Gauridasa Pandita Dasa: I was fortunate enough to be one of Swami Prabhupada’s personal servants. Serving a guru like Swami Prabhupada was the major highlight in my life. Serving him doesn’t ever stop though, even though he left the planet physically, he is still here spiritually and anyone can still serve him. He is living in his books, recordings, pictures and murti’s. You can serve him by reading his books and applying the philosophy in your life. You can accept Swami Srila Prabhupada as your guru and perfect your life.
One of my favorite services was taking care of Swami Prabhupada’s garden in the backyard of his house. I would get it ready for him every morning. That would entail lighting his favorite incense, turning on the Lord Brahma fountain, putting fresh cloth on his vyasasana seat and putting the tape recorder there to record him if he spoke.
Srila Prabhupada would come into the garden every morning and chant Hare Krishna. He would also dictate letters to his disciples and important people all over the world.
Sometimes devotees would sing for him. He liked to hear the students from the Gurukula School sing and a humble Indian devotee named Sac Cit Ananda. One day they did not come and Srila Prabhupada asked me to chant. Normally I would be fanning him the whole two hours or so he stayed in the garden. Then more when he sat by the Tamal Tree in the courtyard of the Krishna Balarama Temple. So I put down the chamara fan because Srila Prabhupada wanted to hear Kirtan more than being fanned. I was a little shy to sing before His Divine Grace, but saw it as a service and duty so I proceeded to chant with kartala’s. I looked at Srila Prabhupada after I started, to see his reaction, and at first he looked at me with a somewhat puzzeled expression, then he shut his eyes and concentrated, so I relaxed and absorbed myself in the Holy Names in the holiest Dhama, for the best guru, it doesn’t get any better than that.
I loved chanting from the beginning, when I joined with Visnujana Swami and his Sri Sri Radha Damodar Traveling Sankirtan Party. We used to chant and dance 8 hours a day most everyday at universities and parks and places where people gathered. So it was nice to do what I love the most for Srila Prabhupada. My heart was there and I wanted to please His Divine Grace.
One morning, the secretary Tamal Krishna Maharaja, asked Srila Prabhupada how do we know when we are becoming advanced in Krishna Consciousness. Srila Prabhupada replied that we are becoming advanced when we reduce our animal propensities of eating, sleeping, mating and defending. He said the more we reduce those things; the more advanced we would become.
He talked about this in his lectures many times. He explained that Krishna Consiousness gives us all who take to it, a higher taste. When you get a higher taste from something it’s easy to give up the lower taste we had before. So by attaining the blissful state of Krishna Consciousness we no longer feel satisfaction in the pleasures of the flesh. Even sex loses it’s appeal in comparison to the higher taste of spiritual life.
Srila Prabhupada used the example of a fish out of water many times. You can put him in a nice beach chair with a beer and cigarette and all, but the fish will not be happy until it is put back into his home, the water. We are all parts of God and separate from Him no sense gratification can really satisfy us, the spirit souls. When we are united with God by the Bhakti Yoga System we become truly happy and realize our real nature as spirit souls. That is sat cit ananda, we are eternal, full of knowledge and full of bliss constitutionally. By Chanting the Holy Names of The Lord we clean our hearts and get that higher taste that leads to ecstacies that were unimaginable before. The ecstacies of spiritual life get better as we improve our chanting. At the most advanced stages our hairs can stand on end, we shed tears of love, our bodies quiver and sometimes we roll on the ground. Lord Chaitanya was always absorbed in the mood of Krishna’s Gopi Goddesses of Vrindavan. He was is an incarnation of Sri Sri Radha and Krishna combined appearing as a Devotee to show us how to love God. Srila Rupa Goswami, one of the great 6 Goswami’s of Vrindavan, said at their first meeting at Prayag that Lord Chaitanya was/is the most munificent incarnation of God because He was freely giving love of God to one and all, whereas Krishna made conditions, first of all you surrender. But this incarnation of Lord Chaitanya made no such conditions, He simply gave it freely, love of God. Don’t you wish you were there 550 years ago to get His causeless Mercy?!
So Krishna Consciouness means to rise above the animal propensities more and more and develop our higher tastes of spiritual life. If we avoid offenses and perfect our chanting we can attain perfection and go back home, back to Godhead, after this body is finished here. If you have a choice to go to the spiritual world where the talking is singing and the walking is dancing and it is a non-stop party with God and His Goddesses, you can have your husband or wife and Krishna too or stay in the material world of various miseries, which place will you choose?
The wise will choose eternity, knowledge and bliss. The unwise will return to the material world. A priceless treasure or broken glass? It’s time to decide!
Hoping this meets you well,
Your servant,
Gauridasa Pandita Dasa
Chant HARE KRISHNA
And your life will be sublime!
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