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Begin at Her feet. Lower than the hem of Her garment, lower than the dust She walks upon, begin where the eyes of a servant rightly rest, at the soft curve of Her toes and the small moons of Her toenails. They are not ordinary nails. They are sphūrjat, manifest and surging, jewels set into Her feet, and from them the light does not merely glint, it leaps, it bursts into being. Now narrow your gaze further. Not all of them, only one. Eka-cchaṭā: a single ray of luster from a single nail.

And watch what that one ray becomes. It does not light a room or gild a leaf. From that single flash there swell millions of oceans, koṭi upon koṭi of them, and these are not oceans of water. They are mahā-sindhu of premāmṛta-rasa, the nectar-flavor of love, and they are sāndra, which means deep: deep, dense, packed so full that there is no shallows anywhere in them, no shoreline where the heart can stand with its feet dry and reason about what it sees. These oceans are deep with mahā-bhāva, the very pinnacle of divine love, the love that lives nowhere in all the worlds except in Her and in the most exalted gopīs who drink from Her. And all of this, koṭi upon koṭi of bottomless love-seas, is only Her vilāsa, only Her play, only the overspill of one ray from one toenail.

O the trembling that comes here. The tradition tells us that just before this, the singer had likened Her to the great ocean, thinking he had praised Her highly. And now he covers his face and repents. "Alas, what have I done? Even from a single lightray of Her toenails millions of nectar-oceans pour out, and I, an unfortunate soul, measured Her whole body against one sea. What offense have I committed, shrinking the glory of my Svāminī to fit my small comparing mind?" This is the right repentance of love. The more it sees, the more it knows it has under-loved. Praise that ends in self-satisfaction was never praise of Her; true praise ends in this sweet collapse, this confession that She is past all measuring.

For how can deep oceans pour from a thread of light? They cannot, to the one who stands on the shore. The shore is the safe ground of the arguer, where a person looks for a reasonable explanation for everything and so never gets wet, never goes under, never tastes. Viśvāse milaye kṛṣṇa, tarka bahu dūra: through faith Kṛṣṇa is met, and from the one who only argues and debates He stays far, far off. So leave the shore. Do not stand and reckon. Walk in until the love-sea takes you off your feet, for these waters are entered only by trust and never by tallying.

And see what such a one prays for. Not the oceans. Not even, directly, the touch of Kṛṣṇa. The whole prayer narrows to a single point of light: if that Rādhā, just once, kadācit, ever at all, lets the corner of Her merciful eye fall upon this lowly one, then it is enough, then it is everything. Mark the smallness of the asking. Not Her embrace, not Her conversation, only the slant of Her glance, only kṛpā-dṛṣṭi-pāta, the falling of a merciful look. The servant asks for the least thing She could give, because even the least thing She gives outweighs all that anyone else could ever give.

How greatly it outweighs them, hear. Let that glance come, and mukti, liberation itself, the freedom that ten thousand renunciants burn their whole lives to win, becomes tucchī, paltry, a small dry thing not worth bending to pick up. And not liberation alone. Every prākṛta-śrī, every splendor of this material world, all its kingdoms and beauties and powers; and beyond that every aprākṛta-śrī, every splendor of the spiritual realms themselves, all become bahuśaḥ tucchī, meaningless in many kinds at once, before that one merciful look. Śrīla Rūpa Gosvāmī fixes it in the Lalita-Mādhava, that as long as not even a whiff of the great medicinal herb of love for Kṛṣṇa has entered the heart, then yes, the riches of mystic perfections and deep samādhi and satya-dharma, the very religion of truth, and even the bliss of brahman can still dazzle a soul, can still cause astonishment; but let that one whiff arrive, and all of it loses its power to amaze. The toenail's ray is that whiff, multiplied past counting.

And so even the highest things the devout dream of grow small for Her maidservants. A throne in Vaikuṇṭha, a place in Ayodhyā, in Mathurā, in Dvārakā, the eternal abodes of the Lord Himself, these cannot draw the eye of one who serves Śrī Rādhikā. Hear the wonder of it: even nearness to Kṛṣṇa in Vraja, if it is nearness not bound to Her, is a poor thing to them. The beautiful gopīs have already poured out body and mind and heart at the sweet feet of Śrīman Madana Gopāla; they float in oceans of bliss, singing, "You, O Kṛṣṇa, are the Lord of all, the worshipable treasure of the great mystics; we are only wretched cowherd girls who know nothing of devotion or formal worship, yet we have poured the love-nectar of our hearts and minds out before Your feet. You are our lord, You are our goal, our heart wants nothing else." They want nothing else, and yet, hear what they ask when sweet Madana Gopāla appears of His own will, spontaneously, wanting to give Himself wholly to them.

He comes, He offers Himself, and the maidservant bows and prays not for Him but through Him: "O Prince of Vraja, paśupālendra-kumāra, I offer my obeisances and I beg You with a breaking voice, do this one mercy for me, make me the object of the mercy of Her, the crowning garland of all the young girls of Vraja, of Śrī Rādhikā." So Rūpa Gosvāmī sets it in the Utkalikā-Vallarī. Even with Kṛṣṇa Himself standing before her, offering His own self, the desire of the true servant runs past Him toward Her glance, toward becoming worthy of Her grace. This is the sweet and beautiful fruit of attaining Her favor, that even the Beloved becomes the door, and Her merciful look the home. O Rādhe, let one ray of one nail of one toe fall on us. We ask for nothing larger; we know there is nothing larger.