My dearest Spiritual Master,
Please accept my most respectful obeisances at Your Divine Lotus Feet. My life air is only subsisting with simply by the merciful eternal blessing of Your Divine Grace. Time is eternal with that come this humble servant of Your Divine Grace to beg unlimited merciful glimpse of Your Divine Grace to be able to have this rarest opportunity to be with the devotees of Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, Gauranga. Your Divine Grace has Gauranga and ONLY Your Divine Grace can give us.
Let me begin my homage to Your Divine Grace by reflecting my pledges from last year. It had been a very trying and also a very sobering period; seeing Your Divine Grace struggling with so many health issues and yet showing the prove of Your Divine Grace’s spiritual potencies by enthusing us in many different ways to continue to preach and take up this devotional services seriously. My heart pains when Your Divine Grace reminding all your spiritual children to follow up the vows taken during initiation and chanting seriously.
All these years, Your Divine Grace has been leading us and now teaching us by example how we should fix our mind at the base of instruction to practice and preach this devotional cult. There is no any other parallel situation at present in the world that we could compare with to comprehend Your Divine Graces greatness. Your Divine Grace defy all material laws to continue to be with us and bestow unlimited compassion upon all the conditional souls so we could be attracted to devotional life. I am stupefied with these wonderful qualities that Your Divine Grace exhibiting in order to safe all of us, eternally condition souls. I am having so many defects and unwanted desires which is obstructing my service to Your Divine Grace. How am I to surpass this Anartha-nirvirti stage which comprises zillion of zillion life time of karmic reaction that constantly impeding my little endeavours? My only hope is the shelter of the lotus feet of Your Divine Grace to subdue my mind and draw it toward devotional service.
Guru Maharaja, Not a moment passes without Your Divine Grace meditating on how to fulfil Srila Prabhupada’s desires and keep up His Divine Grace’s legacy of expanding preaching the glories of Sri Dham Mayapur. Give me a drop of that nectarean service at your lotus feet so that I could be a tool in this service eternally. Let my mind be drawn towards Mayapura dham as my eternal abode in the service of Guru and Gauranga.
There are another two main instructions that Your Divine Grace had given me of which one is a part of last year’s pledge to re-engaged my preaching activities with students at all levels. In year 2005, Your Divine Grace blessed the Bhaktivedanta Student Center (BSC) in Penang which was the base for university and college student activities but due to my own personal shortfall, it had become defunct since the year 2010, when I had dengue fever and my mind never recovered from that. As per my promise last year, I am trying to reactivate this center with new student energy. I am begging Your Divine Grace to shower me with spiritual strength to revive and expand this student preaching. With the help of ISKCON Penang Botanical Garden center, we are doing some student outreach program together with few other devotees by having children program and school/college/university prasadam distribution.
Guru Maharaja, another specific instruction given to me 27 years ago is that I should be ready to take to vanaprastha asrama near future which actually already exceeded the time period that Your Divine Grace indicated. Even though, I have been living as single person for the last 10 years, it never dawn to my mind that this is actually the working of my karma to follow Your Divine Grace’s instruction to get ready to attempt vanaprastha vows. Now, I am starting an extensive research on this asrama to understand exactly the principles that I should follow and at the same time trying to apply these principles accordingly. I need guidance and also similar minded devotees to help each other to execute this mission of my life. By observing some of the principles I am begging Your Divine Grace’s blessing that my chanting could improve from mechanical chanting towards meditative. I am trying my best hard to concentrate during this chanting and one thing I am doing is to focus when I am doing my gayathri mantra which is especially helping me to improve my concentration. All these years, I had been doing things routinely and would want to change that attitude. Let this chanting of Hare Krishna, the great mantra for deliverance become the air of my life.
Guru Maharaja, one last thing but not least, I have also taken a mission to lend a helping hand to an ailing god-sister to execute a task given to her by Your Divine Grace. She had made many attempts with various parties and other senior members to fulfil the task given to her but come to square one. Recently, she requested me to assists her and gave to me the detailed information of the task. It is a mammoth task to accomplish and without the complete blessing of Your Divine Grace and all the previous acharyas, it is not possible for me to handle the intricacies involved. I only agreed to be involved in this task to facilitate with the authorization of my local authorities.
I also had the blessing of HH Bhakti Vrajananda Maharaja, previous ISKCON Malaysia President, who had told me a few years ago to engage those devotees who had gone away from Srila Prabhupada with activities to be favourable toward ISKCON. The task I am involved now is very much related to this directive given by Maharaja. I hope I could be useful in fulfilling Your Divine Grace’s desire to bring together everyone to the lotus feet of Srila Prabhupada.
I am praying to Sri Sri Pralada Narasimha, Sri Pancatatva Bhagavan, Sri Sri Jaganatha Baladeva Subhadra and Sri Sri Radha Madhava Asta Sakhi daily to always protect Your Divine Grace from any of my offenses and failures. Let Their Lordship penalize me for all my shortcomings and release Your Divine Grace from the burden of taking the reaction of my limitations. Let Their Lordship give me the intelligence and spiritual strengths to overcome all my deficiencies in serving v. I am praying again and again, Oh my mind Oh my mind, when will you reform and obtain the shelter of My Spiritual Master’s Lotus Feet.
mukam karoti vachalam pangum langhayate girim
yat-kripa tam aham vande shri-gurum dina-taranamparama-ananda Madhavam sri Caitanya isvaram
Humble servant of your servant,
Chaitanya Hari Das,
Penang, Malaysia.
