6

The day has spent itself, and the kuñja settles into hush: the leaf-walls breathing, the petal-strewn floor laid soft by the sakhīs. Into this bower Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa have entered, and now the order of all the worlds turns upside down. For here it is not the Beloved who is served. Here it is Kṛṣṇa Himself, Rasikendra Maulī, the crown-jewel of all who taste sweetness, the rasika-śekhara, who longs to serve. The previous remembrance had named Her devī, the worshiped one; and devī She is, not because the mañjarīs and sakhīs adore Her, though they do, but for the greater wonder that the very King of relishers kneels to adore Her too. The maidservants read His mind before His lips can shape it. They bring a pitcher of cool water, and with that water the Enchanter of all the worlds washes Priyājī's lotus-feet and dries them with the gold of His own yellow dhoti. They bring flowers, and He gathers a handful and lays them at Her feet, and from His lips breaks the cry "jaya premamayi": glory to Her who is made of love, and He bows down, and tears of love run streaming from His eyes. Rūpa Gosvāmī keeps the secret of this in a single line, pāda-sparśa-rasotsavaṁ praṇatibhiḥ: to touch Her feet and bow before them is for Kṛṣṇa a whole festival of rasa.

And now, O heart, lift your eyes to Her face in that very moment. See how Śrīmatī looks down at the Kṛṣṇa who kneels before Her. What does that face hold? It holds a thousand amorous secrets and lets them flicker out one by one. The dark eyes move; the eyebrows arch and soften; and in those movements the tender ornament awakens that the tradition, after Rūpa Gosvāmī, calls lalita, vinyāsa-bhaṅgi raṅgānāṁ bhrū-vilāsa-manoharā sukumāra bhaved yatra lalitaṁ tad udīritam: the lalita-alaṅkāra is shown by a tender girl who makes playful, enchanting gestures with the eyebrows and with all Her limbs. From that face the luster pours, the luster Śrī Rūpa Gosvāmī names lāvaṇya. He fixes its very meaning in the Ujjvala-nīlamaṇi, muktāphaleṣu chāyāyās taralatvam ivāstarā pratibhāti yad aṅgeṣu lāvaṇyam tad ihocyate: lāvaṇya is a luster that shines through the limbs as a shimmer shines from within a pearl, not light laid on from outside but a glow rising from within. Streams of that pearl-luster gush from Her countenance, and they are the most precious thing in all the ocean of love.

For Her face was churned from that ocean as the moon was once churned from the Sea of Milk. The waters of transcendental prema-rasa, deepest and most powerful of all waters, were churned and churned, and what rose at the last as their cream, their utmost essence, was this: Rādhā's spotless moonlike face. Do not mistake it for the cold lamp of the night sky. That moon is a thing of matter; this face glows with the very taste of mahā-bhāva. O foolish comparisons, fall silent here. To liken Her face to the moon, Her eyes to lotuses, Her nose to the sesame flower is to lay dead stones beside a living flame. She cannot be reached through words at all. Only pure love understands Her; only love can read this face.

There is another way to hold this remembrance, and it is sweeter still. When will that moonlike face become manifest, the face that makes even Śyāmasundara, the Enchanter of the whole world, astonishing at every moment, stand rooted in His threefold-bending form? For the maidservants have watched it: even as Kṛṣṇa serves the nikuñja-devī, His own loveliness grows astonishing moment upon moment, and the most astonishing of all His pastimes is just this, where He lays Himself down at Śrīmatī's service. All His pastimes are sweet, yet His amorous pastimes with Śrī Rādhā are sweet beyond the rest. And why does He bend into that famous triple curve, hip and waist and neck all sweetly inclined? Because He is overcome by the sweetness of Her face. He leans a little to the left, He casts His glances crooked, He bends as one trying to touch the very hem of Her skirt with His heel, He bends as one who cannot bear up under the weight of the sweetness He is tasting. The Gaṅgā-fountain of the maidservants' ecstatic love bursts out in a thousand directions when they see the Dark One thus submit Himself to their Svāminī.

And mark the marvel hidden in this. Kṛṣṇa is Himself the transcendental Cupid of Vṛndāvana; the limbs of His form dwell in each of the twenty-four-and-a-half syllables of the kāma-gāyatrī, and like the moonrays that flood the world with longing, He fills all the worlds with desire. Yet here the Cupid of all the worlds is Himself pierced by Cupid's arrows. When Rādhā's moonlike face rises, the ocean of His own love-longing swells and breaks into waves, exactly as the common sea heaves up when the common moon climbs the sky. He who maddens all is here made mad with sweetness. That is the wonder the word kalā-nidhāna guards, the abode of all the arts. In its very syllables ka and la sleeps the kāma-bīja, the transcendental seed of desire, the invocatory sound of the kāma-gāyatrī and gopāla mantras; and Her face is the treasury where every such art is stored, the source-place from which every grace of beauty is first born. So the Rādhāvallabha rendering keeps it too, naming Her ānana the birthplace of the chāturī, the very artistry, of all the limbs of mādhurya, the lotus-face from which, at every moment, the lāvaṇya of supremely-enchanting playful pastimes flashes out adorned with a thousand sweet curves.

And His sweetness is ever-fresh, never twice the same. In the Caitanya-caritāmṛta Kṛṣṇa Himself declares it, āmāra mādhurya nitya nava nava hoy, sva sva prema anurūpa bhakte āsvādoy: My sweetness is ever-fresh and new, and each devotee tastes it in the measure of their love. Then who, O who, tastes Him most? She who loves Him most. Since Rādhā's love is greatest of all, Hers is the deepest draught of His sweetness, and the more She loves Him the sweeter He grows to Her, in a rising without end. So Her face is rightly the quintessence of the whole ocean of rasa, rasa-sindhu-sāram, for in Her the giving and the relishing of sweetness meet at their highest pitch.

Now hold the last turn of this remembrance, the turn that is the seeker's own. The one who sang this had entered, in his perfected inner form, the very bower of these pastimes; absorbed in his siddha-svarūpa he had stood among the maidservants and seen all of this with their eyes. And then the vision withdrew. He stood again as a sādhaka, a striver with empty hands, and out of that emptiness rose the cry: kadā, when, when will this be manifest? When will I be granted the service of my beloved Svāminī? And hear the tenderness in the very first words, tat naḥ, that, to us. Not "to me" alone. May we all be blessed thus. So even in his longing he gathers the whole company of devotees into the prayer, and his ache becomes a door he holds open for everyone; this is his great compassion. Prabodhānanda sings it at the end into Bengali too, calling Her face the abode of tender moonrays and elegance, a form effulgent as a spotless full moon showing all its sixteen phases, its ṣola-kalā, a treasury of nectar that gives joy even to Cupid, and crying: O Moon of Mahārāja Vṛṣabhānu's dynasty, O Queen of the bowers, alas and alas, when will the fortune dawn for us to see that face rise, that face more beautiful than millions of moons?