Thursday, October 24, 2013

VYASA PUJA 2013




 Dear Srila Prabhupada.

Please accept my humble obeisances at your lotus feet.

This year we were asked to share some recollections of your dealings with children, some stories. When I put mind to the task I realized that actually, in your eyes, we were all children, your boys and girls. 


 How did you deal with us? You empowered us. You trusted us, American, Canadian, European boys and girls, you placed your guru Maharaja’s mission in our hands. Your trust is what gave us strength. While outwardly being as lenient as we needed, with your love, you trapped us into wanting to do what would please you most: full surrender, body, mind and spirit in Krishna’s service. No time to waste, why not give this one life to Krishna, we had already spent so many lives trying to be the enjoyer. 

You empowered your boys and girls to a level that can only be maintained by your mercy. We have to remind each other how this empowerment is still available to us, if we only take shelter of your vani and keep on inquiring submissively, through your books and the following of your instructions. This is your power; this is your eternal compassion. 

With the advancement of technology, it can be so easy to side step the submission in inquiry, to use your words as weapons to prove a point, usually our point. Search Prabhupada on … any subject, pick and choose the quotes and you can have a full arsenal to bring down your opponent. This has little to do with the association that will uplift us, the main thing that becomes elevated through this process is our pride. This may be tad vidhi pani patrena but the pariprasnena sevaya cannot be underestimated.

Every year I ponder on a vyasa puja offering.  What do I have to offer? I repeatedly offer you my life, a life which truthfully has not belonged to me. The disciple’s life is the instrument of the spiritual master for achieving his mission just as your life was the instrument of your spiritual master… 

Today at your feet stands a thief, begging for forgiveness as I proceed to once again offer you what I have, once again, stolen as I stubbornly remained accustomed to call it “my” life.

Srila Prabhupada, I would like to thank you for something very big and important which you left us. I never before realized its importance to the degree I do today. 

I had the good fortune of sharing prasad and kirtan with a few god-sisters and other advanced vaisnavis recently. At least half of us were, are facing difficult life challenges: responsibilities, attachments, disease, old age, mortality. All smiled and embraced the opportunities for greater surrender, realizations and more meaningful prayers as they go about their day, sometimes cringing with pain while repeatedly reaching out to you, to Radha Madhava for help, for spiritual strength. There was such strength and love in the room, support for each other’s surrendering process and prayers. We had an ecstatic kirtan. It was most powerful association. 

I also recently met others who refuse the shelter of your society and saw what they have to endure when similar hard challenges face them. It is like night and day, on one side, serenity, love and shelter and the other side, anger, solitude, defiance and struggle. I want to thank you for your foresight in creating this society, a society meant to increase each other’s Krishna consciousness. We may not realize in our day to day life the wealth we have in each other’s association.

This sanga is available by your mercy. It is beyond what had ever been done before. You have created this very necessary forum for us, for all who want to have it. You did not create maths that only serve brahmacaris and sannyasis but worldwide communities of devotees who can assist each other on the path back to Godhead regardless of varna and ashram. You brought life to Mahaprabhu’s teachings focusing on our eternal nature of spirit soul.


Your house is big enough for all. When you treat us as spirit souls, our tendency is to behave on that platform, not the body. I pray that we do not lose focus and stray away from your vision and the sanga structure you have created for us and that we also learn to treat others with a fraction of the compassion you showed your boys and girls, seeing each other as entrapped suffering spirit souls, just as you saw us.

I beg of you to forgive me for all offences and consider blessing this unqualified fool with guidance from within so that I can complete this life having learned to serve guru and Krishna with all my heart, 24 hours a day, conquering the demands of the mind and body – eating, sleeping, mating and defending – as you did so gracefully.  

I want you to be able to introduce me to Lord Caitanya with the pride of a father, being satisfied that I have lived your instructions, that I have attained the goal of life, pure guru bhakti and Krishna prema.  This is my offering. Kindly guide me to achieve it, sooner than later so that I can be a more powerful instrument in your loving hands.

Ys Yasomati dd

Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur on Kartika


Damodara ki jaya


(Portrait of Śrīla
Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura
Prabhupāda)



Mathura - by Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura Prabhupāda
In śāstra, it has been declared that the month of Kārtika possesses the greatest significance in connection with the practice of devotion to Śrī Śrī Rādhā-Dāmodara. This month is sacred to Dāmodara and should be spent in non-stop service while residing in the holy city of Mathurā.

Śrī Kṛṣṇa was born in Mathurā. The modern city occupies practically the site of ancient Mathurā on the river Yamunā. About six miles to the north of Mathurā is Vṛndāvana, and about seven miles to the southeast is Gokula. All three places are located on the banks of the Yamunā; Mathurā and Vṛndāvana being on the western and Gokula on the eastern bank of the river.


After His birth, which took place in the middle part of a dark and tempestuous night, Śrī Kṛṣṇa was immediately taken to Gokula by His father Vasudeva, who crossed the Yamuna, which was then in flood, by wading on foot.
Vasudeva and his wife Devakī had been confined in a strongly guarded prison by King Kaṁsa. Vasudeva easily got out of the prison, and performed his journey to Gokula and back, completely unseen by anyone. He left the newborn baby in Gokula in the home of Nanda and brought back with him the newly born daughter of Yaśodā, before the close of the night.

When Kiśora-Kṛṣṇa was twelve years old King Kaṁsa ordered Him to attend a sacrifice at the capital, so He came back to Mathurā from Vṛndāvana, where He had been living with Nanda and Yaśodā. Śrī Kṛṣṇa arrived in Mathurā with Baladeva. He killed Kaṁsa, released His parents from captivity and lived in Mathurā with them for some years. The city of Mathurā was then beleaguered by King Jarāsaṅdha. It was finally given up by Śrī Kṛṣṇa, who then made Dvaraka His capital.
These events are described in detail in the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam and other Purāṇas.

Dāmodara is the name of Kṛṣṇa. While an infant, Kṛṣṇa had submitted to being bound to a wooden husking-stand by Mother Yaśodā by means of a cord tied around His belly. ‘Damodara’ means literally ‘one with the cord around his belly’.

It is enjoined that those who observe the Urjja-vrata during the months of Kārtika in the holy city of Mathurā practice strict asceticism. They must spend the whole day and night hearing discourses and chanting the name of Kṛṣṇa in the company of devotees. Such strict observance of the Kārtika vrata, when performed with faith in the company of pure devotees, produces the genuine inclination to serve Śrī Kṛṣṇa. Yet, it may sometimes be seen that even though someone has outwardly followed the rules enjoined in śāstra for the month of Kārtika and lived in the holy city of Mathurā, they are not blessed with that very rare inclination to serve Śrī Kṛṣṇa; but such mishap does not prove śāstra wrong.

Association with the pure devotee is possible and effective only by his own causeless grace. Residence in Mathurā is affected by the mercy of the pure devotee. Mathurā is superior to Vaikuṇṭha. Vaikuṇṭha does not descend to this world. Mathurā has greater power of magnanimity and displays a higher manifestation of the activities of the Absolute than does Vaikuṇṭha. But we must not suppose that it is possible for any person to become eligible to truly live in Mathurā in the same way that one moves to some geographical location on this mundane plane. In order to attain the eligibility to reside in Mathurā, it is necessary to practise association with the sādhus, chant the holy name, listen to the Bhāgavatam and worship the lotus feet of the holy image with spiritual faith. Even those who help others along in such functions, in any way, also perform the function of sādhus.

Residence in Mathurā is no doubt the adored object of our spiritual endeavors. But we also know that Kaṁsa was a resident of Mathurā. Did Kaṁsa thereby obtain the fulfilment of worshipful service? Kaṁsa desired his own pleasure, not the pleasure of Kṛṣṇa. He wanted to misappropriate the pleasure that belongs properly to Kṛṣṇa alone. Kaṁsa attained the state of inactive, self-pleasure as the reward of being killed and liberated by Śrī Hari. He did not attain the plane of intimate service to Śrī Kṛṣṇa in the realm of Mathurā, although he had been, to all appearances, a resident of Mathurā.

A person can find himself in the real Mathurā through his pure disposition to serve. Kaṁsa tried not to serve, but to enjoy Mathurā. But Mathurā is the plane of unalloyed spiritual existence in which Kṛṣṇa manifests Himself to the serving consciousness of His pure devotees in His own, true form. Mathurā is possessed of the quality of perfect spiritual initiative. Mathurā is not any mundane country that possesses no consciousness of its own. We can practice our enjoying mood towards inanimate mundane countries, but if we try to live in Mathurā in that mode, we will miss the experience of residence in Mathurā, for she is an object of worship. Those who serve Mathurā are enabled, by virtue of their discipleship of Mathurā, to serve the manifestation of the birth of Kṛṣṇa in the inner Mathurā of their own pure hearts.

On the plane of the divine Mathurā, the cognitive manifestation is not the mere relative, mundane function. The cognitive function that displays itself in Mathurā has no relation to ay form of mundane activity or inactivity. The pure cognition there is absolutely self-contained in Mathurā’s purely spiritual manifestation. This cognition is indivisible. Our former master, Śrī Mādhavendra Purī, has sung the glory of Mathurā in his famous couplet: “There is Mathurā in the ear, Mathurā in the mouth, Mathurā in the heart, Mathurā now, and here Mathurā, only Mathurā, exceedingly sweet, yes most sweet.”

The repetition of the name of Mathurā in the verse of Śrīla Purīpāda points to the identity of Mathurā within the heart of the pure devotee and also to the fact that Mathurā is a spiritual entity and the object of our worship. The heart that is identical with Mathurā is not subject to the processes of birth, death or worldly existence. Mathurā is the guru, the object of our worship, and the eternal realm of Kṛṣṇa. Mathurā is the summum bonum.
The denizens of Mathurā are the servitors of Kṛṣṇa. Here in Mathurā, everything is engaged in the service of Kṛṣṇa and there can be no entity who does not serve Kṛṣṇa; and no experience except the realization of service to Him. Every tiny creeper, every little blade of grass in Mathurā occupies a position of superiority to me. Every one of them is my guru; the servant of my Kṛṣṇa. If one’s judgement reaches this point, only then is it possible for him to be a resident of Mathurā. Residence in Mathurā means the attainment of eligibility to serve all those entities who are eternally engaged in the service of the nativity of Kṛṣṇa.

Śrī Māyāpura is identical with Mathurā. In Mathurā, the Lord of Vaikuṇṭha, He who is not subject to mundane birth, manifests His eternal transcendental nativity. People of this world perform the worship of māyā at the close of the rainy season. Māyā means that power by which one is enabled to measure or comprehend an entity of this mundane world by one’s defective faculties. This function is performed toward the shadow of the reality. This measuring propensity is the root cause of all of our miseries. Our unserving disposition is responsible for our inclination to engage in such activities. Māyā dresses us up as imaginary lords of this phenomenal world, but Yogamāyā makes us spiritual servitors of the Divine Pair, Śrī Śrī Rādhā-Dāmodara.
Adapted from from The Harmonist
Published in Rays of The Harmonist,
Volume 1, Number 2, Kartika 1997