My Dear Diksa, Siksa, Shelter, Aspiring disciples and other well wishers,
All Glories to His Divine Grace, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada.
Please accept my blessings.
From Saturday,18th August 2012 to Sunday,16th September 2012, we observed
the Purusottama month,the month that has been personally adopted by Lord
Krishna. It is the month of pure bhakti, which is free from all karma and to
which the Lord has given His special mercy.
In the glories of Purusottama month, it says that if one observes this month
then one leads a fairly happy and comfortable life in this world, and at the
end of life goes back to Goloka Vrindavan. We hope that all the devotees
have had a transcendental and blissful time observing the Purusottama month.
A few days ago, we celebrated Radhastami. We are very thankful to Radharani
because She came and established Navadvipa dham. This beautiful dham of nine
islands, was not only created by Radharani, but She created it to attract
Krishna. Krishna was so blissful in Navadvipa dham that He decided to take
the form and mood of Srimati Radharani when He appeared. Therefore He
appeared as Lord Krsna in the combined form of Radharani, or Sri Chaitanya
Mahaprabhu. This holy dham is very special because it is constantly giving
out unlimited mercy. It is the audarya dham, or the holy place of mercy.
Vrindavan is the madhurya dham or the place of great sweetness.Jagannatha
Puri is the aishvarya dham, or the place of opulence.
Here, in Mayapur dham, one can get mercy very easily. What is that great
mercy? It is love of Krsna, which is only seen in Vrindavan, and is awakened
in the heart by Lord Chaitanya’s and Lord Nityananda’s mercy. Therefore, one
can get this love of Krishna and appreciation for Vrindavan by serving in
Mayapur. Lord Caitanya’s devotees get the special blessings to
simultaneously appear in Navadvip dham and Vrindavan dham. This is a great
blessing. We hope that all the devotees will take advantage of the
opportunities that arise to give out Krsna’s mercy to others. Not only
should we follow the regulative principles and chant our sixteen rounds, but
we should also try to give out the mercy to others. In this way, our own
happiness increases more and more as we are able to help all those whom we
come in contact with, to get home, back to Godhead. One of our acaryas has
said that in this material world, you can get some happiness. Friendship,
family, and love will give some happiness, but that happiness is like being
in the desert and requiring litres and litres of water, but only being able
to get a few drops. What is the use? Like that, we need so much happiness,
but in the material world, happiness is limited. But through bhakti yoga, we
can get unlimited happiness. yasyad brahma-saukyam anantam. With this
unlimited happiness, we will never hanker for temporary happiness!
We hope that everyone takes the mercy of Lord Chaitanya and Lord Nityananda
to heart. We hope that everyone takes advantage of this opportunity to chant
Hare Krishna and enter into a spiritual rasa with Lord Krishna. Normally, it
is very hard to get such special mercy, but by the mercy of Lord Chaitanya,
one can naturally develop one’s love for Radha and Madhava. One gets love of
Radha and Madhava simply by the mercy of Lord Chaitanya.
Here in our temple of the Vedic Planetarium, the central Deity will be the
Pancha-tattva, and to the right will be Radha-Madhava and the
eight sakhis. On the left will be the Guru parampara. In this way, one can
get spiritual blessings from Lord Chaitanya to understand the real purpose
of life and to get love of Krsna, which we are always hankering for.
I hope that you are seeing the posts in some of our websites, made by some
sincere disciples. In August, we had an international Bhakti Vriksha
convention in Mayapur. In the month of August after Janmastami and Vyasa
puja and after staying in Mayapur for some days, I went to Patna to see the
temple construction there. After Patna, we went to Delhi, and from Delhi, we
flew to Malaysia. We stayed for about a week in Malaysia in the beginning of
September. In the last days, we went to North Malaysia and did an
inauguration of the Bukit Mertajam temple. This was my first visit to North
Malaysia after the stroke and the devotees were very happy to see me. In
future visits to Malaysia, we will try to visit some other places which were
not yet visited.
From Malaysia, I went for two or three days to Singapore. There we saw
Devakinandana prabhu’s program, and then Haladharapriya prabhu’s program.
Each program was attended by about five hundred people. From Singapore, we
went to Perth and Adelaide. In Adelaide, many devotees came from Melbourne,
Sydney, and the east coast, Brisbane and New Govardhan. It was an ecstatic
visit to the west and south of Australia. Then I returned to Mayapur for
Radhastami, where there were many activities going on. Besides Radhastami
festivities, there is currently a brahmacari retreat in progress for East
India, also a district Nama Hatta program. Anyway, I will keep you informed
of my activities.
We hope that you visit us on Facebook JPSlive in which we are actively
participating. If you have some website you would like me to visit, please
tell me and I will try to visit there and participate with you there. We
hope that all of you are tasting some bliss while you are doing some
devotional service. This bliss is given out freely by Lord Chaitanya
Mahaprabhu. We hope that everyone will get bliss by following in the
footsteps of His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada.
We sing whenever we get an opportunity, “If there was no Prabhupada, what
would there be?”, the song that we composed for Srila Prabhupada’s Vyasa
Puja 2012 and give out some purports to this song. Some devotees have given
their rendition of this song. We hope that this song will be accepted as
something to sing on the glories of Srila Prabhupada. I was thinking if
there was no Prabhupada, what would there be? Prabhupada has given us
extreme mercy, and still to this day his mercy is raining down upon us. I
hope that every one of you may develop a very close relationship with Srila
Prabhupada and engage in serving him through the disciplic succession.
Your well-wisher always,
Jayapataka Swami