172

Picture it. Walk first into the forest, for the scene begins there. Śrī Rādhā and Śyāmasundara are strolling among the trees, Their steps unhurried, Their bodies leaning toward each other, and overhead the birds are singing Śrī Rādhā's glories so sweetly that the very arms of the Divine Couple erupt into goosebumps of ecstasy, the small bright tremor of love rising on the skin. Stand at the edge of that bower, O seeker, and let your eyes travel toward Her, for in this remembrance She is about to become more than a girl beside the Yamunā. She is about to become the whole sea.

For here She is sung as an ocean, a great nectar-ocean of mahā-prema, the immeasurable love that Śrī Rādhā bears for Her Hari. No sailor has charted this water and no shore contains it. Its waves do not crash; they swell and subside like breath, like the rise and fall of longing in a heart that cannot stop loving. And every feature of the Beloved is not described from outside, as one would catalogue a face, but dissolved into this sea, until She is the ocean of love itself and we are walking its rim, breathless.

See first Her eyes. They are mugdha, innocent, unschooled, and they are at play, khelat, never holding still. They flicker and dart, casting restless glances toward Śyāmasundara wherever He stands; and in the figure the tradition gives us they are the mīna, the fishes of this ocean, two bright swimmers turning and flashing through the nectarean waves, slipping beneath the surface and rising again, blissful, most blissful, for they were made for this water and have known no current but the one that carries them toward His face. O Rādhe, even Your looking is a kind of dancing, and the one who watches You watch Him is undone.

Now Her lips. The ocean is the ancient abode of jewels, and the deep is where coral grows, branching red beneath the waves. Śrī Rādhā's lips, full and bright and reddened, sphurat, are the vidruma, the coral-stones of this nectar-sea, the precious red that gives the whole ocean of Hari-prema its dignity and its splendor. Where there is coral the water is rich; where there are these lips the love is sweet beyond saying.

Then Her hips, broad and heavy and graceful, the śroṇi-bhāra, the lovely weight of Her. In the figure they become a long island, a dvīpa stretched out across the waters, its shores fringed with the tossing of waves. The tradition does not flinch from naming why this island is set into the sea: it remembers, tenderly, that Hari Himself grows full of longing when He beholds the sweep of Rādhā's form, that His love is not pale or abstract but kindled and alive. And upon that island roam the smara-kalabha, the baby-elephants of Cupid, young tuskers maddened and proud, kaṭa-āṭopa, swaying in their drunken splendor, pacing the wave-tossed shore, unable to keep still.

And those very elephants give us Her breasts. They are the high frontal domes, the kumbha, the temple-mounds upon the brows of these maddened young elephants of Cupid, paired and raised and beautiful, swaying as the elephants sway. There is a holy boldness in this remembrance: the tradition does not look away from the body of the Beloved, but lifts it into the language of ocean and island and elephant and sacred dome, so that what is most intimate becomes most worshipful. Nothing here is coarse; everything is adoration.

Come now to the center, to Her navel, gambhīra, deep, the great whirlpool of the sea. Every vast ocean has its āvarta, its turning vortex where the waters spiral down beyond all sounding, and Śrī Rādhā's deep navel is exactly this. And here the most secret thing is told: the boat of Kṛṣṇa's own mind is forever sucked down into that whirlpool of rasa. Picture His mind as a little boat upon the waters of Her love, and see how it is drawn, drawn, turning toward the deep center of Her, spinning down into the vortex with no power and no wish to escape. The Enchanter of all worlds is Himself enchanted; He who steals every heart has had His own heart pulled down into the spiral of Her navel and will not be returned. O wonder, O the helplessness of Hari before the depths of Rādhā.

And what of Her feet, the feet for which this whole prayer is offered? They are the lotus-flowers that float upon this ocean of nectar-love. Her thighs are the long stems that hold them up from the deep, and from these lotus-feet there trickles honey, the very prema-rasa, the nectar of love sweet beyond the world. To this honey the bee-like minds of the devotees come humming from every direction, and they drink, and they are made drunk in the only drunkenness worth having. And this same honey, falling upon the heart of Kṛṣṇa, is the one water that quenches the burning fire of desire within Him; nothing else cools Him, only the nectar from the soles of Her feet.

So now hear the whole of the prayer, O heart. The one who speaks does not ask to possess this ocean, nor to plunge in and seize its nectar. He asks for one thing only: yogyatā, worthiness, the fitness to serve. Standing at the rim of this immeasurable sea of Rādhā's love, with Her glance-fishes flashing and Her coral lips shining, the island of Her hips lying long upon the waters and the wild elephants of Cupid pacing its shore, Her navel turning down into unfathomable depth and Her lotus-feet floating and dripping honey, he folds his hands and says: I seek only to be worthy to serve those feet. Not to swim. Not to drink. To serve. To be allowed near enough to tend the dual lotus-feet that float upon the whole ocean of Her love for Hari. This is the smallest prayer and the highest, asking for nothing but a place at the very edge, on the side of service, and counting that the supreme treasure.