Бхакти Чару Свами и Джайапатака Свами, день явления Бхактисиддханта Сарасвати Тхакура

Для англо-язычно читающих преданных. В особенности для Махоттсава-Гауранги Прабху. Речь Бхакти Чару Свами и Джайапатаки Свами на день явления Бхактисиддханта Сарасвати Тхакура.
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Date: February 26, 2008 (Vyasa-puja of Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati)
Speakers: HH Bhakti Charu Swami & HH Jayapataka Swami

[invocatory prayers]

Bhakti Charu Swami:To understand Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur and his activities we have to understand the purpose of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu’s appearance and the progress of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu’s sankirtan movement. A remarkable thing is that Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu appeared in order to inundate this world with Krsna consciousness and then he did that. He inundated the entire India with Krsna consciousness. He created a very special arangement which is otherwise unusual. The general tradition for spiritual culture was established on varnasrama-dharma and when one became qualified he would be situated in the mode of goodness and he would take birth in a brahmana family and then he would have access to the Vedic scriptures. By practicing the process under the guidance of the spiritual master he could make spiritual advancement and ultimately he would become situated on the platform of pure devotional service and receive his siddha-svarupa, spiritual perfection. That was the general tradition, the general culture.

But Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu revolutionized that process. Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu came at a time when the whole world was becoming very, very degraded. Although it was the beginning of the age of Kali, the situation at the time in India was very degraded spiritually. And the reason is: raksasim kalim asritya jayante brahma-yonisu. The demons, taking advantage of the age of Kali, took birth in brahminical families and they attacked the Vedic culture. They had a complete monopoly over Vedic scriptures and Vedic culture and they destroyed the Vedic culture. So that is the general tendency of this age of Kali. But then Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu came to undo that and reestablish dharma. Because it is the business of the Supreme Personality of Godhead to establish dharma:

yada yada hi dharmasya glanir bhavati bharata
abhyutthanam adharmasya tadatmana srjamy aham

Therefore in order to establish dharma in this age of Kali the Lord appeared in a very special way. He did come as the Supreme Personality of Godhead, but he came as a devotee. And he started his very unusual movement, the sankirtana movement, yajnair sankirtanam prayair. It is the easiest process for spiritual advancement and being connected to the Supreme Personality of Godhead and there is no consideration of qualification and eligibility in this process. Anyone from any caste or any creed, any background, could participate of this very simple process of congregational chanting of the holy name and make spiritual advancement.

This is the unique gift of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu. Another consideration of this unique gift of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu is that it is the simplest process but the result is the highest spiritual benefit, a kind of spiritual benefit that was not available to the people of other ages. In other ages the people generally, by following vaidhi-bhakti, could go only up to Vaikuntha. But the access to Goloka Vrindavan was not available in other ages. Therefore in this age Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu came and gave this very simple process of chanting the holy name of the Lord and receiving the most wonderful spiritual benefit of being elevated to the topmost region of the spiritual sky.

So Caitanya Mahaprabhu came and he inundated the whole of India. Of course he met a lot of opposition from various corners. We know how he received tremendous obstacles from the brahmanas in Navadvipa. They even went and complained to the Muslim government officer, Chand Kazi, and then even when he went to Jagannath Puri there was a lot of opposition in spite of the patronage of the king there, but Mahaprabhu’s sankirtan movement was most wonderfully established on this planet and he inundated the whole of India.

Then Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu left this planet at a rather young age, at the age of 48. And although his associates and stalwart spiritual acaryas, spiritual personalities, continued this mission, but then we notice that after a while Mahaprabhu’s sankirtana movement disappeared. Mahaprabhu’s instructions, Mahaprabhu’s teaching, and Mahaprabhu’s dham disappeared from this planet and all kinds of misconceptions and apasampradayas, the unbonafide or rather degraded imitations of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu’s teachings and activities, were introduced. These apasampradayas came and in the name of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu they started to propagate a teaching which was diametrically opposed to Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu’s teachings.
Caitanya Mahaprabhu’s teachings were based on pure principles of dharma, but those activities were totally adharmic.

This is another characteristic of the age of Kali. This is the age of adharma, therefore adharmic principles will flourish and the dharmic principles will be disregarded. That’s what happened soon after Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu’s disappearance. In simple words, in the name of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu’s teachings, they were breaking the four regulative principles on which dharma is actually established. Adharma’s four legs became the pseudo representations of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu’s teachings, breaking the principles of total vegetarianism, abstinence from intoxication, illicit sex, and gambling. Instead of that, these activities became prevalent.

These are the characteristics of the apasampradayas. To a lesser or greater degree they were doing that or instead of propagating the process of bhakti, the impersonalism, or Mayavada, was being propagated. It happened for almost two hundred years. India was totally under the grip of these apasampradayas. In the rest of India, the influence of these apasampradayas were not so prevalent, but in the places of Caitanya Mahaprabhu’s activities like Mayapur, Navadvipa, and Vrindavan, in the name of Caitanya Mahaprabhu these activities were prevalent and flourishing.
Then Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu made the arrangement to undo that. He sent one of his associates of Vrindavan, one of the manjaris, as Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakur. Then he arranged to send Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur as his son. Bhaktivinoda Thakur strated the revival of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu’s teachings.

He is the one who started to profusely propagate Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu’s teachings through printing literatures and giving his profound and sublime and completely immaculate explanation of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu’s teachings. But he was a government officer. He was absorbed; his time was rather sold out to the government. He didn’t really have so much time. He himself could not really propagate Krsna consciousness, the teachings of Caitanya Mahaprabhu, that effectively. Therefore, he started to pray to Lord Jagannath to send a qualified assistant. As a result of his prayer, Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur appeared as a prasada, as a gift, as the mercy of Lord Jagannath. Bhaktivinoda Thakur named him as Bimala Prasada, the prasada of Bimala Devi, which is actually Jagannath’s prasad because Jagannath’s Prasad is distributed through Annapurna, or Bimala Devi.

Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur was naturally an extremely brilliant personality. He was not an ordinary living entity. He was a pure devotee who came down from the spiritual sky to assist his father, Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakur. Bhaktivinoda Thakur also guided him, trained him, and moulded him in a most wonderful way. When he was only six years old, Bhaktivinoda Thakur gave him the Nrsimha Mantra. When he was eight years old, he taught him to worship Kurmadeva, giving him the Kurma mantra. I don’t want to get into the details of why he did that, but the simple understanding is that Nrsimhadeva removes the impediments from the path of devotional service, bhakti-vighna-vinasa. He gave him that mantra in order to remove the impediments from the path of his devotion.

Then we can see such a brilliant personality he was. He was born in 1874. Bhaktivinoda Thakur established a printing press to print his books in 1885. At the age of eleven, Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur was editing his writings. At the age of eleven he is assisting his father editing and proofreading and helping him in printing those transcendental literatures. Then Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur, in 1891, at the age of seventeen, he established an organization called “The August Assembly”. The purpose of the August Assembly was that the young teenagers would commit themselves to the spiritual purpose of maintaining life long celibacy. We can see that at such a young age he had such a lofty idea. He started that August Assembly, the Assembly of the Brahmacaris, in simple words. The only one who maintained that vow was Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur. Throughout his entire life, he maintained his brahmacari vow that he took at the age of seventeen by establishing the August Assembly.

Then in the year, actually soon after that, Bhaktivinoda Thakur established his Svananda Sukhada Kunja, he established his residence and bhajana kutir, not bhajan kutir, the place of his bhajan. It was a very beautiful house. Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur came across Srila Gaurakisora Das Babaji Maharaja in 1898. He developed his attraction towards this brilliant personality. In the year 1900, after a lot of endeavour and transcending a lot of obstacles, he took initiation from Srila Gaurakisora Das Babaji Maharaja. Gaurakishora Das Babaji did not want to accept any disciples, but Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur compelled him to give initiation.

In 1905, he took another terrible vow of chanting one billion names of the Lord, sata koti nama yajna. It was a yajna, a sacrifice that he embarked on, which actually meant in simple words that he had to chant three lakhs, 300,000 names, that means sixty-four multiplied by three, 192 rounds a day for ten years. At that time, there was nothing in Mayapur. He took this vow to chant in Mayapur, here, and nothing was there. He was practically living in a hut on the bank of the Ganges. During the monsoon time, it would rain and the water would seep through or come in torrents through the roof. He would sit with an umbrella in his hand and chant the holy name.

You can see what an unusually brilliant personality. Then from the year 1918, he embarked on his preaching mission. He decided to leave Mayapur, Navadvipa, and go to Calcutta and start preaching because he was sent by Caitanya Mahaprabhu to inundate the world with Krsna consciousness. He went, I heard that whenever he expressed his desire to go to Calcutta, Gaurakishora Das Babaji Maharaja used to be very upset. He would say, “No, don’t go to Calcutta; that is the place of Kali.” Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur used to reason that, “Holding your lotus feet on my head, I will overcome any onslaught of Kali and I will completely destroy Kali, smash Kali’s influence.” In this way, he embarked on his preaching mission.

In the meantime, Gaurakishora Das Babaji Maharaja and Bhaktivinoda Thakur both left the planet. Bhaktivinoda Thakur left the planet in 1914 and Gaurakishore Das Babaji Maharaja left the planet in 1915. In 1918, Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur started his preaching mission. He went to Calcutta. As you all know, the first Math, or preaching center, was established at 1 Ultadanga Main Road. There only Srila Prabhupada met him in 1922. Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur empowered Srila Prabhupada at that time through his first instruction: “Preach the teachings of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu throughout the world in English language.”

Prabhupada was only twenty-six years old at that time, a householder, married with a son. But here also we see another remarkable example. Prabhupada, just one meeting, one instruction, and his whole life changed. He quit his job, left his other responsibilities, and committed himself to preaching. Although apparently Prabhupada was running his business, Prabhupada’s heart was completely committed to preaching Caitanya Mahaprabhu s teachings.

Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur in this way started his preaching mission in 1918. He preached until 1936 with a tremendous effect. Throughout India, he established sixty-four Maths throughout this period on this planet during his preaching mission, and influenced innumerable extremely brilliant personalities. It is remarkable to see the quality of people Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur attracted-the most brilliant personalities of that time became attracted to him and committed themselves. Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur established a very special, unique way to preach Krsna consciousness. This is also another thing which the blueprint was actually given by Bhaktivinoda Thakur. The preaching mission, which is Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu’s main objective: to establish Krsna consciousness and eradicate the influence of adharma in the middle of the age of Kali. That mission was engage everything for the sake of propagating Krsna consciousness.

Therefore we find that Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur gives a very unusual dimension to the sankirtana movement. Generally the meaning of sankirtana is congregational chanting, singing the names of the Lord collectively, but his sankirtan mission was printing books and distributing books. In this sankirtan movement the mrdanga is the printing press, not only a mrdanga, but the brhat mrdanga. A very unique dimension was given to the propagation of Krsna consciousness.
Not only that, but we find that there is another very unique dimension that Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur gave. At first he was at Ultadanga Main Road, a two storey building. Some rich people became attracted to his preaching and committed themselves to him and one such personality built a big temple in Bagh Bazar. The establishment was shifted from Ultadanga Main Road to Bagh Bazar Gaudiya Math. While Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur was taking the Deities in a procession to Bagh Bazar Gaudiya Math, he was singing a song. The song goes like:

pujala raga-patha gaurava bhange
matala sadhu-jana visaya-range

Gaurava means awe and reverence, and gaurava bhange means giving up this process of awe and reverence, the raga-marga has been accepted, raga-marga is being worshipped and established. As a result of that, the sadhus, the saintly personalities, have become engaged in visaya range, apparently mundane activities. So this is the spirit of Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur’s sankirtan movement. The sadhus have become engaged in apparently mundane activities. Now what is the essence of this mood that Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur stablished at that time, pujala raga patha? This is the real spirit of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu. Sometimes we see that people are introducing raganuga bhakti and claiming that Srila Prabhupada did not give raganuga bhakti and that’s why the ISKCON devotees must leave ISKCON and go to them to cultivate raganuga bhakti and go to them and so on and so forth.

Let us consider what is raganuga bhakti. The definition of raganuga bhakti is to follow the ragatmika bhaktas of Vrindavan, those who are completely absorbed in the loving attachment to Krsna, the residents of Vrindavan. The associates of Krsna in Vraja are the ragatmika bhaktas. And raganuga, following their footsteps, anu means to follow, when one practices devotional service following their footsteps, that is called raganuga. So in simple words, to follow an associate of Krsna of Vraja is raganuga bhakti.

Now who is the most exalted associate of Krsna in Vraja? Srimati Radharani. And who is Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu? Caitanya Mahaprabhu is Krsna in the mood of Srimati Radharani. So Caitanya Mahaprabhu’s activities are the activities of Radharani. Those who are following in the footsteps of Srimati Radharani, what kind of devotees are those? Raganuga-bhaktas. And what is Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu’s teaching?

yare dekha, tare kaha `krsna’-upadesa
amara ajnaya guru hana tara’ ei desa

Whoever you see preach to him the process of Krsna consciousness, teach him about Krsna and the teachings of Krsna. So preaching is the teaching of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu, the mood of Caitanya Mahaprabhu. He himself did that traveling all over India distributing Krsna consciousness. So following the footsteps of Caitanya Mahaprabhu is raganuga bhakti. Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur is saying that, that now the sadhus have become engaged in apparently mundane activities. Now what are those apparently mundane activities? These are the activities simply for the sake of propagating Krsna consciousness all over the world. We can see that this mood has been carried most wonderfully by Srila Prabhupada.

Prabhupada’s mood is for the sake of spreading Krsna consciousness I am prepared to do anything, I am prepared to engage everything. Prabhupada showed in ISKCON engaging everything, microphones, telephones, tape recorders, computers, aeroplanes, and Prabhupada even said for the sake of spreading Krsna consciousness if needed we are prepared even to use atom bombs. [laughter] Of course in order to use an article like atom bomb we need a personality like Srila Prabhupada. Only a personality like him or a personality of his stature can do that.
In this way Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur established the real purpose of Mahaprabhu’s sankirtan movement, and most perfectly Srila Prabhupada carried that and established it all over the world. If somebody says that ISKCON is different from Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur’s Gaudiya Math, then I will say they are grossly mistaken. Rather I would say from the ruins of Gaudiya Math, Srila Prabhupada revived the spirit of Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur in the form of the International Society for Krsna consciousness.

Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur ki jai! Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur’s Vyasa-puja maha-mahotsava ki jai! Now I would request Srila Jayapataka Maharaja to continue.

[invocatory prayers]

Jayapataka Swami: So His Holiness Bhakti Charu Maharaja gave us a whole vision about how these pastimes of Caitanya Mahaprabhu are being continued through our guru parampara, how Lord Caitanya came to flood the world and how the different pastimes of the Lord are continuing on even today. Just as Krsna when he came there were so many demons who were attacking, like that when Lord Caitanya came and established his sankirtan movement, Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur gave some explanation that for 200 years the movement was going really strong.

Then Kali saw that at this rate the whole movement is going to take over, I’m not going to get any kind of access. So he approached Sukracarya, the guru of the demons. He said, “You’ve got to help me out to spread some kind of bogus philosophy and stop this sankirtan movement of Lord Caitanya.” Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur said in his lecture that Sukracarya said, “I owe one against Visnu.” Because when Bali Maharaja was taking the drops of water from Vamanadeva, at that time Sukracarya took the form of a fly and flew up into his kamandalu, his water pitcher, and blocked the hole so no water would go. In that way trying to externally block Vamanadeva from getting the promise from Bali.

Then Vamanadeva took that pithcer and took a kusa grass and pushed out the fly which was Sukracarya who turned himself by his mystic power into a fly. And by doing so he poked out one of his eyes for his rascaldom.
Now Sukracarya apparently has only one eye to see. He thought to get back “For taking out one of my eyes because I was a little bewildered then.” You know they have their own way of rationalizing.

So he incarnated as Rupa Kaviraja, according to Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur, a bogus spiritual man who was very erudite. He convinced people to do sahajiya dharma: you don’t have to preach, you don’t have to practice, you don’t have to do acara-pracara, all you do is just imagine you are the one of the eternal associates in Vrindavan, and very easily, just by imitating, you can allegedly achieve your Krsna prema.

By this method they don’t achieve it, so they imitate it. I’m not going to get into that. So he told the story about this Rupa Kaviraja. So Bhaktivinoda Thakur came to bring back everything. How it deviated Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur mentions.
I just wanted to give a few little insights. We lived in Mayapur when there was just a grass hut here. At that time, there was an old Muslim who was my assistant. I think you saw him, Chaki Shekh. He would go with me and help me to different things. He was my agricultural assistant. One day I asked him to tell me about Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur. He said, “Oh, at that time I saw when I was just a child in the village. He was very tall and he had three lines on his stomach and three lines on his neck and his arms were down to his knees. He was ajanu-lambita bhujau. He would come in the village and give candies out to all the Muslim kids. We would go and get candies and we liked him very much.” Actually, the Caitanya Math didn’t buy land; mostly the land was given by the Muslims. He won over the local people. So Chaku Shekh was telling how much people loved Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur.

They were saying that, of course when he established his preaching there was no internet, no airplanes. I don’t know, maybe there was one or two, the Wright brothers or something back then. He had one of the first few cars in India. He got a car. He had the Post Office name changed to Sri Mayapur. There was a big struggle because at time in Navadvipa they were saying that that is the original Mayapur. Then there was a court case and to decide on it, the Viceroy of India, I forgot his name, he was an Englishman obviously. The Viceroy came out here. At that time, they were presenting the evidence. They said Lord Caitanya’s kirtan was at Srivasangam and it was heard by the Chand Kazi, it was disturbing. So the birthplace and Srivasangam are decribed as being is very close. So if it was in Navadvipa, without any loudspeaker, just kirtan, obviously you wouldn’t hear it across the river from Chand Kazi’s house and samadhi which are historical relics. It must be somewhere in this area.

Like this they established that this is the original Mayapur. Other evidence may be there also. So then this became Sri Mayapur. They were saying that every day there were like three or four bullock carts of letters coming to the Post Office and he had a whole crew of people there helping him answer all letters. You know how it is just answering email, what to speak of everyday you have about four tons of letters, snail mail. He would answer everything through his assistants and he would dictate.
When he would do his parikrama at that time they had horses, now we use walkie-talkies, but to keep everybody marching, one Kesava Maharaja was a ksatriya apparently, so he knew how to ride a horse. So he and another group of devotees who would be riding up and down to keep the parikrama in order. Then they had a camp. So in the centre of the camp there Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur and the preachers stayed and then it would go out like that in circles. At time it was also dangerous. In this way he was taking his parikrama out in the nine islands. When he got to Navadvipa, at that time as we heard from Bhakti Charu Maharaja, he was dynamically establishing daiva varnasrama: anyone could practice, anyone could be in Lord Caitanya’s movement.

But he took it a step further that if you are a pure Vaisnava then you are qualified also to be a brahmana. He would give upanayanam to non-brahmanas, he would give the brahmana thread, which we are continuing. So the caste brahmanas-we heard that some of them are demons who came in Kali-yuga-they were very upset. He was also preaching against this idea of different temples charging bhet, you had to pay entrance fees like going into the Disneyworld or something, not for seeing the exhibition, for that we charge here, but to see the Deities even. He said the Deities should be free, the Deities you shouldn’t charge. Like this he was very actively preaching against many of these things.

The caste brahmanas became so angry at him that when his parikrama got into Navadvipa, they started throwing boulders and bricks from the rooftops trying to kill him. At that time one of the disciples took him and pulled him inside a house, put on his saffron cloth and gave him his white cloth and they smuggled him out. Then the disciple dressed like Bhaktisiddhanta was running down the street and the caste brahmanas were chasing him till they realized it was the wrong guy. [laughter] Dynamic preaching.

Damodar Maharaja, our next door neighbour, was one of the youngest disciples. He got initiated when he was about twelve. He told his one time he was just walking along behind when Bhaktisiddhanta was going on an evening walk. At that time the moon already rose, he was looking at the moon. All the devotees were gathered around wondering “What is Gurudeva looking at, why is he looking at the moon?” He started speaking and said, “Now at the moon they have become bahirmukha, they are turning against Krsna and becoming materialistic. Therefore we have to go there and preach to them.” [laughter] Now of course people talk about the moon, even there is some controversy about that sometimes, but in the early 1900?s or 1920?s to talk about going to the moon to preach. . . obviously he is talking not in some mechanical way.
Prabhupada was telling us how Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur established a F.A.T.E., that he had a big exhibition in Calcutta with many dioramas and so many people. This was using, maybe at that time, that was the technology available, to use the dioramas to present Krsna lila, present Krsna’s message.

So many hundreds of thousands of people were coming to see this diorama exhibit. He was presenting dioramas and then in this way in Los Angeles Prabhupada also made, what does F.A.T.E. stand for? First American Theistic Exhibition. They also made a diorama exhibit in LA temple annexe. I remember Prabhupada was telling us about all this and he got some of his disciples to train under local artisans. We brought the clay modelers from Krishnanagar to come and train them. Milan who was a young boy then is still going around and making dioramas for different ISKCON temples. He helped Tirupati also.

I had the opportunity of seeing, you heard about Ultadanga where Srila Prabhupada met Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur, I had the opportunity of seeing that place. One time somebody in the Gaudiya Math took me and said he would show me that house. It’s actually for sale now. It wasn’t for sale but now someone told me it’s for sale. If somebody rich would like to, the Gaudiya Math said that if you get that place we would be eternally grateful because that was also the origin of Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur’s preaching and that is the origin where Prabhupada first met Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur. So we know that pastime. That jackfruit tree is still there. At least when I went it was still there, the jackfruit tree under which Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur was sitting. To actually see that place, see the same jackfruit tree, see the roof, everything, was really something historical.
Prabhupada said that a secret of our success is to please our previous acaryas. On the disappearance day of Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur he told how Bhaktivinoda Thakur had founded the birthplace of Lord Caitanya with Jagannath Das Babaji and he went door to door to build the first temple, how Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur, to make it short, he also developed the temple, developed Mayapur Dham.

He said I am also, in my humble way, trying to develop Mayapur Dham and this is to please the previous acaryas. He said he was very grateful for all those devotees, so many sankirtan devotees, who were helping to develop Mayapur, who are helping to please our previous acaryas. He just broke down and choked up and he couldn’t speak any more. He said the secret is to do the things that please the previous acaryas.
In conclusion (because the Chairman of the GBC is freaking out), gave his final instructions in writing. Somehow we got it in Bengali. There he gave some very concise instructions how he wanted to develop the parikrama in Mayapur Dham, how this would help the whole world, how he wanted to develop Mayapur Dham, the birthplace of Caitanya Mahaprabhu, and this is the merciful place in the world, how he wanted his followers to print books, that spiritual literatures should be published and should be distributed and then that they should also preach Nama Hatta, the congregational preaching, and engage those devotees in parikrama, Mayapur, like that. He brought it around full circle.

This seemed to be the missing thing that after doing the book distribution we also have to cultivate the people, follow up and make them into devotees and engage them here in Mayapur parikrama and Mayapur festival. Prabhupada said his secret of success was he tried to please Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur, simply followed his instructions.

Jay Srila Prabhupada ki jai!

Jay Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur ki jai!

The GBC members should go right up to the meetings. We’re going to come down again to offer puspanjali around noon.