Viśvanātha reads L1 the same way but sharpens it: the anubhāvas (and the sāttvika signs) here take on some indescribable distinction — and this is not just the 'su-uddīpta', the super-blazing grade of those signs. The heightening at adhirūḍha is something else again.

Why 'not merely su-uddīpta'? Because the su-uddīpta signs get their own treatment further on, under the heading of mohana. So they are deliberately kept out of the adhirūḍha definition here.

Viśvanātha's frame: Pārvatī asks Śiva about the force of what makes Rādhikā's love so special, and Śiva answers. He then glosses the 'transcendent happiness' of the verse as two things — the happiness enjoyed in Vaikuṇṭha, and the well-known happiness of liberation.

And the 'suffering'? Viśvanātha glosses it as the suffering of Vaikuṇṭha's own devotees — the ache that rises from their loving longing. (Jīva took the same word more broadly, as the grief of devotees at large parted from Bhagavān; Viśvanātha ties it specifically to the yearning of Vaikuṇṭha's residents.)

Viśvanātha lays the whole verse out in order. All the happiness and suffering there is — spread through crores of universes (of māyā, or else of Brahmā — he leaves aja readable both ways), across all three times — suppose those two were heaped up, at one time, in one place, each into its own separate mass. Even then, that pair of heaps could never reach even a one-part likeness, even a shadow, of just the two drops thrown up from the twin oceans of joy and sorrow that surge through Rādhā's love. He is careful to name 'that pair of heaps' as the subject and 'never attains' as the verb.

Viśvanātha now blocks an objection. One might reason: the verse calls part of this 'suffering'; a thoughtful person avoids suffering; so mahābhāva must not be a goal worth pursuing. Do not think that, he says. Even ordinary bhakti is itself the very form of Kṛṣṇa's hlādinī (joy) and saṁvit (knowledge) potencies — it is their essence — so nothing about it is really painful in the disqualifying sense.

He backs it with a verse: even if the bliss of impersonal Brahman were multiplied a parārdha-fold, it would not come to so much as one atom of the ocean of bhakti's happiness.

He piles on the proof. Scripture says the Lord will sometimes give liberation but withhold bhakti (Bhāgavata 5.6.18) — so bhakti is set above even crores of brahmānanda. And verses like 'though love pours out heat, it is sweeter than crores of moons' settle that even the 'suffering' of prema is really of the nature of happiness. If that holds for ordinary prema, then in mahābhāva it holds all the more, by an emphatic 'how much more'. That, he says, is the real import.

He gives a homely example. In ordinary life, coolness feels pleasant only when there is heat around to set it off. Here coolness stands for one member of a pair (say, joy/union) and heat for its opposite (pain/longing): each is enjoyable only against the other. The point: pleasure needs its counterpart present to register as pleasure.

And the reverse: when it is cold, warmth too feels pleasant. So each of the pair, mapped to joy and pain, is found to be pleasurable — but only with the other present. Together, the opposites yield pleasure.

And the other way: strip away one of the pair, and the one left over becomes nothing but pain. Heat with no relief of cold, or cold with no warmth, is simply suffering. So it is the presence of both together that makes for pleasure.

A second example: eating. When hunger and food come together, eating is a pleasure. Here hunger is the 'painful' member and food the 'pleasant' one. But hunger with no food is sheer misery — the painful member alone is just pain.

And to finish the pattern: with no hunger, even food gives no pleasure. Now he applies it to love. In loves like rati, even in the union of lovers the ache of longing never fully departs — one never feels 'that is enough'. And precisely because that yearning stays alive, the union never goes stale: it is pleasurable always. The 'pain' of longing is exactly what keeps the joy of union from ever satiating.

Even in separation it holds. For in the lover's separation, remembrance and sudden vivid visions conjure an unbroken enjoyment — in the mind, in dreams, even as if face to face — so that very separation is pure joy. And in adhirūḍha-mahābhāva above all: here the joy of union and the sorrow of parting are both peerless, and by the same rule they are present at once. Because these two matchless opposites are simultaneous, mahābhāva is a matchless joy. This is the answer to the objection: its 'duḥkha' is inseparable from, and productive of, its incomparable bliss.

The contrast with the ordinary world: there, the joy of heaven and the pain of hell simply never happen at the same time. Worldly pleasure and pain exclude each other, so worldly pleasure can never be the matchless, self-sustaining joy that mahābhāva is. (The clause runs into the next examples.)

Even the apparent exception proves it. At the start of a meal, hunger (pain) and eating (pleasure) do coincide — but once the hunger is gone, the food itself stops tasting good; the pleasure goes flat. So in the world, whenever the 'painful' member drops out, the pleasure dies with it. Only in mahābhāva does the longing never leave, so the joy never dies.

He notes a rival view. Some hold that liberation just is the total, final absence of all pleasure and pain — that this is the very definition of mukti. He reports it only to set it against the conclusion he is about to draw.

So the conclusion: prema alone is the highest goal of life — not liberation, not anything else. That is the settled truth. But Viśvanātha adds one guard: the devotees do not take up prema for the sake of their own happiness, however supreme that happiness is. They take it up solely with an eye to Kṛṣṇa's happiness. That last point, he says, is the devotees' own understanding.

A bare number marking this passage in the commentary flow. Nothing to decode.