Vyasa-puja Offering 2015
Dearest Srila Prabhupäda,
O my eternal master, my spiritual father, my best friend! I offer my heartfelt obeisance and loving service to you.
This past year, inspired by my dear friend and god brother Vaisesika Prabhu, I made a vow to read out loud forty-one pages of your Srmad-Bhägavatam every day. Remembering how you stressed the reading of your books as an essential part of our sädhana, for your pleasure I started from the preface on 6 September 2014; and today, 14 April 2015, I reached the twentieth chapter of Canto Nine. Indeed, one who reads forty-one pages every day will finish the entire Bhägavatam in just one year.
As easy, simple, and obvious as this practice seems, the result of doing it has surprised me. It has offered me a striking reminder of how profound your association is and how readily available you are through your books.
In June 1977, you spoke these stirring words:
Whatever I have wanted to say, I have said in my books. If I live, I will say something more. If you want to know me, read my books.[1]
I was fortunate to be in your room in Vrndavana and to hear you speak the following words, just a few days before you departed from this world:
Just go on discussing Srmad-Bhägavatam among yourselves and everything will remain clear.
This past Kärttika, we who yearly gather in Govardhana to celebrate that holiest of months—by reading your books out loud for five hours a day—came across the same thought enshrined in one of the final purports you dictated during those last days:
Thus the more we read Srmad-Bhägavatam, the more its knowledge becomes clear. Each and every verse is transcendental.[2]
Is it any wonder then that by reading forty-one pages of the Bhägavatam every day I am going through a kind of revival in my consciousness? Is it any wonder that I am realizing more and more, even after forty-three years of practicing Krsna consciousness, how essential associating with you directly—by systematically reading your books, especially Srmad-Bhagavatam—is to our progressive spiritual lives, individually and collectively?
It had been more than sixteen years since I’d systematically read the whole Bhagavatam with your purports. Of course, I’ve always read your books, especially the Gétä, and memorized a few of the verses therein. And my service during those sixteen years of editing Gopiparänadhana Prabhu’s translations and commentaries, and Sivaräma Swami’s writings, kept me in constant contact with your books as I cross-referenced and checked the writing for fidelity to your teachings, and so on. As a result of all that, I never felt any spiritual lacking.
But when I again began systematically reading the Srimad-Bhägavatam in the mood of associating with you out of gratitude, something wonderful happened. It felt as if clouds were parting and rays of sunshine were entering my heart. I now feel renewed like a wide-eyed new devotee. In this way, you have made it clear to me that you are pleased.
Now I have made my full commitment to use whatever energy I have left in my old age to help devotees I meet revive their taste for reading your books and to teach new people coming into your society to become fixed in the basics of Krsna consciousness, especially in reading your books out loud.
In the places I visit regularly, I have noticed a disconcerting trend: many devotees are losing their taste for reading your books and are relaxing the basics they first learned when they joined your movement.
Some older and mature devotees are concentrating on the higher topics included in your books, and understandably so after forty years of seriously practicing bhakti-yoga. But partly as a result, I’ve also noticed that new devotees tend to be brought into higher topics prematurely, before they are fixed in the basics. Anyone who regularly hears your recorded material and reads your books knows without doubt the tremendous sacrifice you made for us all by sticking to the basics in your daily teachings the entire time you were physically with us.
Furthermore, in this material world time causes everyone to forget. No matter who we are, then, if we, as your disciples and followers, don’t continue to read your books sufficiently and properly, the results, both individually and collectively, will be catastrophic to your movement in the long run.
Thus, you yourself write:
All the devotees connected with the Krsna consciousness movement must read all the books that have been translated (the Caitanya-caritamrta, Srmad-Bhagavatam, Bhagavad-gita, and others); otherwise, after some time, they will simply eat, sleep and fall down from their position. Thus they will miss the opportunity to attain an eternal, blissful life of transcendental pleasure.[3]
This purport, coming as it does at the end of the Madhya-lilä of Sri Caitanya-caritämåta, speaks volumes about the need for all devotees, neophyte or advanced, to continue to hear the basics of Kåñëa consciousness, for those basics are sprinkled throughout the foundational scriptures you translated, from beginning to end. We must read them all continuously for the maintenance of our own consciousness and for the empowerment to spread Krsna consciousness and to properly represent you.
You also state in your preface to Srmad-Bhagavatam:
The only qualification one needs to study this great book of transcendental knowledge is to proceed step by step cautiously and not jump forward haphazardly as with an ordinary book. It should be gone through chapter by chapter, one after another. The reading matter is so arranged with its original Sanskrit text, its English transliteration, synonyms, translation and purports so that one is sure to become a God-realized soul at the end of finishing the first nine cantos.[4]
Now, after forty-three years of practice, I’ve once again gone from the beginning of Srmad-Bhagavatam deep into Canto Nine. And what have I found in this canto, just before the Bhagavatam enters Sri Krsna’s pastimes?: The story of the he-goat and she-goat told by Mahäräja Yayati to his wife Devayani! That we are not this body, that sex life is the basic principle of material existence, that happiness here in this material world is nothing but a horse egg, that the energies of the Lord are all-powerful and insurmountable by the limited strength of our intelligence and senses, all such sobering reality checks are drilled into our consciousness in a singular way in the Bhagavatam by all the great personalities present in its pages and by the sparkling elucidations of your masterful purports.
You gave yourself to the world, Srila Prabhupada, through your Bhaktivedanta purports. Your purports teach us how to think for ourselves spiritually so that we can choose to become completely dependent on the will of the Supreme Lord. The spiritual training you give there is unique in the history of the world.
Is it any wonder then that you emphasized so strongly the importance of hearing and distributing your books? This was your transcendental plot: to uplift human society, to re-spiritualize it by the mass distribution of your books.
You therefore define your books in terms of kirtana:
These books I have recorded and chanted and they are transcribed. It is spoken kértana. So book distribution is also chanting. These are not ordinary books. It is recorded chanting. Anyone who reads, he is hearing.[5]
I want to live in the Bhagavatam, to make the Bhagavatam my home, and to bring others into this transcendental abode. As Srila Sanatana Gosvami prays:
asadhu-sadhuto-dayinn ati-nlcoccata-kara
ha na munca kadacin mam
premna hrt-kanthayah sphura
O [Srmad-Bhägavatam] bestower of saintliness to the unsaintly, O exalter of the most fallen, please never leave me. Always appear in my heart and my voice with pure love.[6]
This desire of mine will be possible to attain only by your causeless mercy, Srila Prabhupada. So on this auspicious day of your appearance, I fall at your lotus feet and beg you to be kind to this fallen soul so that he can assist you in your mission with his full energy.
Hare Krishna
Your aspiring servant,
Kesava Bharati Dasa Goswami
[1] TKG’s Diary: Prabhupäda’s Final Days, 9 June 1977.
[2] Srimad-Bhägavatam 10.13.54, purport.
[3] Sri Caitanya-caritämåta, Madhya-lélä 25.278.
[4] Srimad-Bhägavatam, preface.
[5] Letter to Rüpänuga Däsa, 19 October, 1974.
[6] Sri Krsna-lilä-stava 416.