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Picture it: the last cool watch of the night in Vṛndāvana, when the dark is thinning at its edges and the groves hold their breath. Inside a bower-temple woven of vine and blossom, the divine Couple lies asleep, bound in an embrace so firm that none can say where one begins and the other ends. The night has been Theirs. Now the world tilts gently toward dawn, and the maidservants stir.

See how they wake before their Beloveds, these sakhīs, and how softly they move. They prepare their morning services, they gather the day's paraphernalia, they peer through the latticed windows of the bower at the matchless beauty of the sleeping forms within, and they cannot help themselves: they drink in that loveliness as a thirsty creature drinks at water. At Vṛndā-devī's quiet signal the parrots in the boughs begin their work, singing low sweet verses that are themselves a kind of caress, coaxing the Couple up from sleep without ever startling Them.

And so They wake. Slowly Rādhā and Śyāma sit up upon the bed, and that bed seems to be the place where all the beauty of all three worlds has been laid down to rest for the night. O the sweetness of Them as They yawn, garments loosened, ornaments slipped from their places, faces unfolding like lotuses that open at sunrise. One maidservant lifts a glass of nectar-drink to clear the last drowsiness from Their eyes. Another washes Their faces with scented water; another dries them; another offers fresh betel-leaves. A jewelled lamp burns steady against the fading dark.

Then Śrīmatī, suddenly aware that the morning is upon Her and Her girlfriends will soon arrive, turns to Her dark Beloved with a flush of urgency: dress Me quickly, before they come and tease Me. And Śyāmasundara, brimming with delight at the task, becomes Her attendant. The maidservants bring Him every needed thing, and He sets to work upon His Priyājī. Hari smears Her body with vermilion. He sets the tilaka upon Her brow, lays sindūra in the part of Her hair, gathers and braids those dark tresses. And then, with the patient artistry of a lover, He takes the fragrant musk and begins to draw delicate pictures upon Her breasts.

This is the moment the tradition lifts up and presses into the heart. Those breasts, golden as two pitchers of pure gold, śātakumbha, firm and full, are spoken of as sarvasva-sampuṭam iva: like a sealed casket in which a certain someone has stored away everything He owns. Not gold, not jewels, but His own self, His life's whole wealth. The Rādhāvallabha singers name the same secret in their heading, rasollāsa-rūpa kanaka-kuca smaraṇa, remembrance of the golden breasts that are the very form of rasa overflowing, and they confirm it plainly: remember, O mind, the twin golden-pitcher breasts of Vṛṣabhānu's daughter, which are like the entire treasury of that Gokula-kiśora-moon who stands manifest in Vṛndāvana as a form of millions of Kandarpa.

And who is this boy? The tradition will not even fix a name on Him at first, only kasyāpi: of some certain one, some matchless someone. He is the niśākara, the moon, the maker of night's sweetness. When He stands beside Rādhā He is Madana-mohana, the enchanter of Cupid himself; but the tradition fixes it in the Govinda-Līlāmṛta, rādhā saṅge yadā bhāti tadā madana-mohanaḥ, that when He is with Rādhā He bewilders even Cupid, yet when He is parted from Her, this same boy who bewilders the whole universe is Himself bewildered by Cupid. So even His mastery is held in Her hands.

The great rasika Līlāśuka sings of Him in the Kṛṣṇa-Karṇāmṛta: we worship an adolescent boy of bluish hue, the very limit of cleverness, who slows Śrī Rādhā with the luster of His restless sidelong glance swaying upon the waves of nectarean beauty, who is honored by the glances of the goddess of fortune, who is loved by the girls on the bank of the Yamunā, who is the seed and sprout of every descent of Cupid into the world, kāmāvatārāṅkura, and who is the emperor of sweetness. And Kṛṣṇadāsa Kavirāja Gosvāmī, in his Sāraṅga-Raṅgadā unfolding of this very verse, names Him further: the youthful transcendental Cupid of Vṛndāvana, Śyāmasundara, is the root cause of all Cupids mundane and transcendental, worshipped in the Vedas through the Kāma-gāyatrī with the kāma-bīja, the attractor of every creature, the limitless ocean of natural nectarean sweetness who dwells forever in Vṛndāvana as Śrīman Madana-Gopāla. And the whole of that ocean has been poured, by His own choosing, into two golden vessels held against Her heart.

There is a tender wordplay the tradition treasures here. Gokula does not only mean the cowherd village; gokula also means the gathering of the senses, the herd of the indriyas. So gokula-niśākara, the moon of Gokula, becomes the moon whose every sense is wholly absorbed and at rest in Rādhārāṇī. One of the hundred and eight names Śrīla Raghunātha Dāsa Gosvāmī gave to Her says exactly this: vraja-candrendriya-grāma-viśrāma-vidhu-śālikā, She is the resting-place for the senses of the moon of Vraja. His eyes find their rest in Her form, His ears in Her voice, His every faculty in Her. He has no treasury elsewhere because He has chosen Her to be the casket of it all.

And while He paints the musk upon Her, unhindered, the girlfriends come. They enter the bower giggling, veils drawn across their smiling mouths, and Kṛṣṇa, shameless and glad, begins to tell them of the night's delights with Rādhā. She lowers Her head; the blush rises in Her golden cheeks; She cannot meet their laughing eyes. Even Her embarrassment is part of the sweetness, even the bowing of Her head is an ornament. This is the world the contemplative is invited into: not to take anything, but to stand among the sakhīs at the bower's edge, holding the morning's articles, ready to serve.

So the call comes plainly at the end, the whole tenderness folded into a single command turned upon one's own restless mind: kumbha-dvayaṁ smara mano vṛṣabhānu-putryāḥ. O mind, remember. Remember the golden twin-pitcher breasts of Vṛṣabhānu's daughter, the sealed casket that holds the entire wealth, the very life, of the moon of Gokula. Let this be your remembrance at the thinning of every night. For the tradition teaches that for the rāgānugā traveler there are three treasures above all others: remembrance of these dawn-pastimes, the chanting of the holy name in saṅkīrtana, and dwelling in the land of Vraja. Remember, O mind. That is the whole of the work, and the whole of the joy.