Offering to Srila Prabhupada, 2008
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By Tri-yuga das in General Published: Monday, 25 August 08 - 08:10 PM (GMT +11:00) Last Updated: Tuesday, 26 August 08 - 12:50 PM (GMT +11:00) |
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Dear Srila Prabhupada,
Please accept my humble obeisances.
You have had an undeniably huge effect on my life. I first came into contact with your teachings and your followers 8 years ago, when I was 19 years old and desperately seeking meaning, purpose and direction in life. Your teachings dived in and grappled with the deepest issues of life: mortality, suffering, self, god, and our existential function at the deepest level. Your no-holds-barred analysis of the problems facing contemporary society shocked me awake and inspired me to adopt a positive alternative. That alternative you also provided – a complete model of reality replete with specific and detailed living styles for every phase of human development.
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You emphasised the quest for purity of heart and selfless dedication of all our energies as offerings of love to the Supreme Personality of Godhead as the means for attaining perfect existential fulfilment. The elegance and simplicity of these teachings and the promise they embodied moved me at a deep level and I resolved very early on in my contact with your teachings to attempt their application in my own life.
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Srila Prabhupada – your legacy is extra-ordinary – you delivered the essence of an ancient tradition to a world society that has drifted so far from it’s spiritual purpose. You established a clear set of teachings and a method of systematic application, leaving no field of human life untouched. And, as your greatest gift, you gave your own powerful example of intense conviction in the teachings of the Gaudiya Vaisnava parampara that to this day carries many of your followers beyond the brink where logic and reason fail and into the realms where faith and love preside, where personal revelation alone is the currency of conviction.
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Your teachings are so clear and essential. You take the seemingly infinitely complex network of cause and effect that is this material world, indicate the essential realities, and extract and highlight an ultimate purpose to everything. You do this with such personal conviction that at my first encounter I felt certain that my own success would a sure thing. Of course, in time I have come to more deeply recognize the magnitude of my conditioned predicament, and the limits of my sinscere desire for transcendence.
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My prayer to you on this day is to reveal to me the path onward into the future of my own spiritual life. I stand at the brink of faith, uncertain how to proceed. My limited, conditioned intelligence cannot deliver me realisation of the transcendental reality of Krishna’s personal existence, or rationalise the many inconceivable aspects of Sastra.
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Genuine faith is more than a decision to put aside doubt.
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You teach that as we cannot accept half a hen, we cannot accept half the Vedic presentation.
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Please help me accommodate those aspects of Sastra that elude and frustrate my conditioned understanding, and to thus assist me to move forward with conviction into the bliss and freedom of dedication to devotional service.
Your servant, Tri-yuga das
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