My Dear Srila Prabhupada--- by Bhagavat dasa

[Guest guest]

My dear Srila Prabhupada,

Please accept my most humble obeisances at your divine lotus feet. My task here is to glorify you on the occasion of the one hundredth anniversary of your appearance day. I frankly admit that I feel totally inadequate for the task. However, with your permission I will attempt the impossible.

You are both a fulfiller of prophecy and a prophet. Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu declared, "The holy name will be heard in every town and village in the world." Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakura declared a year prior to your birth that one would appear very soon who would fulfill that prophecy. You, Srila Prabhupada, were that person. When many of your senior disciples wanted to abandon this project here in Bhubaneshwar and go directly to Jagannatha Puri to start a project there, you prophesied that some day this temple at Bhubaneshwar would be the center of the city, and it has come true.

Once in Bombay you ordered me to sit in your room while you were preaching to some Life Members. I sat there and listened for almost an hour. When they left you asked me how I would learn to preach if I did not listen to you preach. You then asked me and the other devotee whom you had ordered to sit there if we knew a certain verse from the Bhagavad-gita, but we did not. Then you inquired from us if we were reading your books every day and we admitted our neglect. You first scolded, then you instructed us that we must read your books every day; otherwise how could we learn anything? Then to our surprise you informed us that you read your own books every day, and you inquired if we knew why. Feeling extremely foolish at this point, we did not offer any answer but waited patiently for your explanation and instructions. When you told us that even you learn something every time you read your own books, we were of course stunned, but when you asked us if we knew why you learned something every time you read your own books, we were even more bewildered. Personally I was totally amazed at what transpired next. You were looking at us with great intensity, and your voice expressed both authority and mysticism. As you moved your hands gracefully through the air, your eyes opened wide and you spoke as follows: "Every morning when I sit down to write these books, Krsna personally comes and dictates every word; therefore every time I read these books, even I learn something. And if you read them every day, then you will also learn something every time you read them." You were the original channeler, and you had the Supreme Personality of Godhead as your personal guide.

Even by material standards, to write one hundred books in ten years is inconceivable. When you add to this the transcendental potency of these books, it transcends material comprehension altogether. The glory of your service to the entire sampradaya is expressed through your purports by your giving the commentaries of all the great acaryas along with your own. For hundreds and even thousands of years these great personalities—Vyasa, Madhva, Jayatirtha, Baladeva Vidyabhusana, Visvanatha Cakravarti Thakura, Sridhara Swami, and many others—have waited for their transcendental glorification of the Supreme Lord to reach the multitudes of conditioned souls. What satisfaction they must be deriving from seeing the millions of books distributed all over the world to benefit the fallen conditioned souls! You have glorified the Supreme Personality of Godhead and his pure devotees by your service of writing and distributing these books, and you are therefore worthy to be worshiped by all fallen conditioned souls.

In a little-known pastime that took place here in Bhubaneshwar, the magnitude of your accomplishments in writing these books was further revealed after your departure to the divine realm. When Gour-Govinda Maharaja finished the translation of your Bhagavad-gita As It Is from English into Oriya, he had compiled a list of questions on about fifty or one hundred words for which he was apparently having a hard time making the connection between Sanskrit, English, and Oriya. Oriya was Gour-Govinda Maharaja’s native tongue, and he had taught English and some Sanskrit in the Orissan school system for twenty years. Still, finding the exact correlation between the Sanskrit, English, and Oriya was confounding him. Since he wanted it to be perfect and he wanted that no pandita or scholar of Orissa should question Your Divine Grace’s work, Gour-Govinda Maharaja went off to a small village in Orissa to seek verifiication from a great Sanskrit scholar he knew. This particular man was one of the best in the world. Gour-Govinda Maharaja spent several days with this man, and then, at the scholar’s request, brought him to the small hut where Maharaja and I were staying in the deserted area that would later become the center of the city, as you had predicted. The scholar told me that he wanted to tell me personally that the words Your Divine Grace had picked in English to explain the meaning of the Sanskrit words were the most obscure and brilliant explanations he had ever witnessed in his forty years of Sanskrit study and teaching. He told me it took him hours and hours of research in his vast libraries of Sanskrit dictionaries and texts to find these obscure and brilliant meanings, and he was personally convinced that only someone who had been directly enlightened by the Supreme Lord could have conceived of them. You are the greatest scholar, author, pandita, linguist, and teacher. Your glories are unlimited!

Your Divine Grace has made the greatest contribution to science by teaching us that life comes from life, thus establishing a new paradigm by which all scientific theories concerning the origins of life are to be judged. You are the greatest scientist!

Your Divine Grace has revolutionized the Western world’s view of vegetarianism by introducing prasadam. You educated us not only on the ethical, ecological, and medical reasons for a vegetarian diet, but you introduced everyone to the theological principles of vegetarianism as well by teaching us patram puspam phalam toyam yo me bhaktya prayacchati. You showed us that real spiritual life was not dry and tasteless but full of flavor, lots of flavors. You are both the master of divinity and the master chef!

You revolutionized the world of art by introducing your windows to the spiritual world. You then made them three dimensional in the form of dioramas. You created and empowered the artists who created the art that displayed to the world the form, activities, associates, and residences of the Supreme Personality of Godhead. You are the greatest artist!

You taught us to march to the beat of a different drum, the mrdanga, to jingle jangle a different tambourine, the karatalas, and to sing a new tune, the Hare Krsna maha-mantra and the songs of Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakura and Srila Narottama dasa Thakura. You are a master musician and the Pied Piper as well!

You taught us a new dimension in cleanliness, punctuality, discipline, opulence, and sense control, simply by teaching us Deity worship. You are the intimate servant of the Supreme Lord Krsna, and you taught us the first step in attaining that position.

You wrote the first articles, translated the first books, collected money to have them printed, and printed them and distributed them yourself in the tea stalls of New Delhi and the bookstores of the Lower East Side of New York. You then created a legion of followers to duplicate your actions and proceeded to distribute more transcendental literature than anyone else in history. You are the greatest of the book distributors!

You gave us a transcendental system of education in the form of gurukula so that our children could learn that ABC does not stand for "at,bat,cat" but Ananta, Balarama, and Caitanya. You are the greatest teacher!

You gave us varnasrama-dharma, a means to organize society around simple living and high thinking. This system of self-sufficient living creates an atmosphere where a minimum amount of time is spent on material maintenance and a maximum amount of time is spent on spiritual development. You are the transcendental sociologist with the real remedy for society’s ills. We beg your forgiveness for not fully establishing varnasrama-dharma. We are working on implementing it.

You taught us how to make and sell incense, manage temples, organize sankirtana parties, run restaurants, and do a hundred different things that we never knew how to do before you taught us. You are our father, our teacher, our advisor, our protector, our guide, our guru, and our ever well-wisher!

You first requested me to come to Orissa with Gour-Govinda Maharaja in 1975. Our initial trip here was unsuccessful. Gour-Govinda Maharaja took sannyasa and returned here alone, and in 1976 I used to visit him when I was selling books to the schools and libraries in Orissa. In 1977, in spite of my unlimited protestations, you gave me the service of staying in Orissa permanently. I remember when you called me into your room (I was told later that you had asked Satsvarupa Maharaja, "Get me the fat one"). When I entered the room you asked, "So, Bhagavat Maharaja, how are you?"

"Fine, Srila Prabhupada." I replied.

Then you told me, "So I would like you to stay here in Bhubaneshwar with Gour-Govinda Maharaja and help him develop this project; you will be co-director with him."

I explained that I had just received a letter from Adi-kesava inviting me to go to New York to take up some management responsibilities.

You frowned, showing your dissatisfaction. "There are so many devotees in New York already. You don’t need to go to New York."

I became nervous. "But Srila Prabhupada," I said, protesting, "I am not feeling well. I need to go back to the West to recover." The distress was evident in my voice, but, Srila Prabhupada, you would have none of it.

"You can be very healthy right here. There is clean air and clean water, and you can pass stool out in the open and take bath. This is a very healthy place for you."

My anxiety grew. "But," I further protested, "I do not get along with Gargamuni Maharaja, and he is the GBC here."

You dismissed this as a minor problem. "I will remove Gargamuni Maharaja as GBC and you will work directly under me." Now you made me GBC without title.

Grasping for some solution, I finally revealed my offense to you. I was convinced that upon hearing that my sadhana was lacking you would not allow me to take over an entire project. "I am not chanting my rounds, Srila Prabhupada," I confessed.

But you were not to be outdone. Your determination was clear. You paused briefly and then said, "I have noted that you work very hard, and when you work hard for Krsna sometimes you cannot chant your rounds. That is all right as long as you work hard for Krsna." Everyone in the room sat in stunned silence, seeing your unflagging determination. I finally surrendered.

"It is stated in sastra," I began, "that by following the orders of the spiritual master and pleasing him one will make spiritual advancement and please Krsna. So if you want me to stay here, Srila Prabhupada, then I will." My reward was instantaneous. Your face lit up with a smile a mile wide, and your eyes twinkled with satisfaction.

"Yes," you said, "that is correct. You have understood my books." That was in February of 1977. Later that same year, in the last days before you passed from this world, I confided to you when we were alone late one night that I was concerned about your leaving and about what I would do after you were gone. You simply said, "You should stay in Bhubaneshwar with Gour-Govinda Maharaja."

You know why I had to leave Bhubaneshwar. Over the course of the years, bereft of my service, I wandered here and there trying to fit in and find myself and some service, both in and out of ISKCON. Sometimes I would think of my days in Bhubaneshwar, and whenever Gour-Govinda Maharaja came to the US on tour I would go to see him and he would remind me that Srila Prabhupada had told me to stay in Orissa and manage the affairs there. But I was caught in the web of Maya, doing business, making money, paying off loans.

I was planning to come to Bhubaneshwar in August of this year when suddenly you came to me in a dream. You asked me what I was doing. I said I was living in Alachua (Florida), doing some work, going to the temple, organizing some programs. You said, "What service are you doing?"

I replied, "Well, I plan to go back to Bhubaneshwar and help build the temple in Puri, open an Ayurvedic clinic, do prasadam distribution, and preach in the villages." The whole time you were smiling broadly and shaking your head in a gesture of approval. Then suddenly you stopped and looked at me very seriously and said, "Remember, you must go back to Bhubaneshwar." I woke up bewildered. When is it that I should go? Today? Tomorrow? Next year? I was not sure. I decided to wait for a while to see if there would be some sign of what I should do. One week later my dear Godbrother Gour-Govinda Maharaja entered into samadhi, and then I understood that I had to go immediately! I left my high-paying job, withdrew my savings from the bank, and came back to the service that you authorized me to do in the first place.

Returning after all these years to do this service, I feel your presence and association more deeply than I have in years. I thought I was doing service for you in Alachua, but now I understand that since I was fortunate enough to be given service by you directly then I must do that particular service or else I am not actually pleasing Your Divine Grace. Once in Vrndavana you were talking to a few devotees in your room, and while speaking these words you looked directly at me and said, "We have associated previously, we are associating now, and in the future." In spite of all my sinful offenses you have not forgotten me. You came in the middle of the night while I was sleeping in the lap of Maya, and you rescued me from a fate worse than death. You have not allowed me to forget my promise to you to stay in Bhubaneshwar as you ordered. This is my prabhu-datta-desa, the place where I have been ordered to perform my devotional service to Krsna by my guru.

It is said that the spiritual master lives eternally in his instructions and the disciple lives with him. I have never felt that more deeply in my life than I do right now. As it is also stated, I shall never be able to repay my debt to you. All glories to you, my Divine Master Paramahamsa Paramapujya 108 Sri Srimad A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Srila Prabhupada, on this, the hundredth anniversary of your birth! May your glories be spread throughout the three worlds!

 

 

(written by Bhagavat dasa)