Dear Śrīla Prabhupāda,
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
We offer our respectful obeisances unto His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda, who is very dear to Lord Kṛṣṇa on this earth, having taken shelter at His lotus feet.
Our respectful obeisances unto you, O spiritual master, servant of Sarasvati Goswami. You are kindly preaching the message of Lord Caitanyadeva and delivering the western countries, which are filled with impersonalism and voidism.
Please accept our humble obeisances at your divine lotus feet. All glories to Your Divine Grace and your mission to save the world! On this most auspicious day, we want to offer our most heartfelt gratitude to you for creating this wonderful house we can all live in.
Śrīla Prabhupāda, in order to carry out your spiritual master’s instructions and to introduce the fallen souls in the Western world to Kṛṣṇa consciousness, at the advanced age of 69 years you sailed for America aboard the steamship Jaladuta on Friday, August 13, 1965, leaving at 9:00 a.m. Despite experiencing seasickness, dizziness, vomiting, and suffering two heart attacks, you were determined to carry out the mission. You felt, “If a third comes, I will not survive!” That night in a dream, the Lord appeared to you in a boat full of many incarnations and assured you, the dedicated mendicant, that He would protect you.
Śrī Kṛṣṇa was very kind to Your Divine Grace. In your diary you wrote, “If the Atlantic would have shown its usual face, perhaps I would have died. But Lord Kṛṣṇa has taken charge of the ship.”
Starting with the most basic principle – how to become a civilized human being – you have laid out the clear path to happiness and fulfillment in this life, the next life, and ultimately, for eternity. All we have to do to succeed is take up your instructions.
To define what it means to be civilized, you told a story about how Gandhiji came to England for “round-table discussions.” To impress him, the hosts gave him a tour of London – Big Ben, the House of Commons, Buckingham Palace, and other places. At the end of it, they asked him, “So, Gandhiji, what do you think of Western civilization?” Gandhiji replied, “It will be a good idea.” In other words, it was not simply the ability to stack up stones that made one cultured, but rather a person’s character and a society’s ethos and aspirations that were a real measure of civilization.
We value how much you have emphasized character, integrity, and honesty. Of the many thousands of verses you translated and commented upon, Bhagavad-gītā 2.41 is a very special instruction to us:
vyavasāyātmikā buddhir ekeha kuru–nandana
bahu–śākhā hy anantāś ca buddhayo ’vyavasāyinām
Those who are on this path are resolute in purpose, and their aim is one. O beloved child of the Kurus, the intelligence of those who are irresolute is many-branched.
Bhaktivedanta Manor owes its entire existence and offering to you, Śrīla Prabhupāda. You had the vision of having a large temple in London, and you inspired Dhanañjaya Prabhu to look for the building, then George Harrison to buy the building, where you then mercifully installed and welcomed our most beautiful Śrī Śrī Rādhā-Gokulānanda, the objects of our worship. By your blessings we have a come a long way to develop Bhaktivedanta Manor as a place of worship for the wider community. We have a vibrant, growing congregation.
We have a goshala, where our cows and oxen are cared for, loved, and in reciprocation, who serve Rādhā-Gokulānanda by giving their milk. One of the loveliest sights is when we let the cows out in the spring. The excitement on their faces has no parallel. We just had this event a week ago.
We now have a haveli building of 2,200 square meters onsite, which has become very useful for our programs and functions. Here we can accommodate much larger numbers of devotees than ever before. We also have weddings there, where couples can take Their Lordship’s blessings. The haveli has allowed us to make our offering to the community bigger, better, and brighter.
We have very special offerings of festivals. Janmāṣṭamī alone attracts in excess of 50,000 visitors over two days. These guests take darshan and celebrate the birth of Lord Kṛṣṇa with us.
We continue our primary focus on spreading Kṛṣṇa consciousness as you taught us, Śrīla Prabhupāda. Our saṅkīrtana program is vibrant, strong, and effective in distributing your books.
Bhaktivedanta Manor has a thriving educational arm called School of Bhakti (SOB), which runs courses at different levels both online and in person. Thousands of participants take advantage of the spiritual knowledge being delivered through these courses. SOB also organizes spiritual retreats, which are very popular and educational.
We have a large army of volunteers who want to serve Their Lordships, and during Janmāṣṭamī alone, we have in excess of 1,500 volunteers serving the visitors to make their experience of coming to the Manor and experiencing the glorious birth of Lord Kṛṣṇa memorable.
We are embarking on producing a master plan for the next fifty years, including constructing a new temple, as you once mentioned. This is an extensive project which will comprise many smaller, subprojects, and with your blessings, it will become a reality.
During the 1950s, before you went to the USA, while translating the Bhagavad-gītā you were struck in a special way by Śrīla Viśvanātha Cakravartī Ṭhākura’s commentary on verse 2.41. You later told your disciples that this commentary fixed you in your resolve to follow Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura’s order to preach Kṛṣṇa consciousness in English.
Śrīla Viśvanātha Cakravartī Ṭhākura writes: “Of all kinds of intelligence, the best is intelligence focused on bhakti-yoga. In bhakti-yoga, one’s intelligence becomes single-pointed or fixed in determination. One thinks, ‘The instructions of my spiritual master to worship the Personality of Godhead by chanting, remembering, serving His feet, and so on are my only sādhana, my only sādhya, my only livelihood. I am incapable of giving up these instructions either in the stage of practice or in the stage of perfection. They alone are my object of desire and my only responsibility. Besides them, I can desire no other responsibility, not even in my dreams. It is all the same whether I feel happy or unhappy or whether my material existence is eradicated or not.
In the same way that this commentary fixed your intelligence on following the instructions of your spiritual master, it should also inspire us to be fixed in following your instructions. We read and follow your instructions as you have left them in your letters, conversations, and books.
Once you were giving a talk in which you said that in order to go back home, back to Godhead, one must be cent percent pure, cent percent free of material desires and attachments. When you saw that the devotees were discouraged, you said “All right, 90 percent pure.” Still, they were dejected. Then you said, “All right, 80 percent. Still, they were crestfallen. Then you said “All right, 75 percent – but no less.” After the talk, you commented, “If you just hold on to my lotus feet, I will take you back to Godhead. I have the key to the back door.”
You are so merciful to us, and our only hope is to be able to hold on to your lotus feet in the form of your instructions and carry them out to the best of our ability. Once, you said, “Your qualification is that I give an instruction and you try to follow it.” And of course, Śrīla Prabhupāda, that is our only hope, too.
We very fondly cherish your pastimes at the Manor and your love for Śrī Śrī Rādhā-Gokulānanda, Rāma-Sītā-Lakṣmaṇa-Hanumān, and Gaura-Nitāi. One evening at Bhaktivedanta Manor, you were sitting in your room with your disciples and a few guests, including a woman reporter, who had come to interview Your Divine Grace. Despite the chilly English summer weather, the reporter was dressed in a scanty mini skirt. Her first few questions revealed her skeptical, almost cynical attitude, toward the Hare Kṛṣṇa movement. As usual, you coolly and expertly answered her questions. Somewhat exasperated and in a challenging mood, she brought up the old question, “Why do you people have bald heads?” You immediately retorted, “Why do you have bare legs?” She was speechless. You then offered, “Better to have warm legs and a cool head.” Everyone, including the reporter, laughed with delight. You added, “You must have a cool head to understand this Kṛṣṇa consciousness philosophy.”
We, of course, in the execution of our service commit many mistakes. But we know that Kṛṣṇa’s and His devotees’ mercy are greater than His laws. You write in the Caitanya-caritāmṛta (Madhya 15.163, purport): “A Vaiṣṇava is so liberal that he is prepared to risk everything to rescue the conditioned souls from material existence.” Śrīla Vāsudeva Datta Ṭhākura demonstrates universal love for he was willing to sacrifice everything and fully engage in the service of the Supreme Lord.” We also know that Lord Kṛṣṇa forgave Pūtanā and in fact liberated her despite her intention to kill Him. Clearly, His mercy is greater than His law.
In your purport to Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 1.5.16 you state: “The expert devotees also can discover novel ways and means to convert the nondevotees in terms of particular time and circumstance. Devotional service is dynamic activity, and the expert devotees can find out competent means to inject it into the dull brains of the materialistic population. Such transcendental activities of the devotees for the service of the Lord can bring a new order of life to the foolish society of materialistic men. Lord Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu and His subsequent followers exhibited expert dexterity in this connection. By following the same method, one can bring the materialistic men of this age of quarrel into order for peaceful life and transcendental realization.”
We have no qualifications to be in this position of being able to serve devotees. But due to His inconceivable humor of the Lord and your mercy, we have been placed in this position.
yogyatā-vicāre, kichu nāhi pāi,
tomāra karuṇā – sāra
karuṇā nā hoile, kāndiyā kāndiyā,
prāṇa nā rākhibo āra
If you examine me, you will find no good qualities. Your mercy is all that I am made up of. If you are not merciful unto me, I can only weep, and I will not be able to maintain my life.
All we have, Śrīla Prabhupāda, is Kṛṣṇa’s mercy and your mercy to allow us to serve.
We very much value your instructions to His Holiness Giriraj Swami about intelligence and organization as means to continue the mission. On 2 January 1973, in a letter to Haṁsadūta Dāsa, you wrote, “Occupational duty means to stick with one type of occupation which is just suitable for me, considering that it is my duty, therefore I am throughout my life obliged to perform it to the best of my ability. This is mature understanding of occupation. That means I must not leave it even for the so-called good cause, just like Arjuna wanted to stop his fighting activity just to avoid killing of so many of his kinsmen, cousin brothers and other friends. So we are preachers on behalf of Lord Krishna, that is our occupational duty, we haven’t got to search any further some new challenge or change our environment. No, that has already been set up. Now best thing will be to develop more and more what we have begun. I have built the skeleton of the building, but there is so much work remaining before us.… You needn’t look further to find some big challenge. The challenge is very near at hand.”
Śrīla Prabhupāda, you built the skeleton of the building and your disciples, granddisciples, and aspiring granddisciples are still working on finishing the outside and inside of this colossal structure.
We, the devotees at the Bhaktivedanta Manor, will continue to serve Śrī Śrī Rādhā-Gokulānanda, Rāma-Sītā-Lakṣmaṇa-Hanumān, and Gaura-Nitāi by your blessings and under your instructions.
Your insignificant and aspiring servants,
The devotees at Bhaktivedanta Manor