Dear Guru Mahārāja,
Please accept my humble obeisances at your lotus feet !
All glories to You and Śrīla Prabhupāda!
Dearest Guru Mahārāja, My beloved Spiritual father, savior of the fallen souls and well-wisher of the entire universe. I’m falling at Your lotus’s feet with great awe and reverence, begging you kindly to accept these most humbly offered obeisance.
I am very fortunate to have the opportunity to write to You on the auspicious day of Your appearance. On this very special and auspicious occasion when with Your appearance came a ray of hope for all the unfortunate jivas like myself, struggling hopelessly in the vicelike grip of Maya, of continuous pain and suffering and repeated birth and death. On this day of Your appearance I feel myself so fortunate to glorify You. I am immature to glorify You properly on Your appearance day. Kindly accept this attempt as I am trying to praise Your qualities and activities. I often think about where I would be without You and Your disciples.
Wish You a very Happy Vyasa-puja with sincere and intense prayer to Śrī Śrī Kṛṣṇa for this auspicious day. Today is the most important day in my life; as this day You appeared amongst us at the behest of the Lord just to deliver fallen souls like me. But the time since then has been full of realizations and new spiritual experiences due to Your blessings. Keeping You at the centre of my life, each day I can feel how Your causeless mercy flows unconditionally in the upkeep of my devotional service. I am thankful to Lord Kṛṣṇa, who has mercifully sent You as my master and savior.
Although You are far away, yet You have very mercifully provided us Your kind association through lectures and live internet broadcasts. In every activity of Yours, You set an example for us and help us strengthen our commitment and conviction to Śrīla Prabhupāda and ISKCON. You teach us the mood of becoming an eternal servitor of one’s spiritual master by displaying Your desire to serve Śrīla Prabhupāda’s mission in spite of all discomfort and inconvenience that may arise due to the body. Guru- Mahārāja, please instill in my heart a drop of that mood of servitor ship for Your divine grace as You have for Śrīla Prabhupāda.
Your life is an example for everyone. Your recent health situation which You are handling with strong will and determination teaches us a lesson and instructs us how to handle certain situations. It is amazing to know even during extreme difficult situations Your enthusiasm to preach and bringing conditioned souls near to Kṛṣṇa was ever increasing. All Glories to Your preaching mission!!!
Your desire to spread Nāmahaṭṭa preaching all over the world inspires me immensely.
There is so much that I have to say. Yet out of foolishness I cannot find the appropriate words. I am incapable of expressing myself truly. This body and mind are full of contaminations and faults. I only pray that You are seeing the essence of this being.
Constantly I am struggling with where I am supposed to be, because my mind wants recognition and facility, but what I truly want is only emotional attachment to those who are my true well-wishers. Spiritual emotions, nothing fanatical, or like blind faith. But faith and emotion founded on realization. I do little sevas that are assigned to me by senior devotes and my siksa guru with all my heart. I put in all my effort to please You and Kṛṣṇa by keeping in mind how it will affect You and how it will help in spreading the message of Lord Caitanya Mahāprabhu.
My name is Karishma Joshi, I am 17 years old and I stay with my parents and brother Param in Dubai. My mother Rati Rupini Jahnava Devī Dāsī who has taken initiation under your Your Lotus feet is from Dwarka and my father Deepak Joshi is from Somnath, whereas my brother has taken shelter under His Holiness Radhanath Mahārāja 's Lotus feet. I am sincerely doing 16 rounds regularly and reading Prabhupāda’s book every day. I have taken aspiring from You last year and this year I am wanting to take shelter and I have a desire for You take me as one of Your disciples. I also want to take initiation from You in the near future. This will happen with Your divine mercy and blessings.
Last year on December 22nd, Gaura Nitāi deities were installed at home. It was moment fo bliss to see them in our alter smiling at us. We are so fortunate to have such divine personalities sitting in our alter and showering their cuasless mercy on our impure minds and hearts. This auspicious step has brought HUGE changes in our lives. My father was not really interested in being God Concious or praying but he would offer respect and obeisances in the temples, devotees or deities. But after Gaura Nitāi came, he has changed so much that it has left everyone in shock even in the yatra. When we took sankalpa for serving the deities, he just stood there and said " All of you have already taken seva but what am I going to do?" so my mother suggested that he can start by offering Tulasi at their feet and offering a glass of water each in the morning before he went to office. He was religiously doing it with so much glee and happiness. Then he wanted more seva after a while, so I started to share my seva of massaging their feet and putting a blanket on for them to sleep in. He wanted to massage their body starting from their feet to their head. Once, he could not make it back home before their sleeping time, so I massaged their feet and put them to sleep. The next day my father told me that Gaura Nitāi weren't smiling as usual, that made us all sad and we started to ask for forgiveness from them. Then my father realized realized that the other night he was unable to do his seva due to which gaura Nitāi had reciprocated. Since then he has gotten so serious with his spiritual life, he started to go for bhakti vṛkṣa class and he also secretly listens to Prabhupāda's lectures. He will come home and start some discussion with a question and when we are unable to answer he will quote exactly what Śrīla Prabhupāda says about that topic. My father has started chanting 8 rounds regularly, because he was told by senior devotees that if one wants to serve the deities, they have to at least chant 8 rounds.
I have also had many realizations lately.
I have been trying my best to bring myself upto the mark for taking shelter under Your lotus feet but there are so many hurdles and problem that I am facing that it is demotivating me and bringing negative thoughts in me. It is so difficult to bring myself to be positive about the situation. I want to share my feelings with someone but there is something that is not letting me do it because I have this constant fear that devotees including my siksa guru and my parents as well as other people will hate me so much because of the way I talk and think. I'm very scared of being chastised.
Recently, one of my close friends, who is a Muslim was diagnosed with autoimmune encephalitis out of the blue. She was slowly slipping in coma but with the prayers of devotees and her family/ friends she was able to talk today. Two weeks before I was confused when I saw her lying on the hospital bed slipping in and out of consciousness, immobile and just being able to hear and respond with moans. She was crying and struggling to speak but she couldn’t. Her mind and body was not supporting her at all. At that time, I didn't what I should do and say to her or her family to make them feel better. Then I was asked to chant in her ear and then applied Narasiṁha Oil on her head and hand. I am still unable to think about the way I should be thinking and doing things in this situation. There were so many prayers messages for her around our school and other religious communities. At last, it struck me that this is how Kṛṣṇa works, It was all His plan that she came out alive. I was also thinking, what if I was in her position, I would've want to say so many things to many devotees and my parents and apologize to them for grave mistakes that I have committed all these 17 years of my life but I would've have never been able to think about Kṛṣṇa in all this pain.
I have had a hard time in school in the last 5 years because after getting serious with my spiritual life I had constricted my mind and thoughts due to which I was not able to able to gel with the school people. My opinions would alwyas clash with theirs because I thought that taking up spiritual life has made me so great that whatever I did was right but then in that process I received so much hate from veryone around me including my parents. These mistakes have taught me so much that I feel like it is making me better day by day.
I have almost finished my 12th grade and to serve as a soldier in Your army to fulfill Prabhupāda's mission, I will be studying Psychology in university and will be pursuing a degree in a Psychology. I am going to be finishing Bhakti Shastri units in this year.
I am still so very selfish, and stubborn. These things I wish I would grow out of. Maybe greed for purification and stubborn to help others.
As said, when the pupil is ready the teacher will appear: You showed me the way, to serving at the lotus feet of The Lord, and for that I’m eternally grateful to You. I listen to Your lectures every day, which inspire me to do my seva and duties with more determination.
You are my spiritual master, and I am Your eternal servant. Sometimes I desire having a very friendly relationship with You, of which You accept me as a significant servant. But that is my false ego wanting to feel important. If I could ask any benediction from You, it would be simply to serve You always in all circumstances and to have genuine attachment and ability to always chant the sacred and divine names of the Lord, with all humility.
I, most fervently, pray to Lord Narsimha Dev that You quickly recover and start traveling more and more to accomplish Your objective of ‘nagar gram tarine’. I also beg You today to please forgive me for the offences that I commit unknowingly while being engaged in my services, due to my incorrigible nature. I hope that, gradually, with Your mercy, I will be able to make myself a better devotee. This is possible only if I have Your mercy; else I am completely incapable of achieving anything.
Please, accept this humble request to allow me to always provide sincere service at Your lotus feet.
With love,
Your aspiring servant,
Karishma Joshi