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Begin in the nikuñja at the hour of the great dance. The vines have drawn their leaves close, the night-jasmine has opened, and into that bower steps Rādhā with Her sakhīs gathering near. She begins to move, and at once the heart that watches forgets everything that is not Her. Look at this Rāi Kamalinī, the Rādhā-lotus playing in the forest-bower, moving every limb in the dance.

For look at how She moves, O Rādhe. Not one gesture, not one turn, is ordinary. Each limb and each lesser limb stirs, riṅgan, with a swaying that is alive, and from every single part of Her a sweetness rises that has no edge to it. The tradition sings of it: madhura hoite sumadhura, sweeter than sweet, an apāra jaladhi, a shoreless ocean filled with the nectar of great fame. When the gopīs dance, Śuka Muni tells how their steps fall light yet quick, full of an endless artful cleverness; their creeper-arms sway as leaves sway on a vine in the wind; and as they turn, their slender waists seem almost to break with grace. Scarves slip from their shoulders, braids loosen, the fresh jasmine garlands shake free and scatter, until they become sweetness itself made visible. And every one of these motions is most perfectly Hers, for She is the spring from which all of it flows. This is why She is named a great nectar-ocean of fame, mahā-kīrti-pīyūṣa-sindhu. Even fame cannot keep pace with Her. Even fame, who is meant to carry the praise of all the worlds, stands speechless before the sweetness of one turn of Her body.

There is a wonder hidden here, O wind that has touched the dust of Barsānā. In the world we know, when a river reaches the sea it is swallowed, loses its name, and is gone. But the river of Rādhā's pastimes is not like that. From this river an ocean is born. The current of Her play does not vanish into the ocean of fame; it gives that ocean its very being, pouring and pouring and never spent. So the more She moves, the more the sea of Her glory swells, and the heart that watches knows it could swim there a thousand lifetimes and never reach a far shore. The Caitanya-caritāmṛta confesses it, kṛṣṇa yāra anta nā pāya jīva kon chāra: even Kṛṣṇa cannot find the end of Her glories, what then of an ordinary creature? And if Śyāmasundara Himself cannot reach the limit of Her sweetness, what hope has any small one of measuring it. Yet what bliss that the limit cannot be found. For into that very ocean the eyes and ears and tongues and minds of Śyāmasundara, of the sakhīs, of the mañjarīs, dive like fishes and swim in unending joy.

Now lift your gaze to Her face. Out of that nectar-ocean of fame Her face rises like a moon rising from the milk-sea, only it is no single moon. It mocks the splendour of millions of moons at once, indoḥ koṭir vinindat, putting their cold borrowed light to shame with its own warm living radiance: koṭīndu vilāsa jini, defeating the play of a million moons. And it is most beautiful, O Rādhe, precisely when You are gazing at Your beloved's lotus-face in the swirl of the dance. For then Your eyes begin to dance too. They roll and dart, restless, lola, drunk with the wine of love, ati-mada, not the dullness of any earthly drink but the intoxication of praṇaya, of confidential love poured out without measure. Madālola netre nirupamā: love-mad rolling eyes that no comparison can hold. You are Vṛṣabhānu's tender and lovely princess, saukumārye sulalitā, the very form of rasa and filled with that rasa.

And this praṇaya, this is the heart of the matter, O devotee who listens. The Gauḍīya elders read the word with care: praṇaya is a love so intimate that the lover no longer feels His own hands and feet as His own. He feels them as Hers, and Hers as His, the two woven past all separating. Yet Śrī Viśvanātha Cakravartī is careful to say that this is not the merging of oneness into brahman, where all distinction dissolves into a featureless calm. No. Here the two remain two, Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa, lover and beloved, and yet so utterly belong to one another that the limbs of the one are dear as the limbs of the other. This is the wonder of madhurya-rasa, where union is total and yet the sweet game of two-ness is never lost. Śrī Rūpa Gosvāmī shows it in the Ujjvala-Nīlamaṇi: when Candrāvalī and her friends dance with Kṛṣṇa, they take careful pains never to so much as brush His feet by accident, for they hold Him in awe. But Rādhā and Her own dear sakhīs are so deeply intimate with Him that they keep no such careful distance; their closeness has burned away the last reserve. That is praṇaya. That is what makes Her river overflow.

So from such a Rādhā, of a body wondrously tender, saukumārya-adbhuta, and exquisitely graceful, lalita, rise rivers. Keli-kallolinī, rivers made of the very waves of Her love-play. Ānanda-syandinī, rivers that trickle and stream pure bliss. Premānanda nisyandinī, ecstatic love flowing constantly from this playful river of nectarean rasa whose name is Rādhā. They run on without ceasing, day and night, fed from the inexhaustible spring of Her praṇaya. The one who has beheld all this can hold his longing no more. His whole mind absorbed in the sweetness of Rāseśvarī, the Queen of the Rāsa, he cries the one prayer left to him: kiṁ vigāhe pravāham, when, when will I be allowed to plunge in? When may I dive into this lovely, tender Rādhā-river and bathe? Anudina kori snāna, kobe juḍāibo prāṇa: when, by bathing every single day in that mighty stream of love, will I at last soothe this burning heart? He does not ask to possess it. He asks only to be let into the water. And in the Rādhāvallabha lineage that same cry is breathed in a maidservant's own voice, क्या मैं कभी अवगाहन करूँगी, will I, Her sevikā, ever immerse myself in this love-rasa-filled, bliss-streaming river of Her play.

And the tradition, the one who carries this prayer to us, leaves us with the secret of why such hearing and singing matters at all. This verse stands at the very doorway of the Mahā-Rāsa, the most confidential pastime, in the Tenth Canto, thirty-third chapter of Śrīmad Bhāgavata, which opens śrī bādarāyaṇir uvāca, Śrī Śukadeva spoke. The tradition records why he is named Bādarāyaṇi: the omniscient Vyāsa performed severe austerities at Badarikāśrama for the worship of Kṛṣṇa, and Śuka was the very fruit of that tapas. So as Śuka speaks the Rāsa with a heart purified by love of God, the listener too must hear it with a heart purified by devotion. And the Bhāgavata seals the chapter with its own promise, the verse vikrīḍitaṁ vraja-vadhūbhir idaṁ ca viṣṇoḥ: whoever faithfully hears or describes this play of Viṣṇu with the maidens of Vraja attains parā bhakti, the highest love of the Lord, and swiftly, as a sober one, casts off the heart-disease of lust. Śrī Jīva Gosvāmī fixes the order and will not let us miss it: the verse names the winning of supreme devotion first, and the destruction of lust only after, and from this he draws that this very practice of hearing and chanting the Rāsa is the most powerful sādhana there is. By it the listener becomes deathless, awakens swiftly to his own true self, gains the highest love, and the old fever of lust is drawn out and gone. The disease does not have to leave before the love can come; the love comes first, and at its coming the disease simply cannot remain. So even this longing of the watcher, this cry of when will I dive in, is itself already the medicine working in him.