24

Begin with the morning. The Yamunā is still cool, the eastern sky just warming, and the dew has not yet lifted from the kadamba leaves. A maidservant, a kiṅkarī, has finished anointing Śrīmatī's tender limbs with fragrant oil, and now she gently rouses Her: "Svāmini, rise and take Your bath." And Śrīmatī, startled out of some inward absorption, turns and says a thing that breaks the heart with its sweetness: "Who is this anointing Me? I had forgotten it was you. Your touch is just like His." Blessed beyond telling is that maidservant, that her hands upon Svāminī's limbs can be mistaken, even for an instant, for the touch of Śyāma. She is an eternally perfect maidservant, and from her, the tradition says, the aspirant is to learn what service is. She does not reach for Rādhā's beauty. She tends it.

You must know the secret hidden among the branches of the nearby kadamba, for this whole verse rises out of it. Nāgarendra, the king of all lovers, the dark enchanter Himself, has climbed up among the leaves and is gazing down upon Śrīmatī's uncovered limbs. The maidservant has seen Him. Śrīmatī has not. The maidservant has now finished the bath and begun to dress and ornament Her, but there is something unnatural in the kiṅkarī's eyes, a quick startled brightness, and Śrīmatī catches it and at once draws Her garment close over Her limbs and looks all around: "Is My beautiful Śyāma somewhere behind Me?" O the gestures She makes in that moment, the half-turn, the gathered cloth, the searching glance. Śyāma, hidden, is enchanted past all bearing, and the maidservant too feels blessed to witness it. And when at last Her gaze climbs the kadamba and finds a bluish effulgence trembling in the leaves, She catches Him though He tries to hide. He cannot escape Her eyes. Then Her eyes turn upon the maidservant and chastise her without a word, "If you saw Him, why did you not say?" And the maidservant answers, also without a word, only with her eyes, "I did not see Him. I too have only just now seen Him."

And now watch what blooms upon Her face, for this is the very thing the one who sings this scripture aches to see. So many feelings crowd into Her at once that an ornament of emotion the tradition calls vilāsa, a bhāva-bhūṣaṇa, adorns Her limbs. Shyness pulls Her one way, toward home; modesty and a sweet pretended refusal tug at Her; and yet heedlessness whispers that She had come out to gather flowers for the sun's worship after Her bath, so let Her seem to be about that errand; and beneath it all, ecstasy and a deep secret amorous longing pour into Her body and mind, until She is brought to a condition no word can hold. It is just this face, this trembling braid of bashfulness and opposition and joy and desire, that the singer prays to behold. And it is said in the Caitanya-caritāmṛta that when Śyāmasundara sees Rādhā's face and eyes wearing this very mood, He tastes a pleasure millions of times greater than any union could give Him: ei bhāva yukta dekhi rādhāsya nayana, saṅgama hoite sukha pāy koṭi guṇa. Such is the sweetness She does not even know She is.

For consider the deepest secret of the morning: it was Her own innermost wish to meet Him that drew Her down to bathe in the Yamunā at all. Snāna chole bhetibo kānāi, the tradition sings, "On the pretext of bathing I shall meet My dark beloved." The jewelled inner temple of Her mind was already filled with the light of that hope before ever She left Her chamber. So when the meeting comes, it is no accident. It is a longing kept and lit and now rewarded.

Now you can taste the comparisons themselves, and taste also why they strain. The singers reach for lotus, reach for moon, and one must ask: can the very form of love, prema-svarūpiṇī Śrī Rādhikā, premamayī, be set beside any earthly thing? No ordinary lotus, no ordinary moon will do. There is no way to understand Her in truth except through love, devotion and surrender; only so are all Her emotions opened to us. And so the words are chosen with care. Her face is not a lotus from any common pond but a lotus blooming upon a lake whose water is sat-prema, true and abiding love for Krishna, the Absolute, the Real, the sat. Only such a lake could grow such a flower. That is why it is said, sat-prema-rāśi-saraso vikasat-sarojam, the blooming lotus of a lake brimful of love for the Real. And the Rādhāvallabha singers add their own wondering note over this same face, naming it the longing to behold the lotus-face: is it the opened lotus of a sacred love-lake, they ask, or the very nectar that gives bliss to Her own people, or the full moon that makes the ocean of rasa rise and swell? They cannot choose among the three, and neither can we.

For when She sees Him the lotus opens wider with joy and desire and turns relishable as honey, svānanda-sīdhu, the nectar of bliss. And this honey has more than one taste. It is the intoxicating wine that maddens Krishna Himself, svasya priyatamasya, for She is His dearest, and His very nature is being, awareness, bliss, sac-cid-ānanda, and Her face is the wine that sends Him reeling, unmādaka. It is also the honey of joy for Her own sakhīs and mañjarīs, svīyānāṁ sakhi-mañjarīnām ānanda-sīdhu, who grow drunk on delight merely to look at Her. And it is honey too for the practising devotee who, far away in time and place, only remembers the sweetness of that face. How sweet, then, is this meditation.

And the moon. Tat-śrī-mukhaṁ, that beautiful face, is a full moon, but again no common moon. The ordinary moon swells the salt sea with its tides; this moon, rising in the heart, swells the very ocean of Self-bliss, svānanda-sindhu, and makes the ocean of rasa rise and overflow its shores, rasa-sindhu-vivardhana. When this moon-face lifts, the tides of mellow within Krishna heave and break. And Prabodhānanda, in his own Bengali singing of this, cries out from his poverty: svānanda ye sudhāsindhu, vivardhane pūrṇa indu, sukhamoy rādhāra vadana, "This full moon of Rādhā's blissful face increases the nectar-ocean of Self-bliss; when will this fortune come to me, that I too may see this moon-like face?"

Last, the bees. She has just bathed, and Her wet curling locks fall loose across Her cheeks and brow, dark and bluish and glistening, hanging over the golden lotus of Her face exactly as black bees crowd a honey-filled bloom, drawn helpless by its fragrance. Kuṭila-kuntala-bhṛṅga-juṣṭaṁ, the crooked locks joined to it like bees at play around a hundred-petalled lotus standing in a pond of sweetness. So Prabodhānanda sings again of this very face, rāi mukha padma cānda, sakala saundarya dhāma, "Rāi's lotus-face is the abode of all beauty, shining like a honey-dripping hundred-petalled lotus in a pond of sweetness full of glistening waves"; and again, mukha-padme niramala, pūrṇānanda parimala, "Her spotless lotus-face is filled with the fragrance of full bliss and the sweetest nectar honey, and the curling locks around it are like bees playing, the realm that delights everyone's eyes." The bees do not take the honey by force. They hover, they circle, they are kept by the flower's own giving.

Then Śyāmasundara comes slowly down from the branch. Waves of longing swell in the ocean of His amorous mellows the instant He sees that moon-face, and with His eyes alone He prays to the maidservant: find Us a sweet bower on the Yamunā's bank. And Śrīmatī too is eager, eager only to fulfil His wish. So the maidservant arranges the meeting of this anxious Pair in a leafy bower by the river, and herself peers through the gaps in the foliage to drink in the sweetness of Their pastimes there. And then, all at once, the vision lifts and is gone, and the one who has been carried so far on the waves of his own prayer is left standing alone, and he prays the only prayer left to pray: "When, O when, will I be allowed to see these sweet pastimes again?"

This is the wonder of it. The one who sings does not strive after these visions. He stands in svarūpāveśa from the first line to the last, already established within his own true servant-form, his kiṅkarī svarūpa, and the visions come to him spontaneously, never by effort, while he floats upon waves of prayer straight into the kingdom of these pastimes. His heart's longings have been kept for us in this very treasury, this nectar-ocean of Rādhā's rasa, the Rādhā-Rasa-Sudhā-Nidhi. And the aspirant is blessed who is permitted to taste even a single drop of this ocean.