130

Picture a seeker who has walked a long road, asking after one thing only: where is the edge of sweetness. He has heard the world praise its beautiful faces and its great loves, and at every door he has asked, is this the limit, is there nothing finer than this. And every door has opened onto a farther door. So he keeps walking until at last the road itself ends, and there, where there is no farther to go, a single Name stands like a horizon: Rādhā. The tradition lifts this verse as a hymn of Her supremacy, Her sarvoparitā, Her all-surpassing crown, and it does not flinch from saying it plainly: She is the place where every "more" lays down its burden and rests.

Begin with love itself. Prema, the tradition tells us, is no ordinary feeling. It is ānanda-cinmaya-rasa: a flavour made of bliss and consciousness, not a thing of this world. And love is not a fixed quantity; it grows, and as it grows it deepens through stage upon stage, until where it crests highest it becomes parama-rasa, mahā-bhāva, the great mood, the very summit of the soul's capacity to love. O seeker, hear the wonder the tradition guards so carefully: the rarest crown of that summit, the mood called mādana, is the sole property of Śrīmatī Rādhikā. It is Her private treasure, Her own and no one else's. Rūpa Gosvāmī fixes it in the Ujjvala-Nīlamaṇi, that when Rādhikā is united with Kṛṣṇa She manifests the wonderful mood named mādana, in which a thousand kinds of pastimes shine forth at once.

What is so astonishing about this mādana. This. The whole world believes that meeting is the cure for separation: you ache for the beloved while apart, you embrace, and the ache is healed. But Viśvanātha Cakravartī, bending close over Rūpa Gosvāmī's word, shows us it is not so in Her highest mood. Even as She is held in Kṛṣṇa's arms, even as She kisses Him, even as He is wholly Hers and She wholly His, the feelings of separation do not let go. Thousands of enjoyments, and woven through them thousands of feelings of parting, and out of that impossible blaze rise words so anxious and so tender that the listening worlds fall silent. One might ask, O wondering one: surely in the earlier ripening of love, in anurāga, the lover already enjoys a vision of the beloved even while parted, and meeting and separation already mingle there. Yes. But in anurāga the vision arrives and ends the pain of parting; the longing is answered and dissolves. In mādana the longing and the union refuse to cancel one another; they hold on together, both at full strength, and that, says the tradition, is more astounding even than anurāga. This is why She is named param-rasa-camatkāra-vaicitrya-sīmā: the very limit of the wonder and astonishing variety of rasa. There is no rasa beyond Hers, because Hers holds what cannot logically coexist, and yet in Her it lives.

Now look upon Her form. The tradition calls Her the limit of fresh youthful beauty: nava-vayo-rūpa-lāvaṇya, and kim api, indescribable. There is a threshold in a life, the trembling hinge where childhood is just turning into youth, vayaḥ-sandhi, the link between the two, and at that threshold the body wears its most exquisite bloom. It is into this very threshold that Her form steps and stays, eternally; She does not pass through it as we do but enters eternity there, abiding forever caught at the most beautiful breath of becoming. O Rādhe, the loveliness others lose to time is Yours to keep.

And how do we know this loveliness is no mere beauty of limbs. Hear what Kṛṣṇa Himself confessed. In the Vidagdha-Mādhava, when His heart first leaned toward Her, His clever friend Madhumaṅgala teased Him: O friend, Vraja is full of beautiful girls, why this helpless leaning toward Rādhikā alone. And Kṛṣṇa answered simply: sakhe rādhāyām asādhāraṇī kāpi mādhurī: in Rādhā there is some uncommon sweetness no other carries. Then He went further, and His words are dear to remember: since the day My sight first sank into Her radiant face and enchanting eyes, I tell you truly, that whenever I now remember the moon or the blue lotus, those very things the poets call beautiful, I make a crooked face and spit on the ground in disgust, as though something cheap had been offered Me. O seeker, mark this well. Kṛṣṇa's heart is a whetstone; it tests every transcendental form that pure love brings into being, and it cannot be drawn by mere physical beauty that is not born of love. Worldly prettiness leaves Him cold. Her beauty alone passes the test, because Her beauty is the very flowering of love itself. So Her form is the limit of natural, love-born beauty; the Lord's human-like pastimes in Vraja are supreme in beauty and flavour anywhere; and Her love for Him is the highest love that Vraja has ever held.

Now turn to Her heart toward others, and here the wonder softens into tenderness. She is the very limit of generosity, audārya. Rūpa Gosvāmī gives the word a startling definition in the Bhakti-Rasāmṛta-Sindhu, that audārya is the generosity which causes one even to give oneself away: ātmādy-arpaṇa-kāritvam. The truly generous one does not hand you something they own; they hand you their own self. And what is Śrī Rādhā if not love made into a person. So when She gives Herself away to Her devotees, She is giving them the highest prema there is, the very thing the whole creation aches for. Remember how Śrīman Mahāprabhu, having taken on Her mood and Her golden complexion, walked the earth scattering that highest love of God to everyone, never pausing to ask who was a friend and who an enemy, pouring prema even upon dull and rooted things, the trees and the creeping vines of the path. Who in all the worlds is more open-handed than this. And the fountain of that flood is She.

And there is one more sweetness, dearest of all to remember. She who is the limit of the highest, most astonishing love, She who tests even Kṛṣṇa's heart and wins it, is Herself forever conquered, not by Him, but by the love of Her own. The tradition names Her the very pinnacle of vātsalya, motherly tenderness, toward Her sakhīs and Her maidservants, Her nija-jana. She is always subdued, always softened, always overcome by the affection of Her girlfriends and Her handmaids. The mistress of the highest love kneels, as it were, to the small loves of those who serve Her. O Rādhe, You who are the boundary of all greatness, You let Yourself be ruled by the least gesture of a maidservant's devotion. This is why the song of the tradition cries out, in the Caitanya-Caritāmṛta, that if even Kṛṣṇa cannot reach the far shore of Her endless qualities, cannot finish the counting of them, then how shall some small and worthless creature like us ever number them. We cannot count Her. We can only bow, and stay, and say Her name.

So gather all the edges into one. The limit of love's joy. The limit of rasa's wonder and astonishing variety. The limit of beauty. The limit of indescribable youthful grace. The limit of sweet play. The limit of self-giving generosity and melting motherly love for Her own. The limit of bliss. The limit of the sweetness of love's own art. Eight horizons, and one Name standing at every one of them. The Rādhāvallabha sampradāya, naming this very verse śrī-rādhā-sarvoparitā, Her all-surpassing supremacy, restates each limit in turn and lands where the heart must land: Śrī Rādhā alone attains the utmost excellence over all. Where the soul runs out of road, She begins. Jayati Śrī Rādhā. All glories, all glories, to Her.