The divine counterpart of Sri Krishna is known as Sri Radha

The divine counterpart of Sri Krishna is known as Sri Radha. Together, according to the ancient Vaishnava tradition, this dual-gendered divinity is God-male and female dimensions of the Absolute Truth. Sri Radha is the complete energy, and Sri Krishna is the complete energetic source. They are nondifferent from each other, just as musk and its scent are forever merged, or as fire and heat are inseparable.

Radha and Krishna are one, yet They have assumed two separate forms to enjoy loving pastimes. Numerous theological texts explain how this is so, but most thorough are the writings of Krishnadasa Kaviraja Gosvami and Rupa Gosvami, great masters in the Vaishnava tradition whose books have been translated and commented upon by His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. To understand Sri Radha, then, English readers would do well to turn to Srila Prabhupada's books.

Sri Radha in Literature
Historically, the ancient Puranas reveal much about Sri Radha's manifest pastimes, even if the Srimad-Bhagavatam (10.30.28), the cream of all such Puranic literature, mentions Her name only once-with the indirect anayaradhitah, indicating that She is "the one who worships Krishna best." Both the Padma Purana and the Brahma-vaivarta Purana, on the other hand, elaborate on Her pastimes of love with Krishna and reveal how the divine couple is the source of all that is. The Brahma-vaivarta Purana, in fact, reveals an esoteric creation story in which Radha co-creates the material world with Krishna.

Sri Radha's dominance in Vaishnava theology did not come to light until the twelfth century, when the saintly poet Jayadeva Gosvami wrote his famous Sanskrit work Gita Govinda. Krishna's spiritual love then became a celebrated theme throughout India, colorfully conveyed in festivals and the arts, with the personality of Radha sometimes eclipsing even Krishna.

It is important to point out that Jayadeva understood the spiritual nature of Radha and Krishna's love. He knew that people could easily misconstrue it as mundane, comparing his work to erotic love poetry (as many still do). Anticipating this misconception, he commenced his Gita Govinda with a section called Dasha-avatara, in which he clearly outlines Krishna's divine nature, listing and glorifying His transcendental descents as incarnations (avatara). With this as a preface, it becomes obvious that the loving affairs to follow-the affairs of this same divine Krishna, who incarnates as so many avataras-are not ordinary. Indeed, they represent the zenith of spiritual love.

This love was expressed more fully after Jayadeva's time. In the fifteenth century, two Bengali poets, Chandidasa and Vidyapati, wrote beautiful Bengali verse about the divine couple. In the sixteenth century, Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu-the combined form of Radha and Krishna, in the guise of Their devotee-relished this poetry, along with Jayadeva's breakthrough Sanskrit work. He also enjoyed hearing the story of Radha and Krishna as expressed in the ancient work of Bilvamangala Thakura, Sri Krishna-karnamrita, and in a contemporary poem, Ramananda Raya's

Meaning of the Mantra

Once someone asked about the meaning of the holy names and Srila Prabhupada said its like a prayer to Krsna saying "Oh Lord please engage me in your devotional service". This is so powerful and if we think of the meaning of these words we may understand that means surrender, means we are thinking of the Lord and not in our own sense gratification, our own material desires and personal needs - we are thinking of how we could improve our service in order to satisfy the Lord, also we are accepting more and more service to His lotus feet.
We sometimes maybe offer to Krsna many prayers but we need to mean them, to really make them with our hearts and engage our senses on that too. Here is a prayer asking for service from the Sri Sanatkumar Samhita:


"O Sri Sri Radha-Krishna, you are like two great oceans of mercy. Please be merciful to me. I take shelter of you. I surrender to you. Please engage me, a sinner and offender, in your service."

Sri Sanatkumar Samhita 5

Chanting is a great service, when we chant we invite Krsna and Radha to our hearts and offer Them our service, our senses, our time, our voice and our love so They can take care of our whole life and engage us like They want to. This means we are surrended and we have complete faith the Lord will be there for us, to protect us any time in any situation we are in and we accept anything They give us. When we achieve this stage of complete faith we may understand our position as eternal servants and advance to pure chanting as our goal of life.

I pray so I can be blessed by the vaisnavas to be able to achieve this level and through strong faith I maybe serve the Lord much better than I do now.


In this material world the conditioned soul is very much distracted from his original all-knowing, all-blissful nature as Krishna's eternal servant because he is carried away by the so-called taste of material sense gratification. This artificial taste is encouraged and exploited by the materialistic propaganda mongers who make a handsome profit by misguiding the people in general promoting cigarettes, liquor, prostitution, meat eating, etc. The foolish sense enjoyer tries to become happy by squeezing as much pleasure as possible out of these things, but because there is no factual pleasure in sense gratification, the poor soul is ultimately left in a state of frustration and bewilderment. If, however, he will reconnect with his original transcendental nature diving deep into his eternal identity as the servant of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, he will taste a pleasure that is unlimitedly sublime and will go on increasing forever.
Chant:
Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna Hare Hare
Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama Hare Hare