Sundari Radha devi dasi

Dear Guru Maharaja,

Please accept my humble obeisances. All glories to You! All glories to Srila Prabhupada!

mukam karoti vacalam pangum langhayate girim
yat-krpa tam aham vande sri gurum dina-taranam

“I offer my respectful obeisances unto my spiritual master, the deliverer of the fallen souls. His mercy turns the dumb into eloquent speakers and enables the lame to cross mountains.”

On this auspicious day of Your Vyasa-puja, all your stalwart disciples are present here to sing your glories using the sweetest syllables, like the birds and bees in the spiritual world. I feel so grateful and extremely unqualified to be part of your spiritual family, serving Srila Prabhupada through you. Thank you for connecting us to Srila Prabhupada and his glorious international family.

This year, for Janmastami and Srila Prabhupada’s Vyasa-puja I had the good fortune of celebrating with the beautiful sanga of devotees in Ypsilanti, Michigan. The devotees there were pouring out their deep love for Srila Prabhupada on Vyasa-puja day, and I was so blissful, observing like a fly on the wall, and sharing in their sentiment of overwhelming gratitude for all the sacrifices Srila Prabhupada made to connect us with Krsna. My spiritual sister, Uma dasi shared a beautiful prayer to Srila Prabhupada that day, which she expertly composed using His Grace Vraja Bihari Prabhu’s article titled, How Do We Pray to Krsna? as a guide. In his article, he shares that all prayers share four elements: 1. Praise of the Lord/devotee, 2. Expressions of our own disqualifications, 3. Expressions of gratitude for everything Lord/devotee has given us, and 4. Requests to the Lord/devotee for the blessings we seek.

Also, I have been reading the biography of His Holiness Bhakti Tirtha Swami, and I consistently find myself in awe seeing how empowered he is, and I can see the power of prayer. His life is a clear example that prayer is such a powerful way of connecting to the Lord and His devotees. With that in mind, today on this auspicious day of your appearance, I wish to offer You a prayer, following in the footsteps of all my senior Godbrothers and Godsisters.

On December 27th, 1948, in the small town of Utica, NY, You blessed us with Your birth. Twenty-one years later, Your intelligence and inquisitiveness brought You to Srila Prabhupada’s soothing shelter and You made it Your life’s mission to share His love forever. Your determination to Srila Prabhupada has never wavered once, and fifty-three years later, here we are, in a room filled with hundreds of us who are completely indebted to You. Nothing can take You away from Srila Prabhupada, even the most excruciating circumstances. I cannot fathom everything You have had to go through during your fifty-three years being in ISKCON, but I know for sure it was not easy. However, you are there every day serving with Your whole life to keep spreading Prabhupada’s mission and supporting Srila Prabhupada’s ISKCON. I am always amazed at how even with Your insanely busy schedule, You still have time for me, insignificant me.

I was born into Your shelter Maharaja. My mother and father first met you while my mother was pregnant with me. You taught her everything I know today. You helped her be the most amazing mother I could have ever asked for, and a big reason why I’m a devotee today. You gave me my two dear loving mentors, Nityananda Pran Prabhu and Hemangi Mataji who taught me how to be a loving, responsible, human devotee. Every part of my life has been carefully orchestrated by you. The community in Chicago and Naperville in which I grew up was personally cultivated by you. The youth I call my best friends today, you personally encouraged. You personally took us to the holy dhamas, Mayapura, Vrndavana, and Jagannatha Puri, every year showing us Krsna in his different forms and pastimes. You personally wrote to me consistently, checking in on my life even when I didn’t know how to appreciate it. And even with all these blessings, here I am, still struggling. You have given me every single thing a soul needs to become a devotee, and yet here I am struggling to chant, struggling to read, struggling to hear and relish the Lord’s glories. I didn’t deserve this set-up, being born into your shelter, because I am not taking full advantage of it.

But it was Your causeless mercy that gave it all to me, and I know for a fact that You are not giving up on me. Even though I’m such a difficult and stubborn soul, you have glanced upon and you see me. You’ve given me a place in your family in the shelter of Your service. You found ways in which to keep me engaged and safe from all the distractions that I won’t let go of. You accept me, knowing that I’m holding on to loads of baggage. I owe everything to You. While reading Bhakti Tirtha Swami’s biography, I came across an excerpt that I resonated deeply with. “The disciple can never repay the spiritual master for what he has given. Also, we understand that one must be careful not to think that the guru needs him or that he is doing something wonderful. Whatever we offer, it is so incomplete if we have not given up sex desire…But by your mercy, I have this last chance to make the greatest offering to—to offer you myself in an uncontaminated state, free of all sex desire, so as to be a perfect instrument for your mission.”

Today on this auspicious day, I pray to you, dear Guru Maharaja, my spiritual father, please bless me so that I can become purified and so my black charred heart can somehow become clean enough for me to become a perfect instrument for You to use in Your service to Srila Prabhupada. Please bless me so that this desire can lead me in my life. Please bless me so that Your service is my only desire. Please accept my frog croak of a prayer.

I have a long long way to go dear Guru Maharaja,

Your aspiring servant,
Sundari Radha devi dasi