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Begin with the heart that holds Him. Śrīpāda has just come, in the verse before this one, from a humble plea to Govinda Himself for the sweet maidservice of Śrī Rādhā; and now, as the fruit of that prayer, the dark youth rises unbidden in his meditation. His heart is clear as the water of the Gaṅgā, and into that clear water the boy steps. See Him: kiśoram, an adolescent, all the freshness of youth upon Him; His luster the deep blue of the kuvalaya, the night-lotus, indīvara-dark; a crown of peacock feathers nodding in His hair; and across His limbs a garment that shines like druta-kanaka, molten gold poured bright. Hold Him there. Do not hurry past the picture. The seer is not collecting an image; he is loving Someone.

And this very form, O heart, is the form that once undid Rādhā Herself. Rūpa Gosvāmī sets it down in the Ujjvala Nīlamaṇi, in the chapter on the kinds of love, that in the dawn of Her first love, in pūrva-rāga, Rādhā turned to Viśākhā and asked, trembling: "Who is that young boy, whose tender body looks like a blue indīvara lotus, who wears a cloth the color of molten gold, who wears a necklace of pearls upon His chest, and who fills the whole universe with the mellows of love?" The very same blue, the very same molten-gold cloth that Rādhā once named in wonder, the seer now lays up in his own chest. For the gopīs this form floods the world with eros; but for the maidservant it does something else: it startles the heart awake with one turbulent ache, the longing to wait upon Rādhikā. The boy is held, and the holding bends, of itself, toward Her.

Why toward Her? Because of who She is. Śrīpāda calls Her sukhamayī, made of bliss, blissful Rādhā, and the name carries a secret. She is called bliss-made because She has no interest of Her own at all save Kṛṣṇa's happiness, exactly as He has no interest save Rādhikā's. Their two joys lean wholly into each other. And here the old teachers love to lay one line beside the verse. Narottama dāsa sings, "kṛṣṇa nāma gāne bhāi, rādhikā caraṇa pāi, rādhā nāma gāne kṛṣṇa-candra": Brother, sing Kṛṣṇa's name and you arrive at Rādhikā's feet; sing Rādhā's name and you arrive at Kṛṣṇacandra. This, the tradition says, is the way to please the divine Couple. So the seer does not march up to Rādhā and demand Her service. He holds Her Beloved, he adores the boy, and he trusts that to delight in Him is to delight Her, and that She, delighted, will turn and give what no asking could seize.

For the gift asked is no small thing. It is the nija-kaiṅkarya-padavī, the seat of Her own personal maidservice, and Śrīpāda names it davīyo dṛṣṭīnāṁ padam, the seat the far-seeing reach. The old teachers unfold that phrase as a long ladder of sight. Most souls do not look far at all; they run after the mirage of passing sense-pleasure, which gives a little sweetness at the start and great misery at the end, and so they keep turning on the wheel of birth and death, old age and disease. A step higher stand those who can renounce those objects and strive for release through jñāna, the path of transcendental wisdom; these are the first who deserve the name davīya-dṛṣṭi, the far-seeing. Higher still are the seers who taste the joy of love for a personal God, for whom even the bliss of the formless brahman has gone pale and small. Higher than these are the ones who worship the Lord in His Vraja-feature, in the cowherd sweetness of Braj. And highest of all, the rarest seers, are the fortunate souls who aspire for nothing in the worlds but the nectarean maidservice of Śrī Rādhikā. These, the tradition says plainly, are the souls who have caught the causeless mercy of Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu poured out upon the fallen of this Kali age; it is precisely these whom Śrīpāda is calling "seers" in his verse. He does not boast that he stands among them. He names the one seat worth wanting in all the worlds, and asks, softly, only to be let near it.

So let the whole prayer ring as one chord, the way the tradition seals it in the song attributed to Prabodhānanda: blissful Rādhā is always pleased with anyone who meditates upon bluish Śrī Kṛṣṇa, the best of dancers, indīvara-dark, peacock-crowned, robed in molten gold; and on such a one She bestows the rādhā-kiṅkarīra pada, the maidservant's seat, atiśaya sudurlabha, exceedingly hard to win. Hold the boy, please the girl who is made of His joy, and wait for the rarest gift She alone can give.