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Picture the garden on the bank of the Yamunā when the heat of the noon-play has spent itself and slid into a slow, breathing hush. The grove is empty of the sakhīs today. The friends have drawn away on some errand of love, so that Śrī Rādhā and Śyāma may enjoy one another with no eyes upon Them but the swans and the cuckoos, and one trusted maidservant, Śrīpāda, who moves so quietly She is hardly there at all. This is the hour the tradition asks us to enter, on tiptoe, as servants, only to see and to serve.

The divine Pair have grown tired with loving, and now They come to rest upon a jewelled staircase that descends into the river. See how the two splendours fall upon the water, the gold of Rādhā and the blue-dark of Śyāma, until both banks of the Yamunā are lit as though dawn had come twice over. The river has made herself beautiful for Them; she has decked her water and her shores. Blissful swans glide over the glistening blackish water between lotuses of many colours. A wind comes off the stream carrying cool drops into the bowerhouse, laying them on Their heated, fatigued bodies like a blessing. The cuckoo sings in the fifth, intoxicated note. On the shore the peacocks have begun to dance.

And now the small, tender story the tradition keeps for us. As They share their soft love-talk, Svāminī's gaze falls upon Śyāma's face and She sees that His tilaka has been half rubbed away in the sweet battle of love. At once She wishes to brighten His forehead again. The maidservant, reading Her mind before a word is spoken, brings a jewelled plate of golden haritāla pigment and a brush. Svāminī bends to the work. O, watch Her now, lost in it, Her brows drawing together in sheer concentration with each delicate drop She paints upon Her Beloved's brow. She is so absorbed that She does not see the mischief rising in His smile.

Then Śyāma, delighted by Her absorption, smiles slightly and suddenly flings the little cup of pigment far out into the deep water of the Yamunā. "Oh! What did You do?" Svāminī cries, for there are still about four more marks to be drawn. The maidservant says, almost helpless with the wonder of it, "Rādhe! There is no more haritāla left!" And here is the tenderness the whole verse turns upon. With great love, Svāminī lifts the edge of Her blouse, and from Her own breasts, where playful pictures of dolphins had been painted in that very golden pigment, She gathers a little of the colour upon Her fingertip, and with it She finishes the tilaka of Kṛṣṇa. So it is that both Śyāmasundara and the lowly maidservant are blessed, by Her own innocent love, with the sight of Śrī Rādhikā's marvellous breasts.

This is the sight the tradition, in the voice it lovingly assigns to Śrīpāda Prabodhānanda, gathers up and turns to honey. He looks upon those breasts and cannot find an ordinary name for them. Are they breasts at all, he wonders, kiṁ vā, or is this some single great lotus that has blossomed in a secret lake? For in the lake of Rādhā's heart there stands a water of the rarest kind, sāndra-anurāga-rasa-sāra: the concentrated essence of the rasa of anurāga, of ever-fresh, ever-deepening love, a love so dense it has body and weight, the very quintessence of love thickened into a lake. And in that lake of Her heart a golden lotus has bloomed, a fragrant hundred-petaled lotus, śatadala, heavy with perfume, pouring its fragrance out and out without end.

And then, he says, the moonlight of Her own face fell upon that one lotus. When the soft white radiance of the moon touches a lotus, the lotus folds; it draws its petals inward into a bud. So this one effulgent, full-blown lotus of Her love, struck by the candrikā, the moon-rays of Her shining face, mukha-candra-bhāsā, gathered itself and folded, mukulita, into not one bud but two, dvidhā, divided in two. And those two folded golden buds are the youthful, newly grown breasts, nūtana stana-yuga, of the daughter of Vṛṣabhānu. They are not breasts the way the world means breasts. They are Her love itself, made into a body you could look upon and adore.

Marvel at the impossibility he sets before us. Honey cannot ooze from a bud, for a bud is still closed. Yet these amazing golden lotus-buds are brimming, dripping, dense with nectar-honey, with makaranda, with sīdhu sweeter than wine. What honey can drip from a bud that has not opened? Only this honey: svānanda, the honey of bliss itself. It is cool, it is intoxicating, it is more delicious than nectar. And the tradition is careful with that little word sva, "own." Rādhā and the gopīs who follow Her are never, ever turned toward their own personal happiness; their whole being leans the other way. So here sva does not mean Her own self-regard. Sva means Her very own One, Her beloved Kṛṣṇa. The bliss heavy in those buds is bliss for Him.

And ghana, dense, also means cloud. So see the final picture rise. These are not only buds; they are two rain-laden clouds, dark and heavy and tender, and the rain they carry is the nectar-honey of love. When Kṛṣṇa burns in the fire of even a moment's separation from Her, these clouds break open over Him and shower Him with torrents of that cooling honey until His fever is soothed. The breasts of Rādhā are the monsoon that quenches the thirst of God.

Then the vision lifts and is gone, the way such visions do, and the servant is left only with the longing to remember. So the word the verse rests upon is smarāmi, "I remember." Not "I possess," not "I behold," but "I remember." This is the lowly maidservant's portion and her treasure. She will carry the memory of those newly grown golden lotus-bud breasts of Śrī Rādhā through every hour. Her mind thrives upon that remembrance; the smaraṇa is the very prāṇa, the very life-breath, of the mind. This is the double abode, the twin dhāma, the two sanctuaries of Her love, and to remember Her so is, for the servant, simply to live.