Dear Guru Maharaj
Please accept my respectful obeisance unto your lotus feet
All glories to Srila Prabhupada
Gurudeva, you are teaching us the pure path of devotional service. I wish to share my meditation on some of your divine qualities.
Executing intense devotional service at all circumstances
You are one of the powerful soldiers of Srila Prabhupada, showing all of us how to execute devotional service among adversities. Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu in the last verse of Siksastaka mentions “adarśanān marma-hatāṁ karotu vā yathā tathā vā vidadhātu”, whatever position the Lord Krishna may put, I will not budge an inch from the intense devotion to You. Gurudeva, you are an ideal example in this regard. You have all reasons to be in one place and still inspire many souls in Krishna Consciousness but still you take the trouble to go to places where no one goes to preach, just to please your spiritual master His Divine Grace Srila Prabhupada. You have not reduced your services to Srila Prabhupada, in this condition, rather you have expanded your services more and more.
Completely free from envy a quality of resident of Sri Vrindavan/Sri Mayapur
Srila Prabhupada write in purport to Srimad Bhagavatam 10.13.60 “Envy develops because of sense gratification, but in Vṛndāvana there is no sense gratification, for the only aim is Kṛṣṇa’s satisfaction”. I have personally witnessed how devotees having differences and misunderstandings could easily confess and take your guidance and resolve their issues. Anyone can approach you and feel completely sheltered and secure. This is because your heart is completely free from envy, rather it is filled with intense desire to help every single person of this world.
Unlimited compassion
One may be satisfied to preach as much as possible. But you constantly think of the many souls who are out there in this world and think how will they get Krishna Consciousness. We hear many of your pastimes where, you go out of the way to give Krishna Consciousness to people at hospitals, airports and many unusual places. I have heard from devotees about your recent travels of South America. You had visited places where no other preachers normally go, places where there is constant security threat. In such a health condition of yours, visiting such places is much more than adventurous, it is intense and unlimited compassion you have. One may go to such places with great difficulty occasionally, but you happily expressed that you wish to go there every year. It is just to please Srila Prabhupada. We can only count on our good fortune that Lord Krishna and Srila Prabhupada has gifted your association to have a firsthand experience of mood of a Vaikunta man.
Identity as a servant of the spiritual master
From your lectures we can understand how by serving and pleasing one’s spiritual master one achieves all the perfection. Focus on executing the instructions of spiritual master is the prime identity of the disciple. Your life is a perfect example of this. You could have chosen to execute some of the instructions of Srila Prabhupada as it is convenient, but you remember all the instructions Srila Prabhupada, both formal and casual as both of them are vani of spiritual master, and you strive to follow every bit of it. You constantly remember these instructions. Your only identity is that of servant of Srila Prabhupada.
Your qualities are unlimited and each of them are very deep. As an insignificant soul I can see some of your qualities and to a very shallow level. My only hope is that I grow my intensity to follow your instructions, which are your actual mercy, as my life and soul. I seek your blessings to follow your instructions.
I have heard from my seniors, that the spiritual master is pleased when he sees the disciple engaged in service of Lord Krishna always and develops divine qualities. On this auspicious occasion I pray that I may be blessed with a drop of your good qualities, that can offer you pleasure.
Please bless me that my mind, which constantly hovers on sense gratification be pulled into thoughts of executing your instructions.
Your servant
Hariksetra das