Vyasa Puja Offerings 2016

A Humble Offering to the Most Auspicious Vyasa Puja of His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada

by purujit dasa

Today we are celebrating the most wonderful and the most glorious event that has ever taken place in this material universe and that is the descend of the resident of the spiritual world Goloka Vrndavana for the purpose of initiating the sublime mission of delivering the conditioned souls from the clutches of illusory potency, the most auspicious appearance of Jaya Om Vishnupada Paramahamsa Parivrajakacharya Sri Srimad His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, the founder-acarya of the International Society for Krsna consciousness and the current initiating spiritual master, diksa guru of the Brahma-Madhva Gaudiya Vaisnava sampradaya.
First of all, I would like to humbly ask all the assembled to kindly allow me to express my most deep gratitude for taking part in this auspicious festival and for joining us in the glorification of our beloved spiritual master. The time will come when this day will be commemorated not only in the privacy of our teeny temple, but will spread to every household, in every town and every village, every street corner and every possible place on Earth and beyond, as such is the glory of Lord Krsna’s pure devotee. As Narottama Daas Thakura prays: Ebe jaśa ghuṣuk tribhuvana: The glory of the spiritual master is spread all over the three worlds. This is the genuine desire of a genuine disciple –to see his spiritual master glorified everywhere.
Srila Prabhupada has blessed us with his divine presence and we have taken shelter of his lotus feet. He allows us to glimpse the transcendental staircase to Vaikuntha and thus to finish the attraction to the glitter of the illusory manifestation of happiness in the temporary material realm. Krsna says in the Bhagavad-gita:

nehābhikrama-nāśo 'sti
pratyavāyo na vidyate
sv-alpam apy asya dharmasya
trāyate mahato bhayāt

In this endeavor there is no loss or diminution, and a little advancement on this path can protect one from the most dangerous type of fear.

Bg 2.40

In the purport to this sloka, Srila Prabhupada explains: “Activity in Kṛṣṇa consciousness, or acting for the benefit of Kṛṣṇa without expectation of sense gratification, is the highest transcendental quality of work. Even a small beginning of such activity finds no impediment, nor can that small beginning be lost at any stage.”
Although one may be still under the influence of the material energy, devotional service itself is not an activity on the material plane. One may be a conditioned soul fighting the clutches of maya, but if he sincerely engages in little service to the Supreme Lord, his service is of liberated nature provided it is done with the right attitude. A prisoner may be in jail and might still suffer from criminal mentality, but if he follows the rules and regulations of the jail and furthermore volunteers to do extra work without expectation of any remuneration, he is doing good and it would be unjust to condemn him for doing so simply because he is currently a resident of jail.  Similarly, if a devotee commits even the most abominable activity, he is considered a saint, because he is rightly situated in devotional service, a liberated activity. 

api cet su-durācāro
bhajate mām ananya-bhāk
sādhur eva sa mantavyaḥ
samyag vyavasito hi saḥ

Bg 9.30

For this, however our service must be ahaituky-apratihata, in other words, it must be free from any material motivation and must be without any material interruption. This is our only worry, that we might not be serving Krsna to ultimately fulfill our own sense gratification. Srila Prabhupada explains:

Just like in the last war in Germany. One German friend told me that naturally all the women went to the church for praying, "My Lord, save my husband. Save my brother." Because all men were in the front, only women were left. So they were praying that "My husband may come back. My brother may come back," or "My father may come back," but nobody came back, and they thought, "Oh, there is no God. Our all prayers are useless." They became atheist.

Room Conversation -- April 6, 1971, Bombay

Our service becomes interrupted if Krsna does not supply us with the fulfillment of such a motivated prayer. Therefore, our only motive to serve Krsna is to get Krsna and nothing else, but Krsna. 

The name “Krsna” is the top most nomenclature when it comes to addressing the Supreme Personality of Godhead, because it is complete. Although God is the most powerful, most merciful, our supreme father, our creator, none of these designations contains a complete definition of God in one word. The name Krsna, meaning all-attractive is the one and only universal name for God, because it attracts all these divine attributes simultaneously and unlimitedly. Similarly, devotional service free from any expectation of results for its execution, is the one and only path of getting out of the material existence, which is nothing but a network of entanglement in the actions and reactions of our sinful activities. And because such devotional service must be free from any sort of material desire, anyābhilāṣitāśūnyaṁ jñāna-karmādy-anāvṛtam, it must be initiated by our attraction to the transcendental realm solely as nothing material can inspire the non-material spontaneous awakening of the non-material spirit soul.  Without the positive information about the transcendental reality of the spiritual world, our futile attempts for liberation are just like squirrels running inside a rotating wheel. No matter how fast the squirrel runs, his very movement is the cause of his own illusion of being liberated. In other words, it is not possible to get free from the imprisonment on our own through mental concoctions created by the three modes of material nature, namely goodness, passion and ignorance. Rather, if a prisoner on his own initiative breaks away from the confinement of his cell, he’s captured and the period of his sentence is extended. This can be said of a foolish Mayavadi philosopher, who despite attaining his false “Godhood” yet again falls down to become a servant of his sophisticated followers, who supply him sense gratification more than any regular materialist can ever enjoy.  We cannot extinguish fire by pouring gas on it. Quite the opposite, the more gas we pour, the more the fire grows. In the same way, our mind, being the creation of the material energy itself can never liberate us from material energy. The more we take shelter of such unreliable master, the more bound we become by following his dictates. We should therefore, humbly surrender to the genuine spiritual master, who is simply acting on behalf of the Lord and initiates us with the transcendental sound of the Hare Krsna mantra, which is the guaranteed method to subjugate the restless materialistic mind.
We should never underestimate the potency of the spiritual sound. When chanted in the right attitude, namely without expectation of remuneration, it is non-different from the transcendent Lord Himself. Thus the mantra acts on His own, without intervention. We cannot control the holy name, we can only serve Him. The bona fide spiritual master being fully spiritual and non-different from his vani, also acts on his own and we cannot interfere, nor stop his preaching work just because he does not follow our limited conceptions of what spiritual life is.  By his sublime teachings, he immediately liberates and initiates into service a sincere soul, who is willing to receive his message. There is no material condition of who that soul might be. He can be situated anywhere and everywhere. If he is sincere to receive the transcendental gift of the spiritual master, then he should be given the recognition of a genuine disciple. And if we, out of foolishness, try to monopolize the spiritual master only to a certain sectarian group, or designation, or even worse put hindrances to the working of the spiritual master, are we not the greatest cheaters by claiming to be his disciples? Such an attempt is yet another infection of the materialistic mind, whose only business is to entangle us in the reaction to our own mental concoctions.  Trapped by the mind, we continuously chew the chewed remnants of the sankapla and vikalpa without any hope of attaining peace from dualities of material existence: 

yasyāsti bhaktir bhagavaty akiñcanā
sarvair guṇais tatra samāsate surāḥ
harāv abhaktasya kuto mahad-guṇā
mano-rathenāsati dhāvato bahiḥ

"One who has unflinching devotion for the Personality of Godhead has all the good qualities of the demigods. But one who is not a devotee of the Lord has only material qualifications that are of little value. This is because he is hovering on the mental plane and is certain to be attracted by the glaring material energy." (SB 5.18.12)

Let us therefore be aware of such traps on the path to Vaikuntha and let us take shelter even more firmly of the lotus feet of our spiritual master in service, reverence and with genuine inquires pertaining to the service setting aside the dictates of the rascal mind who has been dragging us down through so many species of life for so many times. There is no worry, there is no fear to take sole shelter of the bona fide spiritual master. By having firm faith in the spiritual master and Krsna, all the purports of Vedic scriptures are automatically revealed.

yasya deve parā bhaktir
yathā deve tathā gurau
tasyaite kathitā hy arthāḥ
prakāśante mahātmanaḥ

 (Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad 6.23)

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Ramachandra prabhu's Vyasa Puja Offering:

Dear Srila Prabhupāda,
Please accept my humble  obeisance at your lotus feet. 
Today on Nandotsava, Your Divine Grace came to rescue us. On that very same day ,Due to the fear from Kamsa’s attack Vasudeva brought Sri Krishna to Nanda Maharaja  who performed his birth ceremony a day after to The Lord’s actule apearnce day which is known as Janmastami. Some consider this to be a more auspicious day then Sri Krishna’s appearance on the previous day . Srila Prabhupada explains:
Śrīla Viśvanātha Cakravartī Ṭhākura has discussed the significance of the words nandas tu. The word tu, he says, is not used to fulfill the sentence, because without tu the sentence is complete. Therefore the word tu is used for a different purpose. Although Kṛṣṇa appeared as the son of Devakī, Devakī and Vasudeva did not enjoy the jāta-karma, the festival of the birth ceremony. Instead, this ceremony was enjoyed by Nanda Mahārāja, as stated here (nandas tv ātmaja utpanne jātāhlādo mahā-manāḥ). When Nanda Mahārāja met Vasudeva, Vasudeva could not disclose, "Your son Kṛṣṇa is actually my son. You are His father in a different way, spiritually." Because of fear of Kaṁsa, Vasudeva could not observe the festival for Kṛṣṇa's birth, Nanda Mahārāja, however, took full advantage of this opportunity.
The jāta-karma ceremony can take place when the umbilical cord, connecting the child and the placenta, is cut. However, since Kṛṣṇa was brought by Vasudeva to the house of Nanda Mahārāja, where was the chance for this to happen? In this regard, Viśvanātha Cakravartī Ṭhākura desires to prove with evidence from many śāstras that Kṛṣṇa actually took birth as the son of Yaśodā before the birth of Yogamāyā, who is therefore described as the Lord's younger sister. Even though there may be doubts about the cutting of the umbilical cord, and even though it is possible that this was not done, when the Supreme Personality of Godhead appears, such events are regarded as factual. Kṛṣṇa appeared as Varāhadeva from the nostril of Brahmā, and therefore Brahmā is described as the father of Varāhadeva. Also significant are the words kārayām āsa vidhivat. Being overwhelmed with jubilation over the birth of his son, Nanda Mahārāja did not see whether the cord was cut or not. Thus he performed the ceremony very gorgeously. According to the opinion of some authorities, Kṛṣṇa was actually born as the son of Yaśodā. In any case, without regard for material understandings, we can accept that Nanda Mahārāja's celebration for the ceremony of Kṛṣṇa's birth was proper. This ceremony is therefore well known everywhere as Nandotsava.

>>> Ref. VedaBase => SB 10.5.1, SB 10.5.2, SB 10.5.1-2
In the vedic literatures it is mentioned that nothing that the Acarya exhibited can be taken lightly , as a chance  or some insignificant occurrence . every single point of Srila Prabhupadaṝs  Past time is called a Past time, why ? because it is full of spiritual instruction and is not tinched by the matiral modes of nature.  Therefore ,  the only way who to get out of this strong conditioning is by holding very tight to Your Lotus feet, Srila Prabhupada.
Some might say you not present, but the real presence of the spiritual master is due to the following of his instructions. Unless we follow the instructions of the Spiritual master there is not meaning for celebrating his Appearance day, it is simple a farce.
sHakshad dharitvne smstra sitrya “- Srila Prabhupada, You as good as Hari, God. Without appreciating your apeacnce who can relate to Hari? Even a single word spoke without your guidance about Krishna is nothing but a lie.
 Please accept me as you eternal servant life after life .
Yours Truly , You Insignificant aspiring  servant
Ramachandra Dasa.
Haribol!

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Jaya Sri Gaurangi's Vyasa Puja Offering:

My dear spiritual master Srila Prabhupada.
Please accept my humble obeisances at your divine lotus feet.

On this supremely auspicious day of your transcendental appearance in this world I would like to thank you for giving all of yourself in the service of the Lord to rescue his fallen parts and parcels. I am your eternally indebted servant at your lotus feet. My life only has value if you are there otherwise I am a fallen speck with no direction and no hope. You not only give meaning to my life you are my life because without you there is only doom.

Acarya upasana is essential. Your Divine Grace gives us Krsna, the Supreme Personality of Godhead. And if we want to see Krsna, if we want to enter in the spiritual world, then we have to go through the acarya. That is the injunction of the Vedas. We cannot approach the Supreme Personality of Godhead directly. The line of action in our Vaisnava tradition isdasa-dasanudasa (CC Madhya 13.80), we are the humble servants of the Supereme Lord’s servants. We have to go thorough the medium of the spiritual master, the bona fide spiritual master in disciplic succession to approach the Lord.
yasya deve parā bhaktir yathā deve tathā gurau [ŚU 6.23]. If one has got unflinching faith in the Supreme Personality of Godhead, yathā deve, and similar faith in guru then that is the way to perfection.


Tadiya, most cherished is the servant of the Lord, one who is in relationship with Him. So Lord Krsna becomes very pleased if we worship His most confidential servant as well as all Vaishnavas adhering to the path chalked out by the bona fide acarya.
Srila Prabhupada, I would like to thank you again and again for giving us the association of such sincere Vaishnavas for this is all that matters in time and space.

Like a fierceful lion you came to the Western world benedicting the most fallen of the fallen with incredible nectarean flow of instructions from your lotus mouth. When Lord Krsna came and said: surrender unto me! Who was ready and who could understand? Lord Krsna send YOU to make us understand. To show the example, to give us knowledge and destroy the ignorance of impersonalism from our hearts. Lord Krsna send you through Your spiritual master Bhaktisiidhanta Saraswati Thakur Prabhupada who instructed you to preach the message of Lord Caitanya in the Western world. Send by the Lord personally you fearlessly executed the proposition in deepest humility and surrender. You are the perfect tool in Sri Krsna’s hands, a transparent via media of the Supreme Lord’s message. You make us little babies in spiritual understanding feel like we are important servitors and realized souls. But we are completely dependent upon you for any of our progress on the spiritual path. You show the utmost tolerance in your behavior and the greatest kindness upon us paired with affection and understanding towards every individual.

Srila Prabhupada, it is only through you that we can see the truth and it is only through you that we can speak the truth. After having received this treasured bhakti-latta from you, kindly engage us in spreading it around so others will also have the chance getting out of this eternally miserable material existence.

What greater gift could be there to give then pure love of Godhead? Eternal blissfull life in complete knowledge?
Nobody knows who is God but you not only know, feel and live God, you actually freely give this knowledge to others in such a way that they can understand. You see everybody as a servant of the Lord and you are fanning the spark of our dormant Krsna consciousness.
You are teaching us how to spiritualize our existence by giving us proper consciousness.
Please continue showering your causeless mercy upon us and let us get deeply dipped into the the holy name and the propagation of the holy name through the power of Your Divine Grace’s instruction.

My words can’t give a even a glimpse of Your Divine Grace’s greatness and I am praying on this very day of your transcendental appearance that you please may always be so kind to always engage me in the transcendental loving service to Radha and Krsna in the association of your sincere disciples Srila Prabhupada. This is my only desire and my life dedicated to your lotus feet is my heartfelt praise to Your Divine Grace.

Your eternally indebted servant,
Jaya Sri Gaurangi Devi Dasi

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Bhaktin Heather's Vyasa Puja Offering:

To our Dear spiritual Master, His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, I offer my humble obeisance’s at your lotus feet.

Krishna, in his mercy, has sent you, his dear friend and pure Devotee, to rescue so many conditioned souls lost in the maya. You have opened our eyes, and brought us the Absolute Truth, which is the true yearning of all spirit souls. Through your tireless work, your translations, commentaries, lectures, recordings and videos, continue to teach and guide us. Even after your disappearance, you continue to speak to us, and preach true love for God. Through your propagation of Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu’s message, Krishna’s name has spread throughout the western world! Through your teachings we can learn the true joy that comes from devotional service. You are truly Krishna’s own personal messenger, sent for the benefit of all mankind. All the information we could ever ask for is all there, recorded and printed, and explained so perfectly and clearly. Your teachings are a bright light that illuminates a clear path out of bewilderment and back home, back to Godhead. It is truly the greatest blessing and ‘success’ of my whole life, that I have found your books and teachings in my own hands. It is also the most humbling experience, that I have seen your face and heard you voice, and even viewed a piece of your garment, as you are such a dear close friend and servant to Krishna, the Lord God Almighty Himself. All Glories to You, Srila Parbhupad!! Hare Krishna!