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Begin with water. Not a stream you could step across, not a pond at the garden's edge, but an entire ocean, shoreless and shining, made wholly of rasa, the liquid sweetness of love for Śyāmasundara. This ocean is Her very form, O devotee. Picture it. The lover stands on no bank you can name, because there is no outside to this sea. Her śrī-vapu, Her transcendental body, is itself the water, and the water is love that has taken the shape of a girl from Barsana.

And upon the surface of this ocean, two fish are wandering. They will not be still. They dart, they turn, they slip toward one direction and away from another, restless, restless. These are Her eyes, O Rādhe, two sweet fish that swim and never settle. See how they move. Where is He? The glance asks it without words. Where is the dark one, where is Śyāmasundara? She steps out of the inner chambers and already Her eyes have gone ahead of Her down the forest path, looking around restlessly, darting after the blue gleam between the trees, circling back, going out again. The fish cannot rest in the ocean; the eyes cannot rest in the love. Both keep moving because the beloved has not yet been found, and the whole sea trembles with their seeking.

Now look to the nectar-lake, the sudhā-sarasī, which is again this same transcendental body of Hers, water turned to honeyed light. On that lake stand two cakravāka birds, ruddy-breasted, the reddish geese of the old poems who love so fiercely that they cannot endure to be parted even for a single night. Ahaha, the tradition sighs at the very sight: ahaha, these are Her breasts, two warm ruddy birds upon the still nectar-water. The cakravāka is the emblem of longing that cannot bear separation. So even the rising of Her breath, even the place of Her heart, is shaped like a creature made of yearning for its mate. Her body does not merely contain love; every part of it has become love wearing a different lovely form. The eyes are seeking-love. The breasts are longing-love. There is nothing in Her that is not turned toward Him.

And the face. O lift your gaze to the face, O devotee. Out of the moving water a single golden lotus is blooming, vikāsi-hemāmbuja, the lotus of gold slowly unfolding its petals upon the river. This is Her countenance, Her gaura-mukha, fair and luminous, opening above the current. A lotus does not bloom in dead water; it opens on the living river. So Her fair face opens upon a river of passion, a Gaṅgā that is not ordinary, a Gaṅgā of prema.

For the tradition lingers on that word Surataraṅgiṇī, and it carries two sweetnesses at once. Surataraṅgiṇī means the Gaṅgā, the river of waves; and it means a lady deep in love-play, a giver and enjoyer of the highest delight. Hold both at once and you have Her. She is the Gaṅgā of prema, yet a Gaṅgā unlike the river of this world. In the earthly Gaṅgā there are no lakes and no oceans, only the one current; but in this Surataraṅgiṇī Rādhā there are oceans and there are lakes, the whole of water gathered into one flowing form. And Her current floods both Her banks. Think of that word dukūla, which is the two banks of a river, and which is also du, two, and kula, families: both the family She was born to and the family of Her wedded husband. The ordinary Gaṅgā in flood spreads beyond its shores; this river of love overruns both households, swollen past all bounds by the monsoon rains, the rains of nectarean passion for Śrī Kṛṣṇa that make the stream more forceful still. Nothing holds it. No shore, no custom, no fear can keep this water in its bed. It rises and rises until it has crossed every line the world draws, because love that has reached its fullness does not ask permission of any bank.

And who is She, this river, this ocean, this lake, this opening lotus? The tradition tells us tenderly that the verbal root rādh means to worship, and so Her name, Rādhikā, means the girl who is the supreme worshiper of Śrī Kṛṣṇa, the greatest adorer of the dark beloved. She is Rāseśvarī, the Queen of the Rāsa dance, and without Her the Rāsa-līlā cannot please Kṛṣṇa at all; the Caitanya Caritāmṛta sings it, tāhā vinā rāsalīlā nāhi bhāy cite, that without Her His own heart finds no joy in the dance. Yet a festival needs more than two. So He lifted His enchanting flute and called millions of gopīs to the circle, and even then it is She who is the cause. The same scripture fixes it: rādhā saha krīḍā rasa āsvāda kāraṇa; āra sab gopīgaṇa rasopakaraṇa: Śrī Rādhā is the cause of Kṛṣṇa's savoring the flavor of His pastimes, and all the other gopīs serve as the additional ingredients of that savoring. She makes the Rasika relish every mellow of the dance, going to meet Him in the company of all the parties of the grove: sva-pakṣa, Her own dear ones; vipakṣa, Her rivals; suhṛt-pakṣa, the well-wishing ones; and taṭastha-pakṣa, the neutral ones alike. Truly She is worthy of Her name, the supreme worshiper, for She gives the giver of all bliss His bliss.

But know this, O devotee: such a body of love, eyes that are fish and breasts that are cakravākas and a face that is a golden lotus on a river of prema, cannot be seen by these earthen eyes of ours, nor grasped by a mind still wrapped in flesh and bone. The tradition says it plainly. All of this opens only when one lays down the heavy identification with the material body and is given, as a gift, the transcendental mood of the gopīs. Until then the river is invisible. It runs right past us, and to the unawakened eye there is only ordinary water.

So the prayer comes, and it is small and trembling, set against that vast shining sea. Milantu mayi rādhike tava kṛpā-taraṅga-cchaṭāḥ: O Rādhike, may the spray flung up from the waves of Your splendid mercy come and meet in me. Not the whole ocean; the lover does not even dare to ask for the ocean. Only the bright scattered droplets thrown off the crest of one wave of Her grace, only that the flying mist, the cchaṭā, the aura of Her kindness might fall and gather upon this one undeserving soul. The Rādhāvallabha telling closes the prayer the same way, naming it simply a kṛpā-yācanā, a begging for mercy: Swāminī, let me obtain the splendor of Your mercy-wave. The lover of love is not bold enough to ask for the sea. He asks only that some of its glittering spray reach him where he stands far off, and even that he asks as a beggar asks, with folded hands, knowing that the river chooses where it overflows. O Swāminī, let it choose me. Let one cool bright shower of Your mercy meet in me.