Svami Sadananda Dasa
Extract from “Shraddha” (MS, page 10) and a commentary in the “Corrections” to page 218
Into English and © Kid Samuelsson 2021 Last changed: 15 June 2021
[From] Krishna- [and Radha and the] gopi-s, Sita-Rama, Lakshmi-Narayana, to Shambu-Parvati: the only ideal Couple, whose Love is not characterised by mutual exploitation for the sake of enjoyment (bhoga) and one’s own satisfaction. Krishna and Radha are the acme of this Love, which is distinguished by being subjected to the greatest uncertainty and risk of break [separation]. When forms consisting of Cit (Krishna, Rama etc.) and of Cit-shakti (Radha, Sita etc.) serve each other – without expecting that the other shall give him/her sukha (joy, happiness) […] – forms that serve each other because the one wants to serve the other, and none of them accepts or gives sukha for themselves, only the Sukha which lies in service, in serving, then this is something fundamentally different from the poet’s idealised “lyrical”, beastly rubbish, which mundane love is. […] Your task is to clearly and precisely comprehend what the substance is, and then briefly describe this substance so the reader for all time has a guideline to help him understand what the occurrence of these lila-s actually means, so that he immediately and instinctively rejects the nonsense that translators and poets offer him in the form of ”Indian Love Poetry” and similar attempts to drag the Divine through the dirt or glorify the dirt of the world
https://sadananda.com/txt/en/text_downloads/en/couple-en.pdf