Dearest Śrīla Prabhupāda,
I bow down to your divine lotus feet.
Every year it is more exciting to write you because I feel closer and closer to you. As my body grows older and older, I feel close to you more and more.
Dear Śrīla Prabhupāda, I write you this letter on behalf of the Greek yātrā. In Greece it is not so easy to present your books and Śrī Kṛṣṇa’s teachings because the Greeks have been “educated” for many centuries with the understanding that only through Jesus Christ, who they consider to God Himself, can we reach the kingdom of God. They deeply disrespect any other spiritual path.
We have faced many obstacles and challenges in the past, and we are facing more of both now in this difficult country, but anyway, we go out every day to distribute your books and prasādam. As you said, “You will always have your customers.” Every day we meet special people. For sure not many, but every day special souls are saved by your divine books, especially Śrīmad Bhagavad-gītā!
I’m experimenting here in Greece. It’s a little bit the sweet taste of being a pioneer in a difficult country, a little bit like you experienced in the Bowery. I feel very fortunate and blessed by staying here in Greece to “fight” on your behalf! This keeps me young, enthusiastic, and focused on your mission.
My constant meditation is about you in your beginnings in New York. Every day I become more and more absorbed in your hard and difficult early days of preaching Kṛṣṇa consciousness in Manhattan. The streets of Manhattan are my streets of Vrindavan – you walked those Manhattan streets distributing Kṛṣṇa consciousness. You are the greatest “soul seeker” because you left Vrindavan and went to the Bowery, living among the worse drunkards and drug addicts of America. From the garbage of this planet, you cultivated roses and lotus flowers! From the vagabonds, you brought out saintly ladies and saintly gentlemen!
You are the real personification of what the holy scriptures speak about: a Vaiṣṇava, a devotee of Śrī Kṛṣṇa! What a miracle happened in the streets of New York. This is our ultimate and real holy dhāma! For sure, Vrindavan is Vrindavan, but the mercy of Lord Nityānanda and Lord Gaurāṅga walked there in the streets of Manhattan through your unlimited compassionate nature of the greatest ācārya! You exemplify the meaning of a pure devotee delivering the lowest! That’s why I said that my heart is not so much in Vrindavan as in the streets of New York, where you faced the most difficult time of your life.
Śrīla Prabhupāda, please grant me the possibility to serve the sacrifices that you performed in order to save us. I know I’m not qualified to receive that special mercy, but please grant it to me because otherwise everything else is useless to me. Without the dust of your lotus feet that you left in Manhattan, my life is meaningless.
Your servant,
Dayānidhi Dāsa