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Picture the whole vast machinery of existence: the worlds being spun out, sustained, drawn back in. Set it far off, dūre, at the edge of the scene, because the one we are watching has turned His back on it. Madhupati does not so much as look that way. And before you object that surely the creation of the universe is His own work, the tradition pauses you gently with two readings of a single word. Some editions sing sṛṣṭyādi, "creation and the rest," and then the line means: what to speak of the labor of fashioning the worlds, Kṛṣṇa no longer attends to it. Other editions sing spṛṣṭyādi, "touching and the rest," and then the line means: what to speak of touching His devotees, He will not even glance at them. Either way the heart of it is the same. He has gone elsewhere.

And where the first reading is taken, the old teachers are quick to free Him of any neglect. Creation is not even properly His burden. That work belongs to the puruṣa-avatāras, to Mahā-Viṣṇu and His expansions; Kṛṣṇa is transcendental to it, He need carry no anxiety over such affairs. The Caitanya-caritāmṛta fixes it plainly: e sabāra darśanete āche māyā gandha; turīya kṛṣṇera nāhi māyāra sambandha, that upon all these Viṣṇu-forms there clings a faint scent of māyā, while Kṛṣṇa is turīya, the transcendental truth, who has no relation with māyā at all. And the little word ādi, "and so forth," reaches even to the slaying of demons and the lightening of the earth's burden; yet even that is done through His power housed in Viṣṇu: ataeva viṣṇu tokhon kṛṣṇera sarīre; viṣṇu dvāre kore kṛṣṇa asura saṁhare, that Viṣṇu then abides within Kṛṣṇa's body, and through Viṣṇu Kṛṣṇa destroys the demons. So nothing is shirked. The cosmos is simply not where His heart has gone.

Now watch the line of claimants form, and watch Him walk past each one. Here come the great devotees, Nārada at their head, sva-bhaktān, His own, who have served Him through ages: He does not cast upon them even a slight glance, manāk na kalayati. Here come the dear friends, Śrīdāma foremost among the suhṛd: He does not go out to meet them. Here are His own father and mother, whose tender affection for Him would, in any other hour, only swell and deepen: He checks even that, He withholds the increase of their sneha. One by one the dearest bonds of Vraja present themselves, and one by one He lets them go quiet.

Why? The tradition reads it through one luminous law: Kṛṣṇa is governed by the love of His devotees, and exactly as far as the love reaches, so far reaches its hold on Him. The ajāta-rati sādhakas, those in whom love has not yet been born, hold only an atomic particle of it, and so they hold almost none of Him. Nārada and the great mahājanas hold somewhat more. The eternal companions of Vraja, Śrīdāma among the friends, Yaśodā among the elders, hold a great love and therefore a great sway over Him. But Vṛṣabhānu's daughter, the princess Rādhikā, holds the very greatest love, and so Her sway over Him is total, complete, without remainder. And the picture the teachers give is so human it disarms us: how shall an ordinary boy, fallen headlong in love with a girl, keep remembering his house, his parents, his friends? Just so, once Kṛṣṇa has fallen into the love of Śrī Rādhikā, He no longer even looks upon Nārada and all the assembled great ones.

For this is what He now knows, jānan, with His whole being: that Śrī Rādhā alone, śrī-rādhām eva, is premaika-sīmā, the single outermost boundary of love, the place past which love cannot go because there is nothing past Her. She is agādhā, unfathomable, no plumb-line reaches Her floor; She is the very sāra, the distilled essence, of the madhura-rasa-sudhā-sindhu, the shoreless ocean of the nectar of sweet rasa. And He, the rasika, is named here madhupati, the bee-Lord: the bee that knows only honey, that lives bent toward the one flower. So the meter itself is fittingly called bhṛṅgadharā, the bee-bearing measure, and the bee hovers, night and day, aniśam, not in Her bower yet but upon the kuñja-vīthī, the very pathways that thread toward the grove where She may be coming. He does not lounge in waiting. He worships them, upāste; He tends those paths as holy ground, because they are the roads by which Rādhā walks.

Hear how Prabodhānanda, who calls the lotus feet of Gaurāṅga his only wealth and treasure, breaks into song over this and cannot hold it in: ki bolibo rādhāra mahimā, how shall I tell Rādhā's glory! For Śrī Govinda stands in the topmost paramānanda from the love of Rādhā, so enchanted, vimohita, that He forgets even His own self. dūrete sparśādi vārtā, what to speak of touching the great world-makers Brahmā and Śiva, Hari forgets utterly even His own devotee Nārada and the whole Bhāgavata host the moment He merely hears the name of Rādhā fall upon His ear. Rādhā's sweet love, rādhā-preme ki bolo mādhurī, snaps Him clean away from the company of friends like Śrīdāma, and makes Him hold back, samvaraṇa, even the heaped nectar-flood of love that the king and queen of Vraja pour toward Him.

And see at last where the bee-Lord is left. He floats upon the endless waves, ananta taraṅge boye yāy, of that deep ocean whose essence is nectar, agādha amṛta-sāra: Rādhā's love itself has become His sea. And on the grove-paths He prays, He pleads, He puts His one petition before the very ground beneath His feet: bolo more kuñja-vīthi, prāṇeśvarī rādhikā kothāya, "Tell me, O pathways of the bower, where is Rādhikā, the sovereign queen of My very life-breath?" Govinda, the singer ends, is satata dheyāne, forever absorbed in meditation upon the sweet love of His most beloved Śrī Rādhikā.

And remember through all of it who is telling us this. Śrīpāda speaks even in his outward consciousness as Śrīmatī's own maidservant, one whose pride and joy is her Svāminī's glory, and so he watches with delight as Madhupati forgets every other rasa He could ever taste, and gives Himself wholly to worshiping the dust of the forest-paths where Rādhā treads.