Your Holiness (Vyaspuja Offering to HH Bhakti Charu Swami Maharaj)

In search of Guru
You left your high degree and home
Trod Himalayan surface,
As a seeker of Absolute, Alone.
Later you visited ISKCON and read NOD,
It put end to all your trace.
found shelter of His Divine Grace,
Your Holiness.

In first meeting in Allahabad
with His Divine Grace,
His emphatic order to translate
The Srimad Bhagavat to Bengali
You did embrace.
Who else could do,
Your Holiness

In only one year,
You took Harinam Diksha, Brahmana Thread
and Sanyas vows,
In last days of Srila Prabhupada,
you served as servant devout.
Spiritual Progress,
At rapid pace.
Bless us all,
Your Holiness.

Srila Prabhupada as Founder Acharya
& preeminent shiksha guru has been established.
GBC as an ultimate managing authority,
Thou emphasized.
Never leave ISKCON.
You ever address
Srila Prabhupad’s loyal follower.
Your Holiness.
  

To introduce Srila Prabhupad in modern era,
You directed ‘Abhaycharan’.
To immerse vaishnavas ecstacies
You sing melodious kirtans.
At Beautiful temple in Ujjains
RadhaMadanMohanji bestow their Grace.
These all your gifts,
 Your Holiness

Message of Lord Chaitanya
Taken from Bengal to far West.
Though walked and led so many path of          devotion,
Through all obstacles and tests.
Keeping Srila Prabhupada in forefront
Entire ISKCON society Harnessed
We worship thy feet,
Your Holiness.

Golden Jubily of Historic Voyage

James cook, Vasco da Gama, Christopher Columbus Francisco Pizarro are names of few famous sailors who marked their names in the history of the world for undertaking life risking sailing expeditions in the exploration of world. Although the initial impulse behind these expeditions were trade and capitalism, it further lead to rise of colonial empires, transfer of animals, foods, human populations (including slaves), communicable diseases  around the world. In 20th century many wars were fought and countless people sacrificed their lives for breaking free of bonds brought by colonization and achieve independence.  What started with an adventurous endeavor had to end with bloody affair since it was based on personal greed.

On 13th August 1965 also, one person started his sail across oceans on a mission. He neither had manpower to sail along, nor artillery to fight a war, with only a bag full books and door of all uncertainties left ajar. He was an old man with only 40 rupees in his hand, without any personal motivation, he travelled on his Gurus command.  Sea sickness, nausea and heart attacks could not shake his determination, for he only begged to be a doll in the hands of God, instrument of His compassion.  He got down the ship on Boston harbor, alone in the world of unknown faces and culture. He started his mission, sitting under a tree in park, singing the names of Lord, intoxicated hippies danced, it ignited their love of God spark. Soon spark became fire, hoards of devotees traveling across the world, singing and dancing dressed in Vaishnava attire. Temples, farms, gurukulas, rathyatras everything for pleasure of supreme personality, prediction of glorification of names of God in every town and village soon became reality. Prasadam and books being distributed to dissipate hunger and ignorance, gospel of Lord Chaitanya was taught teaching humility and tolerance. 

He was Srila Prabhupada, the most prominent emissary of Indian spiritual culture across the world. This 13th August marks 50th anniversary of historic event of his boarding Jaladuata ship at Kolkata for spreading spiritual culture of India across western world. He said “I have made a home in which whole world can stay”. And what started with his adventurous endeavor now also continues in the form ISKCON since it is based on principle of pure love of God. We offer our sincere most tribute to Srila Prabhupada for this historic voyage he took 50 years ago on this day, to enable ultimate voyage back home, back to Godhead possible of limitless conditioned souls.

Dealing with Guilt

I lost my bag during rathyatra. It contained some important keys. The feeling of being irresponsible and neglectful caught up my mind. While coming back in van, enthusiastic kirtan was going on but the mistake committed earlier made me cold and indifferent to the chanting. My mind started searching for instances where I had acted wrongly and this whole incident brought up so much guilt and pushed my mind towards pessimism. The thoughts of being so incompetent in terms of integrity and maturity after years of practice were eating me up. I wanted to celebrate my sadness for feeling sufficient guilt so I was denying myself to relish the sweet mellows of Kirtan.
Many times it happens that our mistakes cause us so much guilt that they tend to distract us from spiritual practices and the joy of spiritual life appears mismatch to the personal mood at such times.


Can spiritual happiness cause disturbance in ones reformation program? 
 
I was contemplating how should one tackle the situation? Krishna inspired me some insights for my questions which I have posted below

Gratitude enables rectification

The spiritualist finds himself happy for the opportunity to be connected with God, but he same times feels complete dissatisfaction for not being able to reciprocate with mercy bestowed upon him.
The guilt of being incompetent to reciprocate coupled with grateful attitude for whatever fortune granted upon him pushes him towards correction than giving up the process. For Bhaktiyogi even guilt fuels the feelings of more gratitude since he feels himself completely unqualified for fortune he is receiving although being plagued with so many faults. The burden of gratitude makes person think "Oh I must rectify myself, I am so fortunate that I have been a given chance, I must reciprocate"

The spiritual life is meant for pleasure of Krishna

The bhaktiyoga by definition is selfless service of Krishna uninterruptedly. So when devotee feels sad about the mistakes, he does not allows his sadness spill over pleasure of Krishna. By engaging attentively in limbs of devotional service for the pleasure of  the Lord and prayers of purification in the mood of repentance, one finds stability and it helps to come out of  guilt and get purified of the wrong tendencies.  
Self Centric Guilt Produces Only Pessimism but no Solution

It is nature of mind to enjoy emotions pleasure and pain both in equal proportions. So the guilt feelings without corrective measure only result in more guilt and more mistakes in turn. It does not help person to come out of this vicious cycle. One finds himself lonely sulking inside and searching out external reasons for the misfortune to come upon himself. But when guilt is used not to pamper mind for enjoying negative emotions but drag mind towards positive solutions for purification, it helps in long term. 
 We find example of

The Creeper of Devotion

With good fortune, one receives causeless grace, 

When unknowingly a service to vaishnava takes place,

By such cumulated good deeds one qualifies to receive Bhakti lata seed,

It's knowledge of devotional service implanted in the heart indeed.

One should water that seed with transcendental sound,

And safeguard it with fences of association all around.

The creeper of bhakti is slow to grow,

Being choked by weeds of material desires — one's eternal foe!

With discrimination, Faith, service and association cut down these weeds,

Cheating, mundane adoration, profiteering and pride shouldn’t be allowed to breed.

As the creeper of devotion grows beyond the limits of material coverings,

It reaches the realm of Goloka Vrindavana — the world of joys, without sufferings!

At the desire tree of Krishna’s lotus feet it finds its ultimate shelter,

Expanding profusely it produces fruits of love of Godhead, full of nectar.

One should taste these ripened fruits and distribute the bhakti-latä seeds,

To help humans overcome Maya’s deeds!

Mystic की पाठशाला worldview

The Vedic-view is to see this world as ‘Mystic की पाठशाला’ – i.e. to see the mastery and majesty of Lord’s creation, to see His hand in it, understand His purpose and make this life successful. The results of this world view are enlisted below.

•     One feels joy seeing the majesty and mastery of creation of God. Many people want to see miracles and they make huge rush to magical performance shows. But by careful observation, one can realize everything in this world as a magical creation of God. Simply because of our familiarity of seeing it every day, and our attitude of taking everything as granted we don’t realize it. In the Bible, following passage appears

"But ask the animals, and they will teach you, or the birds of the air, and they will tell you; or speak to the earth, and it will teach you, or let the fish of the sea inform you. Which of all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this?”

– Job 12:7-9.

Simply watching a bird, one can be perfectly God-conscious. There is no machine of modern times as advanced in flying in terms of size, navigational abilities and intelligence, as the birds. Even the scientists are amazed by the migration of birds!

“Birds can track the sun, the moon and the stars, using their apparent movement as a compass. Birds also use other senses. They can detect weak magnetic fields with tiny magnetite crystals in their heads. They follow faint odors as does a salmon returning to its birth river from the ocean. They can see polarized light and use barometric pressure. Along with memory and genetic urges to head in a certain direction, birds use a combination of these senses to cross continents and oceans.”

– Steve Tomasko, “Mystery of Bird Migration: How They Get Here from There”.

In Science Café, Columns (April 4, 2000), the new paper co-written by quantum physicist Simon Benjamin of Oxford University and the National University of Singapore describes the way the bird’s eye works as ‘really amazing’ and better than their attempt to recreate the process in the lab. ‘The bird, however it works, whatever it’s got in there, it’s somehow doing better than our specially designed, very beautiful molecule,’ he said. ‘That’s just staggering.’

When we carefully ponder who has given these abilities and intelligence to a tiny bird, one can easily understand that it is none but all merciful God. When we see in everything around us with such vision then we are able to connect everything with God and see his magic in every creation. Then, even watching a small bird also can give us immense pleasure of entertainment by making us understand the magic of God along with great spiritual enlightenment.

•      One understands the purpose of creation. After watching the artistry and majesty of creation of the Lord, one naturally appreciates His supreme hand and ultimately wants to know the purpose of His creation. Then one actually turns to revealed scriptures as per one’s own tradition and tries to understand and live by the prescribed guidelines. This makes life not just the journey from doing this chore to other, but sincere living in symphony with nature and God. Such life is called as ‘Karmayoga’ and it frees one from chains of good or bad reaction.
•       One honors one’s own right to live as well as that of others. Sri Ishopanishad describes that God is perfect and complete and everything in His creation is also perfect and complete. He is the supreme proprietor and it urges one to abide by the arrangement of God for each living entity and accept only things necessary for ones living and not to encroach on the necessities of others. When one realizes the supreme propriety and controllership of God,one becomes grateful for the gifts received from God and does not try to work very hard to increase his possessions for artificial internal security and exterior pomp. In such gratitude, one actually honors life of his own self and that of others and tries to make meaningful utilization of it.
•         One understands the merciful nature of the God and develops love for Him. For
  
  disobedient living entities, who desire to stay away from God to try to lord over, God has orchestrated this elaborate creation of material world and has provided abundant facilities to fulfill their desires. Even people denying existence of God are given benefit of all this arrangement. When one actually understands this fact, he becomes convinced of the merciful nature of God. He realizes that he could reap much more benefit, if he actually lives by the God-given system and obeys the laws by God. He develops attitude of love for God and expresses it by glorifying Him, using his possessions for His service and living a life of devotion for Him.

By being a student in the पाठशालाof the supreme mystic and passing the tests and reversals of life with attitude of gratitude, one graduates from this world of suffering and getsplaced into the loving entourage of Lord in the spiritual world.

मस्ती की पाठशाला (Masti ki Pathshala) worldview

Few years ago, the Bollywood song ‘मस्ती की पाठशाला’ topped the music charts. The song expressed the youth’s desire to freely and unrestrictedly explore the world and people in pursuit of pleasure and rapport, thereby echoing the predominant mentality of the current generation. It was an overnight hit! Even nowwith similar mentality– more and more people are increasingly spending time on social networking sites, WhatsApp-like messengers, city meetup groups, etc. This shows that people are searching after ever expanding elations through unrestricted search for relations through sharing their joys and sorrows. Media moguls and business tycoons have their catalogues full with offerings to cater to this pursuit of every individual – more and more freedom!  Pharmaceutical industries offers freedom through improved health and ability to enjoy pleasure, media firms offer freedom from boredom, IT companies offers the same through lesser manual overheads and better comforts by enabling the people to accomplish a lot right from their desk, etc. But we still find larger and larger segment of the population hooked to addictive use of internet, mobiles, drugs, sex, etc. People are physically debilitated, mentally exhausted, and are compulsively succumbing to their lower impulses resulting in insecure society – 'lose control' as expressed in that song. They even want freedom from all kinds of religious hangover, guilt feelings and inter-personal responsibilities or sense of duties. They are even ready to chuck overboard any conception of God, whom ultimately one is responsible to, according to codes of religion.

This type of ‘मस्ती की पाठशाला’ world-view is described in the Bhagavad Gita, chapter 16, verse 8:

asatyamapratisthamte
jagadahuranisvaram
aparaspara-sambhutam
kimanyatkama-haitukam

They say that this world is unreal,
that there is no foundation
and that there is no God in control.
It is produced of sex desire, and has no cause other than lust.

The results of this worldview are as follows.

•         Lack of dutiful attitude towards God, nature and other living beings.Since a God-less worldview doesn’t recognize any ultimate controller and accepts “chance” as the primary cause of events, it presents a separatist, independent and disintegrated image of the world, when it comes to deriving happiness. This is observed when everyone thinks in terms of his own personal sense enjoyment. From such a perspective, one gets blinded to the sufferings of other living entities in the course of fulfilling one’s personal desires. One even forgets all sorts of duties towards God, nature and other living beings of past, present and future generations – thereby spoiling the resources received from previous generations, and risking the quality of life of present and future generations.
•        Irresponsible lifestyle with self-destructive habits.The reductionism philosophy states that a complex system is nothing but the sum of its parts and that an account of it can be reduced to accounts of individual constituents. Equating and limiting life to just bundle of chemicals is a reductionist’s view of life. As per this philosophy, even the very goal of life becomes reduced to become obscure into oblivion. With such limited understanding of life, one loses respect for one’s own life as well as that of others. One also develops ‘I don’t care’ attitude about his actions and consequences of his actions since he thinks that everything happens by chance. Consequently, one lives an irresponsible life and cultivates various self-destructive habits for ephemeral sensory and imaginary pleasures of this world.
•          Frustration, depression and boredom. By following the above-mentioned lifestyle, one soon realizes that the blazing fire of desires instead of being subsided, multiplies in magnitude, till it consumes complete satisfaction of the self. One then becomes frustrated in his attempts and depressed in his life. After repeated attempts of squeezing the happiness by bringing senses in touch with sense objects, one becomes irksome and spiritually dullard.

In such a way, by being student of ‘mastikipathshala’ philosophy one repeatedly fails the tests of life and loses chance to be happy in this life and next.