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Begin with the longing. Not with arrival, not with attainment, but with the ache of a heart that has not yet come, that does not yet see, and can do nothing but cry the one word the tradition gives us here, set under the very heading of abhilāṣā, longing: kadā, when, when, when. Hear it. It is the whole of this remembrance pressed into two syllables, poured into the slow rising metre the tradition calls śikhariṇī, the wave-crested line that itself swells and breaks like the longing it carries. When will it be? When will the day dawn that I, this poor servant with eyes still filmed over by māyā, go walking the lanes of Vrindavan looking for Her hidden grove? The longing comes first because the longing is itself the wealth. The one who has stopped asking "when" has fallen asleep at the gate. So let the question burn.

Now picture the forest. Vrindavan, but not the dusty pilgrim-town the body walks; this is madhura-madhurānanda-rasade, the Vrindavan that is sweetness pouring sweetness, the grove whose every leaf and vine and bee and deer is made of the essence of sweetness and gives nothing but sweet ecstatic rasa. Śrīpāda's own mind is drowned in this, absorbed in the rasa of Śrī Rādhā's merciful glance, marvelling at the sweetness of Her form, Her qualities, Her pastimes, Her compassion. And the tradition sings the abode itself in his own Vṛndāvana Mahimāmṛta, that monumental garland of praise which became manifest in him purely by the grace of Vṛndāvana-dhāma, for Śrīpāda was the special object of the dhāma's mercy. There, in the verse the devotees relish for the very insight it gives, he sings: the bushes are sweet, the trees are sweet, the vines that carpet the ground are sweet, the bees and the birds and the deer are sweet, and the lakes and the rivers and the hills are themselves built out of the very stuff of sweetness; Vṛndāvana shines as sweetness itself, the abode that bestows that highest sweet love. There is nothing material here, nothing mundane, nothing the calculating mind can possess. It is all transcendental, and how sad it is when a soul comes to Vraja and fails to recognize that transcendental sweetness. Yet by Vṛndāvana's own grace even a neophyte will gradually come to see it with his own eyes, and then, only then, his blissful life of spontaneous devotion can begin.

And in this sweetness I am searching for something particular. Not for peace. Mark that well. For this the rāgānugā-bhakta comes to Vraja: not for peace, but to go mad with ecstatic, passionate love. I am searching for keli-bhavana-nava-kuñjāni, the new arbours, the play-cottages, the secret bowers where my Priyeśvarī conducts Her hidden līlā. New, the tradition says, nava: ever-fresh, never the same grove twice, because Her play is eternally renewing itself, never stale, never finished, always at this very instant unfolding somewhere just beyond the curtain of my blindness. O Radhe, where is it? Where is Your vilāsa-kuñja today? Is it here by the shining water of Rādhākuṇḍa? Is it under some flowering tree I have walked past a hundred times without knowing that behind its leaves the Mistress of all sweetness is laughing with Her Prāṇanātha? Your pastimes are eternal, so even now, this very moment, You are enjoying here with the Lord of Your life. The grove is not empty. The grove is full. It is only my eyes, blinded by māyā, that are empty; I cannot see Your sweet pastimes.

Who is She, this One I follow through the bowers? She is Priyeśvarī, the beloved Goddess, the dear Mistress of Kṛṣṇa Himself, the very Mistress of my Lord. And here the wonder doubles back on itself until the mind staggers. For consider who Kṛṣṇa is. Śrī Jīva Gosvāmī fixes the meaning of the very name: tad evaṁ svarūpa-guṇābhyāṁ parama-bṛhattamaḥ sarvākarṣaka ānandaḥ kṛṣṇa-śabda-vācya, that the word "Kṛṣṇa" means the all-attractive, the most fully blissful, the supreme magnet whose nature and qualities draw every heart toward Him. Bilvamaṅgala paints Him as the dark rake at the bend of the dangerous road: mā yātaḥ pānthāḥ, "O traveller, do not go so fast over that road, for there stands a rake with a complexion like a Tamāla-tree, His hand resting on His hip, robbing the wealth of the minds of all who pass." He is the thief of all hearts; resistance is not possible; He is bliss itself walking on two feet. And yet, and yet. This very Kṛṣṇa, this thief of every mind, this bliss personified, this Śyāma who is rasa itself, when He once, only once, looks upon Śrī Rādhā, He is undone. Her form and Her attributes steal the mind of the One who steals all minds. The plunderer is plundered; the intoxicator is intoxicated; the source of all sweetness goes mad at a single glance from Her. The tradition lingers on how She conquered Him not by force but by the slightest thing, in the days of pūrva-rāga, the first dawning of love. A dūtī, half in awe and half in fear, scolds Her in the old song of Śrī Kavi Rañjana: "Listen, O princess, You have pierced a treasure like Kānu in the heart; what kind of behaviour is that? At the end of the day You went to fetch water, and there You only smiled at Him slightly while embracing a girlfriend; revealing Your moon-like face You cast a dangerous net, You faintly showed Him Your breast, and so You stole His very mind. Oi, oi! I burst into tears. Now You must save Kānu's life, for he is dying of You." Such is the One whose footprints I am following through the groves.

And so the heart of the prayer arrives at the feet. Śrī Rādhā's lotus feet: pada-kamala. From these feet flows mādhvīka, honey-wine, the most intoxicating sweetness, and it does not merely drip, it pours, laharī, a wave, parīvāhaiḥ, by overflowing currents, river upon river of honey breaking from the soles of Her feet and flooding outward in an unbroken, ceaseless raining-down. And what am I in the presence of this flood? I am a bee. Madhukara. Just a little bumblebee of a mind, that does the only thing a bee knows how to do, which is to plunge headlong into the sweetest thing it can find and drink until it can no longer stand. O let my mind be that bee. Let the honey-waves from Her feet break over it again and again until it is adhīra, all steadiness gone, all composure dissolved, reeling, drunk, mad, swooning, mad-matta, intoxicated past all return by the wine that flows from where Her feet have touched the ground of Vrindavan. Madayitā: maddened. That is the whole prayer. Not "make me wise," not "make me calm," but "make me mad, O Radhe, with the honey of Your feet."

This is what the rāgānugā heart comes to Vraja for, to be driven out of its mind with passionate, ecstatic love. And the tradition gives us our living measure in the six Gosvāmīs themselves. The Ṣaḍ-gosvāmy-aṣṭaka offers obeisance to Śrī Rūpa, Sanātana, Raghunātha dāsa, Raghunātha Bhaṭṭa, Śrī Jīva, and Gopāla Bhaṭṭa, who wandered everywhere through the lanes and forests of Vraja, overwhelmed with grief and longing, crying aloud in every direction: he rādhe vraja-devike ca lalite, he nanda-sūno, "O Rādhe! Goddess of Vraja! O Lalite! O Son of Nanda, where are You? Are You at the foot of a desire-tree near Govardhana Hill, or in the forest along the Yamunā? Where, where are You?" They wept this through the dust of every grove. They are our examples; they are the very measure of what this remembrance asks the heart to become. Not a tourist of the sacred, but a soul on fire, searching, calling, weeping, asking with the whole of itself the one word: kadā, when, O when, will I find Her grove, and drink at Her feet, and lose my small steady self forever in the flood of Her sweetness?