Vyasa Puja Offering Letter to Shrila Prabhupada 2019

Dearest Shrila Prabhupada, please accept my respectful obeisances at Your lotus feet.

 

Nama om vishnu padaya krishna preshthaya bhu-tale shrimate bhaktivedanta swami iti namine
Namaste sarasvate deve gaura vani pracharine nirvishesha shunyavadi pashchatya desha tarine
Om ajnana timirandhasya jnananjana shalakaya 
chakshur unmiltam yena tasmai shri gurave namaha 

 

Even through all my prayers to God, my studies and my desire to enter into dialogue with Him in some way, until You offered me Your first darshan, all those efforts remained fruitless. 

I feel, I know, that You created a radical shift in my life: You enlightened me, have inspired me, educated, accompanied and supported me until this present moment with Your living example as a lover of God, a true expression of pure bhakti.

I remember in the beginning, before meeting You, as I was searching for myself, almost unconsciously, I began searching for God and searching for God, I reached You. Reaching You, that same blessed morning in late August of 1976, You redirected me towards the search for God. God was already vaguely present in my consciousness, You rekindled my memory and revived my desire to serve Him, placing him at the center of the flowered garden of my heart.
I feel, I know, that You have been my spiritual catalyzer, the one to transform me. I feel, I know, that Your blessings were the reason everything I had been desiring for years -if not for numerous lives- finally occurred.  

I feel, I know, that thanks to You I have been able to truly reflect in an authentic way on the themes of Being, Knowing and Willing only after having met You. You activated the capacity of my consciousness that reoriented me towards the realization of my bond of Love with God, a realization that can only take off through the indescribable grace of a pure devotee of His who, moved by compassion and piety, is dedicated to reestablishing the interrupted bonds of Love between wandering souls and Him, the supreme and eternal Friend. 
Ever since I was a child, I felt a certain pull towards God but throughout adolescence it gradually diminished until it became little more than a subtle feeling of absence and I was no longer able to place Him at the center of my life except through limiting and abstract concepts. I felt however that the memory of God, although vague and unstable, preceded every other memory and was even like a sublime memory that lay buried far in my mind. The memory seemed to me like an object that had fallen in deep and turbulent waters, that could only be recognized in a vague and indiscernible way, until the waters became calm.
As in certain dreams, even through having forgotten the images, the content surpassing the confines of the night, illuminates consciousness, not to the point of being remembered as precise images but rather like a constant dripping flow of sweetness from an unknown inner source.

I feel, I know, that I only remembered in a vague, distant and confused way my relationship to God. It was as if I had lost a treasure, of which only a nebulous trace remained far in my memory. Searching for and finding it became my life’s purpose and You moved me to search for that treasure.
I feel, I know that thanks to You, the soul’s four passions: desire, joy, fear, and pain degenerate by the world conditionings and that the embraces of true pleasure are authentic only when they are rigorously spiritual. The rest are but optical illusions that are all deceiving and persuasive whisperings of Maya. Only thanks to You was I able until this moment to evade such enchantment. Memory’s reminiscence are passions such as lust, power, wealth, success, praise, powerful friendships and frivolous love, which when they are disconnected from God are source of scorching pain protracted into the realm of conditionings. You taught me to recognize and avoid them and I once again began to live authentically.

Thank you, Shrila Prabhupada, please accept my respectful obeisances at Your lotus feet and please continue to inspire me to offer You my every desire, thought, word and action with heart.

 

Your devoted and loving servant,

 

Matsya Avatar das