Sri Vyasa-Puja of our beloved Spiritual Master
Srila Prabhupada
2022
nama om vishnu-padaya krishna-preshthaya bhu-tale
srimate bhaktivedanta-svamin iti namine
I offer my respectful obeisances unto His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, who is very dear to Lord Krishna on this earth, having taken shelter at His lotus feet.
namas te sarasvate deve gaura-vani-pracharine
nirvishesha-shunyavadi-pashchatya-desha-tarine
Our respectful obeisances are unto you, O spiritual master, servant of Sarasvati Gosvami. You are kindly preaching the message of Lord Chaitanya deva and delivering the Western countries, which are filled with impersonalism and voidism.
On this special day of Your vyasa-puja Srila Prabhupada I would like to express my full and humble gratitude to Your Lotus Feet.
The process you brought and taught us and are still teaching to obtain knowledge is to approach the right person, the guru, and listen with submission from him for transcendental knowledge. Tad viddhi praṇipātena paripraśnena sevayā [Bg. 4.34]. ALWAYS you warned us by teaching us to “don’t try to receive spiritual, or transcendental, knowledge cheaply and that the process must be known” giving the example “like sometimes our typewriter or this Dictaphone doesn’t work so if we go to the proper person who knows the work, he immediately tightens one screw or changes something; it works. The process we must know.”
Never in Your teachings have You neglected to repeat to us “that the real purpose is to understand Viṣṇu, the Supreme, and that the yoga system is therefore a mechanical system. But the bhakti system is above the machine, above this mechanical arrangement and therefore tad-vijñāna.”
Thank you Srila Prabhupada for suggesting that, “If you want to understand spiritual knowledge, you have to go to a guru” and that “Guru means heavy, that is, the one who has better knowledge. Heavy. Guru means heavy, heavy with knowledge and that this heaviness is brahma-niṣṭham, how much one is attached to Brahman, Para-brahman, Bhagavān. This is Your qualification as Guru Srila Prabhupada. Brahmaṇy upaśamāśrayam.”
To You I repeatedly offer my respectful obeisances.
Also, you teach us that “standard knowledge is received from the paramparā system, from the disciplic succession. “He who has heard from the paramparā system,” Śrotriyam. And the result is brahma-niṣṭham: He is “firmly fixed up in the service of the Supreme Personality of Godhead.” Brahma-niṣṭham. He has no other business. This is two qualification. He must have heard Vedic knowledge through the disciplic succession. This is what you teach us Srila Prabhupada, extraordinary.
Thank You, Srila Prabhupada, of Your compassionate teachings, “You need not be a very learned scholar”, You told me through Thy vani, “I must simply have listened from authority.” This is Your infinite goodness Srila Prabhupada. “Stay in your position, in your place. There is no need to change it.” You invite me not to have to change my social position in order to listen to You and follow You Srila Prabhupada. Again, and again I offer You my most respectful obeisances.
Your infinite mercy Srila Prabhupada will never cease to take care of me and take care of us, “viduram prītaḥ” you said, “Vidura was listening to Maitreya Ṛṣi, and Maitreya Ṛṣi was very satisfied. Prīta.” If we don’t satisfy you Srila Prabhupada, you who are our teacher, our guru, in a very kind way, we cannot get the right knowledge. This is obvious. If we take care in receiving Your Divine Grace, offering You a very nice place where You can sit comfortably and talk to us frankly and freely being satisfied with our behavior, then it will be of great benefit to us.
“If we just simply keep asking or Spiritual Master, but do not accept Your instructions, we will only waste time” You once said in a lecture You gave in Bombay in 1974″, said again. “In a challenging spirit, if you go to a spiritual master without any service, sevayā, and praṇipātena… it will be the fall.” You taught us. Therefore Kṛṣṇa says: sarva-dharmān parityajya mām ekaṁ śaraṇaṁ vraja [Bg. 18.66] ”You just surrender unto Me.” And similarly, we have to surrender to Kṛṣṇa or His representative,” and so You Srila Prabhupada are that representative. Jaya Srila Prabhupada
And then You continued in this Your lecture that “therefore one must approach a bona fide guru and that the qualification of the guru is found in every śāstra. One need not accept a guru if one is not curious about the ultimate goal or benefit of life. The common man who is interested in the bodily comforts of life does not need a guru. At the present time for them, guru means the one who can give you some medicine for the body.” We turn to some saint: “Mahātmājī, I suffer from this disease.” “Yes, I have a mantra. Take this….” This kind of guru is accepted nowadays.”
Thank you Srila Prabhupada for teaching us “one should approach guru for seeing the tattva, the Absolute Truth. This is necessary but not for material benefit. One should not search out a guru for, curing some material disease. For that, there is medical practitioner. Why should you search out after a guru?”
“Guru means who knows the Vedic śāstra, the Vedas,” I learned again from this Your lecture in Bombay, “He knows the Vedic conclusion.” “And the Vedic conclusion is to understand Kṛṣṇa. This is the Vedic conclusion.” Vedaiś ca sarvair aham eva vedyam [Bg. 15.15].
We cannot fully understand Kṛṣṇa. It is not possible. We don’t have this ability Srila Prabhupada, “advaita acyuta anādi ananta…” without Your siddhanta, without Your unconditional mercy, that with our limited knowledge we cannot understand… ” Therefore, to understand this knowledge, why Kṛṣṇa is so attractive, He became Lord Caitanya, taking the ecstatic emotion of Śrīmatī Rādhārāṇī. Rādhā-bhāva-dyuti [Cc. Ādi 1.5]. That’s a very great science.”
Dear Srila Prabhupada once again I offer to Your Lotus Feet my respectful obeisances for teaching me that we should be curious, ask the spiritual master, “be jijñāsu, very curious to understand spiritual science and that if we are interested in understanding spiritual knowledge we must approach the representative of ācārya. Acarya-upasanam. And ācārya means who follows Vyāsadeva. Just like Maitreya.”
And so, I need to find an authentic Guru where I can surrender, praṇipātena.
And this Guru is You Srila Prabhupada.
Again and again I offer my humble obeisances to Your divine instructions, Your Lotus Feet, Your grand personality and Your mission to which I would like to be a part of
All glories, all glories to You Srila Prabhupada
Thy insignificant servant of Thy servant of Thy servant
Vijaya Pandita dasa