Śrīla Prabhupāda ki Jaya
At least a brief word about Oṁ Viṣṇupāda Paramahaṁsa Śrī Śrīmad Bhaktivedānta Swāmī Prabhupāda, on this occasion of the 37th anniversary of the sacred day on which he departed for nitya-līlā (the eternal realm).
It is impossible to illuminate the sun, but we can point towards it. Similarly, nothing can be said about Śrīla Prabhupāda, because words will fail to convey the fulness of his excellence. But, with words we can point our attention towards the greatness of his being.
Śrīla Prabhupāda possessed a degree of śraddhā in śuddha-bhakti (assured conviction in the principle of pure devotion) that glowed with an effulgence even the sun cannot match. Just as we feel warm as soon as we come into the sun’s rays, a living being immediately feels suffused by the warmth of Krishna consciousness simply by coming into respectful, receptive, proximity of our Param-Gurudeva, Śrila Prabhupāda. Just like a powerful magnet automatically aligns small filings of iron with the currents of its magnetic field, similarly, when a small jīva even stands receptively in the proximity of Param-Gurudeva Śrīla Prabhupāda, automatically he feels the magnetic flow of Prabhupāda’s feelings and thoughts rushing towards the All-Attractive magnet, Śrī Krishna, and his own thoughts and feelings automatically become aligned to that flow.
We have no need of anything else auspicious to happen to us, for we have already received the most incalculably, inconceivably auspicious prize: somehow or other we have been granted the priceless opportunity to respectfully place ourselves in proximity to A.C. Bhaktivedānta Swāmī Mahārāja. We wish for nothing else. All we pray for, fervently, is fortitude, strength, and lack of insanity, so that we can cling ever more desperately to this opportunity to stand in the glow of his divine consciousness, and feel the flow of his ”tivrena bhakti-yogena (powerful devotional link to Krishna) as it aligns our own malignant, malformed, and diseased consciousness into a pure, healthy, and blissful condition of Krishna-prema.
”Sei mora mantra-japa” — We chant our mantras, and we study our śāstras only in the hope against hope that doing so will edify our heart and mind against the constant proclivity to be distracted from his spiritual proximity and drawn off into useless, meaningless busy-body-thoughts and deeds. We seek no other goal from our sādhanas.
The phrase “Śrīla Prabhupāda ki jaya” has become as hackneyed as the phrase “I love you.” Nonetheless a true lover can say “I love you” with full feeling and wholehearted meaning. Similarly, we hope conclude by sincerely saying, “Śrīla Prabhupāda ki jaya!”
