Sarvabhauma dasa
om ajnana-timirandhasya jnananjana-salakaya
caksur unmilitam yena tasmai sri-gurave namah
“I was born in the darkest ignorance, and my spiritual master opened my eyes with the torch of knowledge. I offer my respectful obeisances unto him.”
Dear Guru Maharaja,
Please accept my humble obeisances. All glories to Srila Prabhupada.
On the very auspicious occasion of your Vyasa-puja ceremony, I would like to express my deepest gratitude from the bottom of my heart for pulling us out of the darkness of ignorance and filling our life with all-auspicious divine grace of Lord Krsna.
We have been wandering in this material world for millions of lifetimes, due to forgetfulness of Krsna. It has been an endless painful journey from species to species while traversing in different planetary systems. While aimlessly wandering for the time spanning millions of lifetimes, we often became fearful and perplexed. In our unfortunate and helpless situation, as we were completely overwhelmed by the illusory energy of Lord, there was no hope for us to come out of this endless wandering. In this world of misery, we were making various futile attempts to lord it over the insurmountable material nature and were getting frustrated again and again. But by coming in contact with you, we really have become very fortunate. We are blessed with the shower of your divine grace, which is like torrential rain, capable of extinguishing the forest fire like tribulations of material existence. We will always remain indebted to you for your causeless mercy and pray to you to shower blessings on us so that we can utilize this rare opportunity bestowed upon us by your divine grace. In every life we were awarded a mother and father, but in this life, we could meet your divine grace, our spiritual father, and this instills hope within us of getting delivered from this labyrinth of material existence and attain the lotus feet of the Lord.
We are very fortunate to get the shelter of your lotus feet which gives protection to the fallen souls like us. Being conditioned souls, we have a tendency to get distracted, but by your causeless mercy, you have always been emphasizing regulated and qualitative devotional service to protect us against any pitfalls created by maya. Srila Prabhupada gave us the teaching that as soon as we slacken in the department of sravanam kirtanam, then it becomes visaya or materialism and the spiritual path is like ksurasya dhara means sharpened razor. Therefore, he instructed that we need to be always very careful to avoid any mishap. Following the footsteps of Srila Prabhupada, you have always advised us to stick to qualitative and regulated sravanam and kirtanam for protection against the onslaught of maya. By your mercy we are getting ample opportunities to hear the topics of Krsna morning and evening from your lotus mouth, in a very authentic way surcharged with your evergreen enthusiasm. You are constantly reminding us about the importance of qualitative hearing and chanting and encouraging us to take deeper shelter of Krsna so that fallen souls like us would be able to remain vigilant on the path of devotional service which has a razor-sharp edge.
Your constant reminder to reorient our focus on the quality of chanting is a great inspiration for forgetful and distracted souls like us. You always try with different tools and messages to emphasize the importance of improving the quality of our chanting. It’s a great impetus for us, to get reminded again and again on how much effort we need to put from our side for improving the quality of chanting. You have been organizing various retreats like japa retreats, festival of holy name, and many more events just to bring our attention to this core business of quality of chanting. We are eternally indebted to you for bestowing this kindness on us despite having no eligibility whatsoever from our side.
Even though in current circumstances most of us are remotely connecting with you and hearing your discourses, we are being blessed by your regular association which is enlivening and sustaining our spiritual life, which could have been very difficult otherwise.
You have always been teaching us to progressively disassociate from the temporary and get attached to the eternal Lord Krsna. You have been setting examples in front of us by your own conduct on how one can expertly disassociate from the temporary and develop affinity for the Supreme eternal. We know very well we are not there yet. But our hope is that some day by your causeless mercy our consciousness may get purified further so that we can become better instruments in applying your instructions more effectively in our life.
In recent months, by your causeless mercy we were fortunate to hear from you the topics of Ramayana, Caitanya-bhagavat, Madhurya-Kadambini, Uddhava-gita and many more topics of Krsna, which were presented in a very authentic way with sophisticated graphic content to attract our heart. We are getting the transcendental hearing opportunity for our purification so effortlessly by your causeless mercy. On top of that we are getting the nectarine commentaries of previous acaryas who are expert in analyzing the truth of Krsna from every possible angle with their deepest realizations. We are very grateful to you for your causeless mercy to bring the answers to our questions from various authentic sources, just to maintain us in good spiritual health by relieving us from all doubts.
We had a great lesson to learn from you in pandemic time on how to carry on our Krsna consciousness with due consideration for health and safety. It also resonates with Srila Prabhupada’s instructions, as he taught us to give high priority to the health of devotees. But without the guidance of pure devotees like you, we cannot really see the complete picture of our devotional life in concept or in action; but by your presence in our life, we get inspired to carry on our devotional service with confidence by placing ourselves under the shelter of the dust of your merciful lotus feet.
Even though most of the time we are physically away from you, you mercifully engage us in your service to the Lord for our purification. In fact, it is a great privilege for us to get engaged in your service. Without service we find it is difficult to develop the higher taste and realization which attracts us to stay committed to the path of devotional service.
Your attention to us at individual level, including even newer people is very inspiring and makes us very grateful to you. You have been painstakingly diving deep into the details of questions from each one of us and coming up with purest and finest possible answers completely aligned with the conclusion of the previous acaryas of our disciplic succession, just to keep us submerged in the purity of the teachings. We observe how much attention you give to the details not only for every task but for every relationship and every interaction, even to the level of every word in order to train us to become an instrument in your hands in service to the Lord.
Thank you for your causeless mercy as we keep ourselves happily busy in counting its various manifestations in our life. You have opened our eyes with transcendental knowledge; you are our master lifetime after lifetime. Please keep on bestowing your mercy on us as you always have been doing.
Your aspiring servant,
Sarvabhauma dasa