20221004 52nd Sannyāsa Anniversary Address

mūkaṁ karoti vācālaṁ paṅguṁ laṅghayate girim
yat-kṛpā tam ahaṁ vande śrī-guruṁ dīna-tāraṇam
hariḥ oṁ tat sat

Jayapatākā Swami: My regards to His Holiness Bhānu Swami and all the assembled devotees. Mahārāja had mentioned that in Chennai they are having Bhagavad-gītā classes, online. They are having 10 or 11 thousand people attending. So I informed the devotees in Mangaluru that see what the Chennai devotees are doing, you are not doing anything! They did not have money to afford 10,000 people on Zoom. They got Microsoft to donate some subscriptions. They have in Tamil, Kannada, Telugu, also Hindi and seven eight other languages. They had 15,000 people at one time and they did ten batches of those! So then had 150,000 people! Chennai also increased, I don’t know how many numbers, but they also increased. So while we had the pandemic we increased the preaching online.

I saw little children do a drama in Chennai. They were playing, one girl was playing Yamarāja and she painted fake mustache. Two other children were performing the part of Yamadūtas. They complained, the Yamadūtas were complaining to Yamarāja. “These Hare Kṛṣṇa devotees they are preaching all over South India. They are having in their house, the Bhagavad-gītā and Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam. They are reading these loud. They are worshiping Deities in their house. They worship Jagannātha and offering their food to Kṛṣṇa.” And the other Yamadūtas was complaining that, “They chant Hare Kṛṣṇa Hare Rāma. We cannot take them to hell and torture them. If this increases, we will be out of our job.” Like this, it was a very nice drama!

I was listening to a lecture by Śrīla Prabhupāda in London, and he was saying how he wants all his gṛhastha disciples to be paramahaṁsa followers. So, Bhagavad-gītā tells us that out of many thousands few want spiritual liberation. And out of many thousands or millions who want liberation, only few get. Out of thousands liberated there are few who are nārāyaṇa-parāyaṇa or Kṛṣṇa’s devotees. We want everybody to be a pure devotee. Śrīla Prabhupāda was giving a lecture in Ardha-Kumbha-melā in 1971. At that time, he was invited to come to Malaysia. He was telling how if you are practicing bhakti-yoga then you have already surpassed all the yajñas and tapasyas. Then one Western devotee asked, “Śrīla Prabhupāda, when I look back at my life, I did not do anything pious, I did not do anything religious, how did I get bhakti-yoga?” Śrīla Prabhupāda said, “I made your good fortune for you!” Haribol! So Śrīla Prabhupāda came here, and he also made your good fortune! Please chant Hare Kṛṣṇa and advance in pure devotion. Hare Kṛṣṇa!