Radha in the Erotic Play of the Universe

by David C. Scott
FOREWORD
I have long been intrigued by the crossing of boundaries, which is at several
points significant to this paper. Certainly the crossing of forbidden boundaries
is central to an adequate understanding of Radha bhakti. This plays itself out in
the transgression of moral and legal limits in the illicit relationship of Radha
and Krsna, a theme accentuated by the intense yearning of viraha [love in
separation]. Further, in the intimacy of the bhakti relationship the male
bhakta, by experiencing himself as female partner violates his primal sexual
demarcation as a male.
In this paper I have endeavoured to create an opportunity to explore these
elements in Hindu bhakti and possible points of contact with elements in
Christian tradition & experience. I see questions of religious language: reality,
analogy and metaphor as being important.
The exploratory character of paper is evident in its lack of sharp focus. Many
questions are posed and suggested answers are tentative. The reader will find
many asides and references which not pursued, which may be merely
suggestive and hence frustrating. One could, for instance, have included
another story of longing love, of Layla & Majnun [Mad One], and with it
attempted to explicate a sufi understanding of human search for divine. I have
further, no more than mentioned in a note the issue of puberty rituals for
women. Perhaps it would have been enlightening to have dealt the association
of woman, sexuality, temptress and sin in the dominant Christian tradition.
Only passing reference has been made to the role of rationality & reason in the
western Enlightenment tradition and how this has displaced categories of the
cosmic and of mystery. Obviously this paper is not intended as an exhaustive
discussion, but more of a suggestive exploration. My purpose is not to suggest
universal categories by means of which the entire divine-human interrelationship is to be explained. Rather the paper looks at one aspect only, that
of symbolising mystery, though one might want to argue that it is too much
neglected. Perhaps the exercise may indicate new directions and spark interest
in following them further. Finally, then, if the paper stimulates continuing
wide-ranging, open discussion, full of creative insights and ideas, my purpose
in writing it will have been amply satisfied.
RADHA IN THE EROTIC PLAY OF THE UNIVERSE
"There is passion in the universe: the young stars, the whirling galaxies - the
living, pulsing earth thrives in the passionate embrace of life itself. Our love for
one another is the language of our passionate God....It is desire that spins us
round, desire that sends the blood through our veins, desire that draws us into

each other's arms and onward in the lifelong search for God's face". (1)
When religion is anthropocentric it has very little to tell us that is good news
about passion and desire. When this happens culture secularises sexuality and
misuses it. Pornography substitutes for mystery. (2) There is, however,
mystery at the core of the Radha-Krishna tradition in this land. Here
passionate love became sacralised as an expression of bhakti: the lovingwoman's longing became devotion and love-making became worship.. It is the
intention of this essay to begin to explore this mystery, and then to look for
evidence of it in our Christian tradition also. The love of Radha, the beautiful
gopi, who later became a goddess for some cults, and Krishna, the youthful
dark deity, who is the object of widespread devotion, is less a story
remembered than a random succession of episodes seen and heard, sung and
danced. Over the centuries their love has been portrayed in thousands of
exquisite miniature paintings, which depict the lovers in separation and union,
longing and abandonment. The love story is heard whenever we listen to the
great vocalists of Indian classical music sing the devotional songs of medieval
bhaktas who in their poems sometimes observe, and at other times participate
in the love play as Krishna's beloved. The story grips our imagination every
time we encounter the animated expressions, flashing eyes and sinuous
movements of a dancer, who - as Radha - expresses her anger at Krishna's
infidelities, or - as Krishna - begs forgiveness for his impetuous dalliance. The
love affair is recreated each time a Krishna bhakta participates in the
communal singing of an episode from the story and especially when she or he,
possessed by the spirit of one of the lovers, feels impelled to get up and
ecstatically dance as the Lord or his beloved. The Radha-Krishna legend, then,
is not a story in the sense of an orderly narrative whose protagonists have a
shared past and are progressing towards a tragic or happy future. It is more
an evocation and elaboration of the here-and-now of passionate love, an
attempt to capture the exciting, fleeting moments of the senses and the
baffling ways in which love's pleasures and pains are felt before retrospective
recollection, trying to regain a lost control over emotional life, edits away
love's inevitable confusions.
A long line of bards and balladeers, most of them indebted to the twelfth
century Sanskrit poet, Jayadeva, who decisively shaped the legend's outlines,
have often described the setting of this legend of love. A pious Hindu needs
only close his or her eyes and `remember' in order to see Vrindavan, a Hindu
garden of Eden, spring into existence. In the perpetual sunshine of the myth,
distinct from the perpetual mists of history, a forest thicket on the banks of the
River Jamuna awakens to life on a tropical spring day. The mustard fields at
the edge of the forest, with their thick carpet of brilliant yellow flowers, stretch
far into the distance. The air is redolent with the perfume of pollen shaken
loose from newly blossomed Jasmine and bunches of flame coloured mimosa
flowers hanging round and heavy from the trees. The ears are awash in the
humming of bees, the cries of the cuckoos and the distant tinkling of cow bells.
The seductive call of Krishna's flute comes floating through the forest thicket,
further agitating the already unquiet senses, making for an inner uprising and

an alien invasion. The legend, aiming to fix the essence of youthful love, has
an amorous rather than a geographical landscape as its location; its setting is
neither social nor historical, but sensuous.
In the falling dusk, Nanda, Krishna's foster father and the chief of a community
of cowherds, asks Radha to escort Krishna home through the forest. On the
way, in a grove, their `secret passion triumphs'. Radha's thoughts come to be
absorbed by Krishna who, however, is unfaithful to her as he sports with other
gopis - hugging one, kissing another and caressing yet another dark beauty.
When he quickens all things
To create bliss in the world,
His soft black sinuous lotus limbs
Begin the festival of love
And beautiful gopis wildly
Wind him in their bodies.
Friend, in spring young Hari [Krishna] plays
Like erotic mood incarnate. [I.46] (3)
Radha is jealous as she imagines the `vines of his great throbbing arms circle
a thousand gopis', but more than jealousy she is infused with all the perplexing
emotions of a proud, passionate woman who feels deserted by her lover.
My heart values his vulgar ways,
Refuses to admit my rage,
Feels strangely elevated,
And keeps denying his guilt.
When he steals away without me
To indulge his craving
For more young women,
My perverse heart
Only wants Krishna back.
What can I do? [II.10]
Solitary grief and images of a love betrayed and passion lost, recreated in
reverie, alternate and reinforce each other:
My eyes close languidly as I feel the flesh quiver on his cheek,
My body is moist with sweat; he is shaking from the wine of lust.
Friend, bring Kesi's sublime tormentor to revel with me!
I've gone mad waiting for his fickle love to change. [II.14]
The power of Radha's yearning produces a change in Krishna. Of all the gopis,
interchangeable suppliers of pleasure and feelings of conquest, Radha begins
to stand out in Krishna's mind as someone special who is desired in her
uniqueness. From the `heroic lover' for whom no woman is exceptional and
who simply desires a variety of amatory dalliances, Krishna becomes the
`romantic lover' impelled toward a singly irreplaceable mistress. The

unheeding pursuit of pleasure, a bewildered Krishna discovers, has been

brought to a halt by pleasure's arch-enemies - memory and attachment.
Her joyful responses to my touch,
Trembling liquid movement of her eyes,
Fragrance from her lotus mouth,
A sweet ambiguous stream of words,
Nectar from her red berry lips-Even when the sensuous objects are gone,
My mind holds on to her in a trance.
How does the wound of her desertion deepen? [III.14]
Having been the Lord who strove to please himself alone, Krishna has become
a man for whom his partner's well-being assumes an importance which easily
equals his own. He discovers that he would rather serve and adore than
vanquish and demand. As a tale of love, this transformative moment from
desire's sensations to love's adoration, gives the story of Radha and Krishna its
singular impact. (4)
To continue the tale, hearing of Krishna's remorse and of his attachment to
her, Radha, dressed and ornamented for love, awaits Krishna at their trysting
place in the forest. She lingers in vain, for Krishna does not come. Radha is
consumed with jealousy as she imagines him engaged in an amourous
encounter with a rival. When Krishna finally does appear, Radha spurns him
angrily:
Dark from kissing her kohl-blackened eyes
At dawn your lips match your body's colour, Krishna.
Damn you Madhava! Go! Kesava leave me!
Don't plead your eyes with me!
Go after her, Krishna!
She will ease your despair. [VIII.3]
But, in separation, Radha and Krishna long for one another with a mounting
sense of desolation. Eventually, Radha's friend persuades her to abandon her
modesty and pride and go to her lover.
Your full hips and breasts are heavy to bear.
Approach with anklets ringing!
Their sound inspires lingering feet.
Run with the gait of a wild goose!
Madhu's tormentor
Is faithful to you, fool.
Follow him, Radhika! [XI.3]
In the full throes of a sexual excitement when even her "modesty left in
shame," Radha rushes to meet an equally ardent (and repentant) lover.
Krishna sings:

Throbbing breasts aching for loving embrace are hard to touch.

Rest these vessels on my chest! Quench love's burning fire!
Narayana [Krishna] is faithful now. Love me, Radhika! [XII.5]
Offer your lips' nectar to revive a dying slave, Radha!
His obsessed mind and listless body burn in love's desolation.
Narayana is faithful now. Love me Radhika. [XII.6]
Once the ecstatic love-making subsides momentarily in orgasmic release, a
playful Radha asks Krishna to rearrange her clothes and her tousled hair, and
also:
"Paint a leaf on my breasts!
Put colour on my cheeks!
Lay a girdle on my hips!
twine my heavy braid with flowers!
Fix rows of bangles on my hands,
And jewelled anklets on my feet!"
Her yellow-robed lover
Did what Radha said. [XII.20]
Jayadeva, legend has it, hesitant to commit sacrilege by having deity touch
Radha's feet, was unable to pen the last lines, and went out to bathe. When he
returned he found Krishna himself had completed the verse in his absence.
The legend of Radha and Krishna as it has come down to us today, differs from
Jayadeva's version in only one significant respect. Jayadeva merely hints at
the illicit nature of their love when he mentions that an older Radha changes
from young Krishna's protective escort to become his lover, thereby defying
the authority and instructions of the chief of cowherds.
"Clouds thicken the sky.
Tamala trees darken the forest.
The night frightens him.
Radha, you take him home!"
They leave at Nanda's order,
Passing trees in thickets on the way,
Until secret passions of Radha and Madhava
Triumph on the Jamuna riverbank. [I.1]
Later poets (notably Vidyapati in the fifteenth century), who tend to focus
more on Radha and her love than on Krishna, (5) gave the illicit element in the
story a more concrete cast and specific content. Radha is parakiya, anotherman's woman, (6) and her liaison with Krishna, whatever its powerful meaning
in mystical allegory, is plainly adulterous (7) in human terms. Radha is
certainly no paragon of the womanly virtues detailed in Hindu texts; nor does
she come close to any of the `good' or `bad' mother-goddesses of Indian

mythology and religion. In her passionate craving for her lover and in her
desperate suffering in his absence. Radha is simply the personification of
mahabhava, that `great emotional state' that is heedless of social proprieties
and unbounded by conventions. As various scholars have pointed out, (8)
many different Indian traditions - religious and erotic, classical literary and folk
- have converged and coalesced in the poetical renditions of the myth,
especially Jayadeva's Gitagovinda, to give that particular work an allure that
extends over large parts of the subcontinent. About this, more anon.
But Radha and Krishna, although linked to the heroine and hero of classical
Sanskrit love poetry in many ways, are primarily products of the bhakti
movement, whose principal mood has always been erotic. (9) In contrast to
much of Western poetry of sexual mysticism, though, Radha and Krishna are
not figures of erotic allegory. Bhakti extols possessing and being possessed by
God. For it sexual love is where the fullest possession, the `closest touch of
all,' takes place. With this the creators and audiences of bhakti poetry seek to
project themselves into Radha's love for Krishna through poems that recount
all its passionate phases. For bhakti is preeminently feminine in its orientation,
and the erotic love for Krishna (or Siva, as the case may be) is envisioned
entirely from the woman's viewpoint. Male devotees, saints, and poets must all
adopt a feminine posture and persona to recreate Radha's responses in
themselves. We shall have more to say about this. Radha's passionate love of
Krishna, raised to its highest intensity, is not an allegory for religious passion;
it is religious passion. (10) Jayadeva, thus does not need to make a distinction,
or choose between the religious and the erotic when he introduces the subject
matter of his poem by saying:
If remembering Hari (Krishna) enriches your heart,
If his arts of seduction arouse you,
Listen to Jayadeva's speech
In these sweet soft lyrical songs. [I.4]
The adi-guru of the Radha-Krishna cults, Jayadeva knows that the enrichment
of the heart and the arousal of senses belong together.
Not only this, there is a powerful sense of eros as the underlying force
motivating all attractions.
Eros is seen as pervading the universe, binding all things together, infusing life
with creativity and exuberance, drawing beings to one another in love, and the
love between man and woman is viewed as an intense participation in this
ongoing erotic play of the universe. (11)
A major source of this erotic excitement in the treatment of Radha and Krishna
is the forbidden crossing of boundaries. First, in the pervasive presence of the
adulterous in the narrative, there is an illicit transgression of moral and legal
limits. Accentuating this is the intense yearning of love-in-separation (viraha).
Second, in a striving to entertain the erotic feelings and sensations of the other

sex, a lover would violate his primal sexual demarcation as a male. Arousal is
provoked, preserved and brought to a pitch by the stealth and secrecy in which
the crossing of such bounds takes place. As much has been written on these
elements, singly and together, (12) we shall only briefly refer to them.
The most obvious manifestation of the illicit, involving the crossing of
boundaries set by social mores and norms, is found in the persistent
adulterous character of the narrative. But even the later accounts which saddle
Radha with a husband, throwing in a mother-in-law for good measure,
persistently underline the adulterous nature of her love for Krishna. There was,
of course, much theological uneasiness regarding this circumstance. Some
commentators went to great lengths to explain why, since Krishna is divine, he
could have not actually coveted the wife of another. Others went to even
greater lengths to prove the contrary, explaining that precisely because
Krishna is divine he is not bound by normal human restrictions. In the end,
and perhaps inevitably, the community's quest for pleasure triumphed over its
theological scruples in firmly demanding that the mythical lovers be accepted
as unambiguously adulterous. (13)
The fifth century Tamil epic Shilappadikaram is perhaps the earliest illustration
of the contrasting attractions of the adulterous and the conjugal for the Indian
man. (14) The sensuality and abandon in the description of Kovalana's
relationship with his mistress Madhavi in this epic, provide a strong
counterpoint to the tenderness and uxorious dependability of his wife, Kannaki.
Significantly, the bhakti cults gave more exalted reasons for making Radha an
adulterous parakiya. For them the adulterous was symbolic of the sacred, the
overwhelming moment that denies world and society, transcending the
profanity of everyday convention, as it forges an unconventional (and unruly)
relationship with God as the lover.
Not surprisingly, viraha was idealised as the necessary condition of the intense
yearning which characterises the adulterous relationship.
As the clouds scatter, her tears flow,
as night deepens, her sighs increase;
Like a bird in flight, her laughter vanishes,
lightning strikes and robs her of her sleep.
Like a cataka, she cries out "Piu, piu!"(15)
waves of fierce heat rise up within her.
Listen, says Kesav, this is her condition:
there is no fire, but her limbs are burning. (16)
It is a complex relationship, for the devotee is the `same as and yet different
from' the Lord, and so even in the joy of union there is the pain of separation.
Indeed, the highest form of devotion, according to Yamunacarya, comes not in
union but after the union, in the `fear of new separation'. (17) Thus the
passionate Radha became the prototype of the passionate devotee. The entire

life of the bhakta was to consist of a `holy yearning', the intense desire caused
by separation. More on this, too, anon.
The crossing of individual sexual boundaries is another major source of erotic
excitement in the treatment of Radha and Krishna. In painting, the depiction of
this crossing ranges from the portrayal of the lovers in the traditional Orissa
school, where they appear as one androgynous entity, to some of the paintings
from the Himalayan foothills where Radha and Krishna are dressed in each
other's clothes, or Radha is seen taking the more active `masculine' role. In
poetry, Sur Das would speak in Radha's voice.
You become Radha and I will become Madhava, truly Madhava; this is the
reversal which I shall produce. I shall braid your hair and will put (your) crown
on my head. Sur Das says: Thus the Lord becomes Radha and Radha the son
of Nanda. (18)
The inversion of sexual roles is even more striking in Jayadeva's depiction of
what are usually regarded as `feminine masochistic' sexual wishes. Krishna,
not Radha, sings.
Punish me, lovely fool!
Bite me with your cruel teeth!
Chain me with your creeper arms!
Crush me with your hard breasts!
Angry goddess, don't weaken with joy!
Let Love's despised arrows
Pierce me to sap my life's power! [X.11]
It was only under the influence of nineteenth century Western androcentricity,
one of the more dubious `blessings' of British colonial rule, that many
educated Indians would become uneasy with this accentuation of femininity in
a culture hero. The prominent Bengali writer, Bankim Chandra Chatterji, the
proponent of a virile nationalism, found in Krishna the perfect embodiment of
the ideal culture-hero, and when he contrasts the representation of the life of
Krishna in the Mahabharata, the Bhagavata Purana, and the Gitagovinda, he
regretted that the obvious allegory of the relation of purusa (spirit) to prakrti
(matter) represented by Krishna's love with the gopis had vanished in the
Gitagovinda. (19) In the Radha-Krishna cults, where the devotee must create
an erotic relationship with Krishna, the transcendence of the boundaries of
gender becomes imperative for the male devotee, who endeavours to behave
like a woman in relation to the Lord. Here, Krishna not only demands such a
reversal from his male devotees, but he has himself set the compelling
exemplar. Consequently, tales of Hindu saints who have succeeded in
feminising themselves are legion. In support, we may cite only a couple of
illustrations. The fifteenth century Gujarati bhakta Narsi Mehta writes.
I took the hand of that lover of gopis [Krishna] in loving converse....I forgot all
else. Even my manhood left me. I began to sing and dance like a woman. My

body seemed to change and I became one of the gopis. I acted as a gobetween like a woman, and began to lecture Radha for being too proud....At
such time I experienced moments of incomparable sweetness and joy. (20)
A.K. Ramanujan tells us that the voice of the Tamil saint-poet Nammalvar, who
composed 370 poems on the theme of love, was always that of a woman,
Krishna's beloved, the girlfriend who consoles and counsels, or the mother who
restrains her and despairs over her daughter's lovesick fantasies. Nammalvar's
love poems alternated with other kinds of poems and a thirteenth century
commentary explained these shifts: "In knowledge, his own words; in love a
woman's words." (21) A legend has it that Amaru, one of the earliest and
greatest Sanskrit poets of love, was the hundred and first incarnation of a soul
which had previously resided in the bodies of a hundred women.
Narsi Mehta, Nammalvar and countless other, unknown devotees of the
Radha-Krishna cults perhaps bear testimony to the primal yearning of men,
ensheathed and isolated by their masculinity, to yield their heroic trappings
and delight in womanliness, woman's and their own. The mother has figured
early on as the omnipotent force of a parental universe, making things,
including fathers and other males, materialise as if at will. It is she whose
breast and magic touch had long ago soothed the savage instinctual
imperatives, she whose fecund womb seemed the very fount of life. Such
maternal and feminine powers are earthly yet mysterious and transcendent,
undiminished by the utter sensuousness in which they are manifest. Indeed,
Krishna's erotic homage to Radha conveys something of the aching quality of
the man's fantasy of surrender at the height of sexual excitement.
The profusion of the imagery of darkness and night in the meetings of RadhaKrishna underscores the secret nature of these fantasies. The paintings which
depict Radha and Krishna surrounded by darkness while they themselves are
lit by a sullen glare from the sky, or portray the lovers enclosed in a triangle of
night while the inhabitants of Vrindavan unconcernedly go about the day's
tasks, are visual metaphors for a sensualism which is simultaneously hidden
from the world and from the lovers' awareness. For Radha, night and darkness
are excitement's protectors as are the silence and secrecy of friends.
Leave your noisy anklets! They clang like traitors in love's play.
Go to the darkened thicket, friend! Hide in a cloak of night! [XI.11]
In a Basholi painting from Rasmanjari the text describes the seated lovers
thus:
Fear of detection does not permit the eager lovers' gaze to meet.
Scared of the jingling sound of armlets, they desist from embracing.
They kiss each other's lips without the contact of teeth.
Their union, too, is hushed . (22)
Many other portraits of Radha reveal that it is not only other people who must

be unaware of her sexual arousal. Radha, too, when in a state where "love's
deep fantasies/struggle with her modesty," [XII.1] would feign ignorance of
her true condition, as if it were a secret another part of her self must not admit
knowing. It is given to the poet to perceive correctly her struggle.
Words of protest filled with passion,
Gestures of resistance lacking force,
Frowns transmuted into smiles,
Crying dry of tears - friend,
Though Radha seeks to hide her feelings,
Each attempt betrays her heart's
Deep love for demon Mura's slayer. (23)
Identifying with Radha's pounding breasts as she steals out at night to meet
Krishna, other poets graphically describe her fear while merely hinting at the
suppressed thrill of her sortie, the arousal sharpened by the threat of
discovery. They give us images of storm, writhing snakes, scratched and
burning feet.
We imagine that on hearing Radha's plaint, Krishna, whose gaze into the
recesses of the human heart is as penetrating as it is compassionate, smiled to
himself in the dark. He would surely have known that the strains of his flute
are the perennial and irresistible call of the human senses caught up in the
throes of love.
And what do darkness and night mean to Krishna as he passively offers himself
to Radha's embraces? Here, too, only under the cloak of night does the Lord
reveal what may be the deepest `secret of man' - that he, too, would be a
woman. In the night, in the jungle, visual and discrete modes of perception are
replaced by the tactile, the visceral, and the more synesthetic forms of
cognizance. Representations of the self and beloved fade and innermost
sensate experience comes to the fore. As the illusions of bodies fused,
androgynously, the fantasies around womanliness and sexual excitement feed
each other and Krishna "knows" Radha not with the eye but with the flesh.
If it has not become so already, surely it is now obvious that our consideration
of Radha's and Krishna's relationship has brought us to encounter the issue of
eroticism and sexuality in the human-divine love relationship. And we
Christians are forced to face the question why it is that dominant Christian
traditions have shunned the slightest suggestion of passionate desire in
Christian faith.
When I reflect on what dominant Christian traditions teach us about sexuality,
two things come to mind. The first, paradoxically, is silence - no puberty rites,
no effective rites of passage for our young to celebrate the incredible
experience that they are now fit and able to pass on the mystery of human life.
(24) A pat on the head or tap on the cheek at confirmation does not make up
for this cosmic silence. A second response to sexuality from various religious

traditions, including our own, is moralising. But telling us about all the sins we
are capable of with our sexual organs does not enlighten us about our
sexuality. I believe it is the French philosopher Gabriel Marcel who has
observed that those who reduce mystery to a problem are guilty of a grave
perversion. There certainly has been a great deal of perversion performed by
religion; in the name of moralising, the mystery of sexuality has been all too
often reduced to moralistic problems.
Why must Christian love be totally gratuitous, disinterested, and passionless?
Indeed, why, given its importance to and power in human life has passionate
relationship not been central in the Christian tradition? Surely, as many in our
day are suggesting, relationship and interdependence, change and
transformation, not substance, changelessness, and perfection, are the
categories within which an adequate theology for our day must function.
Indeed, should not important personal relationships be prime candidates for
expressing the Christian gospel as a relational, inclusive, nonhierarchical vision
of fulfillment?
As the most intimate of all human relationships, as the one that to the
majority of people is the most central and precious, the one giving the most
joy - as well as the most pain - does it not contain enormous theological
potential? Could a relationship be of such crucial importance in our existence
and be irrelevant in our relationship with God? Does this not suggest dualistic
thinking, that the divine and human, the spiritual and the physical have no
intrinsic relationship? Are we not saying that the most intimate and important
kind of human love is inappropriate for expressing some aspects of the Godhuman relationship? The love of parents to children and perhaps friend to
friend is allowed but not lover to beloved. But why not? What is wrong with
desire, with passion? More appropriately, what is good, appropriate and right
about desire, about passion as a means of talking about the God-human
relationship? In these brief comments we are by no means attempting a full or
systematic answer to the question, but are only trying to dispel some of the
incredibility surrounding the metaphor.
We shall consider, very briefly and tentatively a few ways in which desire or
passion, though not exhaustive of the love between lovers, is an important
dimension both of the relationship between human beings as well as the
relationship between God and humans. We begin with the simple reminder that
the Song of Songs is part of our scriptural tradition. Many have ignored the
poem or found it an embarrassment, but it has served to check those who
would argue that the Christian tradition has no place for passion, except for
the sake of procreation. Significantly, biblical exegete Phyllis Trible begins her
analysis of the Song of Songs in a way that further counters this tendency of
the tradition to ignore passion.
Love is bone of bone and flesh of flesh. Thus I hear the Song of Songs. It
speaks from lover to lover with whispers of intimacy, shouts of ecstasy, and
silences of consummation. At the same time, its unnamed voices reach out to

include the world in their symphony of eroticism. (25)

Although the Song of Songs praises human love, and nowhere mentions deity,
some, especially medieval mystics, have not hesitated to use it as an analogy
for the relationship between the soul and God. (26) Whatever one may think of
such mystical theology, the imagery powerfully expresses divine passion for
human beings as well as extraordinary intimacy between God and human
beings. Indeed, the Judeo-Christian tradition has often turned to the love
relationship in order to express closeness, concern, and longing between God
and human beings. There are, for instance, the image of God as the faithful
husband in Hosea, and the New Testament metaphors of the soul as the bride
of Christ. Some of these images are, of course, sexist in subordinating the
female to the male, especially the bridal ones, and some are individualistic,
especially the mystical ones, yet they serve as a reminder that the JudeoChristian tradition, however wary of the lover image, and preferring to keep it
well within the safe boundaries of marriage, has nonetheless not been able to
eliminate it entirely.
This is in spite of the fact that while we Christians speak of God as love, we are
afraid to call God beloved/lover. However, a God who relates to all that is, not
distantly and bloodlessly, but intimately and passionately, is appropriately
called beloved/lover. God is the one who loves not with the fingertips but
totally and passionately. God is the one who deigns to wrestle with Jacob, to
debate with the stricken Job. God is not jealous of human creative passion, but
rather is supportive of all human attempts to love God. Nor is the Good News
of Jesus the Christ a call to passively await God's action in history. To be
passionate is not to coopt God's love; to be creative is not to coopt God's
creativity. Augustine's `holy yearning', then, is no mere trivial petty piety.
Truly, "our hearts are restless till they rest in thee, O Lord", as we have seen
Radha painfully agitated until she is united with Krishna, and even beyond.
Indeed, God is the moving power of love in the universe, the desire for unity
with all beloved, the passionate embrace that spins the living, pulsing earth
around, sends blood surging through our bodies, and draws us into one
another's arms.
This is a poetic way of saying what others have said of eros: from Plato - love
is the "everlasting possession of the good," (27) to Tillich - love is the desire
for union with the valuable. (28) This is the love that finds goodness and
beauty in the other and desires to be united with it. (29) By itself, unqualified
by other types of love, eros can become aesthetic and elitist, but its
importance is that it expresses better than any other kind of love the
valuableness of the beloved. In a time such as ours, when the intrinsic value of
persons and the world must be stressed, eros as the love of the valuable is a
necessary aspect of both divine and human love. Here we come to understand
salvation to be the making whole or uniting with what is attractive and
valuable, rather than the rescuing of what is sinful and worthless. (30)
The assumption that eros is the desire for union with, or possession of, the

valuable suggests, however, that it lacks what it would have. It assumes a

situation of separation, a situation of alienation, in contrast to a situation of
original unity. And it is this lack or need - what Tillich calls the "urge toward
the reunion of the separated" - that is the point of identity in all forms of love,
from epithymia (desire, including sexual desire), to agape, eros, and
philia.(31) In fact, one sees it most clearly in sexual desire. Indeed, the act
that both brings new life into being and gives the most intense pleasure to all
living creatures is a powerful symbol of the desire for unity with others that is
shared by all forms of life. Or as Tillich has it, "The appetitus of every being to
fulfil itself through union with other beings is universal..." (32) Agape, the love
that gives with no thought of return; eros, the love that finds the beloved
valuable, and philia, the love that shares and works for the vision of the good none of these can be reduced to sexual desire, but all of them in different ways
attest to the oneness of love, so evident in sexual union, as "that which drives
everything that is towards everything else that is." (33) Love cannot be
reduced to sexuality, but it cannot escape it either, for if it tries, it becomes
bloodless, cold and sterile, no longer the embrace that spins our pulsing earth,
sending blood surging through our bodies and drawing us into each other's
arms.
However, bhakti is no mere attachment to any attractive object or entrancing
personality, whether natural or superhuman. In both Vaisnava and Saiva
traditions, bhakti is attachment to Ultimate Reality. But how can there be
attachment or connection between the finite and the Infinite? And, if a loving
relationship is difficult between a superior and an inferior on the human level,
how much more difficult must such a relationship be between the infinitely
superior One and such creaturely beings as ourselves? The scriptures to which
the bhakti poets so frequently refer affirm the hierarchy, yet they also recount
efforts of God to cut through the hierarchy and sometimes even to reverse
human and divine roles. How to make sense of such reversal?
Surely, without the emphatic affirmation that bhakti is a one-sided relationship
- God's supremacy and fidelity outdistancing anything humans can imagine the devotee's confidence in resting on the ultimate ground of his or her own
being would have no basis. On the other hand, without the dramatic and poetic
expression of the reversal in God's love play, when Krishna is conquered by
Radha and the divine bows to the human, the full reality that the devotee
experiences would not be expressed. The Gitagovinda thus points to the crux
of this vision of reality, the heart of its philosophical difficulties but also the
source of its remarkable power - indeed, "amazing grace."
Certainly, human sexuality is God's gracious gift, a fundamental dimension of
our created and our intended humanness. We need to recognise our alienation
from our sexuality and to lay bold claim to the gospel's promise of
reconciliation to our embodiment, and then to explore some of the ways in
which sexuality enters into our experience of Christian faith. Do we not have
the promise? The Word became - becomes - flesh. The embodied Word dwells
among us, full of grace and truth [John 1:14]. The embodiment of God is, in

faith's perception, God's decisive and crucial self-disclosure. Our human

sexuality is a language, and we are both called and given permission to
become `body-words' of love. Indeed, human sexuality - in its fullest sense is both the physiological and psychological grounding of the human capacity to
love. (34)
From another perspective, Christine E. Gudorf, in a chapter on "Regrounding
Spirituality in Embodiment", (35) observes that contemporary Christians are
creating new forms of spirituality based in reflection on embodied human
experience. She notes that until the twentieth century, Christianity, indeed,
much of the Western world, has demonstrated for nearly 2000 years an
otherworldly, ascetic spirituality in which materiality, and especially sexuality,
were suspect, if not actually sinful. Now, Gudorf contends, present inroads on
this tradition insist that: "1) bodily experience can reveal the divine, 2)
affectivity is as essential as rationality to true Christian love, 3) Christian love
exists not to bind autonomous selves, but as the proper form of connection
between beings who become human persons in relation, and 4) the experience
of bodily pleasure is important in creating the ability to trust and love others,
including God." (36)
Finally, returning to our paean of love, we find the lovers emerging "out of the
wild, up from the desert....leaning and holding" [Song of Songs 8:5] onto one
another. To make love is to enter the cosmological wilderness, to go beyond
the human artifacts of city and civilisation, to return to the depths of darkness
where spirit embraces matter and the Cosmic Christ (37) is realised as earthy
and untamed. The sexual experience for these lovers is an encounter with the
wild, with the wilderness within and among them, with that part of divinity and
the Christ that is wild, not soft or tamed. The Jewish people first encountered
Yahweh "in the wilderness" and the prophets spoke of going into the
wilderness where God will speak "heart to heart". Jesus, too, wrestled in the
wilderness with the cosmic forces of angels and demons in coming to grips
with the Cosmic Christ in him - an invasion of grace. And so it is that the
ancient Hebrew love poet reminds us that, even in the midst of an often unjust
and violent world invasions of grace yet occur, the passionate Cosmic Lover
still meets us in the flesh of our days. We are given a vision that the winter
shall be past, the flowers shall appear on the earth, the time of singing shall
come, and the voice of the turtle dove shall be heard in the land [Song of
Songs 2:11-12].
The entire poem, so ecstatic about the discovery of the Christic mystery in
another, and indeed in the relationship that two lovers forge, ends with an
urgent invitation when the woman sings: Come! Be swift my lover! Be like a
gazelle, or a wild young stag! Come! Play on the spicy mountain! [Song of
Songs 8:14]
1. From a drama on the subject of God as lover, by Sandra Ward-Angell,
quoted in Sallie McFague, Models of God (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987),
130.

2. The very concept of mystery is suspect in our time, of course. If Newton is

correct and our universe is essentially a machine, who needs mystery? There is
no mystery in a machine-universe. Indeed, in an anthropocentric era of
culture, education and religion, there is no need of mystery. The very concept
of "mystery" itself is reduced to an "unsolved problem". Mystery as the dark
silence behind all being and the deep unfathomable presence that grounds all
being is banished. The Enlightenment banished mystery and mysticism,
relegating the latter to extraordinary states of consciousness on the periphery
of things.
3. The critically edited Sanskrit text of the Gitagovinda prepared by Barbara
Stoler Miller serves as the basis for my translations in this essay. See Barbara
Stoler Miller, Jayadeva's Gitagovinda, (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1978).
Without sacrificing basic meaning, I have attempted to convey the intensely
lyrical character of the original. The references are to this edition.
4. In a remarkable coincidence, three of the world's best-known works of
romantic love which occupy pivotal positions in their respective cultures Beroul's Tristan and Isolde in Europe, Nizami's Layla and Majnun in the Islamic
world, and Jayadeva's Gitagovinda in India - were all produced at roughly the
same time, in the twelfth century CE. Whether this represents happenstance,
coincidence, or springs from sociohistorical trends coalescing across the globe
is beyond our present scope. However, it is striking that the poetry of passion
should predate and possibly prefigure important cultural-historical changes in
Europe, India and West Asia. It is as if the unfolding discovery of each other
portrayed in the love story sheds light on what is fundamental to the human
spirit.
5. In the nineteenth century there was a reverse turn in the fortunes of Radha
veneration. Later in this paper we note Bankim Chandra Chatterji's disdain for
all the Radha represents. In contrast to Mahatma Gandhi's profound love for
Krishna, his silence about Radha is eloquent. There is also a rejection of Radha
in modern Hindi poetry. Indeed, the adoration of Radha during the last
hundred years seems to have been once more to a religious subculture.
6. The rhetorical texts classified the heroine in terms of her relationship with
the hero as svakiya or one's own woman, parakiya or another man's woman,
and sadharanastri or the prostitute, who was not depicted except in farces.
The parakiya nayika was subclassified further into parodha or another-man's
wife and kanyaka or the maiden, who is another-man's daughter.
7. If Radha is parodha parakiya, which she is in some sections of the later cult,
then her relationship with Krishna is adulterous. However, if she is kanyaka
parakiya, technically she cannot be called adulterous. However, here we use
the term adulterous in the general sense of an illicit relationship of two persons
not married to one another.

8. For example, S.K. De, Ancient Indian Erotics and Erotic Literature,
(Calcutta: K.L. Mukhopadhyay, 1959), 82; Norvin Hein, "Radha and Erotic
Community," in The Divine Consort: Radha and the Goddesses of India, John
Stratton Hawley and Donna Marie Wulff, eds. (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass,
1984), 121; Barbara Stoller Miller, Fantasies of a Love-Thief, (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1971), 125-26; Lee Siegel, Sacred and Profane
Dimensions of Love in Indian Traditions, (Delhi: Oxford University Press,
1978), 233.
9. Krishna in the north become the objects of bhakti's impassioned devotion,
and bhakti poetry, brimming with love for the Lord flowers in the vernacular
languages which, to some extent, take over from the language of `high'
culture, Sanskrit. Drawing on the conventions of the classical literature of love
and using an existing pan-Indian stock of symbols and figures of speech, the
bhakti poets nevertheless strive for spontaneous, direct, personal expression
of feeling rather than a rarified cultivation of aesthetic effect and the `emotion
recollected', preferred by the Sanskrit poets. See A.K. Ramanujan, Hymns for
Drowning, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), 127-33.
10. It is perhaps the obvious thematic similarities between the Gitagovinda
and the Song of Songs which predisposed the first Europeans who read
Jayadeva's poem to consider it an allegory. For further discussions see Edward
C. Dimock, Jr., "On Religious and Ertoic Experience," The Sound of Silent
Guns, Edward C. Dimmock, Jr. ed., (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989), 1120; Norvin Hein, "Radha and Erotic Community," in The Divine Consort,
Hawley and Wulff, eds. 116-124; Lee Siegel. Sacred and Profane Dimensions
of Love, 178-84; A.K. Ramanujan, Hymns for the Drowning, 152-57.
11. Karine Schomer, "Where Have All the Radhas Gone?" in The Divine
Consort, Hawley and Wulff, eds., 108.
12.See for example, W.G. Archer, The Loves of Krishna, (New York: Grove
Press, n.d.); Roy C. Armore & Larry D. Shinn, Lustful Maidens and Ascetic
Kings, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981); Edward C. Dimmock, Jr. &
Denise Levertov, In Praise of Krishna (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1967),
Sudhir Kakar & John M. Ross, Tales of Love, Sex and Danger, (Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 1986) M.H. Klaiman, ed., Singing the Glory of Lord Krishna,
(Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1984); Lee Siegel, Sacred and Profane Dimensions
of Love in Indian Traditions; Milton Singer, ed., Krishna: Myths, Rites, and
Attitudes, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966).
13. The question of whether Radha was svakiya or parakiya became an
important doctrinal issue for the medieval Vaisnava theologians, an issue
which ultimately separated the orthodox from the Sahajiya Vaisnavas and
marked a distinction between the Krishna-bhakti poets writing in Hindi and
those writing in Bengali. Indeed, a formal debate to decide whether Radha was
svakiya or parakiya was held in 1717 at the Court of Nabak Jafara Khana, and
those advocating the parakiya position won. The prevailing argument was that

bhakti must be passionate and that the parakiya relationship creates greater
passion than the svakiya one. See Edward C. Dimmock, Jr., The Place of the
Hidden Moon, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966), 201-15.
14. Ilankovatikal, Shilappadikaram (The Ankle Bracelet) by Prince Ilango
Adigal, A. Danielou, tr., (New York: New Directions, 1965).
15. The cataka is a bird that drinks only raindrops, and whose poignant cry,
"piu, piu" is heard from springtime to the coming of the monsoon rains.
16. Visvanath Prasad Misra, ed., Kesav-granthavali, 3 vols., (Allahabad:
Hindustani Academy, 1954). I.146-47.
17. Charlotte Vaudeville, "Evolution of Love Symbolism in Bhagavatism",
Journal of the American Oriental Society LXXXII (1962), 39.
18. W.G. Archer, The Loves of Krishna, 84
19. See Jogeshcandra Bagal, ed., Bankim-racnavali, (Calcutta: Sahitya
Sansad, 1969), 3:98, quoted in Barbara Stoler Miller. "The Divine Duality of
Radha and Krishna", in The Divine Consort, Hawley and Wulff, eds., 25.
20. A.J. Alston, The Devotional Poems of Mirabai, (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass,
1980), 24-25.
21. Acaryahrdayam, "The Master's Heart," by Alakiyamanavala Nayanar cited
in A.K. Ramanujan. Hymns for the Drowning, 154.
22. M.S. Randhawa and S.D. Bambri, "Basholi Paintings of Bhanudatta's
Rasamanjari," in M.H. Klaiman, ed. Singing the Glory of Lord Krishna, 23-47.
23. Vidagdhamadhava VII.38. Quoted by Donna Marie Wulff, "A Sanskrit
Portrait: Radha in the Plays of Rupa Goswami," in The Divine Consort, Hawley
and Wulff, eds., 39.
24. The custom of families and close friends celebrating the menarche of a
young woman has, as far as I know, virtually disappeared. Traditionally, of
course, the onset of womanhood brought a number of social restrictions on the
young woman which are not liberative, and so are not to be celebrated.
25. Phyllis Trible, God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality, (Philadelphia: Fortress
Press, 1978), 144.
26. For example, Bernard of Clairvaux takes a line by the woman to her lover,
"O that he would kiss me with the kisses of his mouth"(1:2) as an analogy for
the incarnation: Jesus is God's "kiss"! "Happy kiss in which God is united to
Man...," writes Bernard in On the Love of God, (London: A.R. Mowbray & Co.,
1950) cited in Phyllis Trible, op. cit., 146. 2

7. From Plato's Symposium, as quoted by David L. Norton & Mary F. Kille in

Philosophies of Love, (London: Rowman & Allanhead, 1983), 91.
28. Paul Tillich, Love, Power and Justice: Ontological Analyses and Ethical
Applications, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1954), 30-31.
29. Though frequently equated, eros is very different from lust, which can best
be described as the desire to sexually possess or dominate another person.
Sexual feelings should not be equated with lust. For further elaboration of this
distinction see Marie M. Fortune, Love Does No Harm, (New York: Continuum
Publishing Co., 1995), 47-49.
30. Prominent expositions of this understanding of salvation are to be found in
the works of Matthew Fox, especially Original Blessing, (Santa Fe, NM: Bear &
Company, 1984) and The Coming of the Cosmic Christ, (San Francisco: Harper
& Row, 1988).
31. The entire passage reads, "In spite of the many kinds of love, which in
Greek are designated as philia (friendship), eros (aspiration toward value), and
epithymia (desire), in addition to agape, which is the creation of the Spirit,
there is one point of identity in all these qualities of love, which justifies the
translation of them all by "love"; and that identity is the `urge toward the
reunion of the separated,' which is the inner dynamics of life. Love in this
sense is one and indivisible." Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol.3,
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), 137.
32. Tillich, Love, Power and Justice, 33.
33. Ibid. 25
34. For a fuller exploration of these themes see James B. Nelson, Embodiment:
An Approach to Sexuality and Christian Theology, (Minneapolis: Augsburg
Publishing House, 1978).
35. Christine E. Gudorf, Body, Sex and Pleasure: Reconstructing Christian
Sexual Ethics, (Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 1994), 205-219.
36. Ibid. 217-18.
37. Lutheran scholar of the history of Christianity, Jaroslav Pelikan believes all
too little reflection on the Cosmic Christ is going on in our Protestant
theological colleges and churches. This, he suggests, is a result of the
Enlightenment. "The Enlightenment's quest for the historical Jesus was made
possible, and made necessary, when Enlightenment philosophy deposed the
Cosmic Christ." Certainly, the Cosmic Christ is not a doctrine to be believed in
and lived out at the expense of the historical Jesus. Rather, "a dialectic is in
order, a dance between time (Jesus) and space (Christ); between