Letter to the Prabhus

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Message to: All ISKCON devotees
From: The Editor, Pavan’s Press
Re: His Divine Grace
Dear Prabhus,
Welcome to the issue and thanks for joining me along this wonderful path of glorifying His Divine Grace Shrila Prabhupada, our divine savior. Through the mercy of the Holy Names of the Lord Shri Krishna, the Hare Krishna mahamantra, we have been united in a spiritual family that Shrila Prabhupada named the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. As was Prabhupada’s work, this Society is completely transcendental. That is, it exists beyond time and limited space, and it is entirely spiritual by the will of the pure devotee. I ask each of you dear Godbrothers and Godsisters to please accept my humble obeisances at your lotus feet. All glories to Shrila Prabhupada, the Divine Leader of Shri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu’s World Sankirtan Party.

Narada Amongst Us
You know, Prabhus, that it can easily be verified though shastra that our “singing guru,” like Shrila Shri (108) Bhaktivinoda Thakura Acharya, our beloved param-param gurudevaji maharaja, Shrila Prabhupada was none other than a direct representative of Shri Narada, who travels the entire Universe on the strength of the holy names. For those who worship the lotus feet of His Divine Grace Shrila Prabhupada as our only salvation from the mohajala of birth and death, this is not very stunning news. These words offered in service to Guru Maharaja are certainly no new revelation to the faithful devotee who has been initiated by the bath of nectar flowing from Prabhupada’s literature. It is no revelation at all for every link of the unbroken Brahma-Madhva-Gaudiya Sampradaya, including Shri Narada, the singing guru of the entire Universe, was represented by Shrila Prabhupada when he walked amongst us. Yet, for those who are new to the path of realized knowledge, pure devotion and hard-core common sense that is Krishna consciousness; let me underscore that Shrila Prabhupada was none other than the paschatya-desha-tarine, the “deliverer of the Western world,” in the spirit of Narada.

Shrila Prabhupada was designated by all the past acharyas of the great Shri Brahma-Madhva-Gaudiya Sampradaya to deliver the eternal message of sanatan dharma to the world. Krishna consciousness has created a foundation for real religious understanding in a world that has forgotten God. Even while religionists go through the motions of worshiping in their churches, mosques, synagogues, temples, gurudwaras etc., battles rage throughout the world. Forgetfulness of Krishna lies at the heart of the problems, and Krishna consciousness is the only cure for a world gone mad.

Thus Prabhupada arrived in the West in 1966 as a representative of not only his own glorious guru maharaja, Shrila Shri Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Goswami Thakur, but as the representative of each successive holy teacher of our Brahma-Madhva-Gaudiya Sampradaya. Thus we pray to the shuddha-bhakta, who is the transparent via media to each previous holy acharya as follows:

namaste saraswati-deve gouravani pracharine
nirvishesha sunyavadi paschatya-desha tarine

This means, in essence, loosely translated: “I humbly bow down before His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, the foremost disciple of Shrila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Thakur. He spread throughout the Western world the uplifting message of Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, thereby defeating the misleading cults of impersonalism and voidism. By spreading the nectarean rays of sankirtan to the Western world, His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada is the savior of the planet.”

Devarshi Narada, the greatest Vaishnava troubadour and balladeer in the Universe, is the direct son of Lord Chaturmukha Brahma. This “four-faced” Lord Brahma, the “creator,” is our sampradaya-shrestha, and he is a pure devotee of Lord Govinda. Brahma’s love for Lord Krishna is revealed in his own words from the Brahma Samhita—govindam adi-purusham tamaham bhajami: “I worship Govinda, Krishna, the Primeval Lord.” These very words were discovered in the form of an old manuscript by Mahaprabhu Himself in the early 16th century while His lotus feet were blessing Dravida-desh with the wondrous sankirtan movement. The Lord passed this message down the sampradaya until Shrila Shri Bhaktisiddhanta Shiddhanta Saraswati, the Founder-Acharya of Gaudiya Math, rendered the Brahma Samhita into chaste English for the world’s benefit, including yours and mine.

It was none other than the great Narada Muni, the Universal acharya of Krishna consciousness, whose lotus feet are worshipped in every corner of the Universe, who gave diksha to Shri Vyasadeva. Now Shri Krishna Dwaipayana Vyasadevaji, the son of Sage Parashara Muni, is the very literary incarnation of Lord Narayana. This great acharya Shri Vyasa remains to this day the world’s most prolific author, because the greatest body of wisdom ever compiled was written down by him at the outset of Kali Yuga. It is recorded that Vyasa (a chiranjivi, or who remains on earth for a long, long time) personally gave initiation to Shri Madhvacharya, the incarnation of the wind god, at his ashram above Badrinath. For those who wish to have a hope of Sage Vyasa’s darshan must first bathe in the very cold Satopantha Lake.

In the Shri Ramayana of Valmiki we read of the great Hanuman, Lord Ramachandra’s most faithful servant. Hanuman was a true mystic with the siddhis of Vayudeva, the wind god himself. That is why in India we often hear the great bhakta Hanuman praised with the words pavana-putra hanumana kijai. Pavana-putra means that Hanuman, like Madhvacharya, is the son of Pavana or Vayu.

In the Bhagavad Gita, Lord Krishna says pavanah pavatam asmi, “among purifiers, I am the wind.” In the Treta Yuga, the wind god appeared as Hanuman, and then in Dwapara Yuga he appeared as the brother of Arjuna, the mighty Bhimasena, as powerful as a hurricane in the Battle of Kurukshetra. Then once again, around ten centuries back, the wind god Pavana or Vayudeva appeared on earth as Shrila Madhvacharya. It was this very pavan-avatara of Shri Vayudeva who placed the precious foundation stone of dwaita-vada for the fortification of our unbroken Shri Brahma-Madhva-Gaudiya Sampradaya. See this:

“Chaturmukha Brahma and others on completion of their sadhana attain liberation and reach the ever-blissful Vaikuntha planets, the abode of Lord Shri Vishnu. There, too, they retain their individuality and enjoy the bliss due to them in a graded manner. This is the view of the Vedas.” -Shri Madhvacharya’s “Song of the Eternal Soldier.”

The names of the leading acharyas of our sampradaya are given in the order of their unbroken succession in the Introduction of Shrila Prabhupada’s Bhagavad Gita As It Is. As the thirty-second acharya in direct line from Lord Shri Krishna, Shrila Prabhupada‘s teachings are non-different from that of any previous acharya since the pure truth of our parampara flows through Shrila Prabhupada just like electricity flows through an unbroken silver wire. This Bhagavad Gita As It Is, the modern law book for mankind, was Shrila Prabhupada’s first major contribution to Western spiritual literature that was printed in here the West.

As the representative of Lord Brahma, Narada, Madhva, Mahaprabhu and of his own beloved guru maharaja, Shrila Prabhupada spread the moon-like rays of Lord Chaitanya’s sankirtan movement far beyond the borders of India. Shrila Prabhupada loved to sing Krishna’s name everywhere, broadcasting far and wide the glories of Krishna, in the mood of Sage Narada or Mahaprabhu. He is the modern patita-pavana, the deliverer of fallen souls through the power of the holy name. He came here for one purpose only, to take us back to home, back to Godhead through the transcendental potency of Krishna’s name. Therefore every deed of his life on Earth stands as the perfect representation of Sage Narada’s (lit. nara- “mankind”; da-“deliverer”). Shrila Prabhupada was a modern savior of man who knew that “There is no other way, no other way, no other way, but hari-nama in Kali-yuga.” (Naradiya Purana)

Shrila Prabhupada was the true representative of Shri Madhva, because His Divine Grace never compromised on the subject of dwaita, the eternal individuality of the soul in subordinance and servitude to the Supreme Individual Shri Krishna, the Soul of the Universe. Dwaita-vada, the path of dualism, is a concept Shri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu honed to perfection with His achintya beda beda tattwa, explaining succinctly that the individual soul is “simultaneously one and different.” Our Vaishnava philosophy makes perfectly clear that the fool’s impersonal dream of “becoming one with God” is a doomed farce. Shrila Prabhupada remained steadfast regarding the impossibility of impersonal liberation, merging into the brahmajyoti rays of Godhead espoused by the insidious cult of mayavada.

And certainly no one has represented Mahaprabhu with such single-minded faith and devotion as Shrila Prabhupada, who alone was responsible for introducing sankirtan to every town and village of the world. In the wonderful book Prabhupada: A Friend To All by our Godsister, the late, lamented Mother Mulaprakriti devi dasi, we see over and over through a hundred of her interviews with people that knew Prabhupada before 1965, that he had asked dozens of his associates to accompany him West. Each one had an excuse, family, job, health, etc., so, like Narada himself, Prabhupada came alone. He was Lord Chaitanya’s trusted solitary representative chanting on the mean streets of the Bowery, and along the highways of the world. He is the representative of Shri Rupa Goswami and Shri Krshnadas Kaviraja as verified by Shrila Prabhupada’s Nectar of Devotion translation of Shri Bhakti Rasamrita Sindhu or his 17-volume Shri Chaitanya Charitamrita. He represented his own guru maharaja as his life’s mission, and taught us that “the order of the spiritual master cannot be separated from the disciple just as the soul cannot separate from the body in conditioned life.”

Shrila Prabhupada remains here with us today, in the form of his literature, his living teachings and the sankirtan movement which eternally have the undiminished potency to deliver souls from this ocean of birth and death. That is why we call our beloved Guru Maharaja as “His Divine Grace Abhaya Charanaravinda das Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabupada, Founder-Acharya of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness.” That Society still remains the transcendental hope for a world gone mad, and Shrila Prabhupada remains at the center, the living guru continuing to bless generations forward through his eternal message of hari-nama.

Thanks, and we hope that you enjoy the issue.
Your servant,
Patita Pavana das Adhikary,
Editor, Pavan’s Press

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