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Picture it: a hidden bower of Vraja, the world shut out behind a wall of leaves, and within, the two of Them, and within Them, nothing but each other. Rādhā is seated in Mādhava's lap, and watch closely who is melting, for it is not as you might expect. It is Mādhava, the Lord of beauty Himself, here meaning Kṛṣṇa, the master of all loveliness, who loses Himself utterly. He has already drunk in Rādhikā's form through His eyes; that thirst slaked, a deeper thirst rose in Him, the longing for the joy of touch. And so His soft palms move over Her, again and again, limb by limb, over skin that is wonderfully cool. And each time His hand meets that coolness, He goes down, down, into a pool of dense nectar-bliss, immersed, drowning, the endless Lord let Himself be bound and submerged by one girl's love.

Linger on the word for that pool. The old teachers do not let it pass. A pool is not an ocean; a pool has edges, a rim, a limited shore. And so they read it: this love, the secret parakīya love of Rādhā and Mādhava, lives in one place only, in the kuñjas of Vraja, and nowhere else in all the worlds. The bowers are bound by small borders, and that is the point of the small word. Inside those narrow banks there is nothing whatever but the two of Them and the taste of each other; everything else has been left outside the leaves. The God who has no bound consents to be drowned within the smallest of pools, because that is where His love is.

And the picture of Her on His lap: O Rādhe, lotus-eyed, the teachers see You as a golden lotus floating upon a blue pond, the dark of Him the water, the gold of You the blossom, each lovelier for resting against the other. With Your mutual love You go on increasing each other's beauty without end, His sweetness drawing out Yours, Yours drawing out His, no bottom to it. And then He gathers You with His rope-like arms into a deep, tight embrace, and that very pressing lifts Your beautiful chin a little upward, the embrace itself tilting Your face toward His, and so He kisses You, and kisses You again. The Rādhāvallabha singers, who set this under the heading vihāra-vyāpti, the fullness of the play, in the rolling Mandākrāntā meter, keep their eyes fixed on what the kiss does to You: it leaves You more restless still, more stirred, more cañcala, the touch waking in You a tenderness that cannot hold still.

And here the tradition adds a point so tender it is easy to miss: the maidservant who stands near and watches is not shut out of this joy. She is not a bystander. Because she belongs wholly and without remainder to Rādhā, she is in a sense nondifferent from Her, and so when Mādhava touches Rādhā the servant feels that touch in her own body. Rūpa's lineage fixes it in the Govinda-Līlāmṛta, that "spṛśati yadi mukundo rādhikāṁ tat sakhīnāṁ bhavati vapuṣi kampa sveda romāñca vāṣpam": when Mukunda touches Rādhikā, even Her girlfriends shiver and sweat, their hair stands on end, their eyes brim with tears. And the maidservants, the teachers say, feel it more keenly even than the sakhīs, though they never unite with Kṛṣṇa as the sakhīs do, precisely because their love for Rādhikā is more intense, more complete, with nothing of self held back. So while He drowns in His small pool of rasa, the servant who only watches floats in a whole ocean of Svāminī's nectarean sweetness. This, then, is no scene of two lovers only. It is a love so real that it overflows its own banks and breaks upon everyone who truly serves it.