35

Begin at the bank of the Yamunā, where the dark water folds into a quiet curve and a single bower stands woven of vine and shadow. The afternoon has gone heavy with that hush the secret kuñjas of Vraja keep, when even the leaves hold their breath. Within that bower the Divine Couple has withdrawn, and one mañjarī, a maidservant who clings to Śrī Rādhā as Her own shadow clings, has slipped to the woven wall of leaves and set her eye to a small gap in the foliage. She is not intruding. She senses that the Couple is eager for loveplay, and she has come out only to look in, to relish the sweetness of Their pastimes so that it may live in the heart and be carried and offered back forever. What she sees, she gathers into this single act of obeisance.

She sees Śyāmasundara, honey to all that moves and does not move, freely tasting the sweetness of Śrī Rādhā's every limb. And she understands the great secret that the bower keeps: He who enjoys all may be enjoyed by none, He who steals every mind cannot be stolen by any creature, and yet there is one thing, one alone, that can subdue Him, and that is Śrī Rādhā's endless beauty. The tradition fixes it in the Saṅgīta Mādhava, where Śrīpāda sings, "śrī vṛndāvana candra durmada manaś caurīṁ kiśorīṁ smara": O mind, remember that Kiśorī, the adolescent Rādhā, She who steals the uncontrollable mind of the very moon of Vṛndāvana. The thief of all hearts is Himself robbed; the adolescent girl carries off the heart that no force in creation can move.

Marvel at the scale of what is being said, O heart. The whole world is mad after the form of Kṛṣṇa. Even the inert are undone by Him: the Bhāgavata tells in its tenth book, "trailokya saubhagam idam ca nirīkṣya rūpaṁ yad go dvija druma mṛgāḥ pulakāny avibhran": all three worlds are enchanted on beholding His beauty, and the cows lift their heads, the birds fall still, the deer forget to graze, and the very trees of the forest stand thrilled, their hairs of leaf and bark erect in ecstasy. He is so beautiful that He astonishes even Himself; the Caitanya-caritāmṛta confesses it, "rūpa dekhi āpanāra, kṛṣṇera hoy camatkāra, āsvādite mone uṭhe kāma": seeing His own form, Kṛṣṇa is struck with wonder, and a longing rises in Him to taste His own sweetness. This is the One who enchants all the worlds. And the mañjarī, eye to the gap in the leaves, sees Him enchanted.

What has captured the captor of all? Her gaze answers from within the vines: nava-stana-maṇḍala, the fresh young orb of Śrī Rādhā's breasts. They rise like two golden lotus buds, kanaka-paṅkaja-kuḍmala, just beginning to open upon a still lake, and the lake is no ordinary water. It is krīḍā-saraḥ, the pond of the Couple's own pastimes. As golden lotuses crown the beauty of any pond and lift it past all common loveliness, so these golden buds crown the topmost beauty of Kṛṣṇa's own pond of play. The water of that lake is Their amorous delight, the lotuses are Her tender form, and the bee who has wandered the whole world untouched now hovers, undone, at these two golden blossoms.

O wind that stirs the kuñja, do you understand what you fan? O lake of play, do you know what flowers you carry on your breast? The maidservant understands, and her understanding deepens as the ecstasy of the pastimes deepens: these buds are svānanda-pūrṇa-rasa-kalpataru-phala, the ripened fruit of the wish-yielding tree whose every branch is rasa and whose root is self-full bliss. The kalpataru gives whatever is desired. And this tree, grown in the soil of Śrī Rādhā's own being, bears the fruit that satisfies the one longing nothing else in all existence can satisfy: the amorous desire of Śyāmasundara Himself. For self-bliss here means just this, the fulfillment of Kṛṣṇa's own amorous desires; these fruits taste delicious to Him, and tasting them He is wholly carried away, He who carries away all.

So the offering turns, and the marvel reverses and runs the other way. The world is mad for Kṛṣṇa; this every devotee knows. But here, in the bower seen only through a gap in the leaves, Kṛṣṇa is mad for Her. Bhuvana-mohana-mohana: the enchanter of the worlds is the enchanted. The hunter is caught in his own net. And the mañjarī, pressing her face to the vines, lays her whole self down before this wonder. Tasmai namaḥ, she breathes. I bow. Not to grasp, not to claim, only to offer obeisance to that fresh golden glory of Her bosom which has accomplished the impossible and stolen the heart of the thief of every heart.

No one else knows this secret. Not the wise, not the worshipful, not the three worlds drunk on His outer beauty. Only the sakhīs and the mañjarīs, who serve so closely that they are trusted to look, carry this knowledge, and they carry it not as a possession but as a treasure entrusted, a flame to tend, a sweetness to offer back. So this is no description of a body. It is a maidservant's worship, sung from just outside the bower, of the secret by which Śrī Rādhā rules the Ruler of all: Her unbounded beauty, before which even the all-enchanting bows.