Respected and Dear Guru Maharaja,
Please accept my prostrated obeisances! All glories to your most wonderful self and Srila Prabhupada and all our present and previous acharyas!
Wishing you fantastic health over this year and in the many many years to come! As the world is going through a crisis like what we are experiencing now, its so much a need and necessity that wise and compassionate souls like you remain here with the human population for many decades to come to guide humanity in the right direction and in the right application of shastras!
Guru Maharaja, in one of the lectures from the Enlightenment series, you tell that the most important thing one can learn from one’s spiritual master is - how to be a disciple, for the guru is the ideal example of a disciple of his spiritual master. And as one crisis after another engulfs the world at large and also in my personal life as well, your example of the focus on serving the orders of your spiritual master shines forth as the Kohinoor diamond of an example for me to look upon. Every year Lord inspires some aspect of your personality to look up to - and this year - it has been your razor-sharp focus on Srila Prabhupada’s instructions.
Be it in the ICU or ICCU or cycling or speaking with devotees or Skype conferences or giving Caitanya lila classes or whatnot, you are completely transcendental to the external situations or the travails which material nature and the modes may throw around you. You remain completely transcendental to all this. You are the perfect living example of what Lord Shyamsundar speaks in the Bhagavad Gita - as someone who seeks happiness from within
yo ’ntaḥ-sukho ’ntar-aaraamas
tathaantar-jyotir eva yaḥ
sa yogii brahma-nirvaaṇaṁ
brahma-bhuuto ’dhigacchati
One whose happiness is within, who is active and rejoices within, and whose aim is inward is actually the perfect mystic. He is liberated in the Supreme, and ultimately he attains the Supreme.
Guru Maharaja, the example which you have set and are setting - its for eternity to come! With just a little bit of sickness or self-isolation or breathing difficulties, the human race is throwing so much tantrum. Hardly would the external world know what battles you have fought. How you breathed through the ventilator/oxygen cylinders/intubation pipes, the stomach taps to remove the accumulated liquid, what physical traumas your body has taken and how much people serving you personally have gone through - and how, despite all this, you have come out victorious!!! We all of us, for all time to come, can look to this person - Srila Jayapataka Swami Guru Maharaja - who battled and went through the impossible and still is going along in his own internal focus of carrying out the instructions of Srila Prabhupada. As I write of this, some words of Srila Prabhupada, from a lecture on BG 2.2 comes to memory and how much you are a living example of these words…. Both as a disciple and as a sannyasi, for this year marks the 50th year of your sannyasa as well…
‘So Viśvanātha Cakravartī Ṭhākura, in connection with the verse vyavasāyātmikā-buddhir ekeha kuru-nandana.... Niścayātmikā-buddhiḥ. So Viśvanātha Cakravartī Ṭhākura says that "The instruction which I have received from my spiritual master, that is my life and soul." This is called niścayātmikā-buddhiḥ, means assurance "Whatever I have received, the order from my spiritual master, that will give me salvation." Or even no salvation. It doesn't matter. A real devotee, a servant, does not expect anything, but kāryam: "It is my duty. It is my duty." If one takes in such spirit...
Anāśritaḥ karma-phalaṁ kāryaṁ karma karoti yā . Kāryam. Kāryam means "It is my duty. It must be done. That's my duty." Without any result. Anāśrita-karma-phalaṁ. Karma-phalaṁ. Every action, there is a result. Bad or good, it doesn't matter, there must be some result. So anāśritaḥ karma-phalaṁ. Don't take shelter of the result of your work. Generally we work if the result is very good, then we like to work; if the result is not very good, then we don't like to work. But a devotee should not take...
Anāśritaḥ karma-phalaṁ kāryaṁ karma karoti yaḥ. Do not take shelter of your result of your activities. You must take it as duty. He is sannyāsī. Anāśritaṁ karma-phalaṁ kāryaṁ karma karoti yaḥ, sa sannyāsī. He's actually sannyāsī. A sannyāsī does not become simply by changing dress. No. Sannyāsī means he's to work for Kṛṣṇa, without taking shelter of the result. It doesn't matter. "Kṛṣṇa has ordered, and Kṛṣṇa's representative has ordered. Therefore I have to do it." Kāryaṁ karma karoti yaḥ, sa sannyāsī.’
You are an embodiment of the words Srila Prabhupada has spoken. Whatever may come, you continue on serving the orders which you have received from your Guru Maharaja.
Guru Maharaja, on one side, is you - who is the huge brilliant shining glowing brilliant Mt.Everest-like example of what a perfect servitor, disciple, celibate-sannyasi, and a Guru should be, and another side is me - and I feel very shameful to even tell that ‘I am a disciple of Srila Jayapataka Swami’, for, I am totally the opposite of the qualities you embellish. I hang my head in shame. With what face would I ever come in front of you. All you have given me is kindness, affection, spiritual wisdom, care, qualities which I could look upon, trusted me by accepting my initiation words of commitment, Holynames, Dham, Deities, Bhagavatam, Caitanya Lila, Srila Prabhupada, Krsna Prasadam, and whatnot… and as a return, even the basic commitments, I haven’t been able to keep up over the last 1 year, forget about the other big things which many stalwart Godbrothers, Godsisters and God-cousins are doing for the parampara. I feel really ashamed but at the same time helpless, strengthless and clueless.
Guru Maharaja, I am really really sick of this world. We are seeing so many deaths around us. It may appear very selfish what I am asking for - but I just want to get out of this material world. Enough of this place. Its way too complicated. Best of intentions and purely motivated decisions produce an opposite result and honestly, I do not have the strength to be in this world in subsequent births - where things can get more and more complicated and scary. Though I have this negative motivation to be out of this world, I do lack the positive motivation of the higher taste or love for the Lord. I do not want to be a misfit in the spiritual world, but at the same time, I do not want to be here in this material creation as well. Plus there are these mountains of karma to be burnt and fresh karmas accumulating by the day. As I think of all this, and my utter lack of any pure experience of Krsna-prema or Guru-prema or Vaisnava-prema, its a trembling thought and feeling as to what will happen if I don't make it this life. Even the experiences within the spiritual realm have been tough - putting my own convictions down and depriving me of confidence in the spiritual path I have traversed so far.
Guru Maharaja, as acharyas like you repeatedly teach - this human life is so rare. If I do not make it in this life, I really do not know when, how, where I would again come in contact with the vaishnavas, gurus, the holy kshetras, the lectures, etc etc which I have got in this life. So, please….I do not want to take a chance. I really want to finish it off once and for all in this birth. So, I am really asking you and through you, all the parampara acharyas - both in Gaudiya line and in other lines like Sri, Kumara, Rudra, and even Shankara sampradaya acharyas - please bless me with the ruchi or practical higher taste in the relationship of servitude to Hari, Guru and Vaishnavas. Let bhakti flow in me naturally and let me be a natural lover of Sri Sri Nitai Gaurasundara, Lord Lakshmi Nrsimha deva, Sri Sri Krsna Balarama, Sri Sri Radha Syamasundara and my wonderful spiritual masters and the vaisnavas and vaisnavis. I really do not have a conviction-realization-based experience of the natural higher taste and flow of devotional sentiments and service in relationships - be it spiritual or material. I don’t have any adhikar, I still have sense-gratifactory desires, and what not - yet, I need this higher taste. I want to get out of this world with a positive motivation not just out of aversion of this world. That’s my prayer to you this year. Please. And please do not forget me. Please. Carry me along out of this world.
Guru Maharaja, speaking of a realistic positive experience - I did shed some true feelings of tears of gratitude to Srila Prabhupada. Will you please pass it onto him? :) :) :)
Its for something very trivial but very essential - prasadam/food. As I write this, I am in Sydney. As if the existing entropies in life were not sufficient, moving to a new country was an added mix into the equation. And with the intent to save every single $, spending 10$ for 2 Idlis in an Indian restaurant was a luxury which I could not afford. At the same time, my stomach would literally grumble and for the first time in my life so far, I experienced what hunger really means. The bottom of the stomach at times really ties up in knots and the sound of the burning jataragni could be heard. And in such a context, one devotee friend of mine told me that ISKCON Sydney gives free prasadam morning and evening as it was Srila Prabhupada’s order that no people around the temple should go hungry. So, here I go - in a foreign land, alone and not having tasted proper rice-based food for many weeks... and when I went to ISKCON Sydney to have prasadam - looking at the free plate of food with rice, dhal, sabji, puri and sweet, and on another day - kichidi … I just cried and said a profound ‘THANK YOU’ to Srila Prabhupada and devotees of ISKCON Sydney. Please tell my thanks to him. I have heard you narrate the story of Srila Prabhupada crying in Mayapur seeing hungry people feeding off the thrown leaves - and now, I have a realization of what hunger can drive one to. It was so kind of him to establish the free prasadam program at Mayapur. Not many temples, even in India, give free food. I do not know how many 1000s are there in India, going hungry and looking for their next meal. And you, more than anyone, can resonate with the poor villagers of Bangladesh and Bengal, and know their needs. You know what their life is and how important is food for them. And no wonder did you arrange for the mass Khichdi distribution during Ganges floods and thus, have an eternal place in their hearts. I hope someday, most of our temples in India would distribute free prasadam to the hungry daily. It may/may not produce devotees who would be useful to an individual yatra/project/temple, but for sure - people would never ever forget and be ever grateful to the hand that fed their hungry stomach and would throughout their lives be remembering and feel indebted to Srila Prabhupada and devotees, which would make them dear in the eyes of the Lord. If Krsna so allows, I shall also see what little squirrel seva I can be of in this direction.
Guru Maharaja, before I forget, please give your blessings to my parents and family members - they have been through just too much just because of me and my lack of spirituality and leadership.
Hare Krsna Guru Maharaja! I hope that - if I would be around to pen an offering to you next year - on both an individual level and on a global level, things would be in a more clearer, brighter and happier setting. You please take care and stay safe!
Aspiring to be your loving servant/son,
praying for higher taste,
with head bowing down in shame,
Śrī Narasiṁha dāsa