4

Begin low, where the truest treasures are always kept. Not at the crown, not at the bright face, but at the feet, and lower still, at the dust that has touched the soles of those feet. Picture the soft earth of a Vraja path at dusk, its fine powder stirred up by Her walking and settling now in the cool of evening. This is where we are asked to look. Not up at glory, but down at the ground She has blessed by passing over it. O heart, learn this first lesson: the wealth of all the worlds lies in the place that pride would never stoop to kneel.

Now watch the gopīs come. The tradition names them purudāra, the most generous, the most openhanded, and they have earned that name with everything they are. Their love for Kṛṣṇa keeps nothing back for itself. There is no hidden ledger in it, no quiet hope of being repaid in pleasure, no thought of what will I receive. Such love is rarer than any jewel the earth has buried. They have set down the whole heavy weight of what the world calls decency and reputation, all the codes that tell a woman where she may walk and whom she may love, and they carry instead one single intention: to please Him, whatever it should cost. See how they bend now, these fearless ones, and lift Her foot-dust to their own heads, the highest place on the body, the place a person reserves for whatever they most revere. They do not crown themselves with their own glory. They crown themselves with the dust of Hers.

And what is it they long for, that they would wear Her dust as a diadem? One thing only. Not power, not heaven, not even the bliss of His embrace held for its own sake. They long for kāmyaṁ padam, the cherished place, the position of being Her dāsīs, Her handmaids, Her very own. To stand near Her, to fetch what She needs, to be allowed to serve the Beloved of their Beloved. This is the whole of their wanting, and it is enough to fill eternity.

How tender they are, even in their wanting. Remember what they cried when He had left them in the forest after the great Rāsa-dance, when the night went dark with His absence. Śuka Muni fixes their words for us in the Śrīmad Bhāgavata, in the tenth canto, where the gopīs sing their separation. They did not first mourn their own broken hearts. O dearly Beloved, they breathed, Your feet are softer than the freshest lotus newly unfolded, and we set them upon our breasts so carefully, terrified we might bruise them, our own breasts feeling suddenly too hard for so tender a thing. And now You walk the wild forest paths alone, over sharp pebbles and thorns and the hidden bulbs that catch the foot. Does it not hurt You? You who are dearer to us than ten million of our own lives, how can our minds find any rest while You wander there? Hear it, O heart. A woman whose beloved lays his feet upon her takes her own delight in it. But the gopīs forget themselves entirely; their only fear is for His tender soles. Only the rasika, the one who has tasted, understands that there is not a single grain of self-seeking in those hearts. And here is the deep and beautiful turn: precisely because they keep nothing for themselves, they are the most blissful of all beings. The happiness they refuse to grasp pours into them unbidden. So prema stands revealed as the highest goal a human life can reach, for every creature reaches naturally toward joy, and this is where joy truly lives. The path to it runs in the footprints of the gopīs, and most of all in the footprints of Śrī Rādhā.

For She is the greatest of them all, the spring from which their every sweetness flows. So it is not the gopīs alone who hunger to serve at Her feet. He hungers too. Kṛṣṇa Himself, the crown of peacock feathers tilting on His dark curls, He who is desired by the whole creation, turns and desires this one thing: to be allowed to tend Her feet. The tradition keeps a scene of it, and it is almost too tender to hold. After loving play in the bower, Śrī Rādhā, proud and shy at once, commands Him to set Her dress and ornaments right again before Her sakhīs notice what They have done and tease Her for it. Śrīpāda himself, in his eternal form as Her maidservant, brings every item for the adorning. And Svāminī orders: anoint My feet with the red lac. So Kṛṣṇa takes the feet of Nāgarī-maṇi, the very jewel of all beloveds, and rests them upon His own chest, and begins. The kiṅkarī holds the little cup of crimson; Nāgara holds the brush. But He cannot work. He looks at the soles of Her feet and is lost; the sweetness undoes Him. Now He presses them to His heart, now He kisses them, and the tears of love spill down and would smudge the very lac He is trying to lay. What are You doing, paint it on, quickly, She says, half-laughing, half-vexed. But His hands are shaking with ecstasy and He cannot hold the brush steady. So Svāminī smiles a small smile and tells Her maid, Nāgara cannot do it, you do it. And the kiṅkarī gently moves Him aside: move up, Śyāma, You are not able. And Kṛṣṇa, the Lord of all, sits back and thinks within Himself: when will I ever be so fortunate as to serve Svāminī's feet the way this maidservant serves them? How can I ever become as worthy as she? O wonder of wonders. The one whom all the worlds desire stands aside and envies the handmaid's place. Now you know how high that place is, the place the gopīs crown themselves to long for.

And what does that foot-dust give to the one who serves it truly? Everything. The Kāmadhenu, the wish-fulfilling cow, was churned long ago from the ocean of milk by the demons and the demigods together, and she pours forth whatever is asked of her. Just so, the dust of Śrī Rādhikā's feet becomes the Kāmadhenu of rasa for Her maidservants, yielding to them the very perfection of loving relish. And here is its hidden largeness. Within the sweetness of service the kiṅkarī also tastes the sweetness of friendship. The keepers of the rasa-śāstras tell us that the parental mood and the lover's mood, vātsalya and mādhurya, do not usually mingle, that the one crowds out the other. Yet in the treasure-house of Śrī Rādhā's rasa there is no scarcity even of motherly tenderness poured out upon Her handmaids. So this single dust contains them all: dāsya, the mood of service; sakhya, the mood of friendship; vātsalya, the mood of cherishing love; and mādhurya, the sweetest mood of the bower. One grain of it, and every mode of love is yours. No earthly cow gives milk like this.

This is why the tradition glories in it, singing that Her foot-dust is a mine of great and brilliant jewels, a single speck of it more precious than ten million Cintāmaṇi wish-stones. The gopīs grow rich, suddenly and wholly rich, when they let themselves be lost in the form and the qualities of this dust and wear it as their only ornament; they drink the joy of service without ceasing. It is coveted by Govinda Himself, the boy with the peacock crown, who decorates His own dark body with Her dust and forever delights in Her service. And in the secret nikuñja, the lonely bower where no eye intrudes, those whose very life is this service worship the joined lotus-feet of Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa in a festival of love, a bhāvotsava, and to them this dust is a spotless Kāmadhenu without a single stain. So Prabodhānanda, finding his deepest pleasure in this intimate worship, lays bare his own aspiration; and the heart that holds it whispers with him that here is wealth past all counting, and that to remember it is the truest play of the mind. I take that dust upon my head. I hold it in my heart. Taṁ rādhikā-caraṇa-reṇum ahaṁ smarāmi. I remember the dust of Śrī Rādhikā's feet.