PLATE ONE
After selecting a pleasing location on the riverbank, Lord Krṣṇa and His friends opened their baskets of food and began eating in great transcendental pleasure. Like the whorl of a lotus flower surrounded by its petals and leaves, Krṣṇa sat in the center, encircled by lines of His friends, who all looked very beautiful. Every one of them was trying to look forward toward Krṣṇa, thinking that Krṣṇa might look toward him. Among the cowherd boys, some placed their lunch on flowers, some on leaves, fruits, or bunches of leaves, some actually in their baskets, some on the bark of trees and some on rocks. This is what the children imagined to be their plates as they ate their lunch. All the cowherd boys enjoyed their lunch with Krṣṇa, showing one another the different tastes of the different varieties of preparations they had brought from home. Tasting one another's preparations, they began to laugh and make one another laugh. In this way they all enjoyed their lunch in the forest. ( pp. 6-10 )