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Begin with the recoil. Only a breath ago, in the verse before this one, Śrīpāda Prabodhānanda Sarasvatī had stood in his siddha-svarūpa, his perfected mañjarī self, and vowed within his heart to serve the Divine Couple in the groves. And now, the very next moment, the vow seems to crumble in his hands. "Alas," he cries, "what an impossible dream!" Picture the soul that has glimpsed the highest thing and then turned to look back at itself and found only smallness. That is where he stands now.

So he asks his three terrible questions, and you must let each one open like a chasm. Where is that Śrī Rādhā, "nigama-padavī-dūragā": She who has gone far past the very path of the Vedas, so high and so hidden that the oldest scriptures cannot trace where She has gone? The Vedas teach the road of action, the road of knowledge, the road of yoga; they speak, here and there, in hushed tones, of devotion to a personal Lord. But the confidential rāgānugā love of Vraja, and far more the personal service of Śrī Rādhikā Herself, these they barely touch. She is beyond their reach. The books that the world calls the summit of holiness stand at the foot of Her and cannot find Her face.

And where is that Kṛṣṇa, He whose one chosen dwelling, "kuca-mukulayoḥ antar-aikānta-vāsaḥ," is the secret hollow between Her bud-like breasts, at the very door of Her heart? He who is sought by sages in the cave of meditation has slipped away to the one place no seeker can follow, the private bower of Her embrace. To attain service to Kṛṣṇa there, nestled against Rādhikā in the kuñjas of Vraja, is possible for no one at all except a kiṅkarī, a mañjarī handmaid born for that very service. It is the rarest thing in all the worlds.

Now turn and look at the third question, the one that aches. "And where am I?" Where is this tucchaḥ, this insignificant speck; this paramam adhamaḥ, this most fallen one; this prāṇī, this mere breathing creature; this garhya-karmā, this doer of disgusting, reprehensible deeds? See the distance he has drawn. On one shore stand Rādhā beyond the Vedas and Kṛṣṇa hidden at Her heart. On the other shore stands a soul that calls itself condemned. No bridge any hand could build spans that gulf. He sets the most fortunate devotee who has climbed to mañjarī-bhāva, the very crown of rāgānugā bhakti, beside himself, and the contrast is unbearable: "How could perfection ever come to one like me?"

And here is the wonder that should stop your breath. This is Prabodhānanda speaking, an eternal associate of the Lord, ever absorbed in his mañjarī svarūpa, and still he calls himself the lowest of all. Do not read this as a pretty pose. The tradition is exact about what is happening in him. This is dainya, the natural humility that is itself the swelling of the ocean of prema. Sanātana Gosvāmī fixes it in the Bṛhad-Bhāgavatāmṛta, that "yenāsādhāraṇāsaktādhama-buddhiḥ": that which makes even the most elevated and qualified soul think himself extraordinarily powerless, wretched and fallen, this the wise call humility. Love does not puff a person up. Love empties a person out. The more it grows, the smaller one feels.

And where does such humility come from? From ripened love, says Sanātana again in the same scripture: "dainyas tu paramaṁ premṇaḥ paripākena janyate," humility is born when prema reaches its full ripening, just as it was born in the women of Gokula in their separation from Kṛṣṇa. In his own commentary upon that verse he traces the whole tender chain: by Kṛṣṇa's special mercy the gopīs were drawn to Him through the taste of His sweetness, His mādhurya; that attraction kindled their love; and when He was parted from them, that very love poured out as the deepest dainya. So the more one's love of Kṛṣṇa rises, the more one's smallness rises with it. His cry of unworthiness is not the absence of love. It is love at its ripening.

So now the turn, the single line on which the whole verse pivots. If, across that impossible gulf, the names of Śrī Rādhā and Śrī Kṛṣṇa nevertheless rise and tremble on his tongue, what on earth can explain it? He cannot explain it by anything in himself. "A fallen soul like me, engaged in disgusting deeds, has no right even to think of these intimate pastimes of Rādhā-Mādhava, no right to chant Their holy names. If my tongue is still vibrating these nectar-names, that can only be the greatness of Śrī Vṛndāvana." The name did not pause to count his faults. The name did not weigh his unworthiness. Because he had fallen, by some grace, into the transcendental dust of Vraja, the name simply appeared, spontaneously, unearned, a free gift; and it came by the mercy of the very residents of that holy land.

Hear how the tradition sings the same conviction in the old refrain. Who can say how far Rādhikā, the kuñjeśvarī, the queen of the bowers, and playful Śyāma, the rasarāja-nāgara, the king of all rasa who sports between Her lotus breasts, are removed from the Vedic scriptures? And where, alas, is the road that leads to perfection in the nibhṛta-nikuñja-sevā, the hidden grove-service of Rādhā and Govinda-deva, for one so condemned? And yet the names became tangible on the tongue, "aphuranta nāmera karuṇā," through the boundless, inexhaustible mercy of the Name itself. "Prabodhānanda says: if the names of both Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa have mercifully become real upon my tongue, then this I know for certain, this is the glory of Śrī Vṛndāvana-dhāma." O Vṛndāvana, you reached down and lifted a soul you had no reason to lift, and that reaching is your whole greatness.