HH Bhakti-tirtha Swami's Puspa Samadhi Installation (Part I)

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HH Bhakti-tirtha Swami's Puspa Samadhi Installation (Part I)

 

18 June 2006

 

Gita Nagari

 

 

H.H. Radhanath Swami:

 

By his very loving, personal relationship with us, Bhakti-tirtha Swami has

left us with an eternal debt. Real love is reciprocation. In exchanges of

true love, there is an eternal debt. Bhakti-tirtha Swami Maharaj accepted

Prabhupada's love and felt that eternal debt. He sacrificed every aspect of

his life as an exchange of that eternal debt. We are assembled here today to

reciprocate with the spiritual inspiration Bhakti-tirtha Swami Maharaj gave

to us and to offer our gratitude to him for all he has done in our lives and

in the mission of Srila Prabhupada and the mission of Lord Sri Caitanya

Mahaprabhu.

 

Bhakti-tirtha Maharaj emphasized so strongly the need of community,

communities where men, women, and children of all nationalities, all castes,

all religions could come together in a spirit of focusing our attention on

the service of Guru and Krsna. Srila Prabhupada brought our lives together

for this purpose and that was the mission of Bhakti-tirtha Swami Maharaj.

 

When a great Vaisnava departs from this world, the flowers that are offered

in worship to his body during those last rites are most holy. In fact, those

flowers absorb the vapu, the body, of the deceased Vaisnava. Those flowers

are non-different than the body of the Vaisnava. Those flowers also absorb

the spirit and the love of that Vaisnava. When those flowers are put in the

earth, it becomes the puspa samadhi. It is non-different than the original

samadhi.

 

Srila Bhakti-tirtha Maharaj personally chose, of all places on this planet,

to depart from this world here at Gita Nagari. Many of these flowers were

grown right in his own project of Gita Nagari and absorbed his divine grace.

It was his will that his ashes be put into a samadhi in Mayapur and that the

flowers remain here at Gita Nagari, the special prominent place of his

worship and service to Srila Prabhupada.

 

Today with very, very grateful hearts, we will weep in separation from this

beloved Vaisnava and we will rejoice in memory of his glorious service. We

will also very deeply ponder what he spoke, the example that he established,

and try to keep that always in our own hearts.

 

As we are putting the spirit of Srila Bhakti-tirtha Maharaj in his samdhi in

Gita Nagari in the form of these flowers, left us today take the flowers of

his incredible example and love and place them forever within our hearts.

 

I welcome you. Thank you very much.

 

 

H.G. Ekavira Prabhu:

 

I thank His Holiness Radhanath Swami for welcoming all of you here to Gita

Nagari . We thought it was most appropriate for Maharaj to be the first to

address the assembly of devotees because he was one of the major caregivers

for His Holiness Bhakti-tirtha Swami . And of course, among the caregivers,

he was the greatest of caregivers and most qualified to honor and welcome

you, the distinguished Vaisnavas, here.

 

We encourage all of the Prabhupada disciples to come forward. We would like

to have those who would like to make some offering to His Holiness

Bhakti-tirtha Swami Maharaj to come forward and do so.

 

The first person we would like to call is His Holiness Lokanath Swami.

 

Of course he would like to defer to one of the other godbrothers. Actually,

we planned for someone else to speak first but he is not here. The next

person we will ask is our GBC here in Gita Nagari and that is His Grace

Ravindra Svarupa Prabhu to please come forward.

 

 

H.G. Ravindra Svarupa Prabhu:

 

I first met Bhakti-tirtha Swami before he was Bhakti-tirtha Swami,

Ghanasyama Prabhu. He came to our temple and he was part of the traveling

library party organized by Satsvarupa Maharaj. I think he took second

initiation at that time. In fact, I believe my wife was teaching him how to

do arati and things like that at the same time. We started to get to know

each other and immediately he was a very rare person that within a very few

minutes one could start to talk on a very confidential level.

 

There is a French theologian named Simon Weil. One of the things she said

that is very profound is that the only important question you can ask

somebody is "What are you going through?" I found that when I started

talking with Bhakti-tirtha Swami, Ghanasyama, very quickly we were sharing

with each other what we were going through.

 

In those days in ISKCON, it was very rare to do that with people. Later on,

I learned that was one of the loving exchanges between devotees to reveal

one's heart in confidence. Somehow or other, without previously meeting and

talking, we began to talk to each other about what we were going through,

our struggles and difficulties in Krsna consciousness, our realizations and

so on. That was very unusual.

 

I have to say that I had the very strong emotional connection with him that

I thought that this person is my brother. We are warned that these exchanges

of love should be done among devotees. When the same exchanges of love we do

with non-devotees, then it is called asatsanga, but we are human beings, we

need these exchanges of love, and Bhakti-tirtha Swami was a human being.

 

I have a saying that I developed, an observation about our Hare Krsna

movement some years ago about the Krsna consciousness movement that you

practice, you strive very hard, you make a lot of advancement and you become

a pure devotee, then you make even more advancement and you become a human

being.

 

I once told this to a person who had been a priest in the Roman Catholic

church for many years and he said, "Yeah, it's the same with us."

 

So our services kept us apart mostly and only occasionally we would come

together. I found with Bhakti-tirtha Swami that whenever we'd come together

we could start talking as if we'd never been apart. There was even a long

period of time when we were somewhat estranged with each other due to the

political situation in ISKCON, but when that was over, we were again

together and it was as if nothing happened and I was happy to again be with

my brother.

 

For me this was an unusual experience and I think the credit for being able

to relate on such a level was owing to him. I think many other people had

the same experience with him. There were so many wonderful things he did and

showed us but for me the main thing was the establishment of a relationship

with a devotee that was profoundly a relationship of two brothers where I

could relate very deeply. Now again we are separate but I look forward to

being able to associate again.

 

Srila Bhakti-tirtha Maharaj ki jai!

 

 

H.G. Vrajalila devi:

 

We'd like to thank His Grace Ravindra Svarupa Prabhu. My husband and I are

playing tic-tac. He is actually allergic to the hay and this was his

service, but this is the farm, and what can is say, we're city people, we're

not accustomed to all the hay.

 

We want to thank all of you. That has been said by His Holiness Radhanath

Maharaj, although he was not feeling that he could do that adequately.

Maharaj, because everything you do is from the heart, it's perfectly

adequate. We want to thank you. Everything you do is adequate.

 

We want to thank our Guru Maharaj's God family, especially his GBC

godbrothers and godsister, Malati Prabhu. This was very important to him, to

have that reciprocation from his God family. This was his prayer in the last

days, he was just crying out to have the love of his God family. He was

praying to Srila Prabhupada, "Whatever offenses I have done, please forgive

me, Srila Prabhupada, and let that love between me and my God family

flourish in ISKCON." I think we see that today and we are so grateful to you

because we know this is what he would have wanted.

 

We especially want to thank His Holiness Lokanath Maharaj from coming from

wherever he was to be here with us today.

 

There are no words we can use to express our gratitude to all of you.

 

His Holiness Satsvarupa Maharaj has been here with us for the last three

days. We want to thank you so much. Yesterday was the tithi date for our

Guru Maharaj's departure. Because we were also engaged in so many different

services and we wanted to honor the Kulimela, in honoring that, we had to

forego the tithi date, which was very great on our part to do that, but His

Holiness Satsvarupa Maharaj shared with us twice during the day and had all

the disciples of Bhakti-tirtha Maharaj just share some thoughts and

reflections of our spiritual master. For us, Maharaj, that was a great boon

and benediction and we want to thank you from the bottom of our hearts

because on that day we had the opportunity to remember our spiritual master.

 

At this time we'd like to ask His Holiness Satsvarupa Maharaj to share a few

things, memories about our Guru Maharaj. Can someone assist Maharaja?

 

 

Satsvarupa Maharaj:

 

Recently on occasions of speaking about Bhakti-tirtha Swami I've talked

about very close early association with him on the library party when he was

a rough gem, he was actually an unpolished gem, but he actually was a fully

potent gem in his ability to sell books to college professors by hook or

crook. I was asking the devotees to speak about the qualities of their

spiritual master and one of them said he was never indecisive. I thought

about the library party when Bhakti-tirtha Swami was Ghanasyama. He was

never indecisive. When talking with the professors he always said the right

thing to them and amazingly pulled something out of the hat to convince them

he was a representative of the Bhaktivedanta Book Trust and that these books

belong in their libraries. He was the best on the party by far. This lead to

his more advanced preaching days in Africa.

 

All over the world in his spiritual master days, I think the most wonderful

days of his manifest activities are the last days in which you all saw and

heard from him when he was near his passing away. I'm surprised to hear more

and more how many devotees came to see him here and in D.C. and how they

were affected. He made a cathartic affect upon them. They cried to be with

him and cleared up so many spiritual problems in their hearts just to be

with him. I myself came very close to him in those days.

 

Ravindar Svarupa Prabhu just spoke about his relationship with Bhakti-tirtha

Swami. I had a certain estranged period also which became completely healed

during the period of his illness and I became close to him and phoned

regularly.

 

On the video this morning he said how he had come close to understanding his

relations with Krsna in one of our calls. He was aware that one has to be

very careful of sahajiya tendencies, but he felt he had a relationship with

Krsna as a cowherd boy and he told me this on the phone. I immediately sent

him a copy from Krsna Culture of Brhad Bhagavatamrta which has so many

cowherd boy pastimes. Sanatana Goswami writes about the perfection of Gopa

Kumar becoming a cowherd boy and pastimes in Vrindavan I fedexed the book

here the next day. Vrajaila told me how happy he was when the book got here

and they began to read it at once. Radhanath Swami also began reading the

book with Maharaj. Maybe it's too public to talk like this but these are

some of my memories of his last days, how he touched people personally who

came to see him, how he brought them close to him and closer to Krsna

 

And now we all have an indelible impresion of him and a kind of legacy,

whether godbrother or disciple, spiritually we all have a legacy to honor

his loving sacrifice and to try to keep up the connection with him and come

to these kinds of celebrations in his honor. Thank you very much, Hare

Krsna.