An Offering to Srila Prabhupada
BY: ROCANA DASA
Bhaktivedanta Book Trust
Oct 25, VANCOUVER, CANADA (SUN) — On His Disppearance Day.
nama om vishnu padaya krishna presthaya bhutale
Srimate Bhaktivedanta Swamin iti namine
namaste sarasvate deve gauravani pracarine
nirvisesa sunyavadi pascatya desa tarine
My dear Srila Prabhupada, Please accept my humble obeisances at your inconceivably exalted lotus feet. All glories to You, my eternal Spiritual Master, on this your auspicious Disappearance day.
I beg that some day, by your causeless mercy, I may have an infinitesimal understanding of actually “who you are”, in truth. I am now struggling to grasp the concept of you being an Uttama-adhikary, a Nitya-siddha, a Shaktyavesa-avatara, a Sampradaya Acarya. In struggling to do so, my contaminated mind and heart have become overwhelmed with many emotions. Do I now have to give up my childish sentimental concepts of you that I have carried stubbornly around with me all these years? Do I have to accept that these immature memories are not the absolute reality, they were not based on truth and verifiable in sastra, they will not save me from Maya’s allurements? The frightening thought that I must finally grow up and assume my adult responsibilities as your spiritual son is beginning to penetrate my consciousness. I am so embarrassed and ashamed that I couldn’t see this earlier.
My only request of you is that you will ask the disciplic succession to take pity on me by blessing me to never slip back to that bewildering state of adolescent confusion. My mind wants to cling to the simplified version of chant, dance and take prasadam. But you state in your Phalgun Krsna Pancami:
"4. The beginner in devotional service has no ability to solve this dilemma, but you are a maha-bhagavata, you have given us direction."
I am becoming aware of how much more fixed up in the Vaisnava philosophy I have to be to be able to properly represent you to the world. How much more determination it takes to follow your instructions to the letter. How much kinder and more merciful I must be to be able to preach your message to the fallen conditioned souls. How many anarthas must be rooted out before I can consider myself a bona-fide disciple of His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada.
I am the perfect example of the prodigal son who wandered away from his nice home, falsely thinking I was strong, fixed-up, qualified, and able to fight maya independently. I am now returning to find that our home, the one I thought that everyone could take shelter in, is actually not part of this material world and never was.
You are always in the spiritual world, and for a very short time, far too short, you gave me an inconceivable blessing and allowed me to have a glimpse of your transcendental reality. You let me to have a small taste of the nectar of devotion, an experience that can only be found in the eternal Hare Krsna Movement, which is beyond the vision of my material senses. I am having to deal with the realization that I have to create the Vrindavan atmosphere so the shelter you previously gave so causelessly will again manifest in my life.
Kindly, you left behind the secret map to the treasure house of love of God. Your personal realizations can be found within your many writings, leading the way back to our real Home. I just have to utilize. The secret is, I have to read your books with the intense yearning to associate with you, the desire to please you with unconditional service, which requires knowing your desires intimately enough so as to have no doubts what you want me to do for you. This I have found is not an easy endeavor, as you state in your Vyasa puja offering:
"20. To resolve all the apparently contradictory statements is not the play of some incompetent fool."
When I return to the once family-like temples where I served you during your manifested lila, I can bring back the memories of the ecstatic kirtans, the fabulously sumptuous feasts, but mostly the blissful bright-faced devotees so enthusiastic to spontaneously serve you. I was one of the few lucky souls who was transformed by your causeless mercy into one of the happies amongst the unfortunate hippies. When I look back, I see with the minds eye all the young bhaktas who were then so full of hope with dreams of being pure devotees, in just a little while. We dreamed about the communities we would soon create to live in blissfully into old age. There we would raise our children to become the pure devotees we all took for granted they would be.
You are now forcing me to open my eyes with the torchlight of transcendental knowledge. You made it seem so easy back then. Like children who don’t appreciate the trouble their parents go through to provide for them, we took you for granted and did not listen carefully enough to the many warnings you gave us about what lay ahead. Now we continuously return to you after learning first-hand some very hard lessons. The most important lesson being to listen far more carefully to your invaluable instructions, being more fearful of the painful repercussions which inevitably come from making foolish mistakes. The message in the next stanza I hope I have realized:
"76. The entire world is filled with the use of material objects, without a trace of devotion to the Lord."
Srila Prabhupada, I am not alone. There are many more wayward sons and daughters who hanker to return to your wonderful world but have a difficult time finding their way. You have inspired so many to begin the search. Please again shine your causeless mercy on all of us, lighten the path in our hearts, so that we can become purified enough to transcend the age of Kali, so that we can again associate together in the mood of service to your lotus feet.
"21. If everyone simply sat down together and considered these things what nice preaching there could be.
22. What is your order also, that everyone, coming together, should merge in your message and preach it to the world."
your eternal disciple and servant,
Rocana dasa
From my 1996 Centennial Vyasapuja Offering.
