Chapter Seven: Literature of the Rasika Tradition

—concealed desire-love, forced to pass through many obstacles, makes love unsurpassably blissful. Madhuracharya replies that this reasoning pertains to ordinary people and is wholly irrelevant when applied to Bhagavan. Love within marriage is in fact the cause of the highest joy of affection. Are obstacles absent even there? Amid service to elders and while avoiding the eyes of relatives, a wedded wife can give a kind of love that can be obtained in no other way.¹

Madhuracharya similarly gives independent meanings to the words jāra and upapati. Jāra is “he who causes the seed of worldly existence to decay”—that is, destroys it. Upapati is he who, as the indwelling ruler, bestows love, sustains, protects, and nourishes.²

Love is not physical; it is mental. Where, then, does the question of bodily contact arise? When the transcendent Lord is called the supporting object of śṛṅgāra or the sweet rasa, the reference is not to ordinary people’s erotic sentiment rooted in bodily pleasure, but to divine bliss itself. Madhuracharya therefore places śṛṅgāra-rasa upon a very high spiritual plane and strongly emphasizes observance of maryādā. He regards bodily pleasure with disgust.

In Madhuracharya’s doctrine, śṛṅgāra-rasa is the transformation of consciousness that enters Brahman, assumes the form of supreme love, and is named “bliss” by the revealed scriptures.³

Throughout this work, Madhuracharya cites many passages from the Vālmīki Rāmāyaṇa to establish that men too, upon seeing Bhagavan’s lovely face, may desire him as a faithful wife desires her beloved husband. At such points Madhuracharya generally explains the love as mental, lest devotees enslaved to social and Vedic convention fall into confusion. His interpretation frequently takes refuge in the word “mystery.” He explains the words of nearly every principal Rāmāyaṇa character in such a way that almost all of them long to attain Bhagavan as their beloved.