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Begin with the circle. The autumn moon hangs flawless in a spotless sky over Vṛndāvana, and the forest answers it: every lotus on the pond unfolds at once, as though the whole grove had waited all year for this one night. Cuckoos call from the dark branches. Bees thread the cool, sweet air. And in a clearing ringed by blossoming trees a ring of women has formed, hands joined, faces turned inward toward the One they came for. The vīṇās begin. The upāṅgas and pākhawājas take up the rhythm. And there, dark as a raincloud and laughing, is Mādhava, the king of all dancers, who summoned them by the breath of His flute.

This is the Rāsa, and the tradition names Him Rāsa-rasika, the taster of this dance. The maidens of Vraja meet Him first with words, with laughter, with the gentle teasing of those who love without measure, and only then does the dance begin. The old definition keeps it plainly: "naṭair gṛhīta-kaṇṭhīnām anyonyātta-kara-śriyam; nartakīnāṁ bhaved rāso maṇḍalībhūya nartanam": the Rāsa is the dance in which the male and female dancers stand in a circle, holding one another's hands. Jñāna Dāsa sings it for us. The girls of Vraja see the king of dancers, their lover, and their minds drown in bliss; they surround Him on every side; they meet in groups, holding each other's hands, raising a fair circle around Mādhava, playing vīṇā and upāṅga and pākhawāja. The sky is clear, brimming with the autumnal full moon; the forest flowers are blossoming; the cuckoos and the bees sing most beautifully; the spotless lotuses are opening. Looking and looking, turning and turning, holding one another's arms, these playful girls dance together. And Jñāna Dāsa cries: how many blissful pastimes does Rasamaya Nāgara, the Lover full of flavor, perform among them.

But the eye the tradition trains upon this scene does not rest on the circle. Stand, it says, in the posture of a kiṅkarī, a tiny maidservant, in Śrīpāda's own contemplated form, and look closer. Gopī, Kṛṣṇa, gopī, Kṛṣṇa, the ring alternates, dark and golden, dark and golden, each gopī a living form of bhāva and prema and rasa and beauty itself. How astonishing, that the naturally sweet milkmaids of Vraja should meet enchanting Śyāmasundara like this. The heart could rest there forever, simply gazing. But the maidservant's mind will not stay at the rim. It travels inward, for the Caitanya-caritāmṛta has already told her where to look: "maṇḍalī-bandhe gopīgaṇa korena nartana; madhye rādhā saha nāce vrajendra-nandana": the gopīs dance in their circle, and in the very center of it the prince of Vraja dances, and He does not dance alone. He dances with Rādhā.

And here the eye stops, because here comparison fails. Set against Her, the sweetness and splendor of every other gathered gopī is gently covered over, the way moonlight covers the lesser lights of the sky. The maidservant searches for something to liken Her to and finds nothing. So she lowers her gaze, as a servant does, to the smallest thing she can find: the nails of Her lotus feet, which shine like little moons. And even there, even at that least and lowest place, the heart staggers. Not one drop, not one sliver of the luster of a single toenail of Rādhā can be reached by the other gopīs. What, then, of the goddesses of fortune in Vaikuṇṭha, Nārāyaṇa's own queens, millions of them? They long for one grain of that moonlight and cannot have it. As the song sings: Her lotus-feet are a treasure of millions of lotuses; millions of moons play in Her toenails; and one drop of that moonlight is craved by millions of Lakṣmīs, the wives of Nārāyaṇa.

O Rādhe, what is this glory that begins at Your feet and has no ceiling? You are agamyā, the unreachable one, beyond the going of any traveler, inaccessible even to Brahmā, the first-born, the maker of worlds. He cannot come to You. Power and penance cannot come to You. And yet a trembling servant dares to ask for something, not by climbing, but by Your stooping down.

Now look at what blossoms in Her. Unmaryāda pravṛddha praṇaya-rasa-mahāmbhodhi gambhīra-līlā-mādhuryojjṛmbhitāṅgī: Her every limb is gladdened, made to bloom, by the deep and fathomless play and sweetness of a great ocean of passionate love, an ocean ever-swelling and forever flooding its own shores. The tradition gives this love its proper name: praṇaya-rasa, which is anurāga, the thirst for the beloved that grows newer at every instant. When love ripens into praṇaya, lover and beloved can no longer find any line between their two bodies, their two minds, their two intelligences, their two hearts; and so Rādhā dances the Rāsa with Kṛṣṇa without a breath of hesitation, without the smallest holding-back.

The tradition shows us the contrast so we will feel what this is. Candrāvalī too is in that circle, and she loves; but watch her dance. Rūpa Gosvāmī fixes it in the Ujjvala-nīlamaṇi: carefully she lifts her left arm from Kṛṣṇa's shoulder and embraces Him with her right; carefully, a little crookedly, she moves her feet, anxious that she might tread on His. She is all reverence, all respectful fear of the beloved. And seeing this careful, dignified love, Rādhā's friend Gaurī only smiles, for no one ever truly delights Kṛṣṇa with such cautious devotion. With Candrāvalī and her group this praṇaya-rasa is not possible. The fearless, boundary-breaking love belongs to Rādhā alone. And Rūpa Gosvāmī gives anurāga its very measure: when the thirst for the beloved becomes so deep that He grows ever more dear at every moment, although He is already constantly experienced, that is anurāga.

This is why the tradition lingers on that strange word unmaryāda, free of all dignity. There is a love so high it has burned through propriety. Rūpa Gosvāmī sings of it in the invocation of the Dāna-keli-kaumudī: though Rādhikā's love for Murāri is already all-pervading, still at every moment it grows; though it is vast, it is utterly free from reverence and awe; and though it bends crooked, it is wholly pure. "Jayati muradviṣi rādhikānurāgaḥ": all glories to that love for the enemy of Mura. Because its potency is past conceiving, it can shelter within itself qualities that ought to contradict each other: the increasing and the already-complete, the crooked and the pure, the boundless and the intimate. And on the waves of this sweet, deep ocean of anurāga Her limbs are forever blooming, while on those same waves She keeps Rasarāja Himself, the king of all who relish, gladly swimming. Yet unmaryāda carries a second reading too, the tradition adds: that Rādhikā is endowed with the very greatest honor, an honor that is itself constantly increasing.

See Her now as the songs see Her: Vṛṣabhānu's daughter, ringed by Her girlfriends, Rāseśvarī, the Queen of the dance. Beside Her gallant Kṛṣṇa She is the very jewel of all beloved women, and together the two of them are nothing less than Kāma and Rati, desire and delight made one. Her golden body, the color of new gold, is itself that expanding ocean of loving flavors; She is the outer limit of all playfulness, swimming in waves of sweetness deep and hidden and intimate.

And the Rādhāvallabha singers, taking up this same verse, do not lay a separate ladder beside it; they restate the one mood and adore it again. She is wealthy with the one wealth that matters, the treasure of Her Beloved; She is the kula-maṇi of all wondrous ladyloves; the single luster-particle of the nail-moon on Her foot-lotus is the lone coveted wealth of crores of Lakṣmīs; Her body delights in the deep līlā-sweetness of that boundless, ever-growing ocean of praṇaya-rasa; and that wholly inaccessible Kiśorī, the heart asks, will She color me with Her grace-rasa and accept me?

And so the servant gathers all of this gazing into one small, helpless prayer. Prabodhānanda, the tradition's voice in this poem, says it plain: O Jewel of Vraja's adolescent girls, let there come one supremely auspicious moment; out of Your own dancing play, out of Your own qualities and not from any worth of mine, just once, take me up into Your merciful pastime. Mayi kim api kṛpā-raṅgam aṅgīkarotu: let Her, in some way I have no words to name, accept me into the play of Her grace.