South Africa

SOUTH AFRICA
nama om visnu-padaya krsna-presthaya bhū-tale
srimate bhaktivedanta-svamin iti namine
namas te sarasvate deve gaura-vani-pracarine
nirvisesa-sūnyavadi-pasatya-desa-tarine
O sublime Srila Prabhupada, please accept our most unworthy obeisances. We humbly beg you to keep us forever fixed in constant devotional service at your lotus feet, for, as the Supreme Lord's pure representative, you are truly our lord, birth after birth. Simply by giving aural reception to the transcendental sound coming from your lips, the dormant prema-bhakti is awakened in our hearts, and by your mercy alone the vast ocean of material suffering becomes a puddle of water in the hoofprint of a calf.
To offer such words to you, Srila Prabhupada, most swanlike incarnation of compassion, is like offering a glass bead to one who possesses millions of the rarest jewels, but by Lord Caitanya's mercy, we might be able to convey the feeling of love that we have for you. Before we received your mercy, we were like deserts. We had not a drop of love, neither for ourselves nor for others. Indeed, we were the possessors of all bad qualities and were totally selfish, not even knowing the nature of the true self, yet by you we were drowned and overflooded in an ocean of all-consuming and ever-increasing love. So our love, our dearmost acarya, is now what we are offering you. You have cultivated it in our hearts, and its flowers we are offering to you and humbly petitioning you to accept them. Otherwise our lives become meaningless.
When we read the beautiful prayer written by Your Divine Grace on your arrival in America, what can we do other than love you? For when you perfectly carried out the instruction of your Guru Maharaja you showed a compassion for us fallen souls, the like of which has never been seen in the West before or since. We remember how you wrote, "Most of the population here is covered by the material modes of passion and ignorance. Absorbed in the material life they think themselves very happy and satisfied, therefore they have no taste for the transcendental message of Vasudeva. I do not know how they will understand it." A later verse continues, "I wish that You may deliver them. Therefore, if You so desire their deliverance, then only they will be able to understand Your message." No greater examples of true compassion exist in Vaisnava literature than these verses. Surely no pure devotee ever worked with more degraded people, coming from a hellish society in which nearly every individual is a Jagai and Madhai, and yet since you are Lord Krsna's dearmost devotee, thousands of these same fallen souls are now engaged by your mercy in His transcendental loving service.
Lord Caitanya has crowned you His beloved devotee with all success, and He has empowered you to spread the chanting of the holy names over an area even greater than He did during His own divine lila, even though our love is so limited and we are bereft of all intelligence, we can understand that you are always with us to the extent that we follow your loving instructions, and the light of your instruction illumines every footstep of the way on this royal road of bhakti. Our striving in our small way to spread Krsna consciousness in South Africa pleased you very much in the past, and we realized, by your special interesting this area, that somehow, if our plans to spread Krsna consciousness in the future bring you pleasure, that this is the fulfillment of our lives.
Your fallen servants,
Tulasi dasa adhikari / Balabhadra dasa adhikari / Girimakha dasa adhikari / Rama-rajya dasa adhikari / Rddha dasa adhikari / Gokulendra dasa brahmacari / Rukma dasa brahmacari / Kedara dasa brahmacari / Yasoda-vatsala dasa brahmacari / Jayanteya dasa brahmacari / Nanda-kumara dasa brahmacari / Dharmavira dasa brahmacari / Vimala Prasada dasa brahmacari / Gobhatta dasa brahmacari / Bhakta Basdaw / Bhakta Nanda / Bhakta Premraja / Bhakta Vinesh / Bhakta Ramdasa / Bhakta Gary / Bhakta Neil / Bhakta Trevor / Lila-devi dasi / Syamasundari-devi dasi / Prasūti-devi dasi / Radha-Rasavihari-devi dasi / Bhaktin Premi / Bhaktin Asha / Bhaktin Vanilla / Bhaktin Premilla / Bhaktin Deolinda / Abhay Charan De / Gopinatha / Bhaktirasa / Sastri
 

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