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Picture one whole day of Śrī Rādhā's heart, and watch how it turns three times like a flower turning to follow the sun. The Gauḍīya tradition names the hour: it is the uttara-goṣṭha-līlā, the afternoon when Kṛṣṇa comes back from the meadows, and Karṇapura paints it in the Ānanda-Vṛndāvana-Campū, that the sakhīs, seeing how hungrily Rādhā and Mādhava long to behold each other, slip away to a nearby garden to gather flowers, leaving Rādhikā behind so that the two may meet. And here He comes. The prince of Vraja returns, and the eyes of all Vraja drink Him in. His curly locks and broad forehead are greyed with the dust the cows' hooves threw up along the path. His turban sits crooked on His head, garlanded with clusters of red Aśoka blossoms and peacock feathers that sway in the wind. His bright earrings swing against His cheeks; the pollen of His ear-lotuses, dried in the sun, clings to those bluish cheeks barely moist with sweat. His anklebells ring soft and slow with His unhurried walk, and the flute at His lips enchants every creature that moves and every creature that does not, until even Kṛṣṇa Himself is enchanted by His own sweetness.

Now feel what passes between the two. Hundreds of lovely gopīs worship Him, the very god of love, with the flowers of their sidelong glances; yet one single glance of Rādhikā strikes Him more severely than all of theirs together. He turns back to gaze on Her moon-bright face and is struck still with ecstasy, for one drop of nectar from that face gives Him more rapture than whole showers of nectar from every other moon-face in Vraja. This is the secret the verse keeps: She is the one glance He cannot survive, the single sweetness that undoes Him.

Then the meeting must end, and the friends fold the lovers back into the ordinary day. Subala and the cowherd boys gather around Kṛṣṇa with their consoling and lead Him home; Lalitā and the sakhīs do the same with Rādhikā. And it is here, returned to Her own courtyard, that the third mood breaks open. She laments like one out of Her mind, turning to Viśākhā: "Enough now! Let go! It's useless. Did you see, Viśākhā, how this shameless one set upon Me right on the open road? However I cried, this bold one would not release Me, the crown-jewel of all chaste young girls." Hear how the words land. "alaṁ muñca muñca": Enough, let go, let go. They sound like a refusal flung at Him. But they are spoken in the soft daze the Rādhāvallabha tradition names exactly: prema-vaicitya-daśā, the state where love grows so full it turns contrary, where the heart pushes away the very thing it cannot live without. This is not a real no. It is ati-madhura-mugdha-pralapita, prattle most sweet and most bewildered, the helpless speech of one so flooded with love that even being held becomes too much to bear, and so the lips say "let go" while the whole being clings.

And watch the day close its circle. Seeing Her lament, the sakhīs try to comfort Her by singing in sweet voices the priya-rati-kalā-vaibhava-gatim, the glory and the very course of Kṛṣṇa's artfulness in love, and that singing does not quiet Her. It carries Her straight back into dhyāna, into meditating on the bhaviṣyad-vilasitam, the pastimes with Him still to come. So the three moods are not three separate things at all. They are one wheel: the singing leads to the dreaming, the dreaming has been broken by the dazed lament, and the lament is consoled by singing that sets the dreaming turning again. The Rādhāvallabha line, holding the same verse, widens the first mood to all of Her līlā-vilāsa, all Her play with Him; and it sets the whole day under that one luminous name, prema-vaicitya-daśā.

And who is keeping this prayer? Not one who asks to enter the bower. The maidservants stand a little apart, and seeing and hearing all of this, Her singing, Her dreaming, Her sweet bewildered "let go, let go," they float in oceans of transcendental bliss. The prayer rises from them and only them: kadā nandayatu naḥ, when, O when, will Śrī Rādhā, passing Her day here, gladden us? They do not pray to be Her, nor to be held as She is held. They pray only for the joy of being near while She is glad, content that Her gladness is the whole of their reward.