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Picture a man standing where every road of the world crosses. Behind him press the crowds of every age, and each of them carries something held high, something sworn to be the best thing a soul can hold. One lifts dharma, the careful keeping of vows, the offered fire, the right deed at the right hour, the charity and compassion and sacrifice that buy a brighter birth, a seat among the heavens. Another lifts artha, the swelling granary, the safe house, the coin that purchases tomorrow, for he keeps the rules and minds his place and so he needs his wealth. A third lifts kāma, plain hunger of the senses, the fragrance and the touch and the honey, some seeking it within law and some, deluded by māyā into thinking sense-pleasure their very nature, seeking it as mere beasts seek it, careless of law and conduct. And a fourth, gravest of all, has turned from every passing sweetness and lifts mokṣa, the great release won by the long climb of jñāna, the dissolving into peace where nothing aches because nothing is left to ache. These are the four puruṣārthas, the four "goals of the person," and the tradition is clear: a puruṣārtha is simply the artha, the desired end, of a puruṣa, a living being. Tastes differ, bhinna rucir hi lokāḥ, the world's likings run a thousand ways, and so desires are past counting; yet the saints string every one of them on a single thread, and the thread is the oldest prayer of every breathing thing: sukhaṁ me bhūyāt duḥkhaṁ mā bhūt, let me be happy, let me not suffer. For surveyability the great ones gathered the numberless wants into these four, and there they stand, dharma, artha, kāma, mokṣa, the summit of all that the world calls worth wanting.

And here stands one who has walked through all of it and out the far side. He does not sneer at the crowds. He lifts his own hand and cries, almost gaily, "All glories to them. Let religion conquer, let wealth conquer, let pleasure and liberation conquer too; let them attain whatever supremacy the world can give. May those who want them have them." But then his voice drops, and something tender comes into it: kiṁ tad vṛthā vārtayā, why should I waste my breath on idle talk of these? Why should a tongue that could be tasting one Name spend itself on the accountancy of heavens and releases? There is no scorn in it. There is only a heart that has found water and can no longer be interested in the map of distant wells.

Hear what the tradition sings beside him, the old teaching of Śrīla Rūpa. He fixes it in the Lalita-Mādhava: as long as not even a whiff of prema, that love which is the one perfect herb to bring even Madhu-ripu, the enemy of the demon Madhu, under control, has yet traveled the road into the heart, then yes, the mystic perfections (siddhi) dazzle, the religion of truth (satya-dharma) astonishes, samādhi and the bliss of the formless brahman (brahmānanda) seem the very summit of summits. They are camatkāra; they make the soul gasp. But Rūpa Gosvāmī seals it again in the Bhakti-rasāmṛta-sindhu: manāg eva prarūḍhāyāṁ hṛdaye bhagavad-ratau, the moment love for the Lord has even slightly sprouted in the heart, the four great prizes shrivel and lie about like dry blades of grass underfoot, tṛṇāyante. Not crushed in anger. Simply outshone. Who counts the stars once the sun has cleared the trees?

Now watch him do the most startling thing of all. He comes to ekānta-bhakti, exclusive devotion to the Supreme Lord Himself, the very crown of all spiritual life, the thing for which kings have left their thrones, and he says: tu āropitā mūrdhani, let it be raised and set upon my head. Set upon the head, the place of highest honor, where the guru's feet are placed, where the offered flower is touched before it is given. He bows to it; he honors it utterly. And yet, set upon the head, it is also set above and apart, held aloft, not pressed to the heart. For this is reverential, regulated worship, the worship of majesty, of the Lord enthroned in His unending opulence; and reverence toward majesty, the tradition warns, cools the deep and intimate warmth of love, so the soul that worships majesty stands with folded hands at a courtly distance. "Let it remain on my head," he says, honoring and releasing it in one breath. Through Śrī Baladeva Vidyābhūṣaṇa the gentle gradations are marked in the Govinda-bhāṣya: the svaniṣṭha devotee loves all the forms of God with one even, equal love (sama-prīti), while the ekāntī, his heart fixed and steeped in one beloved form (viṣama-prīti, rūpa-viśeṣābhiṣakta-citta), is therefore the dearer, the elder, the higher (jyaiṣṭha). And the best of all ekāntīs are the devotees of Kṛṣṇa in Vraja, Vrajendra-nandana's own. Among these, says Rūpa Gosvāmī in the same Bhakti-rasāmṛta-sindhu, the highest is the one whose mind Govinda Himself has stolen, govinda-hṛta-mānasāḥ, the one whom not even the mercy of Śrīśa, the Lord of Lakṣmī, four-armed Nārāyaṇa, can lure away. That one is already a wonder.

But listen, O heart, to where this adoration is climbing, for it climbs past even that. The lover of Śrī Rādhā stands higher still. His heart cannot be stolen even by Govinda. Did not Śrīmat Raghunātha Dāsa Gosvāmī cry out to Her in the Vilāpa-Kusumāñjali, tvaṁ cet kṛpāṁ mayi vidhāsyasi naiva, "If You will not be merciful to me, O Varoru, then what use to me is my very life, what use is Vraja itself, what use even Kṛṣṇa, the slayer of Baka, the Bakāri?" Such a soul has crossed a threshold most have never glimpsed: even the Beloved Himself is wanted only through Her, only as Her sweetness, only as the joy that pours into Her service. These are the crown-jewels of all the ekāntīs, the topmost of all who love.

And now, at last, He names the One around whom all of this has been circling. There, on the very border of Vṛndāvana, vṛndāvana-sīmni, where the forest of love begins, lives kā cana, a certain someone, ghana-āścarya, a wonder so dense and deep the words break against Her. A kiśorī-maṇi, a jewel of an ever-fresh young girl, eternally on the brink of dawn, never to fade, never to ripen into anything less than this trembling first-bloom of love. She is Kṛṣṇa's most astonishing beloved, kṛṣṇa-priyatamā, the one vraja-maṇi, jewel of Vraja, whose name is Rādhā, and there is none in all the worlds, atulana akhila bhuvane, with whom She may be compared. O Kiśorī-maṇi of the Vṛndāvana border, the heart that has once heard of You can never again be content with thrones.

And what does this poor lover want of Her? Not Her glory. Not to stand beside Her as an equal. Not even Her embrace for his own delight. He wants tat-kaiṅkarya, Her maidservice, the right to fan Her in the heat, to string the flowers She will wear into Her tousled braid, to bring the cool water, to wait at the edge of the kuñja while She meets her Prāṇeśvara, to be sent on a hundred small errands of love, to belong to Her as the dust belongs to the path beneath Her reddened feet. And he calls this dāsya not a duty but a rasa, a flavor, and not merely a flavor but rasāmṛta, the nectar of that flavor; and the old Bengali song dares even further: amṛta hoite parāmṛta, sweeter than the nectar of immortality itself, a nectar beyond nectar, matchless in all the universe. Set the four prizes here, set even exclusive reverential devotion to the majestic Lord here, and the tradition lets Prabodhānanda speak in his own name, śrīpāda prabodhānanda bhaṇe, offering his obeisance to that limitlessly opulent Lord and then saying simply, with his whole soul: paraṁ citte na me rocate. Nothing higher than this can ever please my heart. There is nothing else my mind will love. I am done wanting anything but to serve Her. This whole confession, the tradition tells us, is spoken in sādhakāveśa, in the mood of the practitioner, a single-pointed niṣṭhā that has weighed every prize the worlds can offer against one thing only: to be allowed, by Her mercy, to be Her maidservant. And the very heading the Rādhāvallabha line places over these words names that one thing exactly: iṣṭa-kaiṅkarya-mahimā, the glory of the maidservice of the cherished Beloved.