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Begin where the maidservant begins, with her eyes already full of her Svāminī. Śrīmatī has spent Herself on the bower: every leaf laid right, every vine coaxed into place, the trysting-kuñja made ready for one arrival and one alone. And now She waits. The appointed hour comes; the appointed hour goes; and Śyāma does not part the leaves. O Rādhe, how the ocean of Your anxiety rises then, until You can no longer hold it and Your grief breaks open into words. The maidservant hears Her lament, the very cry the Gīta Govinda preserves: "kathita samaye'pi harir ahaha na yayau vanam, mama viphalam idam alam api rūpa yauvanam, yāmi he kam iha śaraṇaṁ sakhī-jana vacana vancitā": "Alas, Hari did not come to the forest at the time He named. If I cannot serve Him, what use is this youth, this beauty of Mine? To whom shall I run for shelter now, deceived by the words of My own friends?" Hold that picture. The first thing sung of Her, prītir iva mūrtimatī, is read straight out of this aching: She is love that has put on a body.

And the maidservant, who knows what she is looking at, knows this is no figure of speech. The old teachers build the ladder rung by rung. Śrī Jīva Gosvāmī fixes it in the Prīti Sandarbha: hlādinī sāra vṛtti viśeṣa svarūpā bhāgavatī prīti, that love of God is the very essence of God's bliss-energy. Then the Caitanya Caritāmṛta climbs the rest of the way: hlādinīra sāra prema, prema sāra bhāva, bhāvera paramakāṣṭhā nāma mahābhāva, the essence of the pleasure-energy is prema, the essence of prema is bhāva, and the topmost reach of bhāva bears the name mahābhāva. And then the last line lands like an obeisance: mahā bhāva svarūpā rādhā ṭhākurānī, Goddess Rādhā is the very form of that mahābhāva. So when you stand before Her you are not standing before someone who loves greatly. You are standing before love at its uttermost height, walking, breathing, weeping for Her Beloved. The Bhagavad Sandarbha adds the deeper grammar of it: these energies, hlādinī and her sisters, are one with the Lord's form in a formless way, yet they take form as their presiding goddesses and step into the world as His consorts, Lakṣmī, Sītā, Rukmiṇī, and Rādhā. Rādhā is the hlādinī herself, made visible, made Hers.

Now the second picture: rasa-sindhoḥ sāra-sampad iva vimalā, the spotless treasure of the ocean of rasa. And who is that ocean of sweet feeling? It is Śrī Kṛṣṇa. She is the essence churned from His own depths, the very wealth of His heart, and we are not left to guess at this, for He confesses it Himself. Again the Gīta Govinda holds His words: tvam asi mama jīvanaṁ tvam asi mama bhūṣaṇaṁ tvam asi mama bhava jaladhi ratnam, bhavatu bhavatīva mayi satatam anurodhinī, tatra mama hṛdayam ati yatnam: "You are My life, You are My ornament, You are the jewel in the ocean of My longings; O stay in My heart, always, with all My care." She is His found jewel. And here the maidservant draws the line between two kinds of finder. When a man of this world chances on a jewel, he sells it for things to feed his cravings, and his mind is only dirtied by the bargain. But whoever finds this jewel, this transcendental jewel that is love of God, is not made poorer or coarser; he is washed clean and filled to overflowing with the very love he has found.

And there is one more turn folded into that word for treasure. Sampad can also mean Śrī, the goddess Lakṣmī herself. Yes, Lakṣmī is fortune's own queen, but recall from where she came: the ocean of milk gave her up. Rādhā, this Prema-Lakṣmī, was churned from no ocean of milk but from the ocean of rasa itself, from the depths of sweet love. So even the goddess of fortune must bow lower; Rādhā stands higher than she.

Then the third picture: vaidagdhīnāṁ hṛdayam, the very heart of all the clever girls, the heart of cleverness itself. The maidservant has watched it with her own eyes, how artfully Śrīmatī came to the meeting, how exquisitely She dressed the kuñja, every grace of skill in love gathered up and living in Her. The Rādhāvallabha edition names this same crown, calling Her the hṛdaya of the chatura-śiromaṇi sakhīs, the heart even of the gopīs who are themselves the crest-jewels of cleverness.

And so at last the crown of the verse: kācana vṛndāvanādhikāriṇī jayati, all glories to the indescribable empress of Vṛndāvana. Notice it is the whole forest that crowns Her. When the cuckoos and the bees, the birds, the trees, the vines, the very deer of Vṛndāvana see how piteously She is parted from Her beloved, they weep with Her, every creature carrying Her anguish in its own breast. Seeing the forest itself made one heart with Her grief, the maidservant can call Her by no smaller name than queen of this whole sweet land. And then, O wind, the air changes: a bluish aura spills suddenly through the kuñja, and the maidservant who has suffered every pang beside her Svāminī rushes out and sees Him, Śyāmasundara, arrived. She watches the fire of Rādhā's separation drowned all at once in the ecstatic shower of meeting, and out of a heart too full for measured words she cries it: kācana vṛndāvanādhikāriṇī jayati, all glories to the indescribable, the ineffable, the supreme queen of Vṛndāvana, who reigns alone.