VMA 2.35 : The play at the center

One of my favorite pictures. Ramesh Baba at dawn with his dancing dervishes on 84-kos parikrama.

ekaṁ sakhyāpi no lakṣitam urasi lasan-nitya-tādātmya-kāntaṁ

tad dṛśyaṁ dūrato’nyad vratati-nava-gṛhe’nyat tu tan-narma-śarma |

anyad vṛndāvanāntar-viharad atha paraṁ gokule prāpta-yogaṁ

vicchedy anyat tad evaṁ lasati bahu-vidhaṁ rādhikā-kṛṣṇa-rūpam ||2.35||

In one form, unseen even by the sakhis,
Radha and Krishna hold each other to their hearts,
losing themselves in mutual oneness.

In another, they may be seen
from far away in a cottage of newly blossoming vines.

In another, they enjoy playful joking words.
In yet another, they wander the forest of Vrindavan,
enjoying its beauty.

In one form they meet in Gokula,
and in another are separated again.

In this way that Supreme Truth
in the form of Sri Sri Radha and Krishna
manifests itself in many different ways.

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In a section of the Bhāgavatam that is often cited by Jiva Goswami, Narada famously visited Dwarka and saw its opulence, how in more than 16,000 palaces Krishna was living with each of his wives, in each of these relations functioning individually and differently. The commentaries never stop telling us that Narada's amazement came from seeing how his own powers of taking many forms, gained through yoga, did not have this power of a separated, individual personality in each.

There are many points to a story like that. Not unlike the one that is made by the residents of Mathura when they saw Krishna and Balaram enter the wrestling arena

mallānām aśanir nṝṇāṁ naravaraḥ strīṇāṁ smaro mūrtimān

gopānāṁ svajano’satāṁ kṣitibhujāṁ śāstā svapitroḥ śiśuḥ

mṛtyur bhojapater virāḍ aviduṣāṁ tattvaṁ paraṁ yogināṁ

vṛṣṇīnāṁ paradevateti vidito raṅgaṁ gataḥ sāgrajaḥ

"When Krishna entered the arena of Kamsa with his elder brother,
he appeared as a thunderbolt to the wrestlers,
as the perfect man to other men,
as the god of love to women,
as a kinsman to the cowherds,
as a chastiser to the wicked kings,
as a child to his parents,
as death personified to Kamsa,
as the gross cosmic form to the ignorant,
as the Absolute Truth to the yogis,
and as the supreme deity to the Vrishnis." (SB 10.43.17)

The One Truth is recognized differently by each observer. So the observer is challenged to see God in different ways, in different ways of relating, in different ways of loving, in order to experience the highest happiness in love of God. And Krishna reciprocates accordingly, reveling in the variety of love that is possible in his infinite being. This we also saw in the previous verse. But each individual observer can also be many in the love of experiencing variety within the frame of one's own desires. As one's own being and tastes crystallize, then one attains the ekāgratā that is the key to samādhi, or losing oneself completely in the melodious name, enchanting form and rasa-maya lila, the ocean of love that is Krishna, the viṣaya of that love.

priyāṁse nikṣiptotpulaka-bhuja-daṇḍaḥ kvacid api

bhraman vṛndāraṇye mada-kala-karīndrādbhuta-gatiḥ |

nijāṁ vyañjann atyadbhuta-surata-śikṣāṁ kvacid aho

rahaḥ-kuñje guñjad-dhvanita-madhupe krīḍati hariḥ ||

Sometimes flinging his goose-bumped arm
over his Beloved's shoulder,
wandering through the Vrindavan forest
with the charming gait of a maddened elephant,
showing off his extraordinarily
amazing education in amorous love,
he plays in the secret groves,
where the bees drone round the flowers. (RRSN 234)

Here comes the adbhuta or wondrous dimension with which we are asked to enter into God's being. The Bhagavad Gita says, in words that are invoked by the sages since time immemorial, He is not knowable. The infinite cannot be grasped by a finite intelligence. The only way it could grasp that infinitude it is to become one with it. But rasa means wanting and trying to understand or know and then giving it up, just to be amazed.

āścaryavat paśyati kaścid enam

āścaryavad vadati tathaiva cānyaḥ |

āścaryavac cainam anyaḥ śṛṇoti

śrutvāpy enaṁ veda na caiva kaścit ||29||

Someone sees it as being wondrous,
similarly, others speak of it as wondrous,
and others hear of it as wondrous,
and others, even hearing from authority,
are unable to know it. (2.29)

The wonder of the atma is a realm of progressive revelation. Starting with a mere negation of material experience, it develops an ever increasing sophistication until it manifests as the form of the Divine Couple in madhura-rasa.

This is the absolute union of the Divine Couple that not even the sakhis can know, because if they were to know it, they would lose their separate existence altogether. That which is unknowable through the human body and senses can only know that by becoming it. The greater pleasure is in rasa, the manifestation of the multiple. It is all God's play.

It is the intensity with which one is permitted to observe the perfection of Love and Beauty in the heart of meditation. An infinity of the manifestations of that Love that can be observed, the panoply of the emotions of love, all being expressed as if simultaneously in the eternal Vrindavan.

This is how the word āścarya indicates the principal quality that characterizes rasa. It is not the satisfaction of knowing, but the astonishment that comes when you realize it is yet far beyond being known. This is stated in the Sāhitya-darpaṇa (3.3)- :

rase sāraś camatkāro yaṁ vinā na raso rasaḥ |

tac camatkāra-sāratve sarvatraivādbhuto rasaḥ ||

In the experience of rasa, the essence is wonder, for without astonishment, rasa is not rasa. Since surprise or astonishment is its principal characteristic, the adbhuta-rasa or sentiment of wonder is omnipresent throughout [effective works of drama].

The last part of this verse speaks of union and separation in Gokula, which is an interesting use of phrasing. By specifying Gokula, it would appear that Saraswatipada is going so far as to say that the separation of Krishna to Mathura is taking place here as one of the many manifestations of rasa going on in the nitya-līlā.

Generally speaking, Prabodhananda Saraswati is categorized as a nitya-vihārī, or someone who believes in absolute meditation on the beauties of the innermost sanctum of the Divine Lila. There is almost nothing to which a nitya-vihārī is averse than the concept of separation. Krishna never sets foot out of Braj, they exclaim. It is unusual that he should even admit the possibility, but even in the nitya-līlā, there are micro-moments of separation that feel like aeons. All the varieties of ecstasy in love are experienced in the nitya-līlā.

yoga eva bhaved eṣa vicitraḥ ko’pi mādanaḥ |
yad-vilāsā virājante nitya-līlāḥ sahasradhā ||

There is a extraordinary mood of mahābhāva known as mādana, whose playful manifestations unfold in thousands of ways in the nitya-līlā (UN 14.225)

There is a spectrum of visions of the meaning of union and separation and their importance in the experience of rasa. The Ujjvala-nīlamaṇi ends with a reminder that uninterrupted union is not as amusing as union interrupted with some drama. To succumb to the Grand Dramatist is the road to experiencing amazement and rasa. The One craves to be many, and once being many tries to remember and recover and rediscover its Oneness.

The nitya-vihārī does not generally contemplate even the painful separation of Krishna from the gopis at the time of his departure for Mathura, though this is an integral element of the Bhāgavata's story of this particular aspect of the avatāra, a secret that stands at the center of the Bhāgavatam. The Gaudiya Goswami school is a little more varied in their visions of the nitya-līlā. The idea here appears to be a little more like that described in Sanatan Goswami's Bṛhad-bhāgavatāmṛta, where these līlās are played in eternal repetition, the devotees reliving those same emotions in real time over and over again in eternity. The different approaches to separation in Gaudiya Vaishnavism, even with the six Goswamis, is a subject of some interest, which we will perhaps be able to return to again in this endeavor of relishing the Vṛndāvana-mahimāmṛta.

VMA 2.34 : The fortunate, the more fortunate, and the most fortunate of all
VMA 2.33 : Vrindavan, on the divine island
VMA 2.30-32 : The ever youthful Divine Couple sport in the kunjas of Vrindavan
VMA 2.29 : Some dark ineffable youth has taken form to play here
VMA 2.28 : If one could constantly sing sweetly of your virtues
VMA 2.27 : Bathe in the dust of the residents of this supremely effulgent realm
VMA 2.26 : Vrindavan, the essence of all things
VMA 2.25 : Vrindavan's divine sylvan virtues