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Vyāsa-pūjā 2023

Śrī Narasimha Dāsa (Srirangam - India)

Dear and beloved Guru Mahārāja,

Please accept my humble and respectful obeisances! All glories to you and Śrīla Prabhupāda!

Here’s wishing you yet another glorious year in your love-filled service to Śrīla Prabhupāda, the paramparā and Lord Caitanya and Lord Nityānanda!

Guru Mahārāja, may you live with the best of health and happiness for 108+ years and may your glories be known for 1000s and 1000s of years!

May Śrīla Prabhupāda be mighty pleased and happy with you and may your pleasing services to him continue to greater and greater depths and widths!

May the TOVP mission of his, which would be the cooling shelter of millions of jivātmās who are scorched by the fire of this material world be a grand success!

May all other missions which you have taken upon yourself be successful and grow and flourish for 1000s of years to come!

May the wonderful qualities of yours, headed by your non-envious selfless loving nature, anasūya-prema, be experienced by many many souls, who are tortured by the selfish ego-centered world!

May your dear servants, headed by HG Mahā Varāha Prabhu, who serve you day in and day out, be blessed with best of health and unending bliss in serving you!

May the various deities, whom you dearly love, across various ISKCON centers, be super happy with the best of worship and love given by the devotees!

Guru Mahārāja, care and happiness of devotees is something you are deeply concerned about. May that desire of yours truly manifest within ISKCON, wherein devotees who come to ISKCON be genuinely loved and cared for, lead a holistic balanced life and experience Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu and the gift He came to give through this movement!

May we all, and the world in general be blessed with having your presence, and may we have the blessing of seeing you walking and dancing before our eyes!

May all your heart’s desires be fulfilled and may you always be happy, Gurudeva!

Gurudeva, I have a specific prayer to you. To get to that, I shall have to present a context. Am trying to do so here….

Guru Mahārāja, you come from the generation of American counterculture, and know all too well about the state of a disillusioned mind. The whole hippie culture was the result of a failed promise and a sense of ‘feeling cheated/let down’ by the system/people whom the young Americans put their faith in. Isn’t it? Isn’t it what we call as māyā, correct? - that which is not… a promise/experience which we think is real but in factuality, is not real.

For jīvātmās, māyā in normal life can lead them to spiritual life and inspire them to follow a spiritual pursuit. But what if, even within the spiritual process/realm, one is given the highest but then feels so disillusioned. If there is an experience of spiritual māyā, where does a jīvātmā go next? He can’t exist in the material realm nor can he commit in the spiritual realm. I feel totally lost and hopeless!

Guru Mahārāja, Śrīla Prabhupāda said, his mission is to change the way people think. Thoughts spring from the depth of consciousness and what Śrīla Prabhupāda’s mission does is - it completely changes the consciousness, and the change of thoughts becomes a by-product. Strangely though, this change of consciousness, and thus, thoughts, within the realm of a growing infant movement whose systems and leadership are still evolving and struggling to get it right, a broken varṇāśrama platform, a contrasting material society which seems to be driven and living by an 180 degree opposite value systems, can cause more distress/harm than otherwise. Thus, in all honesty, I find myself in an incompatible existential crisis! Am I living right? I find it so hard to even exist - with conflicting consciousness/thoughts, that more often than not, guilt becomes a singular feeling to even exist. Furthermore, the experiences in the material and spiritual realms have been very painful, to say the least.

Guru Mahārāja, you have been to ICCU, CCU, ICU and more such health crisis management sections of the hospital. Though your body went through all that, you, the soul were always fresh and energetic. In contrast, I, the soul, have been to ICCU, CCU, ICU and so on. I have lost all energy at the soul level. Like a car running out of gas/petrol, my heart/soul has run out of all its energies, especially energy called love, enthusiasm, and warmth, and importantly, a purpose to live and thrive.

Anyways, for the injured ICCU directionless soul - that is me - Lord Śrī Raṅganātha became the medicine, He became the doctor…. His home – Śrīrangam temple - became my hospital and rehab center. Just like how a doctor would treat an ICCU patient by keeping him close to him, He has kept me close to Him and is treating me. He, along with His eternal consort, Śrī Raṅganāyakī Thāyar have been my solace and shelter over the last 1.5 years. The ever kind and compassionate Śrī Rāmānujar, Śrī Raṅga kṣetram, and the kind Śrīrangavāsīs gave me life and are nursing me back slowly to proper health. If I am alive and am anything, I owe it to Śrīraṅgam and the kind Śrīraṅgavāsīs.

Gurudeva, all this I am speaking is to make this fervent appeal to you, and through you, to the entire paramparā.

The only thing I am not disillusioned about is this - the wicked painful nature of this material world. At 38 years in this human form of life, the best years are behind me. I feel a deep sense of loss and sadness - disillusioned if I have done it right or is it all a lost cause - the past 25 years of attempted endeavors for Kṛṣṇa-prema. The years gone by cannot be got back but I humbly request at least the following from you. Will you please grant me the below wish? I place before you my prayers expressing my present state of consciousness/being.

1.Kṛṣṇa is all powerful, sweet and devotional service ecstatic, and I have faith that He shall be my protector and shelter. Sadly, the nature of this world makes even devotional experiences like a sine curve - sometimes up and sometimes down. This world is a horribly bad place to be. Despite devotional service being the topmost, I do not want to perform devotional service in this world - because this world shakes one’s faith, causes deep disillusionment, enslaves the senses, and even at times makes one turn away from Kṛṣṇa and paramparā.

2. To be free from my karma, vāsanās, saṁskāras, Rāvaṇa, Hiraṇyakaśipu, Hiraṇyākṣa, Kamsa, Pūtanā, Kāliyā type desires and mentalities, I cannot do it on my own.

3. I have reached that point of consciousness where I do not want to take any more birth in this world. Let this be the last one. But there is nothing I can do to effect it nor remember Kṛṣṇa at the time of death (the ante nārāyaṇa smṛti thing), etc. Just like the kitten depending on the mother cat, I have given up on everything else, including sādhanā, or any endeavor to do anything at all that can make me eligible to enter eternal realms of service.

4. I am fearful of this world and do not want to enter another mother’s womb. Fearful not so much for the world world…. for whatever it is...…. but more for how far it can cloud a soul’s desire for devotional service and devotion to the Lord. This desire to get out of the saṁsāra, along with the desire to love and serve the Lord and Vaiṣṇavas is the only thing I have.

5. Thus, here I am expressing my inability. I cannot help myself. I am lifting both my hands up. I cannot do ‘dhāyi tava pāche pāche’ anymore. If you/paramparā/Lord want to help me, you come for me. I am not taking one step ahead. Please bless me with the clarity of mind regarding such a process of finishing the account in this material world in this one lifetime, bless me with the boon of no more birth in this material creation and please take me up to the realm of eternal prema-kainkaryam in this very lifetime.

This is my only prayer to you and the blessing I ask of you!! Please do not let me down. I want to enter eternal loving devotional service to my beloved eternal permanent Master/Friend/Lover, His beloved representatives who appeared in this material world and all His divya-pārṣadas in this very lifetime. I cannot wait for another birth to close the samsara account! I have had enough of this material existence!

Hare Kṛṣṇa Guru Mahārāja!!! Eagerly awaiting to hear the blessing - ‘tathāstu (So be it)’ from you.:)

with sincere respects, thanks and appreciations of your glorious self,

a disillusioned directionless soul,

Śrī Nrsimha Dāsa