My dear devotee friends,
My pranaams to all of you amazing devotees.
I thank you for your kind wishes on my birthday. I am grateful to you for taking your most precious asset, your time to wish me. I am moved by your well wishes and compassion upon me, especially a highly proud person like me, who has absolutely nothing to be proud of, yet has so much pride and sense of being better than everybody else. But in one sense, there is no reason to be moved, for I have learnt from advanced devotees that being most merciful to the most fallen is the hallmark of our sampradaya, and by being merficul to me, you are keeping the torch of this principle of our sampradaya of Sri Chaitainya Mahaprabhu shining bright. I will do my best to catch the mercy and blessings that you are so compassionately showering upon me.
It is my service to Srila Prabhupada to serve the devotees and thus please him. If in my service, there were, are or will be shortcomings or errors, or what we sometimes refer to as offenses, they may please be generously forgiven. Srila Prabhupada’s love passed on to his followers, disciples, grand followers and grand disciples is my inspiration, and I am sure is also yours. Everything and anything good that you saw in me as described in your well worded mails is not my credit, it is to the credit of HDG Swami Prabhupada and his disciples and grand disciples and to yours.
I will also take this opportunity to try and give a humble presentation of my experience to New Vrindaban, where I spent my birthday and the following few days.
We reached New Vrindavan on Thursday afternoon. We had anticipated some difficulty in securing a room to stay, but as the devotee at the lodge put it, if you have a genuine real strong desire to stay in the holy dham, then Krishna makes the arrangements. Lord Krishna reciprocated the strong desire of my traveling companions, and as a result, I shared their ‘karma’, and was awarded with facility to stay in the dham.
We attended the morning program next day starting with mangal arti at 5 a.m., followed by Narasingha arti, Tulasi arti, japa, Shringar arti, Guru Puja, Bhagvatam class (by HH Varsana Swami) and then prasadam.
There was a 24 hour Kirtan utsav planned to start on Sat morning at 9 a.m. The bulk of the devotees started to trickle into New Vrindaban only Friday afternoon onwards. So until Friday afternoon, there were just very few guests/devotees like us, and we experienced the tranquility of the place. One of the few general visitors from New Jersery described in a casual conversation to us that this was the best temple in North America he visited in his trip from India. It being summer season, the place was draped in a cloak of greenery on all sides, as far as one’s eye could see until the clear blue expanse of the sky. For those of you who may not know, the campus is miles away nestled in the forested wooden hills miles away even from the nearest village. On quiet days like this, one can even hear a normally sounded conversation happening nearly 50-100 metres away. Try to imagine listening into the glorious kirtans at arti times in the temple in this atmosphere. However, the best part has not yet even started. Much about the same time, as more and more devotees trickled in, HH Radhanath Swami Maharaj also arrived, though somewhat clandestinely. Suddenly Swapnil prabhu saw that Maharaj was in the temple hall offering obeiances to all the Deities and there was hardly anybody else. Thereafter he took a stroll around the campus, chatting along the way with groups of devotees. We were fortunate to stop by couple of times and talk with him. It is indeed rare and fortunate gift to receive even a few minutes of time from him, whose time is so valuable, who is cherished by thousands of people in the world. Even more fortunate are Anaya and Ashish, who received his blessings. Gradually, more leaders also arrived and present at the place of pilgrimage were the who’s who of ISKCON world viz., HH Jayapataka Swami, HH Niranjan Swami, HH Chandramauli Swami, HH Varsana Swami, HH Romapada Swami, HH Amiya Vilas Swami, HH Sivaram Swami, HH Chandrasekhar Swami, Mother Malati, and other disciples of Srila Prabhupada and others whom I may not know or forget. The occasion was the 24 hour Kirtan presentation by ‘Gurukulis’ with some of the leaders also participating. The Kirtan festival was inaugurated on Saturday morning with some shlokas to remove obstacles after a Bhagvatam class on the holy name by HH Jayapataka Maharaj. Now, know that most of the gurukuli kirtainyas are young boys or girls. However their devotional sentiment in their calling out to the Lord in their melodious kirtans with their expert playing of flute, kartals, mrindangas, harmonium and other instruments surpassed any limitation of age or whatsoever and arrested the attention of the sannyasis and all the devotees. By the Lord’s arrangement, there was no electricity supply available during the evening and night hours. It was an incredible sight to take darshan of the Deities in the dimmer lamps. The Deities also looked so happy and smiling listening to the Kirtan. Radhanath Maharaj led the Kirtan for couple of hours on Sat evening and for about half an hour on Sunday morning, with devotees lovingly dancing around. Radhanath Maharaj remarked that the singing of the gurukulis was not just excellent from the viewpoint of devotional feelings, but was also perfect from the point of view of singing and playing the instruments expertly. The old devotees took rest at night, but some of the younger gurukulis stayed up all night for the Kirtan. Maharaj said that these children had got the extremely rare and fortunate gift of having a taste for the holy name, and asked them to cherish it, and in that sense they were our gurus. The goal of the festival was to help all assembled get a taste of the holy name. One disciple of Srila Prabhupada had remarked that he had never seen such nice kirtans so expertly sung and played with devotion in all this life in the history of ISKCON. From my perspective, if these are the kirtaniyas who are the future of ISKCON, the future is great and promising, bright and brilliantly shining. I can say that we were lucky to be a witness to the preview of the explosion that this Kirtan group can bring about in the world. How can I describe the morning Kirtan raga that went on as the sun rose? I felt at that time that in that sense, New Vrindavan is THE SAME as being in Vrindavan, India. That moved and melted the hearts of the devotees. After the 24 hour festival concluded, HH Radhanath Maharaj gave morning class on verse 8 of Nectar of Instruction. He spoke about how the Krishna consciousness movement is a movement to train our minds to remember Krishna 24 hours a day, how one may reside in a holy place and take shelter of a spiritual master and advanced senior devotees. We left soon after, naturally with more mercy, and spiritual charge than we came with. Let us all desire that we may all together once go to the holy place in the future.
More experiences will follow from the other devotees.
Srila Prabhupada ki Jai.
New Vrindavan, place of pilgrimage, in North American Khand ki Jai.
Ys,
Vikas
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