Dearest Guru Maharaja,
Please accept my respectful obeisances at your lotus feet. All glories to you, Guru Maharaja.
All glories to Srila Prabhupada and his serious followers!
In the early 1990s, there was a magazine called ‘Sri Guru Mukha Padma Vakya’ which was published regularly to present instructions from you, Guru Maharaja- excerpts from your letters to your disciples, classes and anecdotes of your activities. There was one particular volume with an instruction from you which left a deep impression in my heart. You said, “People usually say, ‘Fight fire with fire’, but I always say ‘Fight fire with water’”. This has always struck me as a prominent and outstanding characteristic of you, Guru Maharaja.
I became your disciple in 1994 and in all these years, I’ve always seen that your desire to cooperate with others stands out prominently. Since the year 1999, I’ve had the fortune to assist you in various secretarial tasks, culminating in taking up the role of handling your secretarial office as your executive secretary since 2011. The variety of letters that you receive is mindboggling. Along with the good and inspiring letters that you receive, you also receive letters that are critical, confrontational and complex in various ways. In every single letter that you have received which are critical or confrontational, I’ve always been amazed by the humility and gentlemanliness with which you have responded, without exception.
In 1999, one Guru and GBC was highly critical of you. You told me, “Please invite him to your temple and serve him nicely”. On another occasion, there was another GBC and Guru who was critical of you so you sent one of my godbrothers to invite him for prasadam.
Sometimes when you write a letter, before sending it out, you would ask me, “Is this alright? What do you think?” And you do that quite often, Guru Maharaja. It surprises me each time, to see your humility and how careful you are, to maintain proper standard of etiquette in dealing with devotees.
In 1998, a prominent disciple in South India, who was leading a big yatra, came up with a deviant philosophy called Rtvikism and began to criticise you severely. I was part of that yatra and was shocked at what was going on. Some of my godbrothers and me complained to the local GBC, which was you, Guru Maharaja, and the GBC body, about the disturbance that this leader was creating. Very soon, you came to visit everybody in the yatra along with some senior Prabhupada’s disciples to sort out the problem. Some devotees expected that you would be very heavy in dealing with this leader. To everyone’s surprise, in the first class you gave after you arrived, you glorified this deviant leader for about an hour explaining how dedicated he was to Prabhupada, how he has rendered various services to you, for which you were very grateful and indebted, especially how this leader was among the first ones who arrived in Spain to help you in the hospital when you were physically attacked by a crazy man at the Madrid airport.
During that one-hour talk, I could immediately sense that although you were the target of severe attack by this deviant leader, you chose to instead look at the good qualities of that leader, glorify him, and express your indebtedness to him, Guru Maharaja. I could unambiguously understand that this is what it means to ‘Fight fire with water’.
In the year 2000, I was part of the temple management team in an ISKCON temple. A couple of us had trouble with what we perceived to be lack of principle-based management by the other members of the team. Having an aggressive nature, I began to write strongly to those members of the management team with very unpalatable words in our internal communications through e-mail. They were quite offended by the style in which I did it. At that point, a godbrother asked me a question which halted me in my tracks. He asked, “Acintya, would Guru Maharaja write letters about issues in the style that you did?” That was it. I didn’t have to think about it. You wouldn’t do it. So I spontaneously apologised to those members of the management team who had felt offended and sent a copy of that letter to you, Guru Maharaja.
You responded on December 5, 2000, “I am glad that you are re-establishing better relations with the other senior devotees in a favourable manner. I am very moved by your exalted opinion of me. I am very insignificant and a reservoir of negative qualities. So I can only see your high opinion of me as evidence of ‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder’ or that you are a beautiful person.”
Not just with your godbrothers, you are also very careful with how you deal with your disciples. Once in 1996, when you arrived for a Rath Yatra in South India, I enquired from you whether you had received and read a letter which I had written about four weeks earlier and that I needed some specific direction from you. You responded in a strong tone, “Why don’t you become my secretary and help me to handle my correspondence?” I was momentarily stunned and then later on began to think how I can try to fulfil this. One day later, after I had attended the morning class, I went home, which was fifteen miles away, with a plan to come back for the evening class. An hour later, a godbrother came home telling me that you wanted to meet me. So I rushed back to the temple. To my great surprise, you said, “I hope you are not angry with how I spoke to you yesterday. Please forgive me.” A couple of years later, while in Mayapur, you chastised one of my senior godbrothers. A few moments later, you told him, “Please forgive me. How do you tolerate me?” There are several other instances where I have seen, where you do not hesitate to apologise even to Disciples. In 2014 January, you wrote a letter to one of your disciples about a management issue. You asked me what I thought about it. I said it looked pretty fine and gave explanations why I thought it was fine. The next few days, you spoke about the letter a few times and then you had to travel. So I presumed that you may have sent the letter. One month later, when I asked you about that letter, you simply said, “I did not send it”. So then I asked, “Why don’t you send it now?” You replied, “I think it was strong”. So you did not finally send it, Guru Maharaja.
In 2015, you had a specific bonafide desire to do something while several of your godbrothers approached you, requesting you to change your mind, because they had an equally bonafide different desire. You eventually agreed to their request. I was quite surprised because I knew how strong you were about your own desire. So I asked you, Guru Maharaja, “How did you change your mind?” You replied, “I don’t want to displease my godbrothers.”
Through all these years of being with you, Guru Maharaja and seeing your mood in serving Srila Prabhupada, I’m reminded of what Prabhupada said: “I don’t know Krishna. I know my Guru Maharaja and he knows Krishna”. Like this, your seriousness in taking Srila Prabhupada’s instructions to heart, “Your love for me will be shown by how much you cooperate together”, is a fine example of how to love Prabhupada. So I always think, we don’t know what love for Krishna means. So if we can love Prabhupada like how you love Prabhupada, then we can love Krishna.
Your insignificant servitor,
Acintya Caitanya Dasa (Diksa), Mayapur, India