Homages Other Sources, VP2026
Dear Śrīla Prabhupāda,
Please accept our most humble obeisances. All glories to you and your mercy and legacy.
Another year has passed without your vapuḥ, but your vāṇī remains clearer and more durable than ever. We here at the Bhaktivedanta Archives continue to conserve and preserve your teachings and legacy. Last year, we released VedaBase®25 along with VaniBase®25 to supplement the teachings and pastimes of those who sat at your feet from 1966 through 1977. These releases once again prove that your mercy continues to inspire the Vaiṣṇava community and those aspiring to be devotees now and into the future.
Another major milestone was achieved in 2025 with the commissioning of the new freezer/cooler for all the thousands of images captured of you, along with the historic pictures of ISKCON and artwork used in your publications.
Of course, we mourn the loss of our friend and colleague, and your loyal and committed disciple, Ekanātha Prabhu, who left us in February, but we take solace in knowing that you called him home and that he sits once again at your lotus feet.
We remain your unworthy yet committed servants here at
The Bhaktivedanta Archives
Homages Other Sources, 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
Please accept our humble obeisances at the dust of your lotus feet. All glories to you and to your transcendental books.
We are so fortunate to have been showered by your causeless mercy through this great ISKCON movement. It is so wonderful that anyone irrespective of background can be uplifted to the highest platform of Kṛṣṇa consciousness.
You made the instruction your Guru Mahārāja your one-pointed focus in life. Following this instruction, you tirelessly spent sleepless nights to translate these books and distribute them widely. And as a result you not only triggered a global revolution but also developed it further through your wit, love, affection, and expert guidance.
As we read from a letter you wrote to Rūpānuga Prabhu on 27 April 1970, “I used to say to my Godbrothers that when I would begin preaching I shall take two trucks, one for sankirtana party and one for carrying requisites, and I would go from village to village throughout the whole world preaching Lord Caitanya’s message. So the time has come as per my dream, by the grace of Krishna you are carrying on this program.” Kṛṣṇa fulfills His pure devotees’ desires without fail. In your manifest pastimes, there were many such parties that distributed your transcendental books. We are fortunate to be instruments in one such traveling saṅkīrtana party for distributing your transcendental books.
We are limitlessly grateful to Your Divine Grace for giving us such a project. Being involved in this project, we feel not only filled with joy, but also get so many realizations. Our appreciation for Your Divine Grace and your great ISKCON movement increases as we travel to remote corners of Bharata.
We confront many dry scholars, yet see they lack the joy of devotion you gave us, and we are reminded of your merciful distribution of the essence of the śāstras.
We see yogis at Kumbha Melā who are busy performing weird austere practices, and we are reminded of the fortune you gave us by giving us the joyful yuga-dharma: harināma-saṅkīrtana. These yogis perform their practices yet are far away from the essence of the scripture, and here are we, recipients of your mercy who haven’t practiced such austerities, yet have been bestowed with the goal of such practices.
We visit many spiritual organizations – some may be richer or better organized, but they are devoid of the concrete substance and philosophy. Most are not connected to any paramparā. There again we are reminded of your uncompromising preaching completely in line with the bona fide disciplic succession, carrying solid philosophy and the science of devotional service.
We meet speculators and word jugglers lacking any śāstric evidence and are reminded of the fortune you gave us by teaching everything from the śāstra. You taught us to stick to śāstra and to not concoct anything. You also taught us to be philosophical and not sentimental.
When will all such people receive your mercy? Please bless and empower us to convince all these people to take up this joyful path of Kṛṣṇa consciousness.
We go to remote places, where we see the decades-old photo of your dear Rādhā-Rāsabihārījī, or your decades-old books somewhere in that remote place, a sign that your followers distributed your mercy long ago. Our appreciation for Your Divine Grace increases when we see that no one in the past has made Kṛṣṇa famous as much as you have done.
You gave us this project, which enables us to get quick realization of the philosophy. By immersing ourselves in it, almost every day we see that we are not the doers. Our false pride crushed, we feel more dependent on Kṛṣṇa. No other ācārya has ever given the practice of devotional service so easily and practically as you have done. The potency of your mercy is so great that we have seen even brand-new persons on the street start distributing your books, on the spot, without even any prior background in spiritual life – such persons can serve as preachers by distributing your books.
While traveling and distributing books, we feel almost untouched by māyā when we act on your behalf. Days, weeks, months, and years pass, each day bringing a new realization and thrill.
It is just because of our foolishness and ignorance that we cannot foresee the effects of your transcendental books. Somehow, the same spirit we read of in the Śrīla Prabhupāda-līlāmṛta is not seen these days, especially the street saṅkīrtana and book distribution. As day by day your direct disciples are leaving this planet to assist you wherever you are, our current generation is in need of imbibing that ’70s mood from your disciples. Please inspire and bless us with the right mood to associate with your direct disciples more and more, and with a sense of urgency, so we can loyally carry your mood and legacy of saṅkīrtana, book distribution, and prasādam distribution forward. As your dear son His Holiness Gopal Krishna Goswami Mahārāja once told us that doing street saṅkīrtana along with book distribution increases the book score. We are seeing that happening practically.
Recently, we traveled to parts of North India, concluding the preaching tour in Haridwar and Badrinath, where we went to Vyas Gufa and showed your Bhagavad-gītā As It Is to Śrīla Vyāsadeva. We are certain that Śrīla Vyāsadeva was happy and blessed us for increasing our saṅkīrtana. We also traveled to parts of Maharashtra, covering Nasik and Pandharpur. We traveled to parts of Karnataka, Telangana, and Andhra Pradesh, where many are waiting for your books. The main concern is of rubber-stamp religious conversion by Christians.
You sent us many young boys, who have quickly dedicated their lives to book distribution and are very enthusiastic. What started out as a small handful of devotees has grown larger now. As the number of book distributors grows, we got one more saṅkīrtana bus with larger book-carrying capacity. We need your causeless mercy to walk every step on the bhakti path. Please bless us to be always loyal to you and to your great ISKCON movement. Please bless us with your mercy that we never deviate from your instructions and thus one day become completely purified in this life, as you urged us to do time and again.
Please bless and empower us that, for your pleasure, we replicate these buses hundreds of times and, if you feel it pleases you, then let there be such traveling saṅkīrtana parties worldwide.
Your toddler servants in the Traveling Saṅkīrtana Party from Bhiwandi and Attapur
Homages Other Sources, 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
Please accept our most humble obeisances in the dust of your lotus feet. All glories to Your Divine Grace!
On July 11, 1966, after a meeting in your Matchless Gifts storefront temple at 26 Second Avenue in New York, the incorporation papers for your ISKCON were signed. You had given your society the name International Society for Krishna Consciousness and had personally coined the acronym ISKCON. You also presented seven purposes of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, the last of which reads: “With a view towards achieving the aforementioned Purposes, to publish and distribute periodicals, magazines, books and other writings.”
In a letter to Maṇḍali Bhadra Dāsa (dated 20 January 1972) you wrote: “My first concern is that my books be published and distributed profusely all over the world. Practically, books are the basis of our Movement. Without our books, our preaching will have no effect.”
By the time you left this world in November of 1977, your ISKCON had grown to include more than 108 temples, centers, farm communities, and schools. Now, on the eve of the celebration of the sixtieth anniversary of its founding, your ISKCON operates over 850 temples, cultural centers, and schools worldwide. Undoubtedly this growth was fueled in large part by distribution of your books!
Your disciples, granddisciples, and followers serving at BBT North America pray that Your Divine Grace will continue to bless and guide us so that we may be successful in the important work of keeping your books in print and readily available for the many sincere devotees distributing them in this part of the world.
Your servants at the Bhaktivedanta Book Trust offices in North America.
Homages Other Sources, VP2026
Dear Śrīla Prabhupāda,
Please accept our most humble obeisances at the dust of your merciful lotus feet.
You appeared to carry out a highly urgent and divine mission. Your spiritual master, Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura, inspired and instructed you to preach the message of Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu in English, and from your very birth there were predictions that you would cross the ocean, become a great preacher of religion, and establish temples around the world.
But predictions alone do not change the world. You did.
Leaving behind family and comfort, you accepted the life of a renunciant in Vrindavan. From 1959 to 1965, in your small rooms at the Rādhā-Dāmodara temple, you prepared yourself for the impossible task ahead through prayer, writing, translation, and deep absorption in the holy name. We have heard how you would cry out loudly while chanting through the night and beg the previous ācāryas, Śrīla Rūpa Gosvāmī and Śrīla Sanātana Gosvāmī, for the strength to fulfill your guru’s order.
From that surrender came a spiritual revolution.
What the Six Gosvāmīs established in Vrindavan, you carried to the entire world. Within only a few years, temples appeared across the globe, devotees learned Deity worship and saṅkīrtana, and millions of your books in a wide range of languages began changing people’s lives.
In September 1973, you visited Stockholm, and in one of your lectures you said: “We have got the method of Deity worship. Here we have not yet established, but we worship the picture of Lord Caitanya and guru … The Deity worship is done by guru himself … His disciples are engaged. He is always showing, ‘Do like that. Do like that.’ Or sometimes, if he cannot, the guru shows how to do it. That is the business of guru.”
In April 1977, your disciples had found a property just south of Stockholm. They sent you a letter in which they presented it to you, along with an aerial photograph. You wrote back in May 1977: “I am very pleased to know that our activities are going nicely in Scandinavia … The place as you have described it that they are thinking to get sounds very nice.”
That place was Korsnäs Gård, the estate you named “New Rādhā-kuṇḍa” because it already had a pond on the property. By your mercy, this quiet rural place became an integral part of your worldwide mission. Everything here is an extension of your meditation, your desire, your creativity, and your unparalleled preaching spirit.
Three years later, Śrī Śrī Gāndharvikā-Giridhārī were installed here with great joy and celebration. Their names connect this place directly to Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura’s own Gāndharvikā-Giridhārī Deities in Calcutta, where They greeted each sheet of transcendental literature that rolled off the letterpress your Guru Mahārāja had established.
Today, before Śrī Śrī Gāndharvikā-Giridhārī and beside Their kuṇḍa, your servants are gratefully engaged in your publishing service, Deity worship, and preaching. From this old estate, now a wonderful temple, a vibrant dhāma, a center of intense study of your works and teachings, print-ready files of your books are sent to printers around the world. From New Rādhā-kuṇḍa, with love.
Translators, proofreaders, designers, programmers, researchers, layout artists, audiobook narrators, logistics experts, all devotees and volunteers, across the globe, are taking part in this ecstatic book production program.
And once the books are printed, your amazing book distributors, highly committed and courageous, carry those books into towns, cities, and villages, placing them into the hands of people whose spiritual lives are just about to begin.
May New Rādhā-kuṇḍa always remain your home and office. On your behalf, we invite everyone to come and assist in spreading your teachings all over the world. More and more titles. More and more languages. We need helpers to keep up with your ever-expanding success.
Your slightly sleep-deprived and happy servants at
The Bhaktivedanta Book Trust and ISKCON New Rādhā-kuṇḍa
Homages Other Sources, VP2026
Dear Śrīla Prabhupāda,
Please accept our most humble obeisances at your divine lotus feet. All glories to Your Divine Grace.
On this most auspicious day of your Vyāsa-pūjā, we – the servants at the Bhaktivedanta College in Budapest – wish to lay before you our gratitude, our reflections, and our prayers. Whatever modest service we are able to render in the field of education we render only because you yourself carried the message of Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu across the world, and because you placed in our hands the books, the institutions, the standards, and the spiritual courage by which Kṛṣṇa consciousness may be presented in every sphere of human life.
You taught us that no education deserves its name if it leaves the most essential questions unanswered: Who am I? Am I this body or am I something more? What is the purpose of human life? What is my eternal relationship with Kṛṣṇa? You observed that schools, colleges, and universities exist in every direction, yet the most fundamental learning of all – the knowledge that the living being is not the body but the eternal servant of Kṛṣṇa – is nowhere to be found in their syllabi. You put it with your characteristic directness: “Modern education, there is no real knowledge. Real knowledge begins in the Bhagavad-gītā.” (Lecture on Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 6.1.10, Honolulu, 11 May 1976).
These words are at once a warning and a summons. They remind us that a college bearing your name must never settle into being one more academic institution among many. We may keep our classrooms and lecture halls, our research projects and conferences, our administrative offices and accreditation files – but if these are not bound to your purpose, they remain hollow. Our real work is to help education become whole again: to reunite learning with the soul, knowledge with service, and intellectual cultivation with surrender to Kṛṣṇa.
Yet you did not turn your back on the universities. You urged your disciples to enter them, to speak with care and conviction, to quote your books and to explain their meaning in their own words. You wrote that universities are very important places, because there are people there who can appreciate our philosophy (Letter to Tulsi, Bombay, 9 November 1970). In this you taught us neither to fear the academic world nor to flatter it, but to enter it with purity, intelligence, humility, and courage.
This instruction is especially important for us today. Many devoted scholars serve within secular universities, and we honor their sincere effort. By your mercy, they carry something of your message into places where śāstra may otherwise not be heard. Yet we also see that such environments often have their own boundaries, expectations, and accepted ways of speaking. Devotee scholars may be asked to translate the conclusions of śāstra into secular categories, to soften their language, or to leave unspoken the very truths that give meaning to their scholarship. Sometimes the language of the academy opens doors; at other times, it quietly asks the servant of śāstra to stand at a distance from the full conclusions of the disciplic succession.
It is for this reason that we feel especially grateful that Bhaktivedanta College may exist as a small shelter for scholarship without spiritual compromise. Here, those who follow you are not forced to choose between intellectual seriousness and fidelity to your teachings. They are not asked to disguise their faith in śāstra in order to be taken seriously, nor to lay aside scholarly discipline in order to remain faithful. We pray that this institution may always remain a place where rigorous study, devotional conviction, and service to the guru-paramparā strengthen one another rather than compete.
You once observed that although every department of human knowledge is represented in the universities, there is generally no department for understanding “the science of God, Kṛṣṇa,” and that such a department must therefore be introduced (Letter to Jagadisa, Bombay, 26 November 1970). We see our college as a humble effort to serve that desire. We do not pretend to have fulfilled it; our limitations are clear to us. But we pray to remain faithful to the direction you set: that Kṛṣṇa consciousness is not pious sentiment but a complete educational movement, a science, and a culture capable of guiding human life toward its highest perfection.
By your grace, our teachers take part in numerous international conferences and scholarly forums. They engage the wider academic world in its own language, by its own methods, and within its accepted forms of reasoning. Our deeper prayer, however, is that through such engagement the message of the scriptures may travel without distortion. We have no wish to dilute your teachings in order to be accepted. We wish, rather, to present them with such thoughtfulness, responsibility, and clarity that intelligent people may begin to recognize their depth, their inner coherence, and their power to change a life.
In Hungary, where our college works, many people are searching for meaning, for identity, for wisdom, and for a way of living that reaches deeper than material success. Your books contain the answers. Your movement has demonstrated the practice. Your personal example showed how spiritual truth can be spoken with compassion, boldness, and intellectual force simultaneously. Our small service is to make these gifts accessible – through teaching, through research, through personal guidance, and through the formation of students who may one day carry Kṛṣṇa consciousness into their families, their professions, their communities, and whatever future service Kṛṣṇa entrusts to them.
Śrīla Prabhupāda, please bless us that we may never grow proud of education, scholarship, institutional standing, or academic accomplishment. Please bless us that we may remember always that real knowledge begins in surrender, that real learning culminates in service, and that the only true success is to please you and Śrī Kṛṣṇa.
Please bless Bhaktivedanta College that it may always remain your instrument. May it never become a place where śāstra is studied as a cultural artifact, a historical curiosity, or a philosophical exercise severed from devotion. May it remain a place where your books are honored as living guidance, where students learn not only to think clearly but to live purely, and where teachers speak with both scholarly responsibility and devotional courage.
On this Vyāsa-pūjā day, we lay this institution, our studies, our teaching, our research, our shortcomings, and our hopes at your lotus feet. Please allow us to go on serving your educational mission without compromise, with humility, and with an ever-deepening dependence upon your mercy.
Your eternal servants at Bhaktivedanta College
(written by Gaurasundara Kṛpāmaya Dāsa)
Homages Other Sources, VP2026
Dearest 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
We offer our most humble and respectful obeisances unto you. You are the magnanimous servant of Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura, delivering the message of Lord Caitanyadeva to a world weary of impersonalism and voidism.
Resonance of the Eternal Present
Thank you, Śrīla Prabhupāda, for your living presence. We feel you in every book placed in a curious hand, every grain of kṛṣṇa-prasādam that nourishes a guest, and every mantra that vibrates through the city streets. At Hare Krishna Festivals of India we do not merely see ourselves as a traveling tour but as a vessel for your voice. When guests return years later, telling us how a single kirtan or a page of your Gītā changed their lives, we are reminded of Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura’s realization: “He reasons ill who says that Vaiṣṇavas die, when thou art living still in Sound!”
A Humble Prayer for Scalability and Vision
Śrīla Prabhupāda, we recognize that the world is changing rapidly, and we beg for the intelligence to keep your festivals relevant. We pray to the Lord in the heart to show us how to make this service effective beyond our current imagination.
- Empower the youth: We beg for the mercy to attract and empower the younger generation. Guide us to create a culture where they feel inspired to take up this mission, seeing it not as an ancient tradition, but as the most urgent and exciting service for the modern world.
- Modern means for ancient truth: Inspire us to utilize modern technology – digital storytelling, immersive experiences, and efficient logistics – to present Kṛṣṇa consciousness in a way that resonates with today’s intellectual and truth-seeking audiences.
- A neutral and universal platform: Help us maintain the festival as a “neutral platform” – a sanctuary where people of all ideological beliefs feel welcome, respected, and safe to explore the science of the soul without prejudice.
The Vision of “Autopilot” Sustainability
We beg for the guidance to build systems that are economically sustainable and spiritually enriching – structures so robust they can run with the precision of an “autopilot” system, yet remain fueled by the heat of spontaneous devotion. We do not wish to be a burden to your movement, but a source of strength, expansion, and joy.
Our Indebtedness
Whatever results we see are clearly yours. Without you, the streets would be silent and the hearts would be empty. We remain your indebted servants, praying for the continued strength to “spread the holy Life around” across North America.
Your servants on the North American Hare Krishna Festival of India Tour Team
