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Picture him at the edge of a grove, alone. He has been weeping since the verse before this one, where his heart cried out, "O Prāṇeśvarī, when will it burst into a hundred pieces because I cannot see You?" That cry has not stopped. Bereft of every vision, the virahī wanders from kuñja to kuñja through Śrī Vṛndāvana, searching, searching for the Lady of his heart, and finding Her nowhere. And then the land itself begins to speak to him. The natural beauty of Vṛndāvana, every bower and every bend of the river, presses the līlā-rasa of Śrī-Śrī Rādhā-Mādhava back into his memory, until he can do nothing but point: here. Iha eva abhūt kuñje: it happened here, only here, in this very grove.

Here, he says, my Mohanāṅgī Rādhā has played Her hundreds of ever-fresh artful pastimes with Her dearmost Śyāmasundara. Hear the name he gives Her, Mohanāṅgī, She of the enchanting form, and know what it carries. Her body is made beautiful by mahā-bhāva itself, and that beauty enchants Śyāmasundara, and the sakhīs, and the mañjarīs alike. The fragrance of that love maddens the Beloved Himself. So when he says nava-rati-kalā, the new arts of love, he is not remembering ordinary play; he is remembering the honey-sweet artistry he was once given to witness, and that remembrance now expands a great relish inside a heart that had been burning in the fire of separation.

Then his feet carry him to the bank of the Yamunā, and again the place gives him back the past. How sweetly my rasa-nidhi Rādhā danced here with Her beloved Śyāmasundara, he thinks, atra anṛtyat dayita-sahitā sā rasa-nidhiḥ: here She, the very ocean of rasa, danced together with Her dear one. The remembrance of that sweet dancing pours boundless bliss into him. For this is the hidden mercy of the path of separation: during smaraṇa, Svāminī secretly infuses unlimited coolness into the heart of Her kiṅkarī who is burning, and She does it by handing back to that heart the relish of Her own pastimes.

Why does She let him burn at all? Because, the tradition teaches, this exclusive absorption born of harsh separation is itself a greater treasure than the direct vision of the Beloved. The weeping is the best means of attaining the Beloved; suffering such anguish is the greatest sādhana. So merciful Īśvarī sometimes grants Her transcendental audience and then vanishes again, deliberately, to deepen the longing. Remember the Mahā-Rāsa, the old teachers say: Kṛṣṇa vanished from the gopīs who had given up everything, who had walked into the deep forest in the dead of night holding His lotus-feet as the very essence of life, and only after their anguish did He reveal Himself again. When they asked Him, on the pretext of a question about love, why He had made them suffer so, He made it plain that this absorption is absolutely required for attaining Him and relishing His service. Śrī Bhagavān fixes it in the Bhāgavata, that tenth canto, the thirty-second chapter, the twentieth verse: nāhaṁ tu sakhyo bhajato'pi jantūn, "O sakhīs, just as a poor man who once gained wealth and then lost it can never stop thinking of his loss, so the devotees who have once seen Me never stop thinking of Me when I vanish; therefore I do not always reveal Myself, even to those who do bhajana, only to increase their eagerness."

But Svāminī, the tradition adds, is more merciful still. When She secretly hears the viraha-vilāpa of Her maidservants She says within Herself, "How will you ever attain Me unless you cry your heart out like this for Me?" She knows exactly how to draw Her kiṅkarīs wholly to Her lotus-feet by making them this eager, this anxious. And She does not listen alone: taking Śyāmasundara with Her, the enjoyer of bhakti-rasa beside the enjoyer of bhakti-rasa, Svāminī comes near and secretly hears the lament of the virahī dāsī. For even Kṛṣṇa is astonished, says the Caitanya-caritāmṛta, bhaktera prema-ceṣṭā dekhi kṛṣṇera camatkāra, even He stands amazed when He sees the loving feelings and the loving deeds of His devotees. Only when this eagerness grows truly intense does the relish of the Beloved come, for it is the very sweetness of Mohanāṅgī, Her beauty, Her sweetness, Her pastimes, Her tender attributes, breaking open within revelation, that awakens this great agitation in his heart.

And now comes the turn that makes this verse tremble. In līlā-smaraṇa a consolation can be had, and when the smaraṇa becomes intense enough, the one remembering begins to feel he is directly witnessing the līlā. On the level of prema this remembering grows so deep that it gives birth to the intuitive experience of direct sight. Śrīpāda lives in the very kingdom of mahā-bhāva, and so the flavour of his smaraṇa runs very deep; it is as if he is no longer merely recalling the pastimes but standing inside them, taking part. That is why his prayer breaks out as it does: smaran smaran, remembering and remembering the nectar-wave of Your deeds, kadā syāṁ śrī-rādhe cakita iha vṛndāvana-bhuvi, "O Śrī Rādhe, when will I anxiously live here in this soil of Vṛndāvana?"

Yet even here a fresh longing wakes. For sometimes it seems this nearness is only the fruit of intense remembrance and not direct contact, and so the eagerness sharpens rather than rests. The devotee thinks, "It won't be long now before I attain my deity directly," and he looks all around, anxiously, certain, "I understand, I am getting it now." This is the sweet, shaking, almost-there picture of how a devotee lives in Vraja, cakita, startled by wonder at every grove. If it is this blissful merely to hear of such a state, how blissful must the direct attainment be. Blessed, the old teachers say, are the devotees who follow in the footsteps of Śrīpāda Prabodhānanda.