Rūpa Goswāmī’s Garland of Hymns

Verse one. The dark one and the fair one. Together they are the rain cloud and the lightning that is born from inside the rain cloud. Apart, neither has a meaning. The poet refuses, from the first line, to consider them apart.

Verse two. He is leaning on the bent root of a tamāla. She has just stopped beside him. Her hand has not yet rested on his shoulder. His glance has not yet fully turned toward her face. The whole verse lives in that not-yet. The hymn refuses to resolve the moment, because the moment, unresolved, is what the hymn is for.

Verse four. They are the two halves of one syllable. He is the consonant. She is the vowel. Without her, his sound cannot leave the throat. Without him, her sound has nowhere to rest. The poet, who is a syllable from elsewhere, asks only to be carried along in the music they make together.

Verse six. They are walking through the kunja at dusk. He is on her left. She is on his right. Their two shadows on the path have already become one shadow. The poet says: I will follow the shadow. I do not need to see them themselves. Where the shadow goes is where I belong.

Verse eight. Whoever recites these verses, says Rūpa in the closing, will be given a small place among the mañjarīs who are arranging the bed in the kunja for them tonight. Not a large place. A small one. The poet, signing his name, asks for nothing more.

When will the day come that I am called by name into the kunja and asked to bring fresh water for her feet. When will the day come that I am asked to weave a fresh garland and place it, with my own hands, around her neck. When will the day come that I am sent on a small errand, and I run, and I return.

I do not know when. The day has not come yet. The day may not come in this life. The day may not come in the next life. The longing for the day is what I have. The longing is the only practice I know how to keep up. When other practices fall away from me, this one stays. It is a creeper. It climbs higher in the season when nothing is feeding it but its own reaching.

If I am given any vision in this life, let it not be a vision of liberation. Let it not be a vision of the formless absolute. Let it be a vision, even a brief one, of her hand reaching across the path to break a small flower from the kadamba tree. Let me see the hand. Let me see the flower fall. Let me know that I have seen what I came here for.

And if no vision is given, let the longing remain. The longing has not lied to me. The longing has been the most faithful friend I have had. I will continue with it. I will not put it down before the road ends.

The Yamunā that runs through Vraja is not only a river. The Yamunā is the line of her hair when it is loose down her back. Walk along the bank of the river and you are walking along the line of her hair. The pilgrim who knows this never walks the bank casually again.

The Govardhana hill is not only a hill. The hill is her body curled in sleep on the afternoon when the heat has been too much and the kunja has had to take her in. The pilgrim circumambulating Govardhana is moving along the curve of a body that is resting.

Rādhā Kuṇḍa is the small lake of her own tears, the tears she shed when she thought the meeting was lost, the lake that formed where the tears struck the ground. The pilgrim who bathes in Rādhā Kuṇḍa is bathing in the salt of her grief. The grief has become sweet because it was hers. Whoever bathes there is given access to the grief without having to suffer it themselves.

Nikuñja, the small grove at the bank of the kuṇḍa, is the curl of her ear. The kadamba tree at the head of the grove is the earring she has just taken off. The cow that wanders past the kadamba is the cow she fed by hand this morning. There is nothing in Vraja that is not part of her. The pilgrim who has understood this does not visit Vraja. The pilgrim has returned to her.

The first handful. I gather flowers of awe. The awe I feel when I read of her. The awe that holds my breath for a moment when I imagine her crossing a courtyard. I tie the flowers with a single thread and place them at her feet. I do not look up.

The second handful. I gather flowers of gratitude. The gratitude that this name was given to me. The gratitude that I have been pointed toward this kunja, when there were so many other directions I could have walked in. The gratitude that the breath I have left in this body has been allowed to know what its breath has been for. I tie the flowers and place them.

The third handful. I gather flowers of longing. The longing that I have not yet seen her, that I may not see her in this life, that the meeting is held inside the seal of a future I cannot read. The longing is itself a flower. The longing has its own scent. I tie the flowers and place them.

The fourth handful. I gather flowers of surrender. I do not have anything else to gather. I do not have a great practice. I do not have a great love. I have the small willingness to keep showing up at the gate of the kunja with my hands empty. The willingness is the fourth flower. I tie it with the others and I place all four offerings at her feet, and I sit down at the edge of the path, and I wait to be told what to do next.

At the first watch, before light, the Catuḥ-puṣpāñjali. Four flowers placed at her feet before the eyes have fully opened. The day begins inside the offering, not before it.

At the second watch, as the village wakes, the Rādhāṣṭakam. Eight verses recited slowly, one breath to each verse. The mind, which had been wandering since waking, is gathered. By the eighth verse the day has a center.

At the middle of the day, when work has begun and the heart has scattered, a single śloka from the Yugala-aṣṭakam, recalled from memory. The two of them brought back into the chest. The work resumed.

In the long afternoon, when separation is the dominant mood and longing climbs upward from the chest, a passage from the Utkalikā-vallarī. The longing is given a vine to climb on rather than a wall to beat against.

At dusk, when the body slows and Vraja itself becomes visible to the inner eye, a passage from the Vraja-vilāsa-stava. The geography of her body is walked through in the imagination. The day's last waking minutes are spent inside the kunja.

At night, before sleep, a single line of any of the smaller stotras, recited with closed eyes. The line is the last thread of the garland. The garland, by now, is complete. The practitioner sleeps inside it.

Rūpa wrote the Stava-mālā so that no hour of the day would be unattended. The hymns are not for special occasions. They are for the ordinary day, of which they make a continuous offering.