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The moon has only just lifted itself over the eastern groves, yet already the whole of Vṛndāvana is changed by it, for the Bhāgavata tells how Kṛṣṇa first formed the wish to play, vīkṣya rantuṁ manaś cakre, and at that very wish the full king of stars rose into the sky, taḍodurājaḥ. Looking up at that round, reddening face, He remembers another face, ramānanābhāṁ, the shining face of His Beloved Rādhā, and the longing to dance rises in Him like a tide no argument can hold back. He goes straight to the Vaṁśīvaṭa, the old tree where the flute waits, and sets the bamboo to His lips. What comes out is not a tune so much as a summons. Jagau kalaṁ vāma-dṛśāṁ manoharam, the Bhāgavata sings: an unclear, melting sound, sweet as an all-attractive mantra, and Śrī Jīva Gosvāmī unseals the secret of that one word kala, śleṣena kāma-bījaṁ jagau iti rahasyam: the unclear syllables are nothing other than the first two letters of the kāma-bīja, the invocatory seed of the Kāma-gāyatrī. So each note leaves the flute-holes like an arrow loosed from Cupid's bow, and though no words are spoken, every gopī hears the same two words inside it: "Come. Come here."

O flute of Madana-Mohana, what a thief you make of your own Master. Rūpa Gosvāmī fixes it in the Ujjvala-Nīlamaṇi, ābhīrendu-mukhī smarānala-śikhotseke, that the playing is like Indra's thunderbolt smashing the very mountain of Rādhā's patience, like the wind fanning the flames of the moon-faced girls' longing. One breath of that song, and the milk is left to boil over on the hearth, the porridge forgotten, husbands and parents and the safe walls of home all left behind in a single instant. They do not decide to go. The jewel of their hearts has already been stolen and is running away into the dark; as an unknown thief slips the most precious gem from the storehouse and flees, and the householder rushes out frantic, searching the night with his eyes, so the gopīs pour out after the thief of their minds, searching, calling, undone.

Now look at how they move, O seeker. Picture the eyes first. Each gopī has eyes large and dark and faintly blue at the rims, and there are many millions of such eyes streaming through the forest tonight, and every pair is searching for one face, for Vaṁśīdhārī, the keeper of the flute. The glances fly out sidelong, in waves, līlā-apāṅga-taraṅgitaiḥ, like searchlights sweeping the grove for the thief of their hearts, and so many blue glances cast so far in every direction that the very quarters of the sky take on their color. The horizon turns the deep blue-black of the nīlotpala, the night-lotus, as if the directions themselves had been dyed by the love pouring out of those eyes. O directions, you did not know you could be made so beautiful. Tonight you wear the blue of a million longing glances.

Lift your eyes higher, to the sky above the running throng. As they rush headlong, their bodies sway, their forms rock and oscillate with the speed of it, and to one who watches it is as though great golden mountains were swinging gently in the heavens, dolāyat-kanaka-adri-maṇḍalam iva, dangling there, rocking, filling the empty sky with a tenderness it has never held. Aha, how lovely, those golden peaks adrift overhead, the whole expanse made rich by the swaying of the girls who cannot run fast enough toward their Lord.

Now lower your eyes to the ground, to the place where their feet fall, and behold the most tender sight of all. The soft earth of the Rāsa-circle receives the pressure of those small lotus-feet, pāda-nyāsataḥ, and wherever a foot is set down the ground does not merely hold the print. It blooms. A land-lotus opens there, full and fragrant, an utphulla-sthala-paṅkaja, soft as a rose, until the whole floor of the dance becomes a meadow of blossoms. And these are moving lotuses, walking lotuses, for they are nothing other than the shuffling lotus-feet of the gopīs themselves. The earth is being blessed. A flood of love is poured over her soft body through the soles of those running feet, and she answers the only way the earth can answer, by flowering. Vidyāpati saw it long ago and sang it of the golden girl Herself: wherever Her footsteps fall, lotuses bloom; wherever Her body glistens, waves of lightning leap; when She opens Her eyes, lotuses are made manifest; where She smiles, nectar is distributed; where She casts Her crooked glance, Cupid lets fly a hundred thousand arrows.

And see where they are all converging: the bank of the Yamunā, where the Rāsa-circle will form. What a place she has made ready. Jasmine and mālatī, jāti and yūthi, kunda and mandāra are open and breathing out their scent; a soft breeze lifts droplets off the river and carries the flower-fragrance through the trees until the whole forest is sweeter than the Nandana-gardens of the gods. The bees stagger from blossom to blossom, drunk and humming, drinking their fill of honey. On the river's surface float open lotuses and lilies and kahlāra-flowers, and over it all the full moon pours its nectar down on Vṛndāvana. Into this prepared sweetness the girls come pouring, and they come around Rādhā. That is the secret of the whole scene. They do not run alone; they run after Her, anudhāvatīṁ śrī-rādhām, ringed about Her as a garland of moons surrounds the one Moon, yeno cāndake gheri cāndera mālā. And here is the wonder that must not be missed: by following Rādhā their own beauty does not diminish, it increases. To run in Her wake is to be made lovelier; Her sweetness overflows onto every girl who keeps Her company. By Kṛṣṇa's own inconceivable potency the whole world has turned fit for this dance in an instant, rāsotsavaḥ sampravṛtto, the festival begun of itself, the crest-jewel of all His pastimes opening like a flower.

Within this throng, the tradition teaches, are the sakhīs, the dear attending girlfriends, whose presence Śukadeva never denied even while he named the gopīs independent lovers of Kṛṣṇa, for in the verse apy-eṇa patnyupagataḥ he plainly shows the sakhī-bhāva. And dearer still, more hidden than the sakhīs, are the mañjarīs, the maidservant-hearts, themselves a kind of sakhī, whose whole joy is not their own union but the service of Rādhā-and-Kṛṣṇa's union. Earlier poets, Caṇḍī Dāsa and Vidyāpati, Jayadeva and Bilvamaṅgala, sang the mood of the sakhīs; but the fine difference between sakhī and mañjarī was unveiled only after Mahāprabhu descended, by the ācāryas surrendered at His feet, and Rūpa Gosvāmī himself set down mañjarī-bhāva and mañjarī-sevā within the Rāsa, and how it stands higher and more confidential than sakhī-bhāva, in his Utkalikā-Vallarī. From exactly that place the giver of this verse sees the scene, from the kiṅkarī's form, the little handmaid at the grove's edge, watching the girls forget their bodies, their homes and the world's moral codes in their rush toward Kṛṣṇa. He insists, and we should hold it close, that this is no fancied tale but a record of genuine spiritual seeing. There is nothing in all the world as beautiful and as sweet as this, nothing, a sweetness so complete it can bind and control even Śrī Govinda Himself.

And then, the way such visions go, the lightning fades. The flash of Rādhikā's mercy that had lit the whole grove withdraws, and the seer is left in the dark of his own longing, and he can only fold his hands and pray: when, oh when, will I be fortunate enough to behold the gopīs' sweet Rāsa-tryst? That prayer is the truest part of all. He does not claim the scene; he begs to be allowed to serve at its edge. So the tradition's own song carries it home: their wave-like glances billow like dripping bluish lotuses, filling the ten directions with fragrance; their forms rock in the sky like dangling golden mountains; the cowherd-daughters bless the earth, dharaṇī, with a flood of love through the moving of their feet, covering her soft surface with blooming lotuses; matchless in form and in virtue, these Vraja-girls play in the Rāsa-circle, and Prabodhānanda says only this, that with ecstatic love he would worship them.