Europe & Russia, Homages ISKCON Centers, VP2026
Dear Śrīla Prabhupāda,
Please accept our humble obeisances. All glories to Your Divine Grace.
In your purport to Śrī Caitanya-caritāmṛta, Madhya 25.20, it is written: “We have been spreading this saṅkīrtana movement in the Western countries, and in our recent tour of European cities like Rome, Geneva, Paris, and Frankfurt. Many learned Christian scholars, priests, philosophers, and yogīs came to see us, and by the grace of Kṛṣṇa they agreed that the Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement, the bhakti cult, offers the topmost conclusion. Following in the footsteps of Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu, we are trying to convince everyone that the devotional service of the Lord is enjoined in every scripture.… It is not a question of being Christian, Muslim, or Hindu. One should be purely religious and freed from all these material designations. In this way one can learn the art of devotional service. This argument appeals to all intelligent men, and consequently the Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement is gaining ground throughout the world. Due to our solid logic and scientific presentation, Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu’s prediction that Kṛṣṇa consciousness will spread to every town and village throughout the world is gradually being realized.”
Śrīla Prabhupāda, you arrived in the West more than sixty years ago, entering an America that was blooming economically but dying morally. You came to a land of religious conflict, hypocrisy, and atheism – a place where people were cheated and even killed in the name of God. You personally explained to the people the difference between religion and atheism. Into this world of empty ritualism and impersonalism, you brought the purest gift: unconditional devotional service to the Lord. Many sincere souls embraced these teachings, finding them to be the only authentic truth in a world of materialistic superficiality.
Thanks to your sacrifice, countless people heard for the first time of the mercy of Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu and Śrī Nityānanda Prabhu – the most compassionate incarnations of divine love, who opened the path of chanting the holy name to the entire world. Through you, we received the chance to touch a spiritual reality where love for God awakens and the true meaning of human life is revealed.
Your movement and teachings brought a peace that no political leader could ever achieve. A powerful symbol of this was the Durban Ratha-yātrā, one of the first events where black- and white-skinned citizens danced together in spiritual unity, proving that Kṛṣṇa consciousness breaks all racial barriers. Your personality brought together people who would otherwise never speak; under your loving guidance, even communists and capitalists cooperated in service.
Now, sixty years later, the material world has not improved. Wars continue, nations compete, and large corporations dominate to the point that even pure food and milk are becoming increasingly scarce, just as you foretold. In these times, your followers are the ones maintaining your mission, spreading the desperately needed knowledge of the soul, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, and our eternal relationship with Him.
Śrīla Prabhupāda, in your commentary quoted at the beginning of this offering, you state that this universal message appeals to all intelligent men, so the movement gained traction and your words became reality. The potency and mercy you spread carry on as sincere souls continue to join your mission. In every town and village, “hippies” are being transformed into “happies,” and your divine books and legacy are more relevant than ever.
Your compassion has reached Bucharest, Romania, through your qualified and faithful disciples. Through their boundless dedication and your generous mercy, a living connection with the guru-paramparā has become possible for us as well.
Please accept our humble but sincere attempts to please Your Divine Grace and the guru-paramparā. Our humble results from this past year include:
- Public preaching: Over 50 programs conducted with more than 190 new guests.
- Prasādam distribution: Over 1,500 portions of premium-quality prasādam distributed.
- Book distribution: More than 1,000 of your transcendental books placed in the hands of the public.
- Festivals: Active participation in city festivals with kirtan and Vedic philosophy.
- Sādhu-saṅga: Hosted the annual Romanian Sādhu-saṅga festival, with over 100 international participants.
- Expansion: Established a new strategic presence in the city of Brasov.
Dear Śrīla Prabhupāda, your mission of spreading the saṅkīrtana movement continues even today. It is our greatest fortune to be connected to this inexhaustible stream of blessings. Our hearts are filled with eternal gratitude for the rarest gift: a connection to the guru-paramparā and the opportunity to serve.
We beg at your lotus feet to be used as instruments in Lord Caitanya’s mission. Please let us inherit your solid logic and scientific presentation of Kṛṣṇa consciousness. Please make us dance, make us speak, and empower us to distribute this message fearlessly. We pray to please you and the guru-paramparā by expanding across Romania to bring the art of devotional service to others.
Your insignificant servants,
The devotees of ISKCON Bucharest
Europe & Russia, Homages ISKCON Centers, VP2026
Dear Śrīla Prabhupāda,
Please accept my humble obeisances. All glories to you.
To write my offering this year, I began listening to your classes to better connect with you and help me meditate on you, which will inspire me to write the following lines. In 1977 you gave a class at the Bhaktivedanta Manor where you said: “This is the arrangement of Kṛṣṇa. If we strictly try to serve the spiritual master, his order, then Kṛṣṇa will give us all facilities. That is the secret. Although there was no possibility, I never thought, but I took it little seriously by studying a commentary by Viśvanātha Cakravartī Ṭhākura on the Bhagavad-gītā. In the Bhagavad-gītā verse [2.41], vyavasāyātmikā buddhir ekeha kuru–nandana … In connection with that verse Viśvanātha Cakravartī Ṭhākura gives his commentary, that we should take up the words from the spiritual master as our life and soul. We should try to carry out the instruction, the specific instruction of the spiritual master very rigidly, without caring for our personal benefit or loss.”
Listening to your impressive words, we can find in them everything that founded your success and helped you fulfill your mission. Humility, sincerity, loyalty, commitment, perseverance, and faith – for me, these are the main character traits, the virtues that I hear from your words, which have guaranteed your success in your loving service to your spiritual master.
The disciple receives instructions from the words of the spiritual master, but it is often not so easy to know what it means to fulfill those instructions. What will the full outcome of fulfilling those instructions be? The instructions you received were quite specific and quite narrow: “Write in English, publish books in English, you preach in English.”
But did this mean hundreds of beautiful temples, living farm communities, profitable restaurants, thousands of disciples, impressive Deity worship, world-renowned educational systems, and professionally organized Ratha-yātrā festivals?
These were all revealed by Kṛṣṇa over time to the extent to which your amazing service would develop. So much of these depended on your sincerity, whether you wanted “to make a mountain” out of something “seemingly very small.” You could have fulfilled the instructions you received by traveling to the West, distributing some books, and returning to India. But what you, dear Śrīla Prabhupāda, made of this the instruction your received was something truly extraordinary. This shows that you took the instructions very seriously and turned them into something magnificent.
There is the disciple who takes exactly what he has learned and masters that. He was told to do this, and he does that. This is nice. There is another disciple who takes what he had learned and says, What is the full outcome? What is the full consequence of this instruction? How can this service be developed? How can I build upon this? And then that disciple turns his instruction into something extraordinary. You are definitely the disciple who took the instructions of your Gurudeva and turned them into something very, very special.
This is our greatest fortune, this is our planet Earth’s greatest fortune. Thank you very, very much! We have all the facilities to practice Kṛṣṇa consciousness and go back to Godhead at the end of this lifetime.
Dearest Śrīla Prabhupāda, here at our Budapest yātrā we also already have a lot. We have an amazing temple building with lots of nice space in it for the people, beautiful Deities who charm everyone who sees Them, a profitable restaurant that distributes tasty prasādam, successful festivals at which devotees can celebrate various holy events, quite good book distribution, with the success of distributing full sets of your Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam on the streets, and last but not least, a few hundred enthusiastic and committed devotees.
These things are amazing, and we could reach them only by your mercy and by the sincere and loving services of many devotees. But please, Śrīla Prabhupāda, look at us with your empowering, loving gaze, and bless us to build an even more cohesive, seriously practicing, mutually helpful and respectful, mature-minded Kṛṣṇa conscious community of thousands more people! I wish we could be successful in this so that we can bring you some satisfaction as a token of our gratitude toward you! Thank you very much.
Your servant on behalf of the Budapest temple,
Gauramaṇi Dāsa
Europe & Russia, Homages ISKCON Centers, VP2026
Dear and infinitely merciful Śrīla Prabhupāda,
Please accept our humble obeisances from every member of the Chelyabinsk yātrā.
You are the perfect servant of the servant of the servant of Kṛṣṇa. You are not an abstract ideal, but a real example of a Vaiṣṇava who, with every breath, in every line, and in every decision has fulfilled the will of his gurudeva, Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura, the will of the paramparā, and the will of the Supreme Lord Himself. You never followed a formula. In your letters, meetings, and teachings you had a keen sense of timing, place, and circumstance. You found the unique key to each person’s heart, supporting one with gentle words, awakening another with strict guidance, and guiding a third through the patient repetition of the same truth.
But beneath this remarkable flexibility and personal warmth, there was an unwavering, diamondlike loyalty to your spiritual teacher’s mission. You showed us that true leadership is not about personal power but about spiritually powerful, selfless, impeccable service. We see in you not just a great ācārya but an ideal example of a Vaiṣṇava who has transformed his life into a bridge between the will of gurudeva and the real conditions of the material world.
In this year, 2026, we offer you the fruits of our humble service and our inner work on ourselves, fully aware that you are their true owner and inspiration. By your grace, our yātrā is gradually flourishing. We are raising the standards of Deity worship, and we are learning to treat arcana not as a ritual but as a living experience. Slowly but surely, we are transforming from a small community into a well-coordinated spiritual society, where every aspect is working in harmony. Daily worship is a regular occurrence, and every Wednesday devotees gather to sing kirtans that fill the city with the sound of the holy names. There are ongoing training courses, a Sunday program, and harināmas have become a regular occurrence not only in our city but also throughout the region.
We are doing a lot of work to interact with the city administration. We receive monthly visits from guests and preachers from other regions, enriching our understanding of the śāstras and our mood of service. Every day we read Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam together, and this joint immersion in the transcendental pastimes of the Lord helps to develop our unity. The number of devotees is growing, and the responsibility and inner maturity of each one is increasing. New young, active leaders and preachers are emerging.
We have started building our own temple and are setting up a dairy farm. But we look at all this without pride. It is not our merit. It is your energy flowing through our hands, your will clothed in our capabilities. There were moments when resources, both financial and human, were running out, when fatigue accumulated and our hands literally fell. Several times there was a temptation to stop, to curtail activity, to say: “We have done everything we could.” But in those moments, we remembered how, alone in a foreign country, with no resources or support, you carried the weight of a global mission on your shoulders, relying only on the guidance of your gurudeva. This memory became our oxygen. It transformed our fatigue into determination and our doubts into humble faith. We understand that everything that has grown over the past year is rightfully yours. We are merely the tools, and you have allowed us to be used.
Please accept our deepest gratitude from the very depths of our hearts. You guide us not only through books and lectures but through the very heartbeat of our daily ministry. In moments of acute resource scarcity, when it seemed that the next step was impossible, you provided an invisible shoulder to lean on, guiding the right people, opening up unexpected opportunities, or simply granting an inner silence that made it clear: “Keep going.”
You protected us from the hidden pride that can grow even on spiritual soil, provided us with the wisdom to prioritize, and taught us to see each obstacle as a lesson rather than a punishment. We look into the darkest and brightest corners of our minds and find one constant truth: you are always there for us. Your presence does not depend on distance or communication format. You do not require us to perform superhuman feats or provide flawless reports. What brings you true joy is our growth. It is not the external glamor that matters, but the inner maturity. It is not the number of programs we have completed but the quality of our spirits. It is our sincerity, both when we fall and when we rise. Our honest work on ourselves comes when we admit our weaknesses but do not allow them to break our desire to serve. You rejoice when we learn to listen to one another, when we put the care of the devotees and faith in the holy name above all else, when we can take a hit, when we cooperate based on your wisdom rather than our own calculations. For this, we are eternally grateful.
You have created a perfect home for the entire world, where anyone can enter, but only by serving the Lord and cooperating. You left us clear instructions: “Your love for me will manifest itself in how you will cooperate with one another.” We will actively attract new people, honestly prioritize based on real opportunities, protect and increase the faith of the devotees. We will begin to build transparent self-government mechanisms, develop leadership skills, delegate authority, and teach one another to trust.
May we be blessed to develop the ability to see the will of Kṛṣṇa in every event – success and failure, open door and closed door, support and challenge. Give us the strength to truly cooperate, without fighting or envying others’ successes, with the single intention of serving your mission. Help us gain spiritual purity, maturity, and the unwavering faith with which you yourself set foot on the land of the West. Please strengthen our desire to serve, making it deeper and more resilient to external circumstances. Give us the wisdom to distinguish between inspiration and vanity, and between diligence and fussiness. Let our sādhana become a solid foundation for our service rather than an accessory to it.
And we, your humble servants, dare to offer you a wish that can only come from the position of a disciple who knows his place at the feet of his master: may your mission expand not in spite of our weaknesses but through them, transforming our frailty into an instrument of your mercy. May every devotee in our yātrā become a worthy blade of grass in the path of your service, ready to bear any burden for the sake of the glory of the holy names. May your instructions be conveyed without distortion through our lips, and may our hands be a natural extension of your will. Grant us eternal, unwavering shelter at your lotus feet so that we may serve Kṛṣṇa by serving you and your representatives. May we never stray from the path you have paved for us. May our yātrā grow not only in quantity but also in the quality of our devotion. May your Vyāsa-pūjā become for us not just a date on the calendar but an annual renewal of our vow to serve in the paramparā, humbly and joyfully, always.
Please accept our obeisances in the dust of your lotus feet,
Your śikṣā disciples at ISKCON Chelyabinsk
Europe & Russia, Homages ISKCON Centers, VP2026
Hare Kṛṣṇa, Śrīla Prabhupāda,
Please accept our humble obeisances in the dust of your lotus feet.
nama oṁ viṣṇu-pādāya kṛṣṇa-preṣṭhāya bhū-tale
śrīmate bhaktivedānta-svāminn iti nāmine
namas te sārasvate deve gaura-vāṇī-pracāriṇe
nirviśeṣa-śūnyavādi-pāścātya-deśa-tāriṇe
oṁ ajñāna-timirāndhasya jñānāñjana-śalākayā
cakṣur unmīlitaṁ yena tasmai śrī-gurave namaḥ
On this auspicious day of your Vyāsa-pūjā, we, your devotees from the city of Cherkasy, Ukraine, wish to express to you our gratitude and love.
In former times, disciples searched for the true guru in order to attain knowledge of the Absolute Truth, but modern society has become so degraded that the jagad-guru paramahaṁsa pure devotee of the Lord, such as yourself, had to cross the Atlantic Ocean of material existence in order to find all of us, the lost children of Kṛṣṇa.
Dear Śrīla Prabhupāda, in Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 10.14.58 it is said that this world is a dangerous place and that dangers await at every step. You’ve also said that at any moment, anything can happen. Now, from our own experience, we have realized the truth of your words.
Nevertheless, by your mercy, all your disciples and the disciples of your disciples continue to preach, each on their own “battlefield.” During these years, when war has overtaken our country, dear Śrīla Prabhupāda, armed with your instructions, we have begun to take shelter in the study of the sacred scriptures. Practically the entire yātrā is studying the bhakti-śāstras under the guidance of senior devotees.
A Food for Life project was launched, and people spoke very positively about the devotees, thanking them for their care and support in this difficult time. Together with the devotees, these people chanted the holy names of Kṛṣṇa and received your books.
Daily online lectures on Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam were organized in the mornings (the devotees are learning how to give lectures), as well as readings of kṛṣṇa-līlā in the evenings.
We have also been conducting mantra-yoga – chanting the Hare Kṛṣṇa mahā-mantra with new people, offering them prasādam, and distributing your books to them. People very positively and gratefully shared their experience of happiness from chanting and associating with the devotees.
At present, some services have been put on pause due to military actions, but we are all together and continue to cooperate despite everything because in this way we wish to express our love for you, dear Śrīla Prabhupāda, and to follow you by carrying out your will.
Our community, the yātrā, is small, and we cannot boast of great achievements or projects. Nevertheless, as you have said, “It is time to boil the milk.” And now, together and individually, we are “boiling the milk,” deepening our relationship with you, with guru, and with Kṛṣṇa.
At present, we are absorbed in studying your books, associating with senior devotees, and chanting the holy names.
You continue to lead us, dear Śrīla Prabhupāda, blind and lame as we are, on the path of bhakti, and we, in turn, try to dedicate our lives to you and to your disciples as our guru-dākṣiṇā. You once said, “Do not be surprised when something does not go as it should; be surprised that something still goes as it should.” Therefore, despite all difficulties, hardships, and obstacles, we move forward, dear Śrīla Prabhupāda, through the darkness of Kali-yuga, because you illuminate our path, and by your mercy we are able to see the path of pure devotion.
I was born in the darkness of ignorance, but my spiritual master opened my eyes with the torch of knowledge. Therefore, I offer my most humble obeisances unto him.
All glories to your lotus feet.
The servants of your servants,
The devotees from the city of Cherkasy, Ukraine
Europe & Russia, Homages ISKCON Centers, VP2026
Dear Śrīla Prabhupāda,
nama oṁ viṣṇu-pādāya kṛṣṇa-preṣṭhāya bhū-tale
śrīmate bhaktivedānta-svāminn iti nāmine
namas te sārasvate deve gaura-vāṇī-pracāriṇe
nirviśeṣa-śūnyavādi-pāścātya-deśa-tāriṇe
I offer my humble obeisances to Oṁ Viṣṇupāda Paramahaṁsa Parivrājakācārya 108 Śrī Śrīmad Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda, who is very dear to Lord Kṛṣṇa, having fully taken shelter at the Lord’s lotus feet.
I offer my prostrated obeisances to Śrī Śrīmad Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda, the dearest servant of His Divine Grace Śrī Śrīmad Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura Prabhupāda. He is spreading Kṛṣṇa consciousness throughout the Westernized capitalist world, soundly defeating atheists, Māyāvādīs, who claim that God does not have a form, and the adherents of the atheist doctrine that everything is ultimately void.
Religions failed to confront and defeat atheism
Which currently dominates most discourses in our secular democracies
Be it in the media
Or at universities
The line of demarcation between religion and science
Has been drawn since more than two centuries
Science is the religion of evolution
Sharing the belief in an unknown cause
While Abrahamic religions share the belief in an unknown creator
It is belief against belief, after all.
The science of Kṛṣṇa consciousness
On the other hand
Has nothing to do with religious belief
It is based on the teachings of Lord Kṛṣṇa in His Bhagavad-gītā
The science of Kṛṣṇa consciousness
Does not profess mental speculation
Nor does it preach dogma, manmade doctrines, or some magic
It teaches what the Supreme Personality of Godhead
Lord Śrī Kṛṣṇa, the son of Vasudeva and Devakī, the darling of Vraja
Taught trillions of years ago to Lord Brahmā
Who taught it to the president of the sun planet, Vivasvān
Who taught it to Ikṣvāku, and then to the Manus
Progenitors of generations of women and men.
For this and many other reasons
Kṛṣṇa consciousness
Will prevail against atheism and flourish – for the next ten thousand years!
Thanks to you, Śrīla Prabhupāda,
For it is you who has singlehandedly
Delivered Kṛṣṇa consciousness to the world
In order to defeat the rule of demonic science and ruthless atheism
In all aspects of human civilization
You delivered Kṛṣṇa consciousness in a most selfless way
Acting strictly on the order of your Guru Mahārāja
The evangelic angel of the gospel of Lord Caitanya Mahāprabhu
The Great Savior from the East
Your servants, and servants of your servants in Czech Republic,
Nitāi-Navadvīpa Candra Mandir
Kṛṣṇa’s Court
Śrī Hari Dhāma Saṅga
Chakra Lutotin
and all the friends and supporters of Kṛṣṇa consciousness
(written by Jayagurudeva Dāsa)
Europe & Russia, Homages ISKCON Centers, VP2026
Our most beloved Śrīla Prabhupāda,
Please accept our humble obeisances. All glories to Your Divine Grace!
nama oṁ viṣṇu-pādāya kṛṣṇa-preṣṭhāya bhū-tale
śrīmate bhaktivedānta-svāminn iti nāmine
namas te sārasvate deve gaura-vāṇī-pracāriṇe
nirviśeṣa-śūnyavādi-pāścātya-deśa-tāriṇe
You are indeed the most merciful and advanced personality to have visited this planet of death in recent times. Your closeness to Kṛṣṇa is truly astounding. You are His very intimate associate. We have seen this repeatedly in the pastimes you manifested in this material world. In reality, you were not even in this world. You were always with Lord Kṛṣṇa. You never forgot Him. And yet you hardly ever publicly displayed ecstatic signs of love for God. By that I mean signs such as rolling on the ground, incoherent speech, loss of consciousness and the like. You could have, but for our sake, you acted in such a way that we could gain as much as possible from pure devotional service. You remained understandable to our Western minds. You thought of us. You performed many miracles and accomplished deeds that are unparalleled in the history of this universe. Your greatness is very difficult for us to comprehend. And yet you remained perfectly personal and normal.
Practically everyone who came into contact with you could immediately begin to love you. You knew very well that when a conditioned soul loves someone like you, they gain immense spiritual benefit. Repeatedly in your lectures you teach that our attachment to sense gratification must be transformed into attachment to a sādhu. You also perfectly embodied this sādhu. You were not a charlatan who merely performed cheap yogic or magical tricks to gain popularity among the uninformed public. You took the ancient teachings originating from the spiritual world and descending into this material world through Lord Brahmā, Nārada Muni, Vyāsadeva, Madhvācārya, and Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu. You took this very noble message and very carefully and expertly presented it to us, the people of the West.
And who are we? Merely the degenerate remnants of the mlecchas and Yavanas who, many years ago, broke away from the Vedic tradition and went in search of happiness on a lower, even animalistic, level. But that did not bother you. Although from the Vedic perspective we are untouchable, and a pure person should take a bath as soon as they see any of us, you paid no heed to such regulations. The only thing on your mind was to fulfill the instruction of your spiritual master. You set out into hardship and foreign lands. You proudly carried the message of Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu and proved yourself a true general who defeats the armies of material energy with the ease of a little boy.
Dear Śrīla Prabhupāda, you have Kṛṣṇa. Everyone knows this. Even little Saraswati knew it. And yet you are constantly in the mood of earnest effort to find Kṛṣṇa, just like the Gosvāmīs of Vrindavan. He rādhe vraja-devike ca lalite he nanda-sūno kutaḥ … “Where is Kṛṣṇa? When will the day come when I see Kṛṣṇa?” This is what you taught us. You never taught, “I have Kṛṣṇa. I am very advanced. I am a noble devotee.” That was not your mood. You perfectly embodied the mood of Rūpa Gosvāmī. You gave us countless perfect examples of what a true Vaiṣṇava looks like. You were a perfect servant. Although your position is most exalted, you yourself washed the plates of your future disciples and cleaned up after the feasts you yourself cooked. You did everything so that the conditioned souls of this material world could find a crack in the impenetrable external energy of the Supreme Lord. Like a needle, you created a tiny crack that gradually grew into a vast path leading directly from this brahmāṇḍa to Goloka Vṛndāvana. You built a bridge across which even the blind or mute can safely walk home, back to God.
You feared nothing and no one. And you preached the same: whoever knows Kṛṣṇa has no fear. Fear is merely a sign of ignorance. You alone have done what is utterly impossible for thousands of others. Your glories are celebrated every day. In many places on this planet, hundreds and hundreds of ashrams, temples, and farm projects celebrate your glories, which are constantly expanding. Unlike materially famous personalities, your glories will never fade; on the contrary, they will spread throughout all three worlds. Ebe jaśa ghuṣuk tribhuvana.
Our dearest Śrīla Prabhupāda, you saved us. You saved us from ourselves. We had fallen into the dark well of the material world and lost our direction, purpose, and sense of reality. Like madmen, we wandered from place to place in a hopeless search for happiness. We wanted to be happy, but we didn’t know how to go about it. You came and gave us that supreme happiness, just as if it were a completely ordinary and natural thing. We were engaged in the most dreadful sinful activities, hoping they would bring us joy. But instead of joy, frustration and suffering came again and again. You taught us to chant the holy name of Lord Hari. You taught us to prepare delicious prasādam, and you gave us a yajña perfectly suited to the present age and the condition of humanity. You engaged us in the production and distribution of your books, your transcendental ecstasies.
You taught us perfect selflessness. You taught us that if we truly want to take Kṛṣṇa consciousness seriously, we must spread this consciousness far and wide. Only by sharing Kṛṣṇa consciousness can a living being experience true happiness, which comes directly from the spiritual world. You brought the spiritual world with you and gave it to us. Again and again, you asked, “Where is book? Where is book?” But you did not ask for yourself; you asked for the good of all humanity. Until the very last moment of your presence in this world, you were translating Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam. You fought until your last breath and showed us a perfect example.
Your lotus feet hold the mission and the secret to true happiness. I say “hold,” yet it is no secret at all; service to your lotus feet is the perfection of life. Nothing else in our lives has any real meaning or significance. Taking one, two, three, or more of your books and going to try to place them in the hands of any conditioned living being is the foundation of your mission – the foundation upon which everything else stands.
You, however, are a genius and will not be satisfied with merely partial success. As soon as we understand the importance of your mission, which you received in disciplic succession, and fully engage in it, we will be given a specific place, tailored just for us as individual living beings. You relate to each of us in a perfectly personal way. You know each of your followers perfectly, because you know Kṛṣṇa. You can discern our mentality with absolute precision and engage us perfectly in service to Kṛṣṇa. Although our tendencies are very low and our inclinations among the lowest, you search our hearts for even the slightest interest in Kṛṣṇa and gradually nurture it more and more. As you said, “fan the spark.” You take even the tiniest spark of interest in Kṛṣṇa consciousness and elevate it very highly. You inspire and nurture this slightest interest to the point where it becomes a great fire – a fire that burns away all material attachments, leaving only interest in Kṛṣṇa. You are a perfect sādhu and perfectly care for the plant of bhakti, whose seed you distribute wherever there is even the slightest chance of it sprouting.
In addition to distributing books, you established and announced another vital program. This program is even more challenging than book distribution. It’s a program that engages a vast number of devotees in direct service to the lotus feet of the Divine Couple, Śrī Śrī Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa, in the mood of Lakṣmī-Nārāyaṇa. This program aims at helping all of humanity engage in Kṛṣṇa consciousness. I’m referring to varṇāśrama-dharma. You have repeatedly said in your lectures that it is not possible for everyone to practice Kṛṣṇa consciousness. There will always be people who oppose it. Such is the nature of the material world. However, this did not bother you; you strove to expand self-sustaining communities and teach all of humanity simple living and high thinking. This is especially true in Western countries, which have a culture far removed from traditional Vedic culture – a culture that is, in every aspect, highly conducive to the development of Kṛṣṇa consciousness. It is particularly in these countries that a cultural revolution is needed to enable the mass participation of humanity in the worship of Śrī Śrī Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa.
This endeavor is still in its humble beginnings. Here and there, glimmers of hope and some efforts in this direction appear. The varṇāśrama cultural direction goes against the current social mainstream. The whole world is striving for greater comfort and sense pleasure. Most people seek happiness in making money and satisfying their senses. You, however, teach us how to engage in renunciation and to satisfy the senses of the original master of the senses, Hṛṣīkeśa. You teach us how to live a simple life centered on the protection of cows, chanting the holy name, and serving the temple Deities. In this way, you engage our inclinations and tendencies in pure transcendental activity. You very graciously give us a way to live with our strong conditioning in the service of Kṛṣṇa. You do not send us away because we cannot always follow the perfect ideal you teach; on the contrary, very leniently and patiently, you teach us the basics of Kṛṣṇa consciousness again and again. We hear in practically every one of your lectures that we are not this body. Nevertheless, realizing this fact seems to be a lifelong project. And you very patiently walk with us and help us at every step to overcome the pitfalls of our own material desires. You are more merciful than our own parents. You are a true master on the path upward toward the perfection of human life, and it is only by your grace that it is possible to live in the company of devotees. There is so much I would like to say about you, and there is so much I would like to write to you. Today, therefore, let this be at least a modest effort to glorify your lotus feet, which are the sole comfort and hope of our lives.
We beg you, dearest Śrīla Prabhupāda, shower us with your mercy and make our insignificant efforts successful by being pleased all our mistakes and shortcomings. We will strive to improve ourselves as much as possible.
On behalf of your servants at Prabhupāda Bhavan and Nava Gokula,
Sureśvara Dāsa
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