I arrived in Bangalore on the 3rd of November - just in time to join Srila Prabhupada's disappearance celebration on the next day.....
As every year I was invited to stay with Madhusudan Hari Prabhu who is the Vice TP of the Jagannath Temple in Seshadripuram, his good wife Radha Shakti Mataji and their two children. I always feel very comfortable in their home - like a member of their family.....! And we often have deep and meaningful discussions and exchanges of realizations.
Since Srila Prabhupada's disappearance fell on a Friday, the celebration started in the late afternoon with kirtan and abhishek, and I was invited to give the lecture, followed by the feast. I gave an introduction to a seminar on Srila Prabhupada, which I continued on Saturday evening and Sunday morning as part of the SB class.
Srila Prabhupada's position as the Founder Acarya of ISKCON is a highly relevant topic which deserves most attention. I have to admit, for many years I was not deeply thinking about this - what it actually means. Often we mechanically repeat the words, but within our heart we don't have deeper realizations. After reading HG Ravindra Svarupa Prabhu's book on this topic did I start to more deeply understand its great importance.
Our present Gurus tend to make a much stronger impact on devotees than those who are no longer present in person. So Srila Prabhupada's absence of vapu needs to be compensated for by an ever deepening realization of vani. And this requires deep internal work for each and every member of our ISKCON society. Srila Prabhupada's presence has to be so strong, that it will not diminish even after all his direct disciples will have left this world. Prabhupada created the foundation, the functioning and vision of ISKCON as a global community aiming for the respiritualization of the entire human society - a very unique cultural revolution. Prabhupada was thinking big! His role is ongoing - his presence has to be felt in the life of every ISKCON devotee today, and for many centuries to come.
Being the Founder Acarya is not just a title - it is actually a transcendental system in order to protect, preserve and give longevity to ISKCON dedicated to the mass liberation of conditioned souls all over the world. Prabhupada's personal standards, principles of action and spirit have taken shape in an organization which he created. And each and every member has to internalize this spirit and take it to the very core of his/her own identity, and pass it on to the next generation. Then Srila Prabhupada's spirit will pervade ISKCON as the essence of its own culture, and its members become its visible embodiment in this world. We honor and learn from so many acaryas in our line, but Srila Prabhupada as the Founder Acarya will always be very unique. He will remain present, generation after generation, as the single prominent Siksa Guru. We can understand ISKCON to be like Srila Prabhupada's body, and the soul of this body is Srila Prabhupada himself. As long as Srila Prabhupada will remain in the center of our lives, ISKCON will remain alive. If we loose this Prabhupada consciousness, then ISKCON will become like a dead and useless body.
Srila Prabhupada's position as the Founder Acarya of ISKCON is a highly relevant topic which deserves most attention. I have to admit, for many years I was not deeply thinking about this - what it actually means. Often we mechanically repeat the words, but within our heart we don't have deeper realizations. After reading HG Ravindra Svarupa Prabhu's book on this topic did I start to more deeply understand its great importance.
Our present Gurus tend to make a much stronger impact on devotees than those who are no longer present in person. So Srila Prabhupada's absence of vapu needs to be compensated for by an ever deepening realization of vani. And this requires deep internal work for each and every member of our ISKCON society. Srila Prabhupada's presence has to be so strong, that it will not diminish even after all his direct disciples will have left this world. Prabhupada created the foundation, the functioning and vision of ISKCON as a global community aiming for the respiritualization of the entire human society - a very unique cultural revolution. Prabhupada was thinking big! His role is ongoing - his presence has to be felt in the life of every ISKCON devotee today, and for many centuries to come.
Being the Founder Acarya is not just a title - it is actually a transcendental system in order to protect, preserve and give longevity to ISKCON dedicated to the mass liberation of conditioned souls all over the world. Prabhupada's personal standards, principles of action and spirit have taken shape in an organization which he created. And each and every member has to internalize this spirit and take it to the very core of his/her own identity, and pass it on to the next generation. Then Srila Prabhupada's spirit will pervade ISKCON as the essence of its own culture, and its members become its visible embodiment in this world. We honor and learn from so many acaryas in our line, but Srila Prabhupada as the Founder Acarya will always be very unique. He will remain present, generation after generation, as the single prominent Siksa Guru. We can understand ISKCON to be like Srila Prabhupada's body, and the soul of this body is Srila Prabhupada himself. As long as Srila Prabhupada will remain in the center of our lives, ISKCON will remain alive. If we loose this Prabhupada consciousness, then ISKCON will become like a dead and useless body.
On the following weekend I offered the course entitled "The Vanaprastha Ashram". It was well attended by around seventy devotees, who participated over several days in the 15-hour course. Each participant received well composed course materials with powerful quotes from Srila Prabhupada's purports to selected verses of the Srimad Bhagavatam. We extracted the universal principles of the Vanaprastha Ashram and presented them with clarity and conviction, clearly illustrating how we can apply these principles in our modern days. The course was thought provoking to my audience, shaking us up to the facts of reality that this last phase of life is not meant to be lived in comfort, leisure and opulence, surrounded by sweet grand-children charming our hearts with broken language. Rather are we meant to increase austerities, and by simplifying our surroundings, our eating and our externals we can gradually give up more and more the bodily concept of life and deepen our focus on sravanam kirtanam to ultimately prepare for death - our final challenge. In SB 1.15.44. Prabhupada declares that no respectable gentleman would remain in family life until death, because that was considered suicidal and against the interest of the perfection of human life. Such quotes were indeed a wake-up call for many. It reset the trajectory of life to the most important goal of remembering Krishna at the time of death and going back to Godhead. Our entire lifestyle should be molded around chanting Hare Krishna - something we easily tend to forget when having been lulled into a sense of complacency, with life's priorities revolving around wife and kids, and earning one's livelihood. Then Krishna easily moves into the background rather than being in the very center of our lives. Krishna and Srila Prabhupada's mission are pushed to the back burner while more 'urgent' business grabs our mind's attention. This course urged us all to introspect and re-set our priorities with new intensity. It could just make the difference between making it back to Goloka Vrindavan or having to do another round in this material world.
One day we also conducted an evening program on the topic of the false ego which attracted a nice audience to participate. It was interesting to see that all programs were attended by a lot more men than ladies - almost a little unusual for this part of the world!
The Bangalore devotees kept me busy - I was also invited to visit the temple in South Bangalore and gave an evening program on the topic of Prabhupada being the Founder Acarya. And a new preaching center requested me to speak about Govardhana Puja, since they were celebrating it on the Sunday evening thereafter.
During my visit to Bangalore the sudden policy in regards to exchanging the 500 and 1000 Rs notes was introduced, which was an interesting experience. It was a shock to everyone, and for days people's minds were evolving around this topic - how to change and bank the old notes. And at the same time I could sense that people were proud of the courage Narendra Modi exhibited by launching this surprise. People expressed that it will be for the better of the country, and therefore they were willing to accept the inconvenience and even financial losses they might be facing. I once queued up at a bank for two hours to exchange some of my old notes - a newspaper reporter was there and eagerly took pictures of me. It was interesting to witness all the social exchanges going on in the queue - one fellow managed the entire group of people and helped everybody to fill in the forms and get the right info. And he took care of the elderly, who found it a challenge to stand for such a long time.....
On the 15th of November I flew on to Dhaka/Bangladesh....
Your servant, Devaki dd
The Bangalore devotees kept me busy - I was also invited to visit the temple in South Bangalore and gave an evening program on the topic of Prabhupada being the Founder Acarya. And a new preaching center requested me to speak about Govardhana Puja, since they were celebrating it on the Sunday evening thereafter.
During my visit to Bangalore the sudden policy in regards to exchanging the 500 and 1000 Rs notes was introduced, which was an interesting experience. It was a shock to everyone, and for days people's minds were evolving around this topic - how to change and bank the old notes. And at the same time I could sense that people were proud of the courage Narendra Modi exhibited by launching this surprise. People expressed that it will be for the better of the country, and therefore they were willing to accept the inconvenience and even financial losses they might be facing. I once queued up at a bank for two hours to exchange some of my old notes - a newspaper reporter was there and eagerly took pictures of me. It was interesting to witness all the social exchanges going on in the queue - one fellow managed the entire group of people and helped everybody to fill in the forms and get the right info. And he took care of the elderly, who found it a challenge to stand for such a long time.....
On the 15th of November I flew on to Dhaka/Bangladesh....
Your servant, Devaki dd
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