20240307 Gaura Pūrṇimā Festival Flag Hoisitng Address

Jayapatākā Swami: So this festival is not a stagnant thing. This festival is a living thing. And so it is under the protection of Garuḍa. They are going to lift the Garuḍa flag. As long as it is up, the festival is on. In Sanskrit, the word for festival is ‘utsava’ or Mahā-utsava’, utsava, ‘ut’ means to transcend, and ‘sava’ means very everybody. So all those who are participating in this mahā-utsava are naturally transcending the three modes. And this is dedicated to His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda. Here you see different bricks on which devotees will throw coconuts. That will then take away any obstacles.

So, this festival has the Śravaṇa-utsava, Kīrtana-melā, GBC meetings and this year the SGGS (Saṅga of Gurus GBCs and Sannyāsīs) and Parikramā and various other festivals. Then Gaura-Pūrṇimā. After that we will lower the flag. So, this is a very important festival. As was mentioned, Śrīla Prabhupāda said all the devotees should come and try to establish unity in diversity. And we are very grateful that Śrīla Prabhupāda has given us this vision and we have devotees from every part of the world. Śrīla Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura predicted that the Bengali devotees and the Western devotees they would come together and embrace each other without any upādhis or I am a brāhmaṇa, I am a śūdra, whatever. They would chant, “Jaya Śacīnandana! Jaya Śacīnandana! Jaya Śacīnandana!” Gaurāṅga! Nityānanda! And embrace each other! At that time, it was 1800s and only Western people were the British and Indians were very caste conscious. That they would embrace each other and chant, “Jaya Śacīnandana! Jaya Gaurāṅga!”, without any of these problems was really visionary! I mean, people at the time I don’t know what they thought, how this was possible? But when we had the International group, at that time there were various devotees from different parts of the world, and Gaurāṅga Prema Swami, he was leading the Bengali devotees. We all came together, and the men embraced the men, and the ladies embraced the ladies. We fulfilled Śrīla Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura’s prediction. Now, in this festival, we should be determined to fulfill Lord Caitanya’s prediction as Śrīla Prabhupāda had requested us. Get our Kṛṣṇa consciousness up, so we can go out and fulfill Lord Caitanya’s desire to have the chanting of the Hare Kṛṣṇa mahā-mantra in every town and village of the world. Hare Kṛṣṇa!