Dear Srila Prabhupada! (2018)
Dear Srila Prabhupada!
Please accept my prostrated dandavats at Your lotus feet.
Those feet, which can give shelter to all those, who take shelter in their cooling shadow and become free from all anxieties.
All glories to Your Divine Grace!
Dear Srila Prabhupada, when I fell on the floor of the VIP-lounge in Frankfurt Airport 1974 and I looked upwards again, getting the first glimpse of Your Divine Grace, tears shoot *into my eyes. Realizing then that prior to this moment I never experienced freedom of fear, I felt liberated from the dictate of time, simply blissful as never before. How many life times I had to wander before meeting You, how many times I experienced birth and death before finally being rescued by You, a savior who came unexpected, making everybody feeling the same as I did ,timeless and secure, saving us all, giving us life in a place filled with death.
Years passed, just flashes in eternity, and I still fail to understand the scope of Your mercy and the fortune so causelessly bestowed upon me.
*Seeing friends mutating into unrecognizable forms, becoming institutionalized icons, petrified in their own way, bereft of the mercy channeling preaching spirit, seeing opportunists trying to benefit materially from what you gave, fools and rascals taking apart what other established and seeing those who again and again embraced Your lotus feet, crying out for shelter, I learned to value any opportunity to chant Your glories, to value any minute which You, worshiped by Your faithful followers, are present in Your instructions, Your recorded words and Your ever fresh glances and movements.
More as ever Your warnings are coming true and those who don’t listen are doomed, disappearing again into the non-human forms of life.
Most I meet on the street seem to spend their last lives in the valuable human form of life, their lives already now being conducted in animalistic fashion.
Even worse, due to their sinful lives haunted by beings coming from lower planets, they are becoming walking ghosts, ghastly images of anger
and pain, ready to inflict misery upon others any time. How empty is life without Krsna Consciousness! How urgent is the message You delivered!
And how rich even the most materially impoverished ones can become when accepting the shelter of Your Divine Grace!
Those who still go out and distribute Your precious books are the ones who are at the source of Your mercy, delivering it to others. They may be not the most academically educated, but their realizations are profound and real, making them to real sages in these dark Kali Yuga days. Such devoted vaisnavas delivering Your books to the “steal framed ones”, are the real benefactors of the society, counting their own blessings day after day.
They are the ones who still bring prestige and honor Your movement deserves. Your books speak for themselves, commanding dignity for those
who can grasp even few words while glancing over them.
Your books are the only remedy, their very presence creates an atmosphere of sanity and tranquility in midst of the insanity surrounding us all.
As if idealism was removed even from the young ones, their brains as if sucked out by remote agency, they walk like zombies staring into their digital gizmos, thinking themselves to be active while being turned into passive consumers of what was already chewed by others. Where did the creativity go? Where are those who were ready to give their lives for Your mission without any regret? 1972 I joined such young men and women.
Will they come again?
Dear Srila Prabhupada, my life is one continuous illustration of Your mercy as I still walk freely, without any institutional support, meeting envy the same way You did, seeing a spiritual ideals being compromised by materially motivated invaders, even demons, ready to question even the basis of what You gave. There is nothing what is happening today what You didn’t see and had to overcome.
You saw it all and you prevailed, finally doing what nobody ever did before, planting the seed of bhakti in the desert like western world.
How precious are those who are still ready to become ostracized for the sake of their conscience and for the sake of protecting Your words! This is the ISKCON I love Srila Prabhupada, and those are the devotees I wish to serve. Traveling I see them here and there surviving, often entirely unrecognized, again and again seeking some ways to serve Your lotus feet. Seeing such jewels is for me invigorating, giving me the hope that in this lifetime I may be still of some use for You.
If You, Srila Prabhupada, and Krsna, the Supreme Lord judge me fit to somehow serve You again in next life time, that would certainly be the perfection of my life.
Is there a chance? Please, please Srila Prabhupada, You showed me already such an unexpected mercy in this lifetime, maybe there is a hope I can be engaged in Your service again. I don’t see much more ahead, my destiny is unclear to me. But wherever You are there is safety, there is morality, there is victory and strength and there is bliss as never experienced before.
In Your presence absolute satisfaction can be achieved, as those flooded by Your mercy desire nothing more to achieve in their lives.
Dear Srila Prabhupada, it is terrifying to see how in the last 50 years alone so much degradation took place. What was considered 50 years ago to be “controversial” is now established as standard. The degrading influence of Kali can be felt everywhere. Those without any connection to Your words are doomed to be degraded fast.
Thank You, Srila Prabhupada, for coming in times of the most urgent need, times which never pass. Your words are as urgent today as they were 50 years ago, eternally true and eternally fresh.
Praying to remain Your eternal servant,
your servant Manidhara das