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Begin with a voice rising in Vraja. The dew still clings to the kadamba leaves, the Yamunā runs cool and dark, and somewhere a single throat opens and begins to sing the names of Hari. Not softly. Loudly, uccaiḥ, for Jīva Gosvāmī tells us that loud chanting is the best, praśastam, and the heart here can no longer hold itself; love has overflowed the banks of the body. The chant is no duty. It is ati-sneha, very great affection, made audible. The name does not come out clean and measured. It comes out wet, broken, drenched in longing, and you understand at once that this is the cry the tradition keeps singing: as the cātaka bird cries for the rain of one cloud and will drink nothing else, as the cakravākī cries through the long night for her mate, so the tradition records, the devotee cries out loud for his Lord in saṅkīrtana. A heart that sings the name with such loving anxiety, the tradition promises, will very swiftly come into love of God.

And see, O seeker, what the name truly is. It is no mere arrangement of syllables. Hari's name is His own merciful descent, an avatāra made of sound. Jīva Gosvāmī fixes it: this is the descent of the Supreme Lord Himself in the form of letters, like any other avatāra, the very embodiment of bliss, just like the Lord's original form, and this is the experience in the hearts of the great saints. And Rūpa Gosvāmī, in his Kṛṣṇa-nāmāṣṭaka, sings of the name with toenails: "nikhila-śruti-mauli-ratna-mālā-dyuti-nīrājita-pādapaṅkajānta": the toenails of the holy name are worshipped by the luster pouring from the jewel-strings of the crown-ornaments of all the Vedas. So Rūpa did not see the name as syllables at all but as a sweet and beautiful form, endowed with hands and feet. Bliss took shape and called itself a name. To preach its glory, the tradition records, perfects one's surrender to the Lord. So when this devotee lifts the name aloud, an avatāra of the Lord rises on the breath.

But hear how the name may be carried, for the tradition opens two doors. The name may be chanted ordinarily, or it may be chanted with sneha, with affection. The ordinary offenseless chanter will reach the divine abode of the Lord. But the affectionate chanter, the one who sings as Śrīpāda sings here, attains the very proximity of the Lord, and thereby His personal service. This is no small thing. The Lord Himself confessed it at Kurukṣetra, when He told the gopīs in the Bhāgavata that devotion bestows immortality on all beings, and that their affection for Him had forcibly attracted Him and dragged Him to them. Affection is the rope. And the loud cry is not selfish: the tradition recalls Prahlāda's word to Nṛsiṁha, that those who blissfully and loudly chant the Lord's name are the causeless friends of every living being. One throat opens at dawn, and all of Vraja is blessed.

Now turn and watch the worship. Saugandha. Fragrance. The devotee gathers many tender offerings, sandal-paste ground fine, camphor, cooling lotus stems, perfumes, the whole array of upacāras, and presents them with the certainty that the One he serves is no carved stone. He sees the deity as another merciful descent, exactly as he saw the name. The tradition keeps the cry alive in the Caitanya-caritāmṛta: "pratimā nahe tumi sākṣāt vrajendra-nandana": You are not a statue, You are directly the prince of Vraja. The highest worshipers, the tradition insists, see the deity as God Himself, and their very devotion would break if they thought the deity different from the Lord. For name, deity, and the Lord's own being are one undivided sweetness, three forms of a single cit-ānanda, as the Caitanya-caritāmṛta sings: "nāma vigraha svarūpa tina eka rūpa, tine bheda nāi". And where a heart loves with such faith, the Lord answers it. History keeps these tendernesses without apology: the deity ate the food set before Him, spoke with His devotees, walked the long roads for their sake. For one devotee Lord Gopāla walked all the way from Vṛndāvana to Vidyānagara in the South, and out of love for King Puruṣottama-deva of Orissa He came from Vidyānagara to Kataka. There a queen, beholding Him, longed to hang a precious pearl in His nose and grieved that the image had no hole for it; she offered her obeisance and went home. But at the end of that night Gopāla came to her in a dream and said: when I was a child My mother Yaśodā pierced My nose and carefully hung a pearl there; that same hole is still in Me, hang your pearl in it. So the fragrant service of this devotee is no ritual. It is touch.

Then the third thing, and perhaps the sweetest. Vṛndāvanam anucarantam. To live in Vraja, to wander it, to hold parānanda, the highest bliss, simply by walking the ground and saying within, I am living in Śrī Rādhā's playground. The tradition sings of that blessed day, in Narottama Dāsa Ṭhākura's longing voice: Hari, Hari, when will the day come that I wander Vṛndāvana indifferent to the world, eating a few fruits and roots at evening; bathing in the cool Yamunā in a flood of premāveśa; lifting both arms among the groves and crying out "Kṛṣṇa" through tears; coming upon the secret meeting-places of Rādhā and Her beloved and rolling on that earth, calling, O Rādhā, Prāṇeśvarī, Queen of my heart, O Girivaradhārī, O my Lord, where are You; and sitting at the foot of a tree while the śuka and śārī parrots in the mādhavī-bower sing the rasa of Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa, letting the burning heart be soothed and the whole day pass in joy. This is what it is to wander Vraja with the bliss held in the chest like a lamp.

And here is the whole secret. Singing the loud name, serving with fragrance, wandering in bliss: these are among the most powerful limbs of devotion the tradition names. Rūpa Gosvāmī fixes it in the Bhakti-rasāmṛta-sindhu, that these confidential items are of such inconceivable power that even an offenseless soul who practices them only a little, even unconsciously, even without faith, will see bhāva take birth in the heart; for they simultaneously reveal both the love and its object, Śrī Kṛṣṇa Himself. They are everything. And yet the devotee will not let even these become his resting place. Through all three he prays one prayer: "mano me rādhāyāḥ pada-mṛdula-padme nivasatu": let my mind dwell at Rādhā's soft lotus feet. Not at the name, though the name is an avatāra. Not at the deity, though the deity is the Lord Himself. Not even at the bliss of Vraja, though it is parānanda. At Her feet. The chanting, the worship, the wandering, all of it is sweet only because it is laid at Her feet, for Her, with the mind never once straying from those two soft petals. He keeps everything, and gives the whole armful to Her.

And then the verse opens a second time, the reading the maidservants live, the siddhāveśa. Picture Yāvata. Śrī Rādhā, scorched by separation from Her beloved, enters at last the kadamba forest on the Yamunā bank where the bumblebees are singing, and there, Rūpa Gosvāmī tells us in the Ujjvala-nīlamaṇi, She sinks into a faint, and Her dear sakhīs revive Her by loudly singing Hari's name into Her ear. The kiṅkarīs press cooling things to Her, sandal-pulp, camphor, lotus stems, the very fragrant upacāras of the verse, now poured out to wake a fainting Queen. And as they chant the sixteen-word, thirty-two-syllable name to Her, they whisper within the syllables their secret reading, each name a confession of how He undoes Her. "Hare, You steal My mind at the mere sound of Your name; Kṛṣṇa, by Your flute You draw Me from My house into the forest; Hare, You steal My shame and My patience; Kṛṣṇa, You attract Me with Your bodily fragrance; with Your luster You make Me greedy; with Your supreme bliss You make Me greedy; Hare, You bind Me in Your arm and bear Me to a bed of flowers." And the hare-rāma half of the name carries its own equally relishable, equally confidential sweetness. Yet when even this does not wake Her, the sakhīs send the kiṅkarīs out into Vṛndāvana to find Kṛṣṇa Himself, for only His bodily touch can restore Her. This too is hidden in the words, for "paramānandam vṛndāvanam anucarantam" can be read: I am fetching for You Kṛṣṇa, the pinnacle of bliss, who wanders in Vṛndāvana. He is that bliss; the tradition recalls Śuka Muni's word in the Bhāgavata, "yan mitraṁ paramānandaṁ pūrṇaṁ brahma sanātanam," that the friend of the Vrajavāsīs is the most blissful, eternal, full Brahman. So the kiṅkarīs disguise Him as a girl, lead Him to Yāvata, set His hand upon Her, and at His touch She opens Her eyes. What service is this. To revive the Beloved of the Lord by singing the Lord's own name and by fetching the Lord Himself. This is where the verse finally rests, and where it would have our minds rest: at Her soft feet, among Her handmaids, holding the name, the fragrance, the bliss, only and ever for Her.