Vyasa-puja offering to Srila Prabhupada 2006

(view 2006 offerings by disciples)

Dear Śrīla Prabhupāda,
Please accept my humble obeisances at your lotus feet.

True disciples, no matter how advanced, always see themselves as perpetual students of their guru. Even Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu, the Lord Himself in the role of a devotee, vividly demonstrated how He was never beyond the guidance and jurisdiction of His spiritual master. Humbly aspiring to follow the path set by Śrī Gaura, I seek to praise your constant necessity for my life and beg for your increased presence. In tribute to our eternal connection and active relationship, allow me to walk alongside you in the morning and submit a preaching analysis for your judgment.

There is a toxic mentality raging in the wealthiest nations of the world, the so-called “established market democracies,” and I wonder what you would say about it.

In the first world, besides the monomaniacal focus on economic affairs, today’s dedicated servants of the senses share another virulent affliction that impedes our preaching.

Trendy it is for global humankind to malign whatever seems religious in any traditional sense. Even in India now, young professionals are starting to catch this Western bug: “Excuse me, but I’m into spirituality—not religion.” That means toss out anything smacking of authoritativeness, discipline, and sense control. The progressive notion is that real spirituality doesn’t burden the contemporary truth-seeker with rules, regulations, teachers, scriptures, temples, and so forth. The divine just amazingly springs spontaneously from anyone’s bosom, every heart, in a way unique to each individual.

Paramparās and guru-disciple relationships are the chains of autocracy. Especially scriptural dependency, they tell us, imprisons our mind with archaic dogmas. “Why should genuine spirituality entomb itself in certain texts, practices, and teachers? What truly informed and world-experienced person would accept such a warped vision? Only a fundamentalist, a creationist, a terrorist!”

Global humankind adamantly declares it has moved on. “Watch us soar unabashedly in the free skies of random self-enlightenment and self-justification.” The sad fact: what is deemed as true divinity, religion, and now yoga has become whatever to whomever.

Among today’s do-it-yourself, free-style sages, even their disdain for authoritative scripture does not match their utter abhorrence of religious institutions. “Why oh why would you want to belong to one of those! Are you in the Dark Ages?” The logic goes: religions are regressive and restrictive, and therefore religious institutions are even worse. Only the weak and misguided would ever participate enthusiastically in organized religion.

As your disciple surveying the current wasteland known as the Information Age, I pause to reflect on the unavoidable, inarguable spiritual reality. Śrīla Prabhupāda, you struggled so intensely, at such an advanced age, to give us śāstra, paramparā, sādhana, and an international institution. Oh, how easy it would be to bow to the storms of the moment and back away from these Bhaktivedanta gems. My question: how to acknowledge, in a timely way, the particular diseased mentality of the day while offering the timeless cure? Relevancy in our outreach, yes, but certainly in the process we do not want to risk any of our precious inheritance.

In your glorification of Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Thākura, you closed triumphantly:

My inadequate attempt to glorify you can end with only a pitiful, desperate cry: Śrīla Prabhupāda, I need you now more than ever before.

Trying to be an unconditional servant,
Devāmrita Swami