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Picture a great hall of joys, O seeker, lit by many lamps, each lamp a path some soul has walked toward the Sweet. In one corner stand the preachers of brahman, "brahmānanda-eka-vādāḥ", their faces calm as a winter moon, declaring that the only word worth uttering is oneness, that all difference dissolves into one shoreless light. And it is true light; do not despise it. But Viśvanātha Cakravartī, commenting upon Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 1.2.11, fixes the measure for us: brahman is the moon shining in the daytime, pale against the noon, for there is no śakti in it, its sweetness unmanifest. They have found the changeless ground. They have not yet found the One who dances upon it.

In another place stand those drunk on praise, "bhagavad-vandanānanda-mattāḥ", made mad by adoration, swaying as they sing the glories of the Supreme Lord, tears on their cheeks, hands lifted in vandana, in bowing and hymning. The Hit tradition names this the mood of dāsya, the servant's worship, and it is no small thing; it is a sweetness the brahman-knowers never taste. By Cakravartīpāda's image this is paramātmā, the moon on the first night of the bright fortnight, a thin bright crescent, some potency now present, some warmth beginning. Here the Lord is felt as the Lord, vast and worshipful, and the heart is glad.

And there, nearer the center, stand the dearest of the dear, those who relish "govinda-sakhyādy-anupama-paramānandam", the unrivalled topmost bliss of friendship and the like with Govinda. The cowherd boys who throw their arms around His neck and wrestle Him in the dust and steal the butter from His very hand; the mother who binds Him and scolds Him and weeps when He will not eat, who knows Him as her own small one and not as the Cause of all causes. The Hit gloss calls this maitrī-bhāva, the mood of companionship. By the threefold image this is the full moon, every potency shining, every ray of transcendental sweetness pouring down, for bhagavān manifests all His powers. Here awe has melted into intimacy; here God forgets He is God and lets Himself be loved as friend, as son. Surely, you think, this is the summit. Surely there is no higher.

But the tradition turns our gaze gently aside, to a quieter doorway, to the maidservants of Śrī Rādhā, the kiṅkarīs, "śrī-rādhā-kiṅkarīṇām". The Hit edition sets the whole verse beneath one banner: the supremacy of the bhāva of being Her handmaid. These are the ones who ask nothing of Kṛṣṇa directly, who keep no claim upon Him, whose whole life is spent in the service of His Beloved. And see what is said of them. The entire wonder of bliss, "akhila-sukha-camatkāra-sāra-eka-sīmā": camatkāra, the astonishment that makes the heart catch and the breath stop; sāra, its very essence; sīmā, the single boundary beyond which joy cannot go; all of it is found by them not in embracing Kṛṣṇa, not even in serving Rādhā's face or hands, but in one flash. One ray. The light that leaps from the gem-bright nails crowning Her lotus feet, "tat-pādāmbhoja-rājan-nakha-maṇi-vilasaj-jyotir-eka-cchaṭā api": even one luster of the light manifest from the jewel-like nails of Her lotus feet.

Dwell on that, O heart. Not Her glance. Not Her voice. Not the touch of Her hand in service. The nails of Her feet, nakha, which themselves shine like polished maṇi, gems, throw off vilasat-jyotiḥ, a manifest light, as a jewel throws off light when it turns; and a single splinter of that radiance, the smallest cchaṭā, one luster, marked with api, even, is the outer limit of all wonder in all the worlds. The brahman-bliss, the praise-madness, the friendship and the parenthood with Govinda Himself, all the joys named in the first two lines, gather and crest and find their absolute ceiling here, in the light off the toenails of Rādhā's feet, as tasted by Her servants.

O Rādhe, what are You, that the radiance of Your toenails should outshine the embrace of the Lord of all? What is this love that pours itself entirely toward You and is repaid not even with Your touch but with a glint of light from the lowest part of You, and counts that glint the highest of all heavens? The kiṅkarīs do not measure; they do not compare. They have simply fallen so wholly into Your service that the least gleam from You undoes them, and they would not trade that gleam for the kingdom of Vaikuṇṭha, nor for dissolution into brahman, nor for the butter-stained friendship of Govinda Himself.

This is the secret laid bare, O seeker. There is a love so given over that its own object is no longer Kṛṣṇa at all but Kṛṣṇa's Beloved; and through Her, in service to Her, in being one of the countless girls who braid Her hair and string Her garlands and wave the fan in Her bower, the soul arrives at a sweetness that the direct lovers of God, great as they are, never reach. The handmaid does not stand before Kṛṣṇa. She stands behind Rādhā. And from that humblest place, looking down at the feet of her Svāminī, she catches one ray of nail-light, and the whole astonishment of existence breaks open in her like dawn.

Begin to understand, then, why the servants of Rādhā are esteemed above the seekers of every other bliss. They have discovered that the highest is not had by reaching for the highest, but by becoming the lowest at the feet of the highest of all the Beloved's lovers. The crescent grows to the full moon; and beyond even the full moon there is this: the light a jewel throws when it is the toenail of Rādhā, caught in the eye of one who serves Her and wants nothing else.