My dear Diksa, Siksa, Sheltered, Aspiring disciples and well wishers,
Please accept my blessings. All glories to Srila Prabhupada.
I am writing to you on the occasion of the Gaurabda New Year. We have just
observed the Gaura Purnima Festival. It was an amazing event this year
because of the many different programs preceding the festival and during the
festival.The strategic planning committee had suggested to the GBC that they
invite all the ISKCON leaders. So the GBC invited the temple presidents,
regional secretaries, etc. from around the world to take part in the
meetings called as ILS (ISKCON Leaders Sangha). About four hundred had
come. So for seven days they attended GBC preliminary meetings and also a
variety of seminars on different subjects which the GBC sub-committees have
been working on.
The seminars were intersting. I also attended some of those seminars. It was
a very nice arrangement with tables, chairs, prasada for devotees from all
over the world. It was like what Srila Prabhupada said, “A united nations of
the spiritual world.” That came into the GBC meetings, which were shorter
because already so much time had been taken up by the Iskcon Leadership
Sanga. It was nice to see how all the leaders of the world could get
together to try to push forward Srila Prabhupada’s movement as well as to
see that Prabhupada’s legacy and his instructions are being followed world
wide.
After that there was a Harinam, or Kirtan Mela, which had various renowned
chanters leading kirtan from 10:00 am to 10:00 pm or later. It
included such stalwarts as Sacinandana Maharaja, B.B.Govinda Maharaja,
Lokanatha Swami, Indradyumna Swami, Niranjan Maharaja, Madhava Das from
Vrindavan twenty-four hour kirtan and many, many others. There was a really
good attendance. Some days, including internet there were nine or ten
thousand in attendance. In fact, I heard that with the internet, on the last
day there were 20,000 people in attendance. The temple room was packed.
Everyone was dancing. I could hardly dance. Since I can’t walk
independently, I couldn’t dance fully, but I danced whatever I could,
because I was elated by the kirtan. I was listening all day to the harinam.
It was really ecstatic.
That lead into the Mayapur Navadvip Parikramas. We had this year, as last
year, four different parikramas! We had the Russian, International, Hindi,
and Bengali parikramas. The Bengali group has snowballed into 3000 devotees,
so next year they are going to have two groups. The Russians also want to
have two groups although they have about 1500. So, we’ll see how many groups
there are next year. This year I did the yagna of visiting every group and
participating in each parikrama talking to the devotees. It was very much
enlivening to see all the different devotees and to participate like that.
All the four gropus had maha-milan (grand meeting) on the last day at the
birth place of Lord Chaitanya and came back together to ISKCON Mayapur and
had kirtan almost whole day. The last programs in the festival were the
yagnas, rathayatra, pujas, and all the processions.
This year was really, really ecstatic.Devotees who had come after a long gap
felt like paramahamsas to be here that Lord Caitanya’s mercy was flowing so
much. Meanwhile, The Temple of Vedic Planetarium is coming up. It is already
about seven stories high. It is towering over everything. Soon they will put
up the dome. The number of residents in 1971 was five devotees. Now there
are about 2,500 devotees, who are from all over the world from about fifty
different countries, and sixty three different gurus. It’s a multi-faceted
multi-cultured community.That was our annual Gaura-Purnima festival.
This year I hosted all of the Prabhupada disciples and their families who
had come to Mayapur, and it was a special arrangement by Sarva Sakti devi
dasi and her team. They set up tables and chairs for the Prabhupada
disciples, an ambience, which was very beautiful. We also fed the second
generation and the youth and others. Everybody was happy!
I hope that everybody will try to improve on their personal devotional
service, their personal practice and knowledge of Srila Prabhupada’s books.
Many devotees don’t take advantage of the great sacrifice that Prabhupada
did in writing his books. A large segment of devotees frankly have not read
all of Srila Prabhupada’s books. It’s imperative that every devotee reads
Bhagavad Gita, Srimad Bhagavatam, Caitanya Caritamrita and all of his other
books. Also, it is important to read Srila Prabhupada’s biography to
understand Srila Prabhupada as he was, and in this way, to try to take up
some responsibilities to spread Lord Caitanya’s movement. I communicated in
my last letter how I felt that we have to carry forward the heritage of
Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur to defend and to promote Lord Caitanya and
the acaryas.That was given to us by His Divine Grace, A.C. Bhaktivedanta
Swami Prabhupada.
Srila Prabhupada wanted us also to work co-operatively
together, to promote Lord Caitanya’s Sankirtan movement, to reach out but
basically we need to be as strong as possible so our reach will have the
greatest impact. On one side devotees who have somehow allowed Maya to bring
them down, they should gradually come up. If they are not able to come up on
their own, they should associate with stronger devotees who can help them.
And the stronger devotees should look out for the younger devotees,
or older ones for that matter who are weak, and try to help them to come up.
In this way, as a true family, with a model of devotees care and love and
affection for all the followers of Lord Caitanya, we should try to bring
everyone up, so that by the fiftieth anniversary of our Iskcon movement, we
will have a very large and expansive family. The more soldiers we have out
there who are combating the influence of Kali, during outreach to bring the
conditioned souls under the shelter of Lord Krsna, the more effective they
will be. The loss of some soldiers is sad. We should try to get them back
and at the same time we should engage new soldiers. So we want to try also
to get new people through various ways. I am very happy to say that the
congregational programs like Bhakti Vriksa, Nama Hatta, and others have
proved successful to engage devotees and to give out Krsna consciousness to
a broader audience. But there are always ways we could add more. So, if you
come up with any ideas, please share them!
Recently I went and attended some seminars on social networking such as
Facebook, Twitter, and equivalents in Russian and other languages. This
seems to be a field which we can use in outreach as well. I view a
service such as Facebook , besides outreach, as a way to give you all
association. Shyama Rasika prabhu in the JPS Archives has come up with a
page called JPS Live on Facebook. He also copies our pictures to
websites like jayapatakaswamioffice.com,jpsvani.com, and also jpsdisciples.com.
Everyday he uploads dozens, if not fifty or more photos, so devotees can
also keep in touch if they want. There is an opportunity to send your
postings and questions besides some newly conceived outreach initiatives. If
you have time to help, please inform us.These are areas we are exploring.
Some of you maybe are more advanced and know how to use these and other
medias expertly. We want to excel in these.
Prabhupada told me to do many things. Some things I can do by myself, but
some things I need lots of help. He said to expand the Krsna conscious
message unlimitedly. For that, I need unlimited help. I also need help to
distribute books, and to expand the congregation and so many things. So
please try to help me! I will very much appreciate it, and I hope that this
year Gaurabda will be ecstatic for all of you, and you will be able to make
advancement very nicely in Krsna Consciousness. Thank you very much!
Haribol! Hare Krsna!
Your well wisher always,
Jayapataka Swami