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Begin with a single sound. Not a vow, not a ladder of practices stacked one upon another, not the whole apparatus of striving, but one name lifted softly at the opening of each day: Rādhā. Picture the one who sings this, still wearing the body of a seeker, still inside the seeker's mood, and watch what he does. He sets the kingdom of disciplines on the ground and lifts only Her name to his lips. Anudinam, he says, every single day, this and this alone is my work. Let the morning come and the name comes with it; let the noon heat press and the name cools it; let the night fall and the name is the last warmth on the breath. The Hindi rendering of the Rādhāvallabha stream says it plainly: when the hearing and the chanting of Śrī Rādhā's name arrive each day, śravaṇa and kīrtana of the one name, then crore upon crore of the finest practices become things to be released.

Hear carefully what he is and is not releasing, for the tradition guards this distinction with great tenderness. He says sādhanādhīśa-koṭis tyājyā, that millions of the kingliest disciplines become rejectable. He does not say bhajanādhīśa. He does not say the heart of devotion is to be set down. Hearing of Her, chanting of Her, remembering Her, serving the deity, these are never the things let go. What dissolves is the laborious scaffolding: the deliberate austerities the body imposes upon itself, the heaping up of book-knowledge, the careful observance of ordinary religious rule kept for its own sake. All of that, the very emperor of disciplines, surrenders before the single name. For saṅkīrtana, the loving utterance of the name, is itself the sovereign of all sādhanā, and it gives prema to whoever bows to it, asking no credentials, drawing no line between the worthy and the unworthy. This one limb must never be abandoned, for it purifies the mind, it clears the heart, and through that clearing one slips at last into smaraṇa, into remembrance, where the real meeting waits.

The tradition loves to set beside this verse the great opening cry of Sanātana Gosvāmī, who at the threshold of his Bṛhad-Bhāgavatāmṛta sang: jayati jayati nāmānanda-rūpaṁ murārer, viramita-nija-dharma-dhyāna-pūjādi-yatnam: all glories, all glories to the holy name of Murāri that is itself ecstasy, the name that stops the strain of dharma and meditation and formal worship. And he explained his own song gently, in his own hand. The misery of keeping caste and stage-of-life observance, the misery of pinning down a restless mind in meditation, the misery of straining to hear a teacher attentively, the misery of gathering pure ingredients for the ritual tray, all of it is simply lifted away, nirākṛta, and the whole fruit of that labor is handed over freely, by nāma-saṅkīrtana alone. So do not imagine this seeker is careless of God. He is the opposite. He has found the shortcut that is not a shortcut but the destination wearing the disguise of a single word.

Now go further with him, for he does. Nīrājya rādhā-pada-kamala-sudhām, he says: worship the nectar of Her lotus feet, and watch what happens to the very summit of all aspiration. The teaching has always held that love for Kṛṣṇa is the fifth and highest aim, rising clean above religiosity, above prosperity, above pleasure, above even liberation, the four that the world calls dharma, artha, kāma, mokṣa. And here sat means precisely that which is eternal and transcendental, like liberation itself or devotion to God, the truest goals there are. And yet. And yet the service of Śrī Rādhā is sweeter still, more relishable, more magnetic, so that those who taste it set down even the loving service of Kṛṣṇa, which is the very thing that ripens into love for Kṛṣṇa. Sat-pum-arthāgra-koṭiḥ: millions of the foremost, most eternal aims a soul can hold come and worship the nectar of Her feet. The Hindi says they are nyauchāvar, poured out as an offering, crore upon crore of liberations and the rest, emptied at the soles of Her feet. The destination has found a destination.

And then the grove opens. Rādhā-pādābja-līlā-bhuvi jayati sadā amanda-mandāra-koṭiḥ. On the playground of Her lotus feet, which is Śrī Vṛndāvana itself, millions of wish-granting trees flourish always, in glory. But do not picture the cold splendor of Vaikuṇṭha, the manifestation of majesty and might, aiśvarya-prakāśa, the granting of boons to petitioners who come asking. This is nothing like that. The Caitanya-caritāmṛta sings it: kalpa-vṛkṣa latā yāhā sāhajika vana, puṣpa-phala vinā keho na māge anya dhana, the forest of Vraja is a natural, artless wood, and the people who walk in it ask the wish-trees for nothing but fruit and flower, never for wealth, never for power. And that single word amanda holds the whole sweetness twice over: it tells of trees so lavish, so abundantly glorious, that they need not even be approached, pouring their gifts spontaneously, unasked, into hands that were not even raised. The mystic boon the rest of the cosmos strains and bargains and meditates to obtain grows wild and unwanted here, along the paths where Her feet have walked.

And so to the last wonder, the one that makes the seeker tremble with longing. Śrī-rādhā-kiṅkarīṇāṁ luṭhati caraṇayor adbhuta-siddhi-koṭiḥ. At the feet of Śrī Rādhā's handmaidens, millions of astonishing mystic perfections lie rolling, luṭhati, tumbling in the dust, ready for their command, and the maidservants will not so much as cast a sidelong glance at them. The word adbhuta tells you what these are: the very siddhis that enchant the greatest sages, the powers whole lifetimes of austerity are spent to reach, and here they roll like fallen fruit at the feet of the sakhīs, and not one sakhī bends to gather them. For anyone who has tasted even a single drop of Kṛṣṇa's sweetness already counts sense-pleasure and liberation and mystic power as nothing. How much more, then, the handmaidens of Rādhā, who hold even devotion to Kṛṣṇa Himself as a small thing beside Her service. The perfections that rule the imagination of the wise are simply ignored by those who serve Her, dust upon dust at their feet.

This is the seeker's whole confession, gathered into one breath, for he says it openly: when I attain the maidservanthood of Śrī Rādhikā, every other taste leaves me. He is not boasting of renunciation. He is in love. He has seen what lies at the feet of Her sakhīs, and he wants none of it. He wants only to be among them, one more handmaid in the grove, his single daily work the name on his lips, the nectar of Her feet his only worship, the wish-trees blooming around him unasked, the siddhis tumbling past him unregarded, and Her glory the one direction his whole life faces. O Rādhe, let the name be enough. O Rādhe, let Your feet be the fifth aim and the sixth and the last. Let the wonders roll and let me not look down. Let me look only at You.