20230616 Address in the Mahā-saṅga

The following is an address given by His Holiness Jayapatākā Swami Mahārāja on June 16th,2023 at the Bhaktivedanta Manor London, England. The Address was given in the Mahā-saṅga event.

mūkaṁ karoti vācālaṁ paṅguṁ laṅghayate girim
yat-kṛpā tam ahaṁ vande śrī-guruṁ dīna-tāraṇam
paramānandaṁ mādhavaṁ śrī caitanya iśvaram

Hariḥ oṁ tat sat!

Jayapatākā Swami: We were waiting to hear from Vaiśeṣika Prabhu but he tricked me to be on the stage. Anyways! 500 years ago, they did not have many books. The books were handwritten on palm leaves. You would buy books by giving your life. Now books are cheap. 5$, 10$. Before, one book [36:56]. So you see that Śrīnivāsa Ācārya and other personalities had brought books from Vṛndāvana to Bengal, and then they were stolen. Because the king of Birbhum, he had an astrologer who told him that, “These sādhus were bringing a priceless gem, a priceless treasure!” And his system that anyone who would travel through his country, he would steal from them, if they had something worth stealing. And therefore, he had this astrologer who did that. He told the thieves to go and steal the box of treasure and bring it back to him. It was so valuable that he did not want the thieves to see it before bringing it to him. And at that time Śrīnivāsa Ācārya, Narottama dāsa Ṭhākura and Śyāmānanda Paṇḍita were taking the books back to Navadvīpa. So they were the original manuscripts. So this king he was so anxious to see the treasure, the priceless treasure! When the thieves got there it seemed very easy, the sādhus were asleep. They got the treasure, they did not know what was in there and brought the chest back to the king. When everyone left, they pulled out the treasure and books! Books! He was looking, he could not understand it, like the Caitanya-caritāmṛta was on the top. And, the king was amazed, he was surprised that taking the literary treasure from the sādhus, “The Yamadūtas are going to punish me!” So he told the thieves go and please find who this box belongs to. Anyway, it is a long story, but Śrīnivāsa Ācārya told that he had been asked by the Deities to bring the books, so I am responsible. And as soon as I find them, I will tell you. In those days it was very hard to distribute books. You had to hand copy them and the price was such a big effort, people would pay for their whole life! They would learn the books and teach them. These books are the basis. Of course, he was at first distributing the books in different places. When I joined there were no books. There was the Macmillan Gītā. Śrīla Prabhupāda said I [Jayapatākā Swami] had to read that ten times before taking initiation. I still have that Gītā, it has those marks – 1,2,3,4 then cross, 1,2,3,4, cross. Now books are available. Śrīla Prabhupāda actually, I saw in Māyāpur, he took great effort to translate. He would translate on a dicta-phone and the transcriptions would be sent to the BBT. He would get up every night at 12 and translate. He had the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam which had I forget, seven or eight ṭīkās. previous ācāryas had written something, all in Sanskrit. Śrīla Prabhupāda would read them and give his own personal realization of the previous ācāryas and he would write the purports. Sometimes he would call for me at 2 AM in the morning. His secretary would come and say Śrīla Prabhupāda wants to see you. I would wash my face and go down. I saw Śrīla Prabhupāda, he had a net over him, and he would be translating. Then he would say whatever he wanted to say. I was 24x7 any time he called I would go. I could see how he was translating the books. So he put in great effort to translate all these books. Why? So we would read them and we understand the Kṛṣṇa consciousness philosophy. We have the great good fortune to be able to distribute these books, read them and distribute them. He said that he did not want devotees, if people asked what is in this book, they would say, “I don’t know, I just sell them!” He did not want them. You read the book, you believe in the philosophy and distribute it.

Between Delhi and Māyāpur there is a big competition. I was sick and in Delhi and I saw their secret. So the temple president, every devotee, every Nāmahaṭṭa, every Bhakti-vṛkṣa and every branch, and he would ask what is your goal, how many books will you distribute in the Marathon. One person said, he would distribute 5,000 Bhagavad-gītās. Then he would stop in front of the car at the signal and say, “I will not leave unless you buy a book!” So he was like 60 or 70 and he was distributing like that. Everybody had a quota. Like I told Māyāpur this is the secret. Everybody has to distribute, man, woman, child, so we started. Then we had like ten bus parties. So that was very good but that wasn’t enough. So we had the different book tables, different devotees, different divisions, Nāmahaṭṭas. So that way everyone got out and the whole temple became fixed on book distribution. For the Bhādra Pūrṇimā we wanted to break the record, sets of Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, His Holiness Bhakti Vijaya Bhāgavata Swami, he was very dedicated, every function, every chance he had he would distribute sets of Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam. 600 sets, 1200 sets. I am not able to go on the streets, so I am distributing online.

Lord Caitanya, He would chant Hare Kṛṣṇa, do the saṅkīrtana-yajña and devotees when they came down from Bengal to Jagannātha Purī, they would do kīrtana around the Jagannātha Purī temple and He had four parties. Each party they had eight mṛdaṅgas, 32 karatālas; and in each party they had a dancer. The dancer was very important. He would dance and because they did not have loudspeakers, they would have five people chanting. And the whole crowd would respond. So they had Advaita Gosāñī chanting and dancing, then Śrīvāsa Ṭhākura, Vakreśvara Paṇḍita, he was an avatāra of Aniruddha. He could dance 72 hours nonstop. Like this they had four different parties and Lord Caitanya in the middle. That was how they would do kīrtana, Harināma. Anyone who would come close, Lord Caitanya would embrace them. After that the followers of Lord Caitanya, the six Gosvāmīs, Kṛṣṇadāsa Kavirāja, they wrote books. And so when the books were taking them back to Bengal, they were stolen. And Śrīnivāsa Ācārya, he heard that some king would like to here Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam class. So he went to the king’s palace and the king heard the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam class. But he was making faces and very bad thoughts. So it was visible that he was making faces. He did not ask anybody at the class, they did not know, it was not bona fide. “Okay, you give the class,” and he gave the class. “If it is not better, we will kill you” Śrīnivāsa Ācārya was personally trained by Śrīla Jīva Gosvāmī. He could really a class, that is why he got the name Ācāryapāda. So he was able to give the class, the king realized this may be the person who owns the books. So he brought them back, so they asked him, “What is the purpose?” So he explained how he was brought the books from Vṛndāvana and they got stolen. The king fell down at his feet and prayed, please forgive me. I took the books. Caitanya-caritāmṛta on top. All the other books like Bhakti-rasāmṛta-sindhu (Nectar of Devotion), they were all there. He was so.. he asked him, please take me as your disciple. To be a rāja-guru you have to be a gṛhastha because you have to guide the king on saṁskāras and so on. So he went to Narahari and asked him if he should be the rāja-guru for this king. Narahari said yes, then you can make the whole kingdom Kṛṣṇa consciousness.

Anyway, that was a little about Śrīnivāsa Ācārya. He got the books back to Navadvīpa and started distributing them. How many have we been able to print, how many millions? 70 million. How fortunate people are to get these books! As I said before, the price before was their life. So we are the giving the books out so people can read them. I gave a book to my doctor in Dallas, Bhagavad-gītā As It is. That Doctor in Hopkins was saying that she was always praying to God for this and that but now after reading the book, she said we should ask God what we should do for him. We are always asking God, “Please do this and that for me,” but we should actually be asking Him, what we can do for Him. As a person, just new, she got the book, she asked how to pronounce the name of the person the Gītā was spoken to. So someone told her we can say [R and jun]. Arjuna. Bhagavad-gītā or Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam people understand so much, people don’t know anything about the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Here they  understand that the Supreme Personality of Godhead is a person. And our purpose is to serve Him. The ācāryas, Śrīla Prabhupāda, they took great effort to see that the books are preserved.

Śrīla Prabhupāda translated to English and others translate it to other languages. We are thankful to Vaiśeṣika Prabhu for inspiring everyone to distribute Śrīla Prabhupāda’s books. So many of you can get to distribute Śrīla Prabhupāda’s books. I also sometimes I come and have this association. Thank you so much for enthusing us to distribute Śrīla Prabhupāda’s books.

Just want to say that Śrīla Prabhupāda went through great efforts to translate these books. I have heard his books many times. The Māyāpur Institute wanted to give me an honorary degree. I said, no, I will take the test. I took the test and got my Bhakti-vaibhava. Now I am taking the test for Bhakti-vedānta degree. I hope that everybody will read Śrīla Prabhupāda’s books and get their degrees and distributes them.

Hare Kṛṣṇa!