Dear Śrīla Prabhupāda, my eternal father,
nama oṁ viṣṇu-pādāya kṛṣṇa-preṣṭhāya bhū-tale
śrīmate bhaktivedānta-svāminn iti nāmine
namas te sārasvate deve gaura-vāṇī-pracāriṇe
nirviśeṣa-śūnyavādi-pāścātya-deśa-tāriṇe
Please try and excuse me for not writing my Vyāsa-pūjā offerings the last few years. It is no real excuse, but as my body and mind began to creak more and more in old age (now my body is 81 years old), I couldn’t keep up whilst traveling enthusiastically with our version of your World Samkirtan Party, your “long-cherished idea” you wished to see fulfilled (as per your letter to Tamal Krishna 18 October 1969).
In your Bhāgavatam purport to 6.5.43, you said that the angry parents of your disciples had cursed you to not stay in one place to do your service of writing books. You said you wanted your sannyāsīs to relieve you of that curse by traveling worldwide. I have been blessed with that curse, and since 2016 have been traveling around the world annually with the multinational, multiguru, and multigenerational Harināma Ruci party led by His Grace Viṣṇujana Prabhu from Slovakia.
Whichever nation and city we are welcomed into, we stay for a few days, go out with the local devotees into the city centers, and perform harināma, trying to actively engage the public in blissfully chanting the holy names and taking your books.
To please you, I have over the years since your departure, also become responsible to help develop the expansion of ISKCON in Nepal, DR Congo, and parts of East Africa.
You closed your own vapuḥ pastimes when your body was 81. Mine is now also 81. By Kṛṣṇa’s grace, if it pleases you, I may be able to squeeze some more useful years out of this mortal British dress.
Now I want to improve the quality of my slipshod service and somehow please you more. Please give your glance of mercy to this struggling soul who is arriving at the scrap heap of this body. Please bless me to make the best use of my dwindling bad bargain.
How can I – or anyone – find the words to express what incomparable glorious service you have done and are still doing for Lord Caitanya’s mission and all spirit souls on this polluted Kali-yuga planet? Let us all therefore cooperate with one another to fulfill your desires as ISKCON’s founder-ācārya and the jagat-guru.
Trailing clouds of Kṛṣṇa’s glories – the holy names and your transcendental words and example – you and your beloved messengers came from afar to drag me and countless others, past, present, and future, from the darkness of animal-like ignorance to the light of eternal Kṛṣṇa consciousness. Thank you!
I am always unable to repay your divine gift of a new life when you revealed to me in your introduction to Bhagavad-gītā As It Is that Kṛṣṇa is the Supreme Personality of Godhead. In this regard, as you wrote to praise your own Guru Mahārāja, so I praise you: “Absolute is sentient thou hast proved / impersonal calamity thou hast moved.” (Vyāsa-pūjā offering to Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Gosvāmī)
Please kindly cast a special glance on me to keep me, till my dying breath, always enthusiastic to find nectarean new ways to engage people in Kṛṣṇa consciousness.
In this regard, I again use the words you used to praise your own Guru Mahārāja:
Wonder thy ways
To turn our face,
Adore thy feet
Your Divine Grace.
Śrī kṛṣṇa-saṅkīrtanam kī jaya!
Your fallen, struggling, sannyāsī servant,
Mahāviṣṇu Swami