Houston

Dearest Srila Prabhupada,

It is only by the boundless and causeless mercy of Your Divine Grace that we conditioned souls are, at long last, turning heads, eyes and ears away from the fantasy world of bodily consciousness and selfish desires. Whereas we have been standing in darkness through countless births, you are rushing forward to bring us the light of transcendental knowledge. With this light you are dissipating from our hearts the cloud of illusion, born of a desire to believe the concoctions of so-called friends, relatives, scientists, and scholars. Now, armed with the weapon of bhakti-yoga which you have so kindly offered, we are able to see through the illusory vision of the material mind and approach the Supreme Absolute Truth, Krsna.

We at Houston Yatra offer our repeated obeisances unto the glorious lotus feet of Your Divine Grace Srila Prabhupada. You are teaching us the essence of the Vedas in the line of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu. Indeed, Lord Caitanya Himself delivered this sahkirtana yajna to the conditioned souls of Kali-yuga that they might have the opportunity to revive their dormant Krsna consciousness and thereby return to their rightful position at the lotus feet of Sri Krsna. As prescribed by Lord Caitanya Himself, the most beneficial purifying sacrifice to be performed by the conditioned soul in this age is the congregational chanting of the mahamantra: Hare Krsna Hare Krsna Krsna Krsna Hare Hare / Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare. Lord Caitanya prayed to Sri Krsna: "Your holy name alone can render all benedictions upon the living beings….You have so kindly made approach to You easy by Your holy names." But it is you, O merciful Jagat-guru, who is making our approach to those holy names so easy because you provide the all-important link between these transcendental names and our materially contaminated senses.

O eternal Father, you are so devotedly carrying this torchlight of Vedic knowledge from your predecessor and Guru Maharaja, Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Prabhupada. Because of this alone, the knowledge remains pure and uncontaminated, beyond the world-jugglery of so many nonsense Mayavadi, impersonalist scholars. Because we are assured of your authority in transcendental matters by the luminous purity of your message, we therefore offer our obeisances, indeed our lives, at your transcendental lotus feet. With our consciousness lying in darkness we cannot see or understand Krsna directly. But the Lord is so kind. He has sent you as the external manifestation of Supersoul, His localized aspect in everyone's heart. And if we can simply hear the knowledge which you are transmitting, then we can, by your mercy, come to realize our true constitutional position as eternal servants of the Lord. So we simply pray for the desire to remain at your feet and humbly protect this transcendental knowledge from the venom of the mundane wranglers.

Our eyes have remained in darkness for so long that we cannot even appreciate your transcendental beauty and wisdom. And our lips are far too contaminated by mundane sound vibrations to even consider being able to offer homage worthy of glorifying yourself and your divine message. So we at your Houston temple simply pray for the humility to bow our heads submissively at your glorious lotus feet and to become…….

Your eternal servants in the service of Their Lordships Sri Sri Radha and Krsna.

Thank you, Srila Prabhupada.