17

Picture the earth itself, O heart, the round green planet the elders call Sapta-sindhuvati Dhāritrī, the lady girdled by her seven seas: one of salt, one of sugarcane juice, one of wine, one of clarified butter, one of curd, one of milk, and one of sweet water. Now lift your eyes from the planet to the Person, for the tradition teaches that all seven of those oceans are gathered, deepened, and made nectarean in the single golden form of Śrī Rādhikā, and praised here in reverse order. She does not merely stand beside the seven seas. She is the seven seas, poured into the shape of a girl tender as a vine. Hit Harivaṃśa's own line names Her plainly: Sapta-sindhu-rūpā Śrī Rādhā, She whose very form is the seven oceans.

Begin where the heart that sings this verse begins, in lack. Jīva Gosvāmī fixes it in the Prīti Sandarbha, that alongside the longing to please the Beloved there rises a natural longing for intimacy with Him and for the attaining of Him; and the one fixed in smaraṇa wins direct association with his cherished deity within the mind, as the sakhīs and mañjarīs hold their sweet converse in the spiritual world. Hear how he reads the word itself: upa means close by, and upāsana means sitting close by, so that by constant smaraṇa the servant lives near the sakhīs and the mañjarīs in his siddha-deha. This is sāsaṅga bhajana, worship with spiritual attachment. And now the vision has withdrawn. He has slipped back into his sādhaka-self, and the grove is gone. For Īśvarī plays hide-and-seek with Her maidservants. Sometimes She shows the sweetness of Her form, Her ways, Her play, and sometimes She draws the curtain and is gone, and the servant stands in the ordinary world with empty hands and a burning chest. Yet even in that separation Her sweet qualities rise before the eye. So the whole cry comes from that emptiness: sphuratu me hṛdi, O let Her flash forth in my heart again. Not "let me grasp Her." Let Her appear, of Her own sweet will, the way lightning chooses the sky. And as he prays, Her qualities rise before him, sea after sea, and each one undoes a little more of his despair.

First, O Rādhe, You are vaidagdhya-sindhu, the ocean of cleverness, of rasa-pāṇḍitya, learnedness in the very science of sweetness. Think of it: You teach the King of Relishers Himself. Kṛṣṇa confesses it openly in the Caitanya Caritāmṛta, "Rādhikā's love is My teacher and I am the dancing pupil; She forever makes Me dance new and wondrous dances." She learned this art from no one. The tradition presses it: the word ācārya means She did not learn this science from anyone at all; it rose in Her of itself, the way fragrance rises from a flower. Rūpa Gosvāmī sets the picture before us in the Ujjvala Nīlamaṇi, where Kundalatā tells Gārgī of Her artful expertise: She paints with mineral colours, She cooks, She strings garlands no one else can string, She teaches the śārī and śuka parrots their verses, She defeats even the unconquerable Ajita in the game of dice, and in a war of words She can silence Śyām mid-sentence. So You, Prāṇeśvarī, are the seventh sea, the ocean of sweet water, clear and deep and endlessly drinkable.

Second, You are the one and only ocean of anurāga, that ever-fresh, ever-astonishing love which is mahā-bhāva itself. To You His sweetness is new in every instant, never once stale, so You thirst for it as if You had never tasted it before. Rūpa Gosvāmī tells the tender comedy of it in the Ujjvala Nīlamaṇi. After You had pressed close to His heart, overwhelming Him with Your mādana-rasa, and then slipped off to another bower to tease Him, the sakhīs there spoke His name, and You turned, wide-eyed, "Slender one, whose name is that? I must guard My vow as a chaste wife." Lalitā laughed, "O girl blinded by love, You are forever playing on His chest!" And You, bewildered by the very intensity of Your longing, "Truly? He appeared before My eyes only today, only this one second, like a flash of lightning." This is anurāga thickening into mahā-bhāva, and mahā-bhāva deepening into mādana mahā-bhāva, the rarest crest of love, and You alone hold it. You are the wellspring from which all the gopīs draw, as the sea is the wellspring of every river; they are Your phalanx, completing His relishing. And as milk boiled long grows thick and rich kṣīra, Your love is love condensed past all measure. So You are the sixth sea, the ocean of milk.

Third, You are the ocean of vātsalya, the tender mothering love that bends toward the poor and the fallen. The wise say motherly love and amorous love cannot share one heart, yet You make them lie down together. When Śyāma takes His meal You mother Him, and the whole grove brims with bliss to see it. Toward Your sakhīs You let Yourself be ruled by their love. Once, sorry after a quarrel and aching to meet Him again, that kalahāntarita ache, yet wishing to show that You are wholly Your friends' own, You sent word through Vṛndā, as Rūpa Gosvāmī sings it in the Ujjvala Nīlamaṇi: "Tell this prince of Vraja I am controlled by My girlfriends. Why does He waste His words on Me? We are proud girls; let him fearfully flee. Does he not know the prowess of My Lalitā?" And inside those proud words You hid an invitation, telling Śyāma the very hour to come, pleasing Your sakhīs and Your Beloved in one breath. And toward Your mañjarīs, O Svāminī, Your mothering is past all comparing. Śrīpāda draws it in the eighth canto of the Vṛndāvana Mahimāmṛta: day and night they cling to Śrīśvarī's lotus feet, for they would die to be parted from them a single moment. You keep them at Your side, naming them with the deep sweetness of mine, "My Rūpa Mañjarī, My Rati Mañjarī," and You drape them in the worn garlands and dress and ornaments left by the Divine Couple, and they shine with humility and sweet behaviour. Because the richest essence of love is gathered here, as curd is the essence of milk, You are the fifth sea, the ocean of curd.

Fourth, You are the ocean of mercy, ati-sāndra-kṛpā, compassion so dense it has no shore, forever showering Your devotees with its nectar-stream. Those touched by even one drop of it can testify. Raghunātha Dāsa Gosvāmī says of You, karuṇā vidravad-dehā, "Her very body melts with compassion." A heart may melt with pity, but in You the whole body dissolves. And this is the great secret the world was given. In the groves of Vraja this storehouse of Your mercy stayed hidden and shut. But when Kṛṣṇa took on Your mood and golden complexion and walked the earth as Mahāprabhu, it broke open before all. He gave divine love to anyone, asking nothing of caste or āśrama or worthiness, a body literally melting with compassion, and that mercy was Yours, O Rādhe, drawn out of You and spilled upon the unqualified. Because Your body melts so, You are the fourth sea, the ocean of clarified butter, ghee that softens and flows at the least warmth.

Fifth, You are the ocean of lāvaṇya, of liquid loveliness, the shimmer that gushes from every limb the way light seems to tremble from inside a pearl. And Kṛṣṇa, who is Himself called lāvaṇya-sāra, the essence of all elegance, swims His fish-like eyes in the sea of Your beauty and never tires, His thirst only mounting. The tradition records the same in song, that Kṛṣṇa's eyes billow on the waves of nectarean lāvaṇya, grown thirsty for the nectar-waves of Rādhā's loveliness. He is drunk on the sight of You; Your sakhīs and mañjarīs are drunk on the sight of Him drunk on You. So You are the third sea, the ocean of wine, and the servant prays to forget both this world and the next and grow wholly intoxicated worshipping Your feet.

Sixth, You are the ocean of amṛta-cchavi-rūpa, the form that is glowing nectar made visible. You are mahā-bhāva given a body, and mahā-bhāva is itself nectar, the deepest love that can ever be, and Your form pours out all its beauty and tastefulness to the very brim. With one stray drop of His beauty Kṛṣṇa floods three worlds, and yet He Himself drowns in the nectar-sea of Your form. He says it plainly in the Caitanya Caritāmṛta: "Though My form defeats millions of Cupids and gladdens all the worlds, still My eyes find their rest only in seeing Rādhā. I am the cause of the world's joy, but Rādhikā's form and qualities are My very life." So You are the second sea, the ocean of sugarcane juice, sweetness welling up sweet.

And seventh, last and first of the cosmic seas, You are keli-sindhu, the ocean of play, Your frolics with Śyāmasundara. You keep Him tossed in the waves of Your pastimes when You meet. And when the swell of mādana-rasa rises in this ocean, even Kṛṣṇa, the youthful Cupid of Vṛndāvana, dares not set the little boat of His heart upon its surface, the way a boatman keeps his craft against the bank when Gaṅgā meets the sea in towering waves. So You are the first sea, the ocean of salt, whose very sight burns away every sin, yet whose water no ordinary one may drink and live. Here the tradition sets its loving warning, plain as the shore-line: to faithfully hear and chant of the play of Rādhā and Mādhava frees the heart of all sin and of the fever of lust; but to reach out and imitate that play is to perish. The Bhāgavata seals it at the close of the Rāsa-līlā, that a non-Īśvara should not imitate these pastimes even in his mind; the fool who tries destroys himself, as one who would drink the churned-ocean poison would die where Śiva drank it and lived. The rule the tradition gives is plain: one who desires all auspiciousness should act like a devotee, bhakta-vat, never like the Lord, kṛṣṇa-vat. This is the settled purport of all the bhakti-śāstra.

And see what these seven seas have done to the heart that prayed. The darkness of his own unworthiness is burned away in the light of Her qualities. He thinks: "Hā Svāmini, I cannot serve You with any skill at all, how shall I ever stand among Your expert maidservants? But You are the ocean of cleverness, so teach me. Expert service without anuraga cannot please You, but You are the ocean of anurāga, so give me one drop. I am the most wretched of the wretched, but You are the shoreless ocean of mothering love, so sprinkle me with one drop and keep me at Your feet. And what daring is this, that one so unfit dares ask for Your service and Your love? But She is not only the ocean of mothering, She is the ocean of great mercy; surely She will pour it on a fallen one like me." When he remembers Her compassion he forgets his own unfitness, and prays now to enter the seas of Her loveliness, Her form, Her play. And it is exactly this kind of eager, helpless, shoreless prayer that unlocks the chains of Her mercy. That is the whole teaching this prayer lays down for us. Sphuratu me hṛdi keli-sindhuḥ: O ocean of play, O sevenfold sea in the shape of a girl, dawn now in my heart, and stay.