79

The sky has counted out the whole month waiting for the full-moon night. Through the first evenings the moon was a sliver, then a curved blade, then a leaning bowl, never whole, its light thin and provisional. And then comes Rākā, the night of fullness, when the disc rounds to its sixteen perfect phases and the whole earth is washed in flooding silver. Now picture a man who says he wants the full moon but has no use for the night that holds it. He wants the radiance and turns his back on the very condition that completes it. O foolish longing. The moon without its full-moon night is a fragment, a paring of light on the thirteenth or fourteenth evening that almost looks whole and is not. So comes a tender warning to anyone who would reach for Govinda while stepping past the service of Śrī Rādhā: rādhā-dāsyam apāsya, giving up Her service, to chase govinda-saṅga, His company, is to want pūrṇa-sudhā, the full moon, and refuse rākā, the night that makes it full.

For listen, why is He called Govinda at all? Because every sense of His is gladdened, pastured, made glad, by Her. Govinda: the one whose senses She delights. And this is no outside claim; He confesses it Himself. In the Lalita Mādhava, Rūpa Gosvāmī sets the words in Kṛṣṇa's own mouth as He turns to Her: O Kalyāṇi, O auspicious one, Your lips defeat the redness of the bimba-fruit and shame the very sweetness and fragrance of nectar; Your face is more fragrant than the lotus; Your voice runs sweeter than the cuckoo's; Your limbs are cooler than sandal-paste; Your whole body is the vessel where all beauty is kept; and tasting You, O Rādhe, this gathering of My senses rejoices again and again. Hear that and the whole truth opens at once. The sweetness others run to find in Kṛṣṇa is a sweetness He Himself is drinking from Her. To bypass Her and clutch at Him is to come to the spring far downstream and miss its source. And so the truest way to make Kṛṣṇa relish His own sweetness is to serve Śrī Rādhā.

The tradition tells us plainly what His nature is: He is subdued by devotion. The Siddhānta Ratna fixes it, that God stands willingly controlled by love, as a bee is held fast in the cup of the lotus, drunk and unwilling to leave, as a romantic youth is captured utterly by the girl he loves; and this, it says, the śruti and the smṛti both confirm. And in all the worlds He is most thoroughly bound by the sweet love of the people of Vraja. Bilvamaṅgala Ṭhākura saw this and marvelled: O Kṛṣṇa, You romp in the mud of the cowherds' courtyards yet grow shy at the spotless sacrificial altars of the brāhmaṇas; You cry out at the lowing of the cows and bulls of Vraja yet stay silent under a hundred polished hymns of the sages; You make Yourself the servant of the cowherd girls and will not be even the master of the austere ascetics; by this I know, O Kṛṣṇa, that Your lotus feet are won by ecstatic love alone and by nothing else. And if love alone wins Him, then She who loves Him most fully is the door. Śrī Rādhikā is the greatest lover in all of Vraja, so it is past argument: to want Govinda's nearness without Her is to want the full moon and refuse the full-moon night.

The rasikas who went before us, those fortunate ones who tasted Kṛṣṇa's upswelling beauty by serving Her, learned it with their whole hearts: it is useless, wholly useless, to try to relish that beauty by abandoning Her service. All the spiritual practice a devotee performs in Vṛndāvana, all the chanting and circling and remembrance, runs dry unless his inner eye sees Śrī Rādhā as a golden vine twining about the dark tamāla tree of Śyāmasundara, putting out fresh sprouts and leaves in the form of Her sakhīs and maidservants. Why? Because the dark loveliness of Kṛṣṇa is kindled and completed by the gold of Her presence and the green of Her girlfriends gathered round Him. Raghunātha Dāsa Gosvāmī unfolds it through every season in his Viśākhānandada-stotram: She is the sun that opens the lotus of Govinda's amorous longing and the moonbeam that gladdens the kumuda-night-lily of His heart; She is the clear Mānasa lake where the swan of His mind swims, and the fresh raincloud that keeps the cātaka bird of His thirst alive; She is the golden yūthikā blossoming on the tamāla that is Kṛṣṇa, the steady lightning standing fast in His dark cloud. In summer She is camphor and sandal and cool moonlight on every limb of His; in winter She is the glistening yellow silk laid over Śyāma's dark beauty; in spring She is the very form of the vernal goddess gladdening the Kṛṣṇa-tree; in the rains She is the Mallāra melody that thrills Him; and in autumn She chooses Him, Rāsaika Rasikendra, the one king of all relishers, and dances the rāsa at His side among Her friends; and in Hemanta She wanders to His amorous battles, taking the very form of Jaya-Śrī, the goddess of victory. O Surasika Bhāvuka-vṛnda, O sensitive hearts that can taste this, see then how little savour there is in His company when She is not there. As there is only a sliver of light on the second or third night of the waxing moon, so there is only a sliver of joy in Kṛṣṇa's sweetness taken alone, set against the boundless sweetness of the Divine Pair together.

And then the deeper word, lest anyone still console himself. For someone may say: but on the thirteenth or fourteenth night the moon already looks nearly full; surely a little short of Her is good enough. To break that comfort comes the ocean and the drop. Those who do not know that Rādhā is the bīja, the seed, of the tidal wave, the very flood-source, of love for Śyāma will arrive at the shore of a mahā-amṛta-ambudhi, a great ocean of nectar, and carry home a single bindu, one drop. For She is the origin of His pleasure-potency, His hlādinī. Jīva Gosvāmī fixes it in the Prīti Sandarbha, that of this hlādinī there is one supreme function surpassing all bliss, poured perpetually into the hearts of His devotees and named there bhagavat-prīti, love of God. And the Govinda Līlāmṛta asks and answers it without a hedge: who is the birthplace of love for Kṛṣṇa? Śrīmatī Rādhikā alone. Take shelter of Her, and His sweetness becomes truly relishable, an ocean to swim in. Bypass Her, and though a man stand at the very shore of that ocean, he scoops out a drop and calls it all.

So the elders of this path bound themselves to Her with fierce, tender vows. In his Sva-Niyama-Daśakam, his ten vows, Raghunātha Dāsa Gosvāmī swore: even if the immensely opulent Lord of the Yadus should personally summon me to Dvārakā, I will not leave the land of Vraja, that matchless playground of Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa, for even an instant, though I have suffered ages of separation from the Couple here. But if I hear even with the rim of my ear that Rādhā, mad with love, has gone to Dvārakā and that Hari there holds Her against His heart, then with a leaping heart I will fly from Vraja faster than Garuḍa himself. And again he vowed: I will not go for even a moment near the impure place where some proud hypocrite worships Govinda alone and leaves out His dearest, Śrī Gandharvā, Rādhā, whose glories the very Vedas and the great sages sing, Nārada among them with his vīṇā. But anyone in this world who, bent low with love, worships Śrī Rādhā together with Śrī Kṛṣṇa, Her whose sweet name showers grace upon all mankind, ah, that devotee's feet I will wash and joyfully drink the water and carry it on my head every single day. Prabodhānanda gathers it all into song: curses, O curses, on the folly that drops Her service to chase Govinda alone, like wanting the full moon without its night; for the Lord's sweetness is incomplete and feeble without Her sixteen phases, and alas to see Govinda, the moon of Nanda's clan, dimmed to such a state; Rādhā is the seed of the unrivalled stream of love for Kṛṣṇa, and whoever wants Kṛṣṇa-love without Her grace, hear, O brother, the end of it: he gets one drop of the very nectar-ocean he was searching for. This is my settled certainty, says Prabodhānanda: sarva-labhya rādhikā-caraṇe, everything is attained at the shelter of Rādhikā's feet.