Chapter Eight: Literature of the Rasika Tradition in Hindi

Those who beautifully preserve this feeling within the heart, though outwardly they speak of themselves through the body as servant, friend, or another relation,
Are certainly dear to the Lord and freely come and go within the palaces.

The Couple are the cause and agent of every rasa; they are the great sovereigns of rasa and śṛṅgāra.
Sri Sampada and Ramadeva, the chosen Lord, bestow happiness.
The pure relation of husband and wife contains every desired fruit.

Concerning the Five Consecrations

An unmarried girl remains a maiden and may be regarded as the woman of a thousand potential husbands.
When she marries one companion and places herself into his hands,
That one becomes her exclusive husband and all false claimants lose hope.

So too worldly people, outward-turned and pleasure-seeking, become worshippers of every god.
Dull-minded, they worship, praise, and bow to all while abandoning Sita-Raghunandan.
Without a relation to the Lord, their various forms of worship, feeling, love, devotion, and meditation remain rootless.

This continues until they worship Sita-Raghurai, turn toward the guru, and adorn the body with the proper form and marks;
Until they abandon expectation from all gods and place their trust in the Lord.
Until then, union with Rama remains exceedingly distant and devotion without the sacred form remains incomplete.

Without devotion to Rama, one wanders through the eighty-four lakh forms of birth and does not attain an auspicious, intimate destination.

Concerning Eightfold Daily Contemplation

The Importance of Relationship

In parental affection, śṛṅgāra, peace, friendship, and service,
The five kinds of rasikas serve the Lord through their own distinctive natures.

Without a relationship, one does not know one’s spiritual form; how then can service to the chosen Lord be undertaken?
Name, form, service, eligibility; feeling, attainment, happiness, and foundation;
Mother, father, sister, beloved, birth; lineage, reflection, and significance;

Rasa, exclusivity, the chosen Lord, devotional conception; convention, mystery, awakening, and purification;
The eight watches and one’s own identity—without knowing all these distinctions, the heart’s distress does not end.

These twenty-four happiness-giving aphorisms contain many distinctions of feeling.
They cannot be fully described even in elegant language concerning the relations.
Whoever receives the relationship knows it, and the exclusive rasika delights in the happiness of that feeling.

Without a Vaishnava relationship, one has no right to the Lord’s service.
Even in dreams it cannot be obtained, though one perform ten million observances.