Dear Śrīla Prabhupāda,
“We were born in the darkest ignorance, but Śrīla Prabhupāda opened our eyes with the torch of knowledge. We offer our respectful obeisances unto him.”
We, the servants of your servants at ISKCON of Silicon Valley, offer our most humble and grateful obeisances at your lotus feet on this most auspicious day of your appearance. Everything we have, everything we know, and every moment of clarity we find in this dark and confusing age comes from you. You crossed the Atlantic Ocean so that we might cross the ocean of repeated birth and death. This loving offering is our sincere attempt to express our gratitude to Your Divine Grace.
I. You Equipped Us to Defeat the Empire of Doubt
Śrīla Prabhupāda, we live in an age of skepticism. From the earliest years of our education, many of us absorbed a subtle and corrosive teaching: that nothing can truly be known, that all truth is relative, that the wisest position is to hold all convictions loosely, and that only conclusions reached through empirical science may be trusted.
You not only systematically dismantled this worldview, but you engaged us in a battle against it. You gave us a complete and rigorous answer to skepticism, pointing out that all human beings, in every domain of life, operate through faith in authority. The medical student trusts centuries of accumulated wisdom before personally verifying each finding. The student of mathematics accepts axioms – foundations not proven but required for any reasoning to begin. The question, you taught us, was never faith vs. no faith. The question was always, Which authority and why?
You taught us that the Vedic authorities and evidences – pramāṇas: perception, inference, and śabda – are not competitors but ascending levels of vision. The senses reveal fragments, logic arranges them, but transcendence must descend from beyond the limits of speculation. Therefore, for understanding the self, suffering, and our eternal relationship with Kṛṣṇa, you directed us to śabda: divine sound received through the transparent medium of realized teachers. You placed this understanding in our hands, and then you gave us the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam.
Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam is the transcendental science not only for knowing the ultimate source of everything but also for knowing our relationship with Him and our duty toward perfection of the human society on the basis of this perfect knowledge. It is powerful reading matter in the Sanskrit language, and it is now rendered into English elaborately so that simply by a careful reading one will know God perfectly well, so much so that the reader will be sufficiently educated to defend himself from the onslaught of atheists. Over and above this, the reader will be able to convert others to accepting God as a concrete principle. — Śrīla Prabhupāda, preface, Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam
We live in Silicon Valley, a place where some of the world’s brightest and most ambitious gather to engineer ever more sophisticated forms of material absorption. Without the benefit of hearing the sublime teachings of Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, people seek perfection through technological innovation, only to worry that those same advances may lead to humanity’s undoing. You have brought what people are missing: a philosophy not only refined enough to be taken seriously, but powerful enough to realign human life with its true purpose – going back to Godhead.
People hanker for perfect knowledge yet settle for what is merely available to them: incomplete knowledge. By bringing Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam to light, you gave the world a spiritual science that answers the most fundamental questions that baffle humanity. The Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam does not ask us to embrace blind faith. Rather, it satisfies the sharpest minds at the highest level, working through logic, narrative, philosophy, and ultimately through direct experience to distinguish reality from illusion. You educated us in the spiritual science of the Bhāgavatam, showing us how to speak on it with clarity and confidence to a world drowning in uncertainty.
Your descendants in the community at ISV daily endeavor to engage people from every culture and background in Kṛṣṇa’s service by placing in their hands the most powerful philosophy in the world, Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam. Guided by your example, the devotees work constantly to refine their presentation of the Bhāgavatam, “in an interesting manner for the understanding of the audience.” This is our mission at ISV.
II. You Healed What the World Could Not Diagnose
Śrīla Prabhupāda, the people who come through the doors of your ISV temple – and the people we meet through our outreach, festivals, and online programs – come because they are suffering. They suffer from rāga – misplaced attachment, grasping at things that cannot satisfy them. They suffer from bhaya – fear born from their sense of impermanence. And they suffer from krodha – anger born from intellectual despair after hearing philosophies that cannot satisfy them. Rāga, bhaya, and krodha are not passing emotions. They are, as the Bhagavad-gītā tells us, ontological distortions – symptoms of the soul’s misidentification with matter. As Kṛṣṇa says in Bhagavad-gītā 4.10: “Being freed from attachment, fear, and anger, being fully absorbed in Me and taking refuge in Me, many persons in the past became purified by knowledge of Me – and thus attained transcendental love for Me.”
You taught us that this verse not only diagnoses the root cause of every conditioned soul’s frustration but also reveals how to administer the cure. The disease is rāga-bhaya-krodha – a cascade of attachment, fear, and anger that begins when the soul turns away from Kṛṣṇa, misidentifies itself with matter, and then suffers the inevitable consequences: grasping, losing, fearing, raging – and then grasping again.
Rāga – The hunger that cannot be filled
You explained rāga to us with the clarity of a physician. The soul is ānanda-maya – constitutionally blissful and constitutionally designed to love. When a living being’s love is directed toward Kṛṣṇa, it expands without limit. When it is directed toward temporary objects and relationships, it contracts into debilitating obsession, craving, and grief. The soul attached to the material world chews what has already been chewed – punaḥ punaś carvita-carvaṇānām – seeking juice from a dry husk.
You taught us that the cure for irrational attachment to the temporary is not to reject love but to redirect it toward Kṛṣṇa. By hearing Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam – its stories and philosophy – we achieve a higher taste that replaces the lower. Paraṁ dṛṣṭvā nivartate: when one has seen the superior, the inferior releases its grip.
We have seen this happen here at ISV, Śrīla Prabhupāda. People who enter the community with their hearts clenched over months and years, through chanting, association, and hearing the Bhāgavatam, gently uncoil their hearts and feel happy.
Bhaya – Fear overcome by shelter at Kṛṣṇa’s lotus feet
You taught us that bhaya – fear – is the inevitable consequence of turning away from Kṛṣṇa, only to lose oneself in a vast, dark, indifferent universe. Bhayaṁ dvitīyābhiniveśataḥ syāt – fear arises when consciousness becomes absorbed in the “other,” in separateness from the Supreme (Bhāgavatam 11.2.37).
The modern world, Śrīla Prabhupāda, is steeped in this fear. People clothe their fear in the language of strength – in independence, self-sufficiency, and the rejection of any personal God, claiming it to be a crutch for the weak. But underneath that language is the terror that there is no shelter, that the universe is cold, that consciousness is an accident, and that love is merely a useful fiction. Impersonalism and voidism are philosophical reactions to the soul’s fear of a personal relationship with God.
Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam dissipates this fear by introducing us to Kṛṣṇa, the all-merciful and all-attractive Lord. Kṛṣṇa, who is full of beauty, charm, and tenderness; who plays with His friends and calves in Vṛndāvana; and who holds Govardhana Hill on His little finger, becomes our ultimate object of meditation. You showed us that Kṛṣṇa is real, that our relationship with Him is real, and that there is ultimately nothing to fear because He loves us.
At ISKCON of Silicon Valley, we are in the business of reclaiming our natural fearlessness and empowering others to reclaim theirs. Fearlessness – abhaya – is the natural consequence of taking complete shelter of Kṛṣṇa. We do this through the culture you gave us: through kirtan that fills the room with Kṛṣṇa’s direct presence; through Bhāgavatam classes that explain exactly why the soul need not be afraid; and through simple acts of devotion, like offering food to Kṛṣṇa and honoring prasādam.
Krodha – Anger transformed into compassion
The world we live in, Śrīla Prabhupāda, is an angry world. The anger of people who were promised happiness by materialism but did not receive it. The anger of people who are told that science has all the answers but find that it cannot quiet their fear of death.
You gave us the antidote – service to Kṛṣṇa. You gave us Prahlāda Mahārāja as the example: one whose consciousness was so absorbed in Kṛṣṇa that external provocations – however extreme – could not disturb him.
Here in Silicon Valley, we see that devotees practicing under your guidance – hearing, chanting, distributing the Bhāgavatam, and serving – feel happy despite the many distractions and provocations they face in their daily lives.
III. You Showed Us the Paramparā Is Alive in Us
Śrīla Prabhupāda, one of the greatest gifts you gave us – perhaps the one we are still learning to fully receive – is the understanding that we are not spectators of this tradition. We are participants. The paramparā does not flow around us; it must flow through us. You said it plainly: “Kṛṣṇa consciousness is not limited. The Gosvāmīs wrote so many books, Viśvanātha Cakravartī and all the ācāryas wrote books, and still, I am writing books. Similarly, also my disciples will write.” You similarly said, “Every one of you should be spiritual master next.”
You did not say this as a concession. You said it as a directive – a description of what faithfulness to our line of teachers looks like. You taught us that the paramparā is not a museum but a living current. It persists wherever devotees offer complete surrender to the previous ācāryas through faithful transmission of their message.
We take seriously our role in this. This community – your temple, Śrīla Prabhupāda – is not merely a place of worship. It is a place of transmission. Every class, every festival, every plate of prasādam we give, every book we place in someone’s hands – these are the paramparā moving through us, as it has always moved: one person at a time, one genuine connection at a time.
Our Prayer
Dear Śrīla Prabhupāda, you said of Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura that he left the work of spreading the saṅkīrtana movement unfinished so that we would have some service. That is his mercy. You have extended that same mercy to us. We pray to carry your teachings forward with dignity. We are your foolish, stumbling, but earnest servants. We chant your praṇāma-mantra every morning and remember that you came to lift the world out of its spiritual poverty.
We pray, therefore, that we may please you by our services – imperfect as they are – and that by your continued mercy, this community may grow into an ever-brighter and more powerful instrument for the saṅkīrtana movement of Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu. We pray to remain your ideal followers: perpetually students before you, always prepared to receive your guidance, never imagining that we have arrived.
We are servants of your servants, Śrīla Prabhupāda. All that we offer here – all the book distribution scores and Bhakti Community Bhakti Sanga Labhas, the garlands, the Deity worship, the kirtan, the prasādam, the classes, the scrubbing and sweeping, the late nights and early mornings, and all the small acts of service that no one records – are for you. All glories to you, Śrīla Prabhupāda!
Your servants at ISKCON of Silicon Valley