Dear Śrīla Prabhupāda,
Please allow me to offer my prostrated obeisances at your divine lotus feet.
Garlanding the world with Śrī Gaurāṅga’s mercy, you circled this planet fourteen times in twelve years, gracing every habitable continent. The histories and diaries of your miraculous travels will enthrall devotee-readers for generations far into the future. More striking than even the fascinating details are the transformative impacts.
Śrī Caitanya-caritāmṛta (Madhya 9.360) gives a glimpse of the peak possibilities of that transcendent outcome on the devoted heart. Recounting Mahāprabhu’s travels, especially Lord Caitanya’s movements throughout South India, Kṛṣṇadāsa Kavirāja Gosvāmī proclaims: “Whoever hears of Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu’s pilgrimage to various holy places attains the riches of very deep ecstatic love.”
As the pure servitor of Śrī Gaurāṅga, you are of the same quality as Him, due to your one-hundred-percent surrender to Him. Therefore, who can calculate the spiritual effect of absorbed, dedicated hearing of your activities? May I always meditate on your ocean of loving devotional service as you unflaggingly traversed the globe at such an advanced age.
The more one hears the pastimes of Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu with faith, analytically studying them, the more one attains the ecstatic riches of love of Godhead. (Madhya 9.364)
Let us endlessly analyze your years physically manifest with us as we strive to study your instructions, your goals, your perseverance.
In your books you have presented such an astonishing standard of pure bhakti – a touchstone that you not only advocated but also personally demonstrated: “‘My dear Lord, I am fully satisfied with whatever You have given me or not given me. I have nothing to ask from You, for I am fully satisfied to be engaged in Your service.’ This is the mentality of a pure devotee, who does not want anything, material or spiritual, from the Personality of Godhead . . . One who is absorbed in kṛṣṇa-bhāvanāmṛta has no material benefits to ask from Kṛṣṇa. Instead, such a person prays to the Lord for the benediction of being able to spread His glories all over the world. Mama janmani janmanīśvare bhavatād bhaktir ahaitukī tvayi. A Kṛṣṇa conscious person does not even want to stop his cycle of birth and death. He simply prays, ‘I may take birth as You like, but my only prayer is that I may be engaged in Your service.’” (Bhāgavatam 9.9.45, purport)
In your closing words to chapter 9 of the Madhya-līlā, you write: “As usual the author concludes the chapter by reciting the names of Rūpa and Raghunātha and reinstating himself at their lotus feet.”
Every year a Vyāsa-pūjā offering to you is an opportunity to reinstate myself at your lotus feet. I beg you to continue accepting my attempts at service.
Aspiring to be your qualified servant,
Devamrita Swami