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Begin with Her feet upon the path. The hour has come when Śyāma waits in the grove, and Svāminī cannot be still. Love has lifted Her clean out of Herself; She rises, She runs, and in that rapture She has forgotten that She even wears a body. She does not feel the road. But the maidservant feels it. The mañjarī, who lives only at the hem of these feet, looks down at the ground of Vraja and sees thorns there, sees pebbles, sees the hard baked earth, and her own heart splits. For these are not feet as the world knows feet. They are softer than the śiriṣa-blossom, more tender than anything tender, and the single thought that a thorn might press against them is more than love can carry.

So the prayer breaks from her, half a cry: Hā Rādhe, You have lost Yourself in the ecstasy of worshipping Him; You will notice nothing. But we, Your poor maidservants, lose our minds imagining Your feet wounded on the way to His side. Do not set them on the rough ground of Vraja. Place them on my head. Let me carry them, these feet that are a million times dearer to me than my own life, and I will bring You all the way to Śyāmasundara, and not one stone shall touch You.

This is the very ache the gopīs knew in the Rāsa-maṇḍala. The Bhāgavata keeps it, O Rādhe, in that trembling verse the cowherd women sang: yat te sujāta caraṇāmburuham staneṣu, "O dearly beloved, we set Your soft lotus feet upon our breasts so gently, afraid all the while that they will be hurt as You wander the forest; our hearts ache to think how the thorns and the sharp little stones of the woodland paths must be paining Your feet." Out of love that wanted nothing for itself, they feared only for His comfort. And now the same fear turns the other way. For the sakhīs and the mañjarīs are the leaves and the flowers upon the very desire-vine of love for Kṛṣṇa, and Śrī Rādhā is that desire-vine Herself; how then could the leaf and the flower not tremble for the life of the vine?

Hear, O Rādhe, what is flowing from these feet even while the servant pleads. From the ocean of pure, selfless love an unbroken stream of honey-nectar is falling. The feet are the honeyed essence, the makaranda, drawn up out of that vast sea, the sindhu, of true love, sat-prema; and the nectar pours endlessly, on every side, abhitaḥ, without a single pause, into all who have come to take shelter, into the mañjarīs who keep the worship of the heart in the mood of the maidservant. To bear such feet is no labor at all. It is to be bathed, the whole way, in a falling shower of the sweetness of love.

And there is a second sweetness folded inside the first. Sat-prema is true love; but sat is also the Absolute, the Real, and so the words sing at the same time of love for Kṛṣṇa, the Sat Himself. From the ocean that is love-of-Kṛṣṇa an endless nectar streams out of Rādhā's lotus feet toward the surrendered. The tradition has long held, in the vow Raghunātha Dāsa Gosvāmī set down in his Sva-Saṅkalpa-Prakāśa-Stotram, that there is simply no other door: anārādhya rādhā-padāmbhoja-reṇum, without worshipping the dust of Rādhā's lotus feet, without taking the shelter of Vṛndāvana where Her footprints are pressed into the soil, without sitting in the company of those whose hearts have grown grave and deep with love for Her, how could anyone ever plunge into the mellow ocean of Śyāma? These feet are the threshold; their dust is the beginning of the whole road.

Why does the servant call these feet govinda-jīvana-dhanam, the wealth, the very life-treasure, of Govinda? Because Govinda is named for exactly this: His every sense lives steeped in Rādhā. He drinks Her form with His eyes, Her taste with His mouth, Her voice with His ears, Her touch upon His skin, Her fragrance with His breath; go-vinda, the One who finds and keeps His senses in Her. Rūpa Gosvāmī sets it on His own lips in the Lalita-Mādhava, where Kṛṣṇa says to Her: O Kalyāṇi, beautiful auspicious One, Your lips red as the bimba-fruit shame the sweetness of nectar; Your face carries the fragrance of the lotus; Your words crush the pride of the cuckoo's song; Your body, the whole storehouse of beauty, is cooler than sandal-paste; and tasting You, O Rādhe, all My senses rejoice again and again. The One whom the worlds adore here turns adorer, and that turning makes Her feet the wealth on which His own life rests.

And mark how He is kept longing. Yogamāyā arranges that She is hard for Him to win, for She is wed to another, and the tradition sings it plainly, kabhu mile kabhu nā mile, daivera ghaṭana, now they meet, now they do not, as fate appoints; this parakīya-rasa only deepens the pull between Them. So see then how the Beloved Himself longs for what the servant longs to carry. When Rādhā turns away in proud anger, He prays to Her, in the words the Gīta-Govinda gives, dehi pāda-pallavam udāram, "Give Me the tender blossom of Your foot," and He lifts Her lac-reddened feet onto His own head, and His head is made more beautiful for the bearing of them. A wave of rasa rises in My heart, He sings, hiyāra mājhāre uṭhe rasera hilloli, only at the wish to touch Your toes. This is the very quintessence of Divinity: that God Himself should reach to receive the feet of prema's own perfect form, Śrī Rādhā, and count them the treasure of His life. It does not lower Him. It lifts Him higher. It is the glory of Rādhā, who is love made a person, that the Lord of all should crown Himself with Her feet.

Now picture the servant pressing her plea, half-arguing in her love. It will be no burden at all, Rādhe; Your limbs are light as cotton-wool, carrying You will be nothing, and besides, I shall be drenched the whole way in the honey of love that streams from these exquisite feet. And should Svāminī answer, But I will feel it Myself if My feet are hurt, why do you fret, then the servant has her reply ready: No, Rādhe. You will be mad with the anxious love that drives You to Him; You will feel nothing. You will go to worship Govinda and never once look to see whether the wealth of His very life, Your own feet, are being wounded. So let me look. Place that treasure of Govinda's life upon my head; it is His happiness too that I am guarding, for Govinda Himself will be made glad if His treasure comes to Him unhurt. And so the prayer holds Rādhā and holds Govinda together in one love, and from this single verse a hundred meanings and more keep rising like that ceaseless stream. Blessed beyond all telling is this maidservant. Blessed, blessed is her service.