2003

Vyasa-Puja Offering to Srila Prabhupada - 2003

Dear Srila Prabhupada,

Please accept my prostrated obeisances in the dust of your lotus feet. All glories to Your Divine Grace!

On this anniversary of your divine appearance in this world, I would like to express my gratitude for everything that you are doing for me. The mercy you are pouring upon this unworthy soul is immeasurable. I cannot imagine where I would be had you not reached out to save me from Maya’s clutches. Wherever it might have been, it would have been hell, that place where there is no association of Krsna’s devotees. I would have been totally lost, floundering somewhere in this universe, repeatedly tossed by the powerful waves of Krsna’s illusory energy. Having not heard your divine message, no doubt I would have also accumulated an additional burden of sinful reactions, sufficient to keep me entrapped for several million more births than I’m already due.

When I look where I am now, more than thirty years from the time of our first meeting (when you appeared before me in your purports to the Bhagavad-gita), I realize that although I’m still in this material world, by your divine grace I know that I do not belong here. This world of duality and illusion is not my home. You revealed that my real home is in Goloka Vrindavana, Krsna’s eternal abode, and that I am meant to be with Krsna, serving Him in spontaneous and ecstatic loving devotional service.

In your Bhagavad-gita As It Is (11.14), I have read: Krsna’s devotees relate to Krsna in various relationships; one might treat Krsna as a son, or one might treat Krsna as a husband, as a friend, or as a master. Krsna and Arjuna are related in friendship. As the father tolerates, or the husband or a master tolerates, so Krsna tolerates.

And in a Srimad-Bhagavatam lecture (1.5.2) in Los Angeles, 1968, you once said: “[T]his world, the manifested world, is false.” How it is false? That is not explained by Sankaracarya. That is explained by Caitanya Mahaprabhu, that reality, real father. . .  If you accept Krsna as your father, oh, He’ll give you all protection. If you accept Krsna as your husband, oh, there is no question of divorce. If you accept Krsna as your friend, oh, Krsna will give you everything.

So, so many relationships. All these relationships in the relative world, they are all shadow or temporary. But the same thing is there in the spiritual world. And if we come to that platform, then there will be happiness.

These and countless other revelations have come from your lotus mouth and entered my heart. It is only fitting that from the core of my heart I must thank you, Srila Prabhupada. I am eternally indebted to you for all your divine revelations. Krsna —His name, form, qualities, pastimes, and transcendental abode—all manifest in your words. Before I met you, nobody ever told me I belonged somewhere else. I was misled into thinking I could find a shelter here in the world of no shelter. But somehow, by your unlimited causeless mercy, I met you. You took my hand and began leading me on the most direct path back “home,” back to Krsna.

I am still on this journey, and you still have my hand. But while I accompany you, you have mercifully shown me one other place I could go—a place more accessible to me here until I’ve completed my journey to Krsna’s abode. You mercifully manifested this place to shelter me from the vicious attacks of lust, anger, greed, illusion, madness, envy, and everything else Maya uses in her arsenal of weapons against those she holds captive. This place is another home, a safe haven here in this world, where wayward souls can find permanence and shelter. That place is none other than under the shade of your two lotus feet! Your two lotus feet are the abode of ecstatic love for Krsna.

Who would be so foolish and not take full shelter there for all of eternity?

In Jaiva Dharma, Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakura writes: If he [a person tormented by the troubles of material life] intelligently understands that his sufferings are all caused by the illusory potency maya, and that the entire material world is by nature inauspicious, and that his only shelter is the lotus feet of the Supreme Lord and the association of the Lord’s devotees, then he will take shelter of the feet of the devotees who have taken shelter of the feet of the Lord. Taking shelter of their feet is the most effective means to attain devotional service. That is the way one attains the feet of the Supreme Lord.

And Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura has also written: We all should aspire to be Mathura people. We should have a proper conception of spiritual Mathura instead of the mundane Mathura which is the place of enjoyment of people with very low aspirations. Our Sahajiya brothers think that they can have access to Mathura by paying the railway fare. It is by surrendering ourselves to the Preceptor’s Feet that we can have an abode in Mathura. Otherwise, we cannot get an entrance into the transcendental region.

On this most auspicious day of your divine appearance in this material world, I place my head at your lotus feet and beg you to please keep me under the shade of your lotus feet for all of eternity.

Please make me your fully surrendered servant and take everything I have—my mind, body, words, and my very life air—as my offering unto your divine lotus feet, the safest place in all the three worlds.

Your eternal servant,
Niranjana Swami


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