->

Srila Prabhupada’s Vyasa Puja

September 2nd, 2010

Dear Srila Prabhupada,

Please accept my humble obeisances. All glories to you!

A god-brother shared with me a personal realization, fully aware of the irony: “After studying the sastra deeply for over forty years, I have come to the realization that the essence of spiritual life is to fully surrender to the spiritual master.” I chuckled. It seemed like my life as a devotee. How do we miss the simple points you stressed again and again? But it also strongly highlighted one of my strongest appreciations over the last few years of you as a spiritual teacher:

You are expert at stressing and teaching those points that are most essential.

It also brought to my mind the things you emphasized that I am just beginning to realize after my own forty years of study:

Closeness or distance from you is not a matter of personal association or even what generation we are. It is simply our humility and mood of service that reveals who you are.

The foundational moods of devotion like humility, gratitude, and fixedness in guru are the mood and shape of love of Godhead that we can most readily access and express now.

Without being fully dependent on the mercy of Sri Guru there is no hope to advance in spiritual life.

My studies have also have reaffirmed your expertise as a teacher:

Although advanced in studies, you can explain even the deepest concepts to those who are not.

You're an authority in the subject you teach – never off the mark.

In the second verse of the Bhagavatam, we are told that one who hears the Bhagavatam just once arrests Krishna in his heart! I ask, “Why doesn't that ever happen to me? I've heard the text hundreds of times.” I know the answer. I haven't accepted its simple message – that Krishna is the most worthy object of devotion and my duty is simply to surrender to and serve Him. By hearing it again and again from you, however, I am getting closer to the goal.

What greater treasure than to have the lotus feet of Krishna in one's heart, by your grace? Thank you. Thank you.

Your unworthy disciple,
Dhanurdhara Swami

Comments are closed.