Vyāsa-pūjā 2020
nama oṁ viṣṇu-pādāya kṛṣṇa-preṣṭhāya bhū-tale
śrīmate jayapatākā-svāmin iti nāmine
namo ācāryapādāya nitāi-kṛpa-pradāyine
gaura-kathā dhāmadhāya nagara-grāma tāriṇe
My dear spiritual father His Holiness Jayapataka Swami Guru Mahārāja,
I offer my respectful obeisances unto your lotus feet on the auspicious occasion of your 71st Vyasa-puja celebration. All glories to your lotus feet!
My dear Guru Maharaja,
You are the dear, empowered, intimate and the most beloved disciple of Srila Prabhupada. Throughout your life (which is a glorious life of commitment and surrender unto the lotus feet of Srila Prabhupada) by your personal behaviour, you have displayed the mood and mind of an ideal disciple. It is indeed flabbergasting to see the unmotivated and uninterrupted fashion in which you conduct yourself as a committed and determined disciple of Srila Prabhupada. Your attachment to Srila Prabhupada and your daily meditation on his instructions is your very identity and this very fact makes you a crown jewel of this world.
“guru-mukha-padma-vākya, cittete kariyā aikya,
āra nā kariha mane āśā”
Narottama Dāsa Ṭhākura advises everyone to stick to the principle of carrying out the orders of the spiritual master. One should not desire anything else. If the regulative principles ordered by the spiritual master are followed rigidly, the mind will gradually be trained to desire nothing but the service of Kṛṣṇa. Such training is the perfection of life. Guru Maharaja, having attained the pinnacle of perfection in your own life, you are now mercifully passing on the same formula into the hearts of your disciples. Srila Prabhupada would be so pleased with you.
Beloved Guru Maharaja,
You are the perfect representative of the Guru Parampara. Your magnanimity and eagerness to give the mercy of Guru Parampara to all are melting even the stone-like hearts of those whose only goal of life is sense gratification. Displaying an undaunting spirit of unparalleled compassion, you now have more than 50000 disciples. It is inconceivable how you prepare your mind to continuously give shelter to more and more conditioned souls and then pray for them, nourish the via your instructions and inspire them by your personal conduct. Your life is an offering of selfless service to the Guru Parampara. The deep care and intimate concern which you show for your disciples is the direct embodiment of the causeless mercy of Sri Krishna Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. Your activities, mood, mind, and symptoms are all inconceivable for an unworthy and ungrateful disciple like me, as also is rightly pointed out by Krishnadas Kaviraj Goswami.
“yāṅra citte kṛṣṇa-premā karaye udaya
tāṅra vākya, kriyā, mudrā vijñeha nā bujhaya” (CC Madhya, 23.39)
Translation
“Even the most learned man cannot understand the words, activities and symptoms of a person situated in love of Godhead.”
My dear Master of my life,
You exist in a transcendental realm as an eternal associate of Lord Chaitanya and are simultaneously favouring this world by your Vapu and Vani. The goal of your life is to simply to broadcast the never-ending glories of Patitpavana Sri Krishna Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. You leave everyone around you spellbound by your heart-throbbing narrations of the pastimes and the unlimited mercy of Lord Chaitanya. Your attachment to the lotus feet of Lord Chaitanya is rarest. This attachment is so exemplary that in order to serve Him you live on the “Avayrtha Kalatvam platform”, that is you don’t waste even a single moment of your time. I have heard from my seniors, who have fortunately got your close association, that you indeed never forget Lord Chaitanya and Srila Prabhupada even for a moment. You mercifully exhibit your devotion by showing qualities like forgiveness, concern that time should not be wasted, detachment, absence of false prestige, hope, eagerness, a taste for chanting the holy name of the Lord, attachment to descriptions of the transcendental qualities of the Lord, and affection for those places where the Lord resides-that is, a temple or a holy place like Mayapur or Vṛndāvana. You carry the mercy of Lord Chaitanya in your heart and have become His instrument. You make the spiritual lives of your disciples easy by telling them the success formula to persevere in spiritual life which is,
“kathañcana smṛte yasmin
duṣkaraṁ sukaraṁ bhavet
vismṛte viparītaṁ syāt
śrī-caitanyaṁ namāmi tam” (CC Adi, 14.1)
Translation
“Things that are very difficult to do become easy to execute if one somehow or other simply remembers Lord Caitanya Mahāprabhu. But if one does not remember Him, even easy things become very difficult. To this Lord Caitanya Mahāprabhu, I offer my respectful obeisances.”
My dear Ever-tolerant Father,
I am your very ungrateful and thoroughly wicked disciple. The fact that I am still surviving in my spiritual life is the living proof of your unlimited tolerance and patience. Srila Prabhupada says “Great unalloyed devotees of the Lord are compassionate towards the fallen, and therefore they travel all over the world with the mission of bringing souls back to Godhead, back to home. Such pure devotees of the Lord carry the message of Godhead in order to deliver the fallen souls, and therefore the common man who is bewildered by the influence of the external energy of the Lord should avail himself of their association.” (SB 3.5.3). Guru Maharaja, although I am unable to associate with you personally because you are a transcendental traveler, I am trying my best to associate with you via your instructions. However, Guru Maharaja, I face many difficulties and obstacles in my spiritual life.
In one of your Radhashtami lectures on Sep 07, 1981, in Boston, you very tactfully compare the nine stages of devotion to the extraction of sugar candy from sugarcane. You compare the initial seed of sugarcane to the Shraddha, its juice to Association of devotees, refining the sugarcane juice as Bhajan Kriya and you go on to compare the process of boiling the sugarcane juice for removing the impurities to Anartha Nivritti. You describe how the Bhakti is independent of all other yoga practices by mentioning that even to boil this sugarcane, the waste bagasse(left-over) of the sugarcane is used and no external fuel is required. You then go on explaining other stages of devotion and analytically compare it to various stages of sugarcane processing, but I lose my heart in the description of Anartha Nivritti phase.
Guru Maharaja, because I am your disciple, I am determined to cross over the unfathomable ocean of anarthas in my heart, but I am struggling and am weak at heart and it overwhelms me. When the sugarcane waste gets thrown out, although human beings don't eat it, the dogs, they like it. The stray dogs come and lap it up and become intoxicated by eating the garbage. I am like that stray dog, which is satisfied with little sweetness mixed with dirt. The weeds and anarthas in my heart exist because I don’t have a higher taste in Bhakti. I don’t have the capacity to weed out my anarthas, so I beg you to be merciful to me.
In the same lecture, you compare the crystallized form sugar to Nishtha and explain how the crystallization process begins by putting a crystal in the sugarcane juice and then the whole thing crystallizes. You mention the following
“So, in the same way, we practice; we purify, but ultimately we have to get the mercy from Vaishnavas. We have to get special mercy from those who are very close to Krishna. This is what crystallizes everything. This is what makes everything perfect. If we think that we can directly reach the Absolute Truth, we will reach the Absolute Truth with our own effort, there are so many pitfalls that ultimately it doesn’t crystallize. So, the process is that we take the shelter of the bonafide spiritual master, take the shelter of a Vaishnavas. In this way we reach very easily. So, then we have crystal Gur and that is further refined into a candy. So that candy Gur is like very nice taste. So that the crystal is like Nishtha, fixed devotion, very fixed devotion. As one has got the impurities off, has the mercy of the spiritual master, then his devotional service becomes fixed. That means no longer is the mind chanchala.”
Guru Maharaja, you are so charitable and magnanimous, please mercifully give the seed of Nishtha Bhakti as a charity to me, so that I can begin to serve you and your servants with complete chastity and thorough obedience.
I want to dedicate my life to your service, trying to imbibe a fraction of your innumerable qualities. Your mercy is my only wealth. Please give me the strength to take full shelter of your instructions and become your faithful servant and representative. Please make a puppet in your hands use me as an instrument to broadcast the glories of Srila Prabhupada and Lord Chaitanya. Just like the chakora bird always looks towards the moon and longs for it, feeling its incapability to attain it, but never losing hope, this insignificant disciple of your divine grace, hankers for a drop of your mercy. I aspire to become a faithful servant of your servants.
Yours eternally,
Acyuta Arjunasakha Das,
Śrī Śrī Narasiṁha Giridhari Mandir,
Bangalore, India