VMA 1.3 : O Vrindavan! Reveal your true essence to my heart!

śrīmad-vṛndāṭavi mama hṛdi sphorayātma-svarūpam

atyāścarya-prakṛti paramānanda-vidyā-rahasyam|

pūrṇa-brahmāmṛtam api hriyā vābhidhātuṁ na neti

brūte yatropaniṣada ihātratyā vārtā kutastyā ||

O Vrindavan! Land of wondrous nature!
Reveal your true essence to my heart,
with all its esoteric secrets,
the spells that lead to supreme bliss. 

The Upanishads themselves are too shy
to describe the full nectar of Brahman,
and so say, “but not this, not this!”
So what hope have we to tell
who or what you are?

---

Commentary


As Prabodhananda embarks on the journey -- a lifelong commitment to glorifying Vrindavan until his dying day -- he continues to reflects on the nature of his task. How can a mere mortal limited by time and space, bodily consciousness and conditioning, enter into this inconceivable transcendental realm of God's own abode? The only recourse is to beg for the Dham's mercy itself. As Prabodhananda wrote in one of the concluding verses of the Sudhā-nidhi, the grace of the Dham is essential for completing and perfecting the culture of devotion to the Divine Couple.

kvāsau rādhā nigama-padavī-dūragā kutra cāsau

kṛṣṇas tasyāḥ kuca-mukulayor antaraikānta-vāsaḥ |

kvāhaṁ tucchaḥ paramam adhamaḥ prāṇy aho garha-karmā

yat tan nāma sphurati mahimā hy eṣa vṛndāvanasya ||261||

How great is Radha,
whose glories are so far beyond the Vedas!
And how glorious is Krishna,
whose single abode is in the space between her breasts!
And how low am I, alas!
such a fallen creature addicted to sinful life!
If their names manifest on my lips,
it is only due to the glory of this land of Vrindavan. (RRSN 261)

Vrindavan is the ground of Radha and Krishna's being. It is the manifestation of the sandhinī potency. Radha and Krishna and their lilas are revealed by Vrindavan alone. The mystery of Vrindavan is that erotic pastime, the full manifestation of madhura-rasa, which is the ineffable core of all existence. It is Nature (prakṛti) in its untainted, ideal form.

There is no entering the lila without first entering Vrindavan, Prabodhananda has determined that the best sādhanā for entering the most secret realm of Radha and Krishna's intimate pastimes is through the culture of residing in Vrindavan. No one can enter physically into Vrindavan without first entering there in the mind, and the best process for entering with the mind is through hearing and glorifying the Dham.

In the Bhagavat-sandarbha, Srila Jiva Goswami discusses at length the prayers of the personified Upanishads from the 87th chapter of Canto 10. The question that starts the chapter is, “If Brahman is ineffable and beyond the capacity of words to express, then how can the Vedic texts themselves describe It?”

Sri Jiva concludes that it is possible, since the words that describe the Lord are a part of his energy and so can be given the capacity to indicate him, even if the Lord is unlimited and beyond the capacity of the mind of an individual soul to fully grasp him. He also says that even the negative statements like neti neti, the negative path to the Absolute, are in fact a process of describing the Lord. What He is not also indicates what He is. It is through the Vedantic process of negation that we come to faith in the Supreme Person, his divine pastimes and associates and Abode.

The negation that results in Brahman has not gone far enough. Prabodhananda Saraswati is an acharya of the Vedanta who has learned to go beyond the intellectual and mental processes of the jñāna-mārga and has concluded that only Prema is the goal and means of entering into the full glory of God.

Of course, the real point is that the personal form of God, his name, his abode, his pastimes, all exist specifically in order to be accessible to the individual souls. They would have no purpose, indeed God Himself would have no purpose, if there was no one to relish his blissful existence in all its infinite manifestations and with its divine center in Vrindavan, the abode of love as embodied in the form of Radha and Krishna.

So here Prabodhananda ascribes the Upanishads’ silence about the glories of Vrindavan and Radha Krishna’s līlā to shyness (hriyā). In a later verse, he says that they all became cows in Vrindavan so they could relish the grasses here, just like the Bhāgavatam says that the great sages all became birds to incessantly sing hymns in his glory.

VMA 1.10 : More glories of Radharani's kunj
VMA 1.9 : Radhika's cottage in the kunj
VMA 1.8 : Vrindavan contains all the Dhams
VMA 1.7 : Vrindavan includes all of Braj
VMA 1.6 : What is it to me if you cannot see Vrindavan's glories?
VMA 1.5 : Take shelter of Vrindavan with all your being
VMA 1.4 : Where all the relishable relationships are found
VMA 1.3 : O Vrindavan! Reveal your true essence to my heart
VMA 1.2 : Prabodhananda's humble determination to glorify the Dham
VMA 1.1 :