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Picture it. A grove in Vraja at the hour when the light goes golden, and Śrī Rādhā turns Her head, just slightly, and lets Her eyes travel sideways. That sidelong look, the apāṅga, does not move straight ahead like an ordinary glance. It curves. It slides toward the corner of the eye, where the lashes are darkest and the gaze is most laden, and as it goes it ripples. The tradition gives us this image with such tenderness: the glance does not simply fall, it undulates, taraṅgita, breaking into wavelets the way the surface of the Yamunā breaks when a soft wind crosses it. And in the Rādhāvallabha telling it is not even a mere look but a dance, an apāṅga-nartana, each sidelong motion performed with hāva and bhāva, the play of amorous gesture, so that the glance itself seems to step and sway. And from the crest of each little wave of that dancing look, something is born.

O what is born! Not flowers, though flowers would be sweet enough. From each rippling fold of Her glance there rises a Kandarpa, a Cupid, the very god of love, and not one, and not a hundred, but koṭiśaḥ, by the millions, eka-ekaśaḥ, one springing up after another and another until counting fails. And each of these countless love-gods comes already armed. Each holds a great bow, a mahā-kodaṇḍa, that quivers and trembles in his grip, visphāriṇaḥ, and each makes the bowstring twang, ṭaṅkṛta, with puru-darpa, the immense swagger of love that knows it cannot miss. The Hit stream lingers on how that twang is drawn out, śanaiḥ-śanaiḥ, set vibrating slowly, gradually, the way a master archer lets the string sing before he looses. Imagine the sound of it: not one bowstring but a million million bowstrings ringing at once, a sky filled wing to wing with archers of desire, every arrow nocked toward a single heart.

And whose heart? Begin with this and the whole verse opens. The arrows of these Cupids fly toward Madhusūdana Himself. They fly toward Kṛṣṇa, the dark beloved of Vṛndāvana, who is no helpless mortal but is Himself the youthful Cupid of that land, the aprākṛta navīna madana, the ever-fresh transcendental god of love. The Caitanya-caritāmṛta sings it of Him, "vṛndāvane aprākṛta navīna madana; kāma-gāyatrī kāma-bīje yāhāra upāsana," that in Vṛndāvana He is the transcendental fresh Cupid whom one worships through the kāma-gāyatrī and the kāma-bīja. He is the one who enchants all beings. And here is the wonder the tradition wants us to taste until our knees give way: He, the enchanter of all, is Himself agitated, undone, conquered, by a single sidelong wave of Śrī Rādhā's eyes. One glance of Hers can enchant Kṛṣṇa completely; one glance carries the striking force of millions of Cupids' arrows, and it is Kṛṣṇa they strike. The archer of the universe is brought to His knees by the corner of Her eye.

Now stay with the second marvel, for the tradition lingers here with breathless adoration. All of this, this storm of love-gods, this sky of bows, this conquest of the conqueror, breaks forth not from Her ripened womanhood but from the very first instant She crosses into youth, tāruṇya-prathama-praveśa-samaye, the hour of Her first entrance into the springtime of Her body. Adolescence has only just stepped into Her childlike frame. The powerful king who is Cupid has only just begun to enter and rearrange this tender form: the breasts and the curves of Her growing into their grace, the waist drawing slender, the eyes turning a little naughty, the steps growing restless, the gait of one in whom a new sweetness is just beginning to stir and does not yet know its own power. This is the threshold, the doorway, the first hesitant footfall into youth. And already, already at the threshold, the millions of Cupids are pouring out of Her glance. Already Kṛṣṇa is undone.

O Rādhe, if this is the dawn, what is the noon? The tradition asks it for us and then falls silent before its own question. If the first faint flush of Your youth scatters Cupids by the millions and conquers the conqueror, then what shall be said of Your full-blown adolescence, Your ripened madhurya in its noonday glory? The mind cannot follow it. It can only stand at the edge of that endless stream and tremble. For this is what Her sweetness is: mahā-mādhurī dhārā ananta, a great sweetness flowing as an endless current, and at every bend of that current a new camatkāra, a new astonishment, a new shock of wonder that empties the heart of every other thought. Śrī Rūpa Gosvāmī tried to name this sweetness and could only call it, in the Ujjvala-nīlamaṇi, "rūpaṁ kim apy anirvācyaṁ tanor mādhuryam ucyate," that mādhurya is some indescribable beauty of the body, a loveliness that words approach and then turn back from, unable to say it. And Śrīla Kavi Karṇapura fixes the law of it in his Alaṅkāra-kaustubha, "rase sāraś camatkāro yam vinā na raso rasaḥ," that astonishment is the very essence of rasa, that without this wonder rasa is no rasa at all. So when we say Her sweetness is camatkṛta, we are saying it is rasa in its fullest pitch.

And here the tradition leans close and tells us a secret about why this matters, why we are gazing at Her glances at all. There are crowds who know how to take something from Kṛṣṇa, it says, but how few know how to give to Him. Only the people of Vraja know it, who are love itself made flesh. Think of Yaśodā: Giridhārī lifts the whole Govardhana mountain on one finger, a display of God's omnipotence that should freeze the blood with awe, and what does His mother do? She forgets the miracle entirely and remembers His mealtime. "Oho," she says to Nanda, "why don't you hold this hill a while, so I can breastfeed My Gopāla a little." And Rādhā, seeing Her beloved bear that weight, does not marvel at His power either. She thanks the Creator only for arranging that Priyatama must carry the hill so that She may gaze on Him without pause, and She prays to Girirāja Himself, "Do not be too heavy for this tender boy to carry." The Vrajavāsīs stand in the very lightning of His divinity and taste only His sweetness. They have forgotten wanting. They have forgotten asking. They are absorbed entirely in giving.

This is why we take up the mood of the gopīs. Not to acquire something, but to be cured of the disease of acquiring, to give up at last all thought of taking and asking and to learn how to think only of giving. Śrī Rādhā thinks of nothing but Kṛṣṇa's happiness. The maidservants think of nothing but the happiness of the divine Couple. And the one who gazes at this verse in sādhaka-āveśa is being led, glance by glance, deeper into that selflessness, until even the wish to possess Her sweetness dissolves into the wish to serve it. Remember too that this verse follows the last: there Śrīpāda, absorbed in sādhakāveśa, tasted the sweetness of Her knitted eyebrows, and here he beholds the sweetness of Her sidelong glances, the gaze drawn one feature deeper into Her.

There is a question the tradition pauses to answer, gently, in passing. Why do the followers of the Gauḍīya line not call Rādhārāṇī "mother"? For if She is Kṛṣṇa's consort, surely She is the mother of the world; what is the harm? The answer turns on two ways of beholding God. One is tattva, spiritual truth, and the other is rasa, spiritual flavour. From the side of tattva, Kṛṣṇa is everything, all-pervading, truth and knowledge personified, blissful in Himself, all His desires fulfilled, without hunger or thirst. From the side of rasa, He is full of love and nectar and pastimes, and is forever hungry and thirsty for the love of His devotees. These seem to contradict each other, yet they are made compatible by the Lord's inconceivable potency, and rasa is relished only upon the firm foundation of tattva, for rasa is like the moss that greens a vast lake of tattva. In Vraja the devotee forgets Kṛṣṇa's divine prowess and holds Him as the laukika-sad-bandhu, the dear worldly friend or son or lover, and Kṛṣṇa reciprocates in kind. The Gauḍīyas prefer above all the loving service of Rādhā, and long to serve Her as mañjarīs, Her spiritual handmaids. And though the Caitanya-caritāmṛta itself says "sarva-pālikā sarva-jagatera mātā," that She is everyone's protectress and the mother of the whole world, still the parental mood will not sit beside the amorous mood, and so the words "mother Rādhārāṇī" are never heard from Gauḍīya lips. The amorous sweetness must not be broken.

But mark well: these things cannot be seen with the eyes of this gross body, nor even with the subtle mind. The tradition is firm here, and gentle. The first entrance of Śrī Rādhā into youth, the Cupids rising from Her glance, the endless stream of astonishment, all of it is beheld only in svarūpāveśa, when one is absorbed in the consciousness of one's own eternal spiritual form, the form of a handmaid in the eternal Vraja. As long as we are caught in gross or subtle bodily consciousness, this remains a closed garden. The verse is not a description we master; it is a door we are taught to knock at, humbly, from outside, until by grace it is opened from within.

So the heart of one who tastes all this can only do what Śrīpāda does at the close, with a melting heart, in the mood of an intimate associate of Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu. Having seen the waves of Her glance and the Cupids born from them and the endless astonishing stream of Her sweetness, he does not ask to keep any of it for himself. He asks only this: bhavatu naḥ śrī-rādhikā svāminī. Let Rādhikā be our mistress. Let Her be our Swāminī, the one we belong to, the one we serve. Be manifest to us, O Śrī Rādhā, in this supreme sweetness, not so that we may hold You, but so that we may bow at the hem of Your garment forever and call You our own beloved Mistress.