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Begin low, where the dust is. Not at Her face, not yet at Her eyes, but down at the ground where Her feet have just pressed the soft earth of Vraja. Look there. A faint golden shimmer lies in the dust, the parāga, the pollen-fine powder that clings to the soles of Her feet and lifts a little when She walks. It seems so small. It seems like anything a passing breeze could carry off. And yet the tradition tells us a wonder that bends the knees: this little golden dust is sudurūha, hardly to be reached, all but unattainable, even by the very greatest of the gods. The Gauḍīya ācāryas remind us why the poem opens this way and not with sweetness first, for the Caitanya Caritāmṛta sings that the heart grows fixed in faith only when it knows the greatness of the Lord, and so Śrīpāda begins his auspicious invocation by praising the prowess of Śrī Rādhā.

There is a reason for this order, and it is the rock under everything that follows. Rasa, the honey of tasting, rests always upon tattva, the truth of who She is; strip away that truth and the sweetness can look like an ordinary mortal affection, but keep it and the simple barefoot girl of Barsana stands revealed as the One the worlds cannot reach. Jīva Gosvāmī fixes it in his commentary on the Bhāgavata, that the Supreme is a singular Truth full of self-perfect prowess and sweetness at once, aiśvarya and mādhurya never divided. So Vraja is the very abode of sweetness, and Rādhā is that sweetness made a person; the Gauḍīya teachers hold up Her sweetness for all the world to taste, yet here and in the verse to come they also lift the veil a little on Her majesty, the foundation on which the whole palace of Her charm is built.

Picture them coming, then, the high ones. Brahmā first, the four-faced grandsire, the one from whose mind the worlds unfold. He has seen everything that can be made, for he is the maker. And once, on the bank of the Yamunā, when Kṛṣṇa was only a small cowherd in His paugaṇḍa years sharing a forest meal with His friends, Brahmā looked, and his heart broke open with longing, and he offered prayers that were part reverence and part pure sweetness. He did not dare ask outright for the foot-dust of those simple cowherd boys. He prayed instead, as the Bhāgavata records it, the most humble prayer a creator has ever prayed: let me take birth in this forest of Gokula in any body at all, even a subhuman one, only so that the dust of one of these blessed feet, whose very life is Mukunda, might be sprinkled upon me, that foot-dust which the Vedas themselves are still searching for. The tradition tells us he was so astonished he had not the courage to ask directly, and so prayed to be born even as a tile outside the house of the lowest dweller at the edge of Vraja, only to be covered in such dust. And if the grandsire who could ask for anything trembles so before the foot-dust of Vraja, then how high, how hidden, how sudurūha is the dust of the feet of Her who is the dearest treasure of all Vraja, Vṛṣabhānu-nandinī Herself.

And Śiva next, O Mahādeva, the great ascetic who holds the Gaṅgā in his hair and the cosmos in his stillness. Even his snow-throne on Kailāsa could not give him the dust of Vraja's cowherds that he longed for. So he came down. He took up residence in Vraja itself under the name Gopīśvara, standing watch at the edge of the grove, hoping for a single grain of that sacred powder. And here the tenderest reversal unfolds. When Rādhā and the gopīs saw him standing there, they did not push past him to be served; they bowed and prayed instead for the dust of his feet, hoping that through his grace they might draw nearer to their Kṛṣṇa. So even the lord of all yogis finds Her foot-dust hard to hold. The high ones reach up, and the dust stays higher still.

Even Lakṣmī, O wonder of wonders, even the goddess of fortune herself. The dust is śrīmat, filled with all opulence, and so the meaning grows staggering: the goddess of opulence cannot reach the opulence that rests upon Rādhā's feet. The wives of the Kāliya-serpent confess it in the Bhāgavata, that Lakṣmī gave up the side of her own divine husband Nārāyaṇa by her own will and took shelter of Vṛndāvana to perform harsh austerities, longing only for the foot-dust of Kṛṣṇa in His cowherd form, and that until now she has not attained it. Why should the goddess of all wealth be turned back? The Caitanya Caritāmṛta gives the reason plainly: whoever worships the prince of Vraja in a reverential mood, in the mood of awe and distant majesty, without following in the very footsteps of the gopīs, will not attain Him; and Lakṣmī is set down as the great example, who worshiped and yet did not gain Him. So this dust is not bought with majesty. It is reached only by becoming small in the gopīs' service. Uddhava too, the Lord's own great devotee, was astonished when he saw the gopīs' love, and prayed for a birth in Vraja even as a blade of grass, only so that the dust of those feet might fall upon his head.

Now lift the heart higher, to the most secret marvel, the one the rasikas of Vṛndāvana whisper with shining eyes. There is a hidden reading folded inside the word brahmeśvarādi, for it can also be heard as the Lord of Brahmā, which is Kṛṣṇa Himself. And if it is read so, then even Kṛṣṇa, even Śyāma the all-attractive, finds the dust of Rādhā's lotus feet rarely attained, and longs for it. This does not diminish Him; it is the very crown of His glory. So fierce was His longing for Her feet that He came as Jayadeva to sing that famous line of the Gīta Govinda, dehi pādapallavam udāram, give Me Your generous lotus-feet. And the tradition recalls a day when Śrīmatī is māninī, when love has turned to a sweet sulking jealousy and She will not be soothed; the sakhīs conspire in tenderness, and Kṛṣṇa places Her feet upon His own head to coax away Her pique. Her soles are moist, the red lac upon them still wet, and so the crimson of Her footprint stains the dark crown of Śyāma while His peacock feather slips and falls. He is not lowered by this. He is raised. The mark of Her mercy upon His head makes Him rasikendra-mauli, the very crest-jewel of all who relish love, and this is the inmost quintessence of Godhead itself. So, only to increase His own greatness, Kṛṣṇa forever desires the dust of Her feet. And this is no fairy-tale, for He tells Uddhava in the Bhāgavata that He follows His devotees always to purify Himself with the dust of their feet, and Jīva Gosvāmī explains the heart of it: since He can never repay their love, He performs a kind of loving atonement, sanctifying Himself by their dust. And since no one loves Him as Rādhā loves Him, it follows of itself, sweet beyond saying, that no foot-dust is so dear to Him, so longed-for by Him, as Hers. This, the ācāryas say, is the sweetest possible explanation for the rasika sādhakas of Vṛndāvana.

So this is the foundation. Hold it. This towering, unreachable greatness is not opposed to Her sweetness; it is the rock on which the palace of Her sweetness is built. The simple barefoot girl of Barsana, whose feet press the dust of Vraja, is the One before whom Brahmā, Śiva, and Lakṣmī all stand with empty hands.

And now, having bowed at Her feet, at last lift your eyes to Hers. For after all this towering majesty comes the turn to mercy, and the mercy is even more astonishing than the power. Her glance, O Rādhe, the kṛpārdra-dṛṣṭi, the look gone soft and melting with compassion, the eyes grown wet with grace. And from that glance there does not fall a single drop, there pours a rain. It showers, rasa-varṣi, it rains down the rasa, the sweet living essence of sarvārtha-sāra, the quintessence of every goal a human being could ever pursue. The Caitanya Caritāmṛta sets the four goals in their place: before this treasure, dharma and wealth and pleasure and even liberation are as light as blades of grass, for love of Kṛṣṇa is the fifth and highest puruṣārtha, an ocean of nectar-bliss beside which the joy of mokṣa is not even a single drop; this prema is the great wealth that lets the devotee taste Kṛṣṇa's own sweetness, the love by which He becomes won and bound by those who love Him. And She does not make us earn it grain by grain. She has only to let Her merciful eyes rest upon a soul, and this love-rasa is given at once, with no further striving, flowing out in countless directions all together.

More than this, the tradition sings, it is not even Her glance alone. Simply to behold Śrī Rādhārāṇī is to receive the treasure of love for Kṛṣṇa without any separate effort at all. Nārada, when at last he was granted Her audience in the Padma Purāṇa, spoke from his own trembling experience, that never, never in all his ages had such an ocean of love for Govinda's lotus-feet risen in him as rose the very moment he saw Her. And Sanātana Gosvāmī seals it in his Bṛhad-Bhāgavatāmṛta, that when goddess Rādhikā is anywhere seen, one sees love of God standing there in person, and the seer gains the very experience of that love. This is why love of Kṛṣṇa is sweetened only by love of Rādhā; for the tradition warns that worship of Kṛṣṇa without the worship of Rādhā is but a single drop drawn from the shoreless ocean of divine love. She is Vṛndāvana's own sweetness made a person, the all-in-all of every pastime there, and so the very life of love for Śyāma is love for the dust of Her feet.

And in this dark and quarrelsome age, the tradition rejoices, the day has come when this can be tasted directly, for Śrī Gaurasundara has descended wearing Her mood and Her golden lustre, blessing with prema all who behold His radiant golden form; Sanātana Gosvāmī promises that when such a descent of Kṛṣṇacandra comes to distribute love of Himself, or some descent of Rādhikā, then through that audience this prema must be experienced. Such is the prowess of even Her aura, that it can come walking among us and pour love into the world. So fierce is this truth that Mahādeva himself warns Pārvatī that whoever would worship Kṛṣṇa, or chant or meditate upon Him, without the worship of Rādhā, falls into sin; Her glance is not an ornament to His worship but its very life.

So I gather all of it together, the unreachable dust and the overflowing eyes, the majesty that turns back gods and the mercy that needs no merit, and I lay my whole self down. To that greatness of Vṛṣabhānu's daughter, whose feet the highest cannot touch and whose glance gives freely the highest of all gifts, namo'stu, let there be obeisance, again and again and again.