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Begin where the prayer begins: not with arrival but with aching. "Kadā," when, when. The whole verse is a single held breath of longing, and the longing is not vague. It has an address. It is Vṛndāvana, and not Vṛndāvana as a town on a map but Vṛndāvana the pāvana, the purifier, the blazing and wonder-filled abode steeped in rasa. O sacred dhāma, You are not merely the stage of the līlā; You are its sākṣiṇī, its witness, the one ground that has seen every art of Rādhā's play and held it. To live there is to live inside the watching presence that never once looked away from Her.

And how does the seeker pray to live there? "Premaika-mattākṛtiḥ": with the whole form maddened by love alone. Not learned, not powerful, not even peaceful. Mad. Helpless. The Hindi of the tradition keeps this exact pulse: prema-vivaśā-ākṛti, the form rendered powerless by love. This is the only fitness asked for. Drink nothing else, O heart; be drunk on this one wine until the body itself is shaped by the drinking.

Now the inner movement turns, and here the old teachers lean close and tell us what is truly being begged for. On the surface it is a prayer to dwell in a place. Beneath it, it is a prayer for svarūpa-siddhi: the day the eternal spiritual body stands revealed. The tejo-rūpa-nikuñja, the effulgent bower, is first seen netrādi-piṇḍa-sthitam, held within the orbs of the inner eye, contemplated; and only then, "svocita-divya-komala-vapuḥ svīyaṁ samālokaye," does the seeker pray to look upon his own tender, divine body, the one cut to fit this grove and no other. The picture seen within ripens until the true self steps out of the seeing.

And the love named here is not love in general. The tradition is precise: it is the ecstatic love of a maidservant for Śrī Rādhikā, the mañjarī's love. Picture her as the scriptures picture her. Śrīpāda himself fixes the image in the Vṛndāvana-Mahimāmṛta, that the bodies of these maidservants are forever bristling with goosepimples of tenderness for their beloved divine Couple; that they bring a flood of satisfaction by following Their every hidden hint and unspoken order; that they always, always choose Rādhā's side; that they are quick and expert in playful joking; and that they stay eternally bound to the one place that is the lotus-feet of Śrīśvarī, of Rādhā. They are the very embodiment of the mellow of servitude folded inside this sweetest love, and even when ecstasy floods them they never once let the service fall.

What is the service? Let it be named in full, for the prayer is for hands that can do exactly this. Again in the Vṛndāvana-Mahimāmṛta the tradition unfolds the day: sometimes she massages Rādhikā with oil; sometimes she bathes Her with fragrant water; sometimes she worships Her wholly with garments, ornaments, perfumes, and garlands; sometimes she feeds Her an ambrosial meal; sometimes she offers Her camphor-scented betel; sometimes she presses Her lotus-feet; and sometimes, with a soft cloth fan moving slowly, she lulls Her to sleep. Day and night, in great ecstatic love, the maidservants live in Vraja doing only this. O Rādhe, to be given a body that can press oil into the weariness of Your feet, that can hold the fan until Your eyes close, this is the whole of the wanting.

So the path is laid plain by the teachers. The aspirant on the road of rāga-bhakti is to live in Vraja, to become absorbed in the mentally conceived spiritual body in which he serves Rādhikā day and night, and to give up all bodily consciousness. The more he grows aware of that spiritual identity, the more deeply the ecstatic love intoxicates him, and the love and the clear self rise together. And the moment he stands completely free of all body-consciousness, svarūpa-siddhi dawns: the eternal body is revealed in cinmaya Vṛndāvana, the spiritual Vṛndāvana that was always the real one. That revealed body is the tender mañjarī-form, dowered with all the senses, eyes and ears and hands, fit for service in the luminous arbours. This is why the verse aches for eyes and ears and a frame at all: not to possess, but to be equipped to serve.

And this self is not self-imagined out of nothing. The siddha-svarūpa is received from the Guru, instructed by the Guru, held until it is firm. The scriptures themselves command the seeing. The Sanat-Kumāra-Saṁhitā says, "ātmānaṁ cintayet tatra": one should meditate upon oneself there among the gopīs, as an enchanting young kiśorī, lovely in the bloom of adolescence, a companion among the girlfriends of Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa, given over to the services ordered to her, adorned with jewelled ornaments, ornaments that are Rādhā's own, handed down to her as cherished remnants. That single word cintayet, the teachers gloss, means to see one's spiritual self as truly so endowed, as if meeting oneself and settling firm into that body; and when the practice ripens, the material body is forgotten and the seeker comes wholly into the mañjarī-deha. That ripening is svarūpa-siddhi itself.

And mark the wonder the tradition will not let pass. Śrīpāda Prabodhānanda, to whom the tradition ascribes this poem, is himself an eternal associate of the Lord. He need not beg for what is already his. Yet here he reveals the desire all the same, and prays the prayer of a sādhaka still on the road. Blessed is he, the closing strains sing, blessed the lotus-feet that flung open such longing for us to follow; for this is sudurlabha sampad, a most rare treasure, the bower-service of Śrī Rādhā-Govinda-deva, won only by one who can truly dwell in Vraja. The longing, kept burning, is itself the jewel.