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Picture it. The grove has gone quiet. The flower-bed is crushed and fragrant, the garlands undone, the ornaments scattered where they fell; a sheen of sweat lies over the two bodies that have just loved each other to exhaustion. A maidservant stands near and fans Them, asking nothing, wanting only to be there. And Śrīmatī, suddenly shy, turns to Śyāmasundara and says, "Quickly, dress Me before My girlfriends come and make fun of Me." So He begins, but His hands wander into play, and instead of robing Her He starts to paint little leaf-pictures on the curves of Her breasts. And then it happens. The painting hand stops. For in the bright golden surface of those breasts, polished like two mirrors, Śyāma has caught sight of His own reflection.

Understand what this is, O heart, for it is the most astonishing secret of His nature. Kṛṣṇa's sweetness is not a stored thing that wears thin with looking; it is ever-fresh, the tradition says, like the running water of a river that is never the same water twice and never less. And because it is so fresh, even He cannot stay composed before it. vismāpakaṁ svasya ca saubhaga, the Bhāgavata sings: He is astonishing even to Himself in His own loveliness. The Caitanya-caritāmṛta puts it just as plainly: when Kṛṣṇa sees His own form He is struck with wonder, and a hunger wakes in Him to taste that beauty for Himself, rūpa dekhi āpanāra, kṛṣṇera hoilo camatkāra, āsvādite mone uṭhe kāma. This is no idle vanity; it is the impossible appetite of beauty for itself.

And He has known this hunger before. Rūpa Gosvāmī fixes the memory in the Lalita-Mādhava, in the eighth act, when at Dvārakā Kṛṣṇa once glimpsed Himself in a jewelled wall and stood amazed: aparikalita-pūrvaḥ kaś camatkāra-kārī, sphurati mama garīyān eṣa mādhurya-pūraḥ. "Aha, I have never seen such an astonishing beauty before as this great flooding stream of My own sweetness. Even I grow eager to gaze upon it and to enjoy it, ayam aham api hanta, lubdha-cetāḥ, rādhikeva: just like Śrī Rādhikā." Just like Her. There is the wound and the wonder in a single word. The Lord who is the object of every longing finds Himself longing, and the only one whose longing He can borrow to do it is Hers. āpana mādhurya hare āpanāra mana; āpane āpanā cāhe korite āliṅgana, the Caitanya-caritāmṛta says: He steals His own mind with His own sweetness, and then He wants to embrace Himself.

But here in this grove the beauty is doubled, and so the bewilderment is complete. It is not a cold jewelled wall now; it is the warm golden mirror of Śrī Rādhikā's own body, and the reflection enchants Him past all keeping of His name. He no longer feels Himself to be Kṛṣṇa at all. He feels Himself a young gopī, a girl among the girls, and out of that overturned heart the strange prayer comes. "Who are these two boys, O Gāndharvike? Their luster steals the very pride of fresh blue lotuses, and yet they shine on the globes of Your breasts more beautiful still. Tell Me, who are they that have so enchanted Me?" And then, tenderly, the request that only love could speak: "Listen, O moonfaced Rāi: make Me Your girlfriend. These two boys live always in Your heart, and unless I become Your sakhī it will be very hard for Me ever to come near them. But as Your girlfriend they will embrace Me though I am unqualified, simply because they know I am Yours. One of them can hold Me and the other hold You. That, O Rāi, is the innermost desire of My heart."

O the sweetness of that logic. He who is the whole of being asks to be made a friend, a servant-companion, so that He may be allowed in. He claims no right; He pleads kinship through Her: "they know I am Yours." And the tradition will not let us leave the grove without the deeper thing it hears in His words. For this very ache, the ache of Kṛṣṇa to taste His own sweetness from within Rādhā's heart, is the seed of His coming to earth. The Caitanya-caritāmṛta keeps yet another memory of it: once, sporting with Rādhikā in a Vraja-grove, He saw Himself in a mirror and thought, darpaṇādye dekhi yadi āpana mādhurī, āsvādite lobha hoy āsvādite nāri: "When I see My own sweetness in the mirror I long to relish it, but I cannot; and when I pondered how it might be done, My mind ran after the thought of accepting the very nature of Śrī Rādhikā." So He did. He took on Her compassionate mood and Her golden hue and descended as Śrī Gaurasundara, to relish at last His own sweetness through Her love, and, overflowing, to hand that love freely to a world that had never asked for it.

Which is why this small smile is so vast. Śrīmatī hears Her bewildered Beloved, the rasika nāgara undone by His own reflection, and a slight smile breaks across Her moonlike face. The maidservant, watching, floats in an ocean of bliss to hear enchanted Śyāma's words and to see that smile. But the tradition reads in it more than tenderness. That smile, it says, is Her consent: Her quiet yes to the all-merciful golden descent that His longing has set in motion, Her blessing upon the avatāra who will carry love of God to every door. And so when Śrīpāda Prabodhānanda ends the verse with rādhā-smitaṁ pātu naḥ, "may Rādhā's smile protect us," he is not asking for shelter only from the burning fire of separation from Her, though that too. He is pointing, for those tender enough to feel it, at the golden Gaurāṅga whom that smile permitted into the world. Sensitive hearts will understand the hidden thing. And mark his last word, "us," not "me": even in the height of his rapture the saint will not pray alone, but draws all of us, by his generosity, under the canopy of that protecting smile. udbhrānta vacana śune, rasika nāgara pāne, cāhe rāi sahāsya vadane: hearing Rasika Nāgara's bewildered words, Rāi gazes at Him and smiles, and may the luster of that nectar-smile protect everyone, always.