20230409 74th Smṛti Vyāsa-Pūjā Celebration Address

Mūkaṁ karoti vācālaṁ paṅguṁ laṅghayate girim
yat-kṛpā tam ahaṁ vande śrī-guruṁ dīna-tāriṇam
paramānanda-mādhavam śrī-caitanya-īśvaram
Harihi oṁ tat sat

Jayapatākā Swami: Hare Kṛṣṇa! On this April 9^th, the day on the English calendar I appeared, here they are doing a kind of Vyāsa-pūjā smṛti, no fasting, only feasting. It is a supreme sacrifice, feasting on kṛṣṇa-prasāda. I had the great fortune, I joined in San Francisco in 1968 and that time I saw His Holiness Tamāla Kṛṣṇa Goswami. He was not a swami then, but he was very dynamic. And then I was engaged by Jayānanda Prabhu in making the Ratha-yātrā cart. Then Nityānanda Prabhu invited me to come to your Ratha-yātrā. I took it as a great opportunity.

Now, in 1968, I visited every temple in ISKCON! All three! San Francisco, in New York and Montreal. Then I went to Montreal and saw Śrīla Prabhupāda. I was in Canada for about two years. And then Śrīla Prabhupāda called me to Los Angeles, and he was telling that I should go to India. But then it got cancelled. But eventually I was sent to India. And I arrived in Bombay and then I went to Calcutta. And then at that time Śrīla Prabhupāda came from the Dai Nippon in Japan. He printed many books with Dai Nippon.

So in 1970 Śrīla Prabhupāda gave me sannyāsa. I was the eleventh. But now the ten before either they have gone back to Godhead, or they have left sannyāsa. That is why I am the oldest standing sannyāsī. Not only in ISKCON, but in the whole Gauḍīya-sampradāya! Śrīla Prabhupāda asked me to try to unite the Sārasvata family.

His Holiness Tamāla Kṛṣṇa Goswami, he was very dedicated to serving Śrīla Prabhupāda. As Westerners in India, we did not really know the things, how they go. His Holiness Tamāla Kṛṣṇa Goswami, he was sent to Māyāpur to buy some land. And I was sent to the General Post Office, GPO. I don’t know if you ever have been in a GPO in Calcutta! Śrīla Prabhupāda said, “I want the letter sent by registered mail.” There are different queues and so I stood in the one that said registered mail. At the end I went to the counter. and I said I wanted to send a registered mail. He said, “You have to buy the stamps.” Anyway, it took about 3 hours, I went to wrong lines, and so on. Again, one line to another and so on. Finally, I got the letter stamped. Then I waited in the line and finally they said, “You have to sew it outside.” Oh! Anyway. Meanwhile His Holiness Tamal Kṛṣṇa Goswami, he went up to Māyāpur to buy the land. And he did something that you normally don’t have to do. He wrote down the serial number of every bill they paid! I mean, it is just a land, when you register a land, you don’t have to give the serial number. He was so careful that he wanted to please Śrīla Prabhupāda, that he wrote down hundreds of hundreds of bills, on so many pages, page after page. Then he came back to Śrīla Prabhupāda and Śrīla Prabhupāda asked, “If it is done?” He said, “Yes, Śrīla Prabhupāda!” That is the land where we have the Temple of the Vedic Planetarium right now! Haribol! All the labor that His Holiness Tamāla Kṛṣṇa Goswami did, you can make it more valuable by helping to finish the temple!

Anyway, I rode in the lorry with him, we were carrying steel to Māyāpur. And the lorry that we were in, the driver suggested we have a cup of hot milk in the roadside dhaba. As we were just having the hot milk, someone came and said that someone was taking the steel rods and throwing it off the lorry. We ran out, and sure enough they had thrown some rods into the ditch. We had them back on the lorry and we were not going to take any more milk. I had many moments like this with His Holiness Tamāla Kṛṣṇa Goswami. He was very dedicated to serving Śrīla Prabhupāda. Although I took sannyāsa before him, I always considered my senior godbrother and he was a GBC much before I was. And he was a great preacher. He loved to make devotees. Anyway, he was part of our designing the Temple of the Vedic Planetarium, helping in the designing. Anyway, I can tell you so many things. But he wrote many books and Śrīla Prabhupāda told us we should write books.

So I am trying to write like the Kṛṣṇa Book, the Caitanya Book, with all the pastimes of Lord Caitanya from various other books that I could find. Like in the Caitanya-caritāmṛta it tells about Lord Caitanya talking to the Chand Kazi. But in the Caitanya-bhāgavata it tells about the procession. In that procession, there were not lakhs of people, but millions of people and they had four different groups - one by Advaita Ācārya, one by Haridāsa Ṭhākura, one by Śrīvāsa Ṭhākura and one by Lord Caitanya with Lord Nityānanda on one side and another Gadādhara Paṇḍita. When the Chand Kazi broke the mṛdaṅgas, khol-bhaṅga-daṅga, then Lord Caitanya was saying that no one could stop the saṅkīrtana movement. His was the first civil disobedience. Actually, He was in completely ecstasy. We see that Kṛṣṇa dances with zillions of gopīs, He did the Kurukṣetra war with millions of war. In Dvārakā, He married 16,108 queens. He is big, He is super, He is the biggest! Lord Caitanya, He had the saṅkīrtana where there were literally millions of people and all the Apsarās were showing flowers and little conches. To watch that kīrtana, Lord Indra and Vāyudeva they came down and they saw the Supreme Personality of Godhead Lord Caitanya dancing, crying in ecstasy the kirtana sound not only reached to Svarga, it also went to the spiritual world. And Indradeva Vāyudeva, they fainted to see the Supreme Lord dancing, crying and chanting in ecstasy, they were overwhelmed, they fainted. When they gained consciousness, they took human form and joined the kīrtana. There were some atheists, they were laugh at the devotees and making fun of them. But then they saw Lord Caitanya coming, dancing, crying, they became overwhelmed, they started rolling on the ground they were crying themselves. Lord Nityānanda, Lord Caitanya, They had such an impression. Then when they were approaching the house of the Chand Kazi, who was at that time the representative of the Mohammadan ruler, he was telling his soldiers, is that some Hindu wedding or something? Just as the sound was penetrating. The sent out the solders to stop that noise. They came out and saw the ocean of people, they got frightened. They took off their turbans and covered their beards and started chanting Haribol! Haribol! So like that we have different books with different details. Right now, we are reading about Lord Nityānanda Prabhu, Lord Nityānanda, He had converted a gang of armed robber, dacoits. So that I cannot tell you that now, it is a long story. But it is very interesting, how Lord Nityānanda He touched, the heart, He changed the heart of a serial killer. So this is a very wonderful to read these histories of Lord Caitanya, Lord Nityānanda. You see, Lord Caitanya told Lord Nityānanda, You go back to Bengal and take up where You had left off. He said that there are four kinds of people that We promised to deliver that normally do not get delivered - the mūrkas, the foolish; the nīcas, the low born; the patita, the fallen; and the duḥkhas, the distressed. Before you were devotees, did you qualify for any of these things? I qualified for all! So you are great Vaiśyas and so. But I qualified in all these four. I thought I was the body. Definitely, I was low born and I was patita, I broke all the principles. As a little baby I was eating non-veg and definitely distressed. So, Lord Caitanya, Lord Nityānanda, They came down to deliver these kind of people. And Śrīla A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda, he brought Lord Caitanya’s mercy to the West. And His Holiness Tamāla Kṛṣṇa Goswami, he was representing Śrīla Prabhupāda very nicely. I don’t want to talk about his disappearance, it is too heart breaking for me! But the people, they stood in front of the vehicle when they were taking his body, and they said we won’t let him go unless we see his lotus feet. He was a great sādhu, we had to see his lotus feet, we had to show his lotus feet, and then they all bowed down. So living or dying, His Holiness Tamāla Kṛṣṇa Goswami was very dear to everyone. I am very glad that I could be here at this wonderful temple. I hope that everybody can have some nice prasāda! There is a big cake here! I guess someone will have to take that! I thank everybody very much for your being here! Haribol!