Gurudāsa

I offer my prostrated obeisances unto your lotus feet O Divine Srila Prabhupada, where I find shelter in the sweet shade offered by your toes of knowledge. You who has seen Krsna and has given with causeless mercy to the moonlike recipients in this miserable place.

I have so much to surrender to you for, and yet your mercy alone can remind me of this fact.

I thank you for fathering so many Vaisnava Godbrothers and sisters and I can learn at their feet, they who are learning to be worthy of the regal name "Vaisnava."

I offer my humble obeisances unto your golden self, who is more magnanimous than anyone because you are bestowing freely what no one else has given to the West, pure love of Lord Caitanya, who has given us pure love of Krsna. And you have presented to us the most wonderful line of parampara lineage, whose heritage we are blundering to keep.

And as we grope, you come and remind us that we must "simply chant Hare Krsna," and our answers to all questions will be revealed. You have given us the linkage (the transcendental umbilical cord) with the most complete reservoir, purity unbounded, mercy manifest, Syamasundara, the end of our soul's love.

You must do with me anything, yes, anything that Krsna desires since the composition of gross elements called lovingly by you as Gurudasa is nothing but another bit of paraphernalia dedicated to Krsna's service, impure now, but by your direction this gross material is brought into transcendental service, for it is said in the Sri Īsopanisad:

So continue to please offer me to Krsna, and by determination and unflinching faith in you I will try to help you instead of making you pull the opposite way, away from illusions sphere.

You are the general on the battlefield of maya, directing expertly with your boundless tactical moves that extend from Krsnaloka and embarrass maya at every turn, You come and everything lumpy becomes smooth. Srila Prabhupada, you whose clever diplomacy satisfies the most demanding of demons. Who became the marriage councilor in front of my eyes, one evening, for a most respected and seemingly important diplomat of illusion who couldn't control the threefold miseries, and thus consulted our dispeller of woe, our beloved Srila Prabhupada. In London, one noted psychologist upon visiting Srila Prabhupada said to his wife, "I am going to see my psychiatrist."

Srila Prabhupada is the liaison between Krsna and all the living entities. Let me understand his teachings, as well as his bodily features, for his vani goodness pervade our dark hearts.

Srila Prabhupada, you are most expert as you cradle a flower softly between your lotus fingers for two hours on the morning walk, and your kindness knows bounds. For as I wait for you to stoop for the fifth day in a row to walk with you and receive knowledge, you spy me and say. "Oh, are you coming?" And I feel that I have benefited by you loving association already, for five days, and feeling selfish say, "Yes, Prabhupada," and you so kind, accepting, tendering, say, "Thank you very much." As always I am uplifted and prance along at your side, knowing I am in the association of the extensions of Krsna, Radha, the gopis, the gopas, the Panḍavas, Lord Caitanya and associates, crores and crores of associates, so how can I ever be lonely. If I know one thousandth of you I know everything, you who are Mahapaurusikaḥ, the most sincere devotee of Lord Krsna who has given again to this world the congregation of knowledge.

Sambandha or relationship, abhidheya or activity that pertains to the relationship, and prayojana or object of such activity, nothing else deviates from these categories of knowledge which you put before us so simply and force us to ask

And though you are an associate of Krsna, you take the time to associate with the lowest speck of dust who is so puffed up. You touch and ruffle my sikha and head as it rests on your lotus foot, and in your causeless mercy you, like the sun, dry up the urine with your purity. And as the flower bends towards the sun, so also this weed bends towards you, for it is not maya that nourishes.

Add all the items of illusion together, and the product will be illusion with all its attendant miseries.

So always you attract us moths away from the flame of illusion, out of the window in freedom to be fed by krsna-prem.

And I remember fondly in Ascot, England, when a butterfly or moth perched on your finger submissively, like a trained lion, wanting your association. And when you pointed your finger, the whole world revolved around it.

So why be unhappy? That is not spiritual life, for it is maya that causes this unhappiness. Why join her?

This you taught me every morning in England, as well as politics, grammar, ethics, economy, history, physics, metaphysics, ontology, morphology, and diplomacy. Oh, wretch that I am to have forgotten all.

So Srila Prabhupada, all I want to say, and I can't say enough, is that I don't want wealth, respect, love, knowledge, liberation, anything. I want you. You who have given me a microscopic taste of that unfathomable nectar where your home village lies, where as

This you delivered to me in a ceremony of second birth, the sound of Krsna's flute, you, the father, gayatri and Vedas the mother, and I the naughty child.

So I pray that everyone will wake up and listen to these parampara teachings and follow your finger, pointing straight up, out of your bead bag, pointing back home, back to Godhead.

Your servant

Gurudasa

(ISKCON London)