One of the unique qualities of Hinduism, as we have already seen, is its almost infinite capacity to create gods and goddesses. There is a standard ritual process for doing so, quite akin to nyasa of pranapratistha, the breathing of life into an image of stone, metal or wood.11 What makes Radha so exceptional is that she is god(ess) not as father, mother, child, sibling or spouse, but as paramour, lover, beloved. The distinction between licit and illicit love is erased in madhurya; only love reigns supreme. Radha ‘the lover of Krishna’ is an empowered being who is able—in love, and as lover—to transcend all barriers and obstacles to reach Krishna. She is the classic abhisarika, the woman who ventures out in storm and rain, overcoming both shame and fear, to meet her lover. But here she is exalted to the status of a goddess for doing so, not stoned, lynched, pronounced whore, or forced to commit suicide. Radha’s devotional and sexual prowess is celebrated. In her wake there are texts—such as Radhika Santwanam of Muddupalani, famously quoted by Susie Tharu and K. Lalita in their introduction to Women Writing in India (Tharu and Lalita, 1)—where Krishna is taught how to satisfy Radha, which is one of his duties as her lover. Radha, then, does give us one more example of women on top, though by and large subdued and vanquished by the patriarchy. Radha’s story suggests that the eternal feminine can never be fully suppressed, but rises in one guise or another to claim her rightful equality with the male principle as enshrined in Sankhya, one of India’s oldest philosophical traditions.
Radha also represents Advaita, or non-dualism simplified. Doctrinally, Advaita, as propounded by Shankara and others, is quite deep and subtle philosophically, which is one reason that it was traditionally thought that women and Sudras should not be privy to it. But the Radha–Krishna relationship, modelled as it is on romantic human love, is easy for all of us to comprehend, even instinctively relate to. It is simply the story of a glorious and joyous union between two lovers as each one of us dreams of and craves on earth, born separate and lonely as we are. We each of us hope to find that perfect partner who can help us bear the sorrows of life and lift us out of our primal loneliness. Radha–Krishna is the celebration of two becoming one; wherever that happens is sacred, at least we believe so in India, where every confluence of two or more rivers is considered holy.
Radha–Krishna, then, stands for just such a holy confluence, the very contemplation of which puts us into the frame of mind to appreciate the perfectibility and perfection of not just all nature but of the human condition itself, so characterized ordinarily, as the great Buddha reminded us, by dukkha, suffering, duality, separation from self. We, the ordinary, suffering mortals, beholding the perfect bliss of Radha–Krishna in Vrindavana, may also retrace the fundamental sense of purnatva, or completion, whose memory still inspires us and which we know, at least unconsciously, is our true nature and original state. Radha–Krishna in Vrindavana is thus the iconic depiction of the initial wholeness which the Upanishads declare as the nature of the ultimate reality: ‘Purnamada, purnamidam, purnat purnamudachyte . . .’
I would like to end by re-invoking Sri Radharani, the queen of Braj, who also rules the hearts of all devotees of Krishna, this time in the words of Bilvamangal:
May Radha purify the world who, all her thoughts
given up to the Eternal Lord, Krishna, kept
churning in a vessel empty of curds.12
We love and worship Radha because she mirrors Krishna so perfectly, finally merging into him as another great and self-abnegating lover Parvati did into the very body of her only lord, Shiva. In the words of Vidyapati:
As the mirror to my hand,
the flowers to my hair,
kohl to my eyes,
tambul to my mouth,
musk to my breast,
necklace to my throat,
philosophy to theology
ecstasy to my flesh,
heart to my home—
as wing to bird,
water to fish,
life to the living—
so you to me.
But tell me,
Madhava, beloved,
who are you?
Who are you really?
Vidyapati says, they are one another.13
Of course, every Radha-like love also belabours under the fear of losing her lover or beloved. What will happen when such a mad, obsessive, totally self-consuming love comes to an end?
In Chandidas’s words:
Suddenly I am afraid.
At any moment, Kanu’s love for me may cease.
A building can collapse because of a single flaw—
who knows in what ways I, who desire to be
a palace for his pleasure, may be faulty?
And few are those who can restore what once is broken . . .
Distracted, I wander from place to place,
everywhere finding only anxiety.
Oh, to see his smile!
My love, whoever brings down the house of our love
will have murdered a woman!
Whether such things happen in real life or not, in the poem, Chandidas, the poet himself enters the world of Radha’s fear and grief to offer the following reassurance in the concluding couplet, or the bhanita:
Chandidasa says, O Radha, you reflect too much;
without your love he could not live a moment.14
With Chandidas, we too need to believe that the very Lord will have to come down to earth when faced with love as intense and irresistible as Radha’s. Even Krishna, normally so wayward or impersonal, must yield to such a great love as Radha’s. He too cannot live even for a moment without her. So must it be in all stories of true love. Wherever love exists in its pure, concentrated and overpowering form it manifests as the Radha tattva, the essence that is Radha, which has the power to capture even the Lord of the worlds, Krishna himself, the supreme Godhead, the stealer of our hearts and the object of all our desires.
9
RADHA: THE PLAY AND PERFECTION OF RASA
SHRIVATSA GOSWAMI
Essence of beauty and rasa,
Quintessence of bliss and compassion,
Embodiment of sweetness and brilliance,
Epitome of artfulness, graceful in love:
May my mind take refuge in Radha,
Quintessence of all essences.1
AS ‘QUINTESSENCE OF all essences’ Shri Radha is the ultimate answer to the human quest—philosophical, theological, existential. The following interpretation of her significance reflects the views of the religious community of which I am a part, the Chaitanya sampradaya, those who look to Sri Chaitanya, the Bengali ascetic of the late 15th and early 16th century, as the complete avatar of both Radha and Krishna.
The final adequacy of the Krishna avatar has sometimes been likened to the sixteen degrees through which the moon waxes from nothingness to fullness in the course of a fortnight. These are called kalas, and it is asserted that Krishna contains them all, whereas other incarnations lack at least one. The kala they lack is kala in another of its meanings: fine art. They lack the fine art of love. Such avatars may have been motivated by love, but they were never the enactment of love itself, its full play.
When one claims such a fullness of love for the Krishna avatar, of course, it is not only Krishna about whom one is speaking. Without the highest shakti, Radha, it would all be impossible, for she is love’s potency. Without the round dance that magnetizes the two of them—the rasa in which they equally participate—there would be no experience of rasa. There the divine grandeur plays a limited role at best: all melts away in the intensity of love. If it were not so, the human seeker would remain far from the divine presence: there would be no common meeting ground . . .
Love is a form of relation grounded in the innate attraction of the human senses for their objects. This attraction builds upon a fundamental identity between subject and object; love is thus ‘a natural, intense desire of a subject for contact with its object’.2 Beings whose essences are mutually exclusive, by contrast, cannot be attrac
ted to one another. Hence all love, following from a community of essence, is ultimately self-love. Yet, in the process of love the distinction between subject and object does not collapse into total non-differentiation. On the contrary, love is by nature a relation that presupposes a state of identity indifference.
Human love may take any number of forms, but it finds its highest expression in the love of a man and a woman. Such love, in which two hearts melt into one, involves the highest degree of intensity, and provides a more complete union than is found in other modes of relation, such as those of servant with master, parent with child, or friend with friend. Amorous love (kanta-bhava) joins two lovers on the same level in mutual satisfaction. This equality coupled with intensity makes possible a level of rasa unknown elsewhere.
Because of its finite basis, however, this worldly love ultimately gives rise to feelings of disgust and aversion. It cannot lead to infinite and eternal bliss, and it is to this that the human quest tends. The limited phenomenal rasa must finally be transmuted into the transcendent, absolute rasa.3 To attain such a rasa the devotee chooses a personally suitable mode of relation with Krishna from those exemplified by the people of Vraja. The deep, loving relationship is crystallized in certain conceits that a devotee may adopt. One may regard Krishna as one’s master, charge, friend or beloved. Such conceits, remembered from dramatic situations in Vraja and gradually appropriated, give rise to permanent relationships. One comes to consider Krishna as a master (dāsya), a son (vātsalya), a friend (sakhya) or a beloved (mādhurya). When catalysed by ancillary factors, these modes of intense attraction and attachment (rati), the substantive causes (sthāyi-bhava) of love, culminate in the ultimate aesthetic experience of Krishna rasa. Such realization is the highest form of love.4
What is the form of Radha adored by those who aspire to such higher reaches of bhakti? On the one hand, Rupa Goswami tells us she is ‘the supernal hlādinī shakti, established in the scriptures and especially in the tantras as the greatest of all shaktis. Yet, on the other hand, that very shakti is Radha, daughter of Vrishabhanu. As such, her form is exceedingly beautiful. She has sixteen ways of dressing and making herself up, and she bedecks herself with twelve different sets of jewels and ornaments.’5
Raghunatha Dasa Goswami draws out the inner meaning of the various aspects of Radha’s splendid appearance.
Her body is the glowing touchstone of mahabhava [the highest state of love], which further shines with the unguents of her friends’ love for her. Having bathed in the ocean of the nectar of beauty that flows with the current of youth and ripples with compassion, Radha makes even Lakshmi despair of her charms. Radha’s inner silken garment is her modesty. Her body is delicately painted with the saffron of beauty and the musk of glowing srngara-rasa [amorous mood]. Her ornaments are fashioned of the nine most precious jewels: they are her trembling, tears, thrilling, stupor, sweat, stammering, blushing, madness and swoon. Her garland is prepared from the flowers of a select assortment of aesthetic qualities, and her garment is freshened with the pure, subtle perfume distilled from her exquisite virtues.
Her hairdo is devious like her hidden pique, and she wears a bright mark of good fortune on her forehead. Her ears are adorned with the glorious sounds of Krishna’s name. She reddens her lips with the betel leaf of intense attachment, and the guile of love is her mascara. She is fragrant with the camphor exuded by her sweet smile and tinkling voice. Wearing on her heart the necklace of love’s separation, weighted with a swinging pendant fashioned of the paradoxical feeling of separation-in-union, she reclines on a couch of conceit in the chamber of charm. Her breasts are covered with the blouse of anger and affection. The melody from the vina of her glory drowns out the noise [of envy] from the hearts and speech of her co-wives. Her lovely hands rest playfully on the shoulder of her companion. Adorned in this way Radha offers the honey of amorousness, which maddens even the Love-god.6
Even when bhakti blossoms into the highest state of love (prema), there is a further internal intensification of feeling. This ripening process begins with the stage of being confident of one’s love, flourishes in a complex of moods that express her stubborn annoyance at her lover’s inconstancy, congeals into a state in which the heart melts with excessive longing for the beloved and, in a love that is ever fresh, culminates in a supreme ecstasy (mahabhava).7 This process resembles the various stages required to refine the juice of the sugar cane until it becomes a transparent crystal, the quintessential concentration of sweetness. External agents may encourage this refining process, but their presence does not affect the essential flavour. The love of the gopis of Vraja, and of Radha, first and foremost, is of this highest type.
Love by its very nature is manifest, realizing itself in infinite ways and moods, and Krishna experiences it in its total variety through his relations, with the panoply of gopis that inhabit Vraja. Yet, in a way that seems paradoxical, he is satisfied only in the company of Radha, love’s ideal. The paradox is resolved when one realizes that the many gopis are but manifestations of the body of Radha (kāya-vyūha). She complicates herself thus in order to satisfy her beloved in all possible ways: her friends are but instruments of rasa. All that expresses the fact that the love of Krishna for his lovers remains the same, while yet it varies in accordance with the receptivity and preparedness of his devotees. The love of the gopis, which symbolizes this devoted love at a higher level, is itself great. Yet, in the last analysis there is a further height, a level at which all feelings are fully explicit. This manifests itself as an excess of unmotivated jealousy and a deep contemplative consciousness even in the actual eternal union with Krishna. It occurs only in Radha: it is possible for no one else, since she alone is the essence of hlādinī shakti.8
Love is, by nature, a mutual satisfaction that is possible only when one negates oneself totally for the sake of the other. This self-negation involves the negation of sensuality and constitutes the height of spirituality. Its other-directed delight both includes and transcends personal and subjective pleasure. Krishna seeks pleasure in heightening the bhava of Radha and she is delighted in his delight.9
Thus, Radha and Krishna, the subject and object of love, provide absolute bliss to each other through their lovely dalliance (rasa). This supreme aesthetic experience is the ultimate stage of love, the goal of a devotee, where the two highest principles are coupled in one self-subsistent reality. Often this highest experience is described with the imagery of rain. Either Krishna is painted as the dark cloud pregnant with torrents of love’s nectar (rasa, i.e. Radha), or Radha is envisioned as the receptacle and Krishna as the liquid content. Their mystical union is the ultimate rasa.10 In it separation gives rise to the pleasure of union, and conversely union contains a loving feeling of separation. In such an intermingling the separate identities of lover and beloved dissolve into a single whole; two characters flow into each other; two separate entities become interchangeable . . .
From age to age one essence, two names:
the joy of bliss is Śyāmā,
the bliss of joy is Śyāmā.
From all eternity manifest
as two in a single form
Two as one they come to Vrindavana,
Rādhā–Krishna, Krishna–Rādhā,
ever and unchanging,
Devastatingly beautiful.11
—Harivyāsa Deva
10
UNDERSTANDING RADHA’S SYMBOLIC LOVE
SHUBHA VILAS
THIS ESSAY AIMS to explore the role of Radha, the feminine aspect of God, through the teachings of the bhakti saints in the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition. Gaudiya Vaishnavas are those who worship Radha and Krishna in accordance with the teachings of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, whom they worship as a divine avatar.
For the Gaudiya Vaishnavas, Krishna is the most comprehensive appearance of God. The Chaitanya Charitamrita (Adi-Raas 4.10–12) substantiates this.
pūrṇa bhagavān avatare yei kāle
āra saba avatāra tāṅte āsi’ m
ile
nārāyaṇa, catur-vyūha, matsyādy-avatāra
yuga-manvantarāvatāra, yata āche āra
sabe āsi’ kṛṣṇa-aṅge haya avatīrṇa
aiche avatare kṛṣṇa bhagavān pūrṇa
‘When the complete Supreme Personality of Godhead descends, all other incarnations of the Lord meet together within Him. Of the multifarious energies, or shaktis, that Krishna has, two are prominent. They are the bahiranga shakti, or external energy, and the antaranga shakti, or internal energy.’
kṛṣṇera ananta-śakti, tāte tina – pradhāna
cic-chakti’, ‘māyā-śakti’, ‘jīva-śakti’-nāma
antaraṅgā’, ‘bahiraṅgā’, ‘taṭasthā’ kahi yāre
antaraṅgā ‘svarūpa-śakti’ – sabāra upare
‘Krishna has unlimited potencies, which can be divided into three main parts. These are the spiritual, material and marginal potency, [together] known as the living entity. In other words, these are all potencies of God—internal, external and marginal. But the internal potency is the Lord’s personal energy and stands over the other two.’
Krishna never becomes influenced or affected in any way by his external potency more popularly known as Durga Devi. On the other hand, he is so intimately connected with his internal energy that he allows himself to be affected by it intensely. This energy is also called swarupa shakti or atman shakti. This is the energy that allows Krishna to be what he is. This internal energy manifests itself in three divisions—known as sat (eternality), cit (knowledge) and ananda (bliss). The sat feature, which is also called sandhini shakti, causes all expansions of Krishna into being. The cit feature, which is also called samvit shakti, is used by Krishna to cause everyone to know. The ananda feature, which is called hlādinī shakti, causes Krishna to feel bliss. Radha is the very embodiment of the bliss-producing feature of Krishna’s internal—or antaranga swarupa—shakti. The culmination of hlādinī shakti is prema (pure love), the culmination of prema is bhava (ecstatic emotions), the culmination of bhava is mahabhava (highest emotions of love of God) and the personification of mahabhava is Radha.
Finding Radha Page 11