My very sincere gratitude to all of the assembled devotees who have been here today. I just remembered about 1980 I was just traveling through out the Central, Eastern part of America to colleges, universities, High school along with Devaki Nandana Prabhu and give lectures. In one college, it was a major university of America; there were about 120 students in class about 5 professors attended. I began class to the students with Kirtan, and then give lecture, Questions and Answers and then Prasad and books. Whenever possible I would go near small children from ghrihasta community, in one such occasion there were three little boys, very small and after the kirtan we have these boys chant Brahmahsamhita and during the kirtan they played Mridanga and Kartals. They chanted Brahmahsamhita and they asked to speak few words and then I began, I spoke from Bhagavad Gita and from Upanishads and I answered Questions and I tried to defeat all opposable arguments and at the end of the class the five professors came to me and they said we believe in your movement now. We have for the first time in all these years adopted real confidence and respect for your movement, they said your lecture is nice and we have heard so many nice lectures, but we saw in these children that practice what your religion teaches but they love to practice this we have to take very seriously.

So these professors were telling that we see the authenticity of any religious movement according to how the older generation can imbibe within the small children and understanding and love for their religion and consciously or subconsciously the world feels that way , they told me, to make thousands and millions of converts are good but that doesn’t impress us. And we follow the path of Bhakti, Prabhupada he was so very very deeply concerned for the people of his society, the small children that were born in the society of ISKCON and we are so fortunate to have the first parent of any child born in ISKCON with us today ShyamSundar Prabhu the father of the illustrious Saraswathi, Srila Prabhupada considered these children to be his own personal responsibility to Krsna and he wanted to understand , he wanted the parents to understand the serious responsibility that they had, in inculcating love for Krsna in the hearts of children, today some of these children’s are in their mid thirties and some have had fortune and others unfortunate experiences over the years, but one thing that practically everybody of that generation remembers as one of the most worshippable times of their lives was Srila Prabhupada giving them cookies and smiling, they felt Prabhupada’s love and they knew that it was Krishna’s love coming through Prabhupada , if our children do not feel love they will not understand Krishna’s love because the love of the parent is translated to the children as the love of Krsna, unconsciously their parents are devotees, their parents are chanting, their parents are doing pooja , their parents are doing seva, they are doing so much to Krsna and they feel their parents love they can actually begin to understand Krishna’s love and what is love? Love doesn’t mean spoiling a child, love doesn’t mean to sentimentally only being nice, real love means that we must give the child the best possible that we can in our life that is the love of a parent, if the goal of life is to awaken our eternal love of god Or Krsna then that’s the most important thing that we can give to our children, everything should be in harmony with that.

Durlabhah manava janma samasare, the goal in human life is only to be in Krishna consciousness, to awaken ones natural devotion to Radha and Krsna, Prabhupada quoted from Garga Samhita, where it describes that if a person in human life dies without realizing god that is a miserly person who has completely wasted their life, so yes it is the parents first and foremost responsibility to try to create an environment that will induce the child to want to know and love Krsna and at the same time teach wonderful skills that they can use in Krsna consciousness through out their life. From a Krsna conscious point of view that is the singular exclusive reason for education to give children tools that they can use in Krsna’s service to express their love through out their life, so please all parents or future parents take this very seriously , it is your first and foremost responsibility to your children by your personal example, by your words and by what you emphasize in their life, to attract them to Krsna , Krsna is all attractive and raising our children should be in such a way that their naturally being attracted to Krsna. Srila Prabhupada said even little children rising early in the morning and coming to mangalaharathi Prabhupada said its fun, those little austerities with Krsna in the center is fun for children. We should create an environment where children find the greatest happiness in their life in those activities in those subject matter that relate to Krsna.

And that is the purpose of Gopal’s garden, it has been said that many of our senior most congregational leaders were in anxiety and fear about their fate of their children, they had a nice spiritual atmosphere at home but they would come back from school, small children even some of the best academic schools, I wont tell you some of the things that the parents were telling the children were coming back with, parents were in terrible distress what they were learning from the other students who with their parents were addicted to cinemas and televisions and all of these things and all sorts of very very materialistic ways of enjoyment. How will we going to raise our children to be pure in this atmosphere? So actually it wasn’t exactly as Krsna Chandra Prabhu said that I ordered to start a school, he likes to give all credit to someone else, I simply said you are the parents, you are responsible that these children go back to godhead, you are the care takers of Prabhupada and Krsna children, it is your responsibility to do something about it.

In my opinion all of you should come together and use your resources and your energies to start the type of school that you wanted your children to grow up in. That’s all I said there was no order. then I asked would you like to start a subcommittee to start this and immediately a subcommittee has started and before I knew it, even I was very surprised there was a school, I must give immense appreciation to Krsna Chandra Prabhu although it was a joint effort of all the parents, he is the person who really pushed with such incredible determination although all his children are already grown up and out of school practically but he was concerned , Krsna Chandra Prabhu really really worked hard, so much is his resources and immense amount of his human energy, working with other devotees to make this possible. Braj Kumari Devi , Braj Kumari Devi was , she had a very very good job at international school with all kinds of features, for position, influence, a lot of money, but she gave it all up to come out of the multi multi million dollar or crores and crores of rupees of project to be principal of one flat and just a few students and of course Jahnavi Mataji she has been a very very great lover our children for so many years and certainly she inculcated this sense of importance in her daughter in a very beautiful and wonderful way, and to our beloved ShyamSundari who was also a very dynamic and exciting part of this wonderful family, this the faculty decided on the name of the school Gopal’s Garden , when it came to my attention I was thinking my lord this is really a sentimental name, Gopal’s Garden,I was expecting something like Gaudiya Vaishnava Academy, Gopal’s Garden then they told me what it meant, that all the children are all flowers and teachers are the gardeners and through education and spiritual education, academic education , cultural education, they are watering the seeds within the hearts of those little children so the flower of love of Krsna will grow in Gopal’s garden, so I very happily surrendered to this beautiful name , because it really does reveal the essence of the purpose of this project, In any endeavor in this world mistakes and problems will inevitably come, even tragedies happen it’s the nature of the world. The success of any project is that we maintain the dignity and integrity of the values that we are meant to stand for, Srila Prabhupada within his worshippable books have revealed all we need to know to understand what the goal of life is and how to achieve it.

Srila Prabhupada in one conversation with a PhD candidate spoke something that really shook my heart, you have heard me repeated many times and I will probably carry on repeating it to my last day in this world. Prabhupada was speaking about how there is no culture in the west as long as there is slaughtering and eating of innocent animals, Hare Krishna and this professor, she came or just PhD she was writing her thesis on how great guru’s of the west have influenced western culture, so she was asking Prabhupada, how do you think you have influenced the western culture, Prabhupada said what culture, there is no culture, where is your culture and he would not give up this idea about animal slaughtering, so finally she said swamiji I have a philosophical question for you and Prabhupada answered like a thunder bolt he said philosophy has little or no meaning without proper character. If we want to have a society that will actually be happy united and transformed the suffering ignorant people of the world we must build our society on the foundation of proper character, that’s what vaishnavism is about, character to be trinad api sunicena taror api sahisnuna amanina manadena kirtaniya sada hari, Chaitanya Charitamrita says take this verse and put it on the string of the holy name and wear it always, humility like the grass, tolerance like the tree, offering all respects to others and expecting no respect for oneself then you could chant the name of the lord constantly, in the Siksastakam it is the progression, unless we take very seriously striving to follow these principle of trinad api sunicena and being respectful and accepting for ourselves we cannot enter into the higher stages of giving up material attachments, na dhanam na janam na sundarim kavitam va jagadisa kamaye mama janmani jamanisvare bhavatad bhaktir ahaituki tvayi, then next verse I do not want wealth, I do not want beautiful women, I do not want fame and followers, I don’t even want to be great educator, I only want your devotional service birth after birth, Ainandana tanuja kinkara, to be the dust of the feet of Krsna, to actually feel ecstasy when we are chanting Krsna’s name, it cannot be done until we pass through this gate way of humility, tolerance, respect and no false prestige, this is substance if we don’t live by these principles then all our devotional service is superficial, its external , its licking the bottle of the honey and not really going inside properly , we must have proper character, when Srila Prabhupada was asked by American reporter how do I know who is your devotees?, he said they are perfect ladies and gentlemen that means good conduct.

The six Goswami’s they represented such conduct, if we read the life of Santana Goswami , he was so humble, he had no desire for anything, Jiva Goswami came and asked him to be his guru, who would not want Jiva Goswami to be a disciple, the greatest scholar in all the world. Santana Goswami said you should take initiation from Rupa Goswami he is more qualified than me, and Rupa Goswami said no no he is more, because Santana Goswami was Rupa Goswami’s guru and elder brother, Rupa Goswami surrendered and every body loved him, even the most common farmers trusted him completely because he was devoid of any sense of false prestige.

In Krsna Consciousness we don’t want power, we don’t want position and we don’t want prestige, Bhakti Siddantha Saraswathi Thakur said all these things for a Vaishnava should be seen as the dung of a boar. The stool of a pig, a wild pig, Hare Krsna. That’s what we think of enjoying position , prestige or power, Mahaprabhu taught, Gopi-bhartur pada-kamalayor dasa-dasa-dasa-dasanudasa, that’s our only identity , that’s our only aspiration to be the servant of the servant of the servant to be devoid of the prestige and offer all respects to others that is character, character however Maya tries to test us through illicit sex, intoxication, gambling, meat eating testing us by big money to do illegal things, in the west it is a temptation you could make hundreds and thousands of dollars in one day if you just go out and sell some illicit drugs and some devotees tried it, we can make big money, but because it was without character they were thinking Krsna would protect them and you know something Krsna did protect them by putting them in prison, Sri Krishna Bhagavan ki jai.

You know some of these stories put them in prison because Krsna wants the character of the devotees to protect the dignity of our institution more than money or property or anything else because it is all just an empty hollow shell without the devotees having proper character and what is character? Humility, tolerance, offering respect to others without expecting for oneself, not to be attached to anything but servant of the servant of the servant that is character. And to maintain our vows and something so sacred that we won’t trade for anything in this world. We must have long term vision and especially the future of our movement, the hope of our movement is to the degree we as parents and leaders can inculcate within the hearts of our children these values, marry your child to a wealthy man and they have comforts and nice things but they don’t have love for Krsna, if they don’t have character, what is their life? Its empty, its superficial and its wasted.

The parents of our wonderful congregation came together united and performed many sacrifices to provide this opportunity for all the parents and future parents to have a place where their children could learn top quality skills in arts, in academics but most of all as their foundation to learn the sacred qualities and characteristics of a vaishnav, because our goal in life as His Holiness NirajanSwami Maharaj says, our goal of life is to know that Prabhupada is smiling upon us that’s all, that Prabhupada is smiling that each and every one of us according to our position is doing the best we can to serve the overall movement of Krsna Consciousness, yes obstacles will come, I have never seen a project and iam confident that I will never see a project where there are set back’s , where there aren’t scandals, where there aren’t politics, Haribol. Have you ever seen such a project, may be satyayuga. Of course in vaikunta , but in kaliyuga , but we must see all of these things, all of these deviations as fire and wherever there is fire we cannot think that by fanning the fire , because Maya will make us think if we fan the fire, you know how much you will get out of this , you will get more money , if you fan the fire you will get more prestige, if you fan the fire you will get more facilities and you will but in the end everything will be burnt. We must extinguish this fire, no politics, no selfish motivated mentality, no immorality, no envy, the dignity of our movement to the degree each and every member is serious enough to overcome these propensities and the leaders to stamp them out whenever they are seeing , it must be if you allow a disease to grow it becomes chronic and later terminal, so from the very beginning of life how wonderful it will be if we can water that seed of devotion and proper values and character in the hearts of our children, all of us old people we know how much we have to fight against our previous conditioning, that’s why Srila Prabhupada said that third generation of your children, said the third generation of Krsna consciousness movement, they will have the power to make the changes within this world, providing we raise them properly.

Srila Prabhupada, how many times did he explain when he was just a little boy he would rise and the first thing he would hear in the morning was his mother and father doing arati to the deities of RadhaGovinda, and he would get up and his father would be offering arati and his mother would be cooking and doing bhoga and singing and everything cooked in the house was offered to the deities with great devotion and every evening they would invite about five or more sadhu and serve them nicely and beg for their blessings , right in the first canto of SB in purport Prabhupada explained how that was such a foundational support in his life, of course we understand Prabhupada descended this world but great personalities do teach by their example. Srila Prabhupada and such a deep love and concern for our children of our movement and I personally believe in the core of my heart that there is no priority above than raising our children the best possible way we can, if we let any other priority go above that we will very likely regret it in a massive way in years to come and to some extent we have already experiencing that in our society let us take everything in a positive way and learn, Krsna Consciousness is not just based on good intentions , its based on keeping our priorities always in order, Prabhupada said that the children born to devotees are rishis and demigods, yes , they are not ordinary children, but we have responsibility for them, Iam eternally grateful to Krsna Chandra Prabhu, Jahnava Mataji, Braja Kumari, Raghunath Sharan Prabhu, Rohini Nandan Prabhu and all the other devotees, please do not be offended if don’t say your name , all the other devotees who have given so much for this project to all of the teachers, to all of the workers and the prasadam cooks, to the drivers of the buses that go 500km everyday and to the parents and to the students. I sincerest gratitude, let Gopal’s garden develop into such a wonderful wonderful facility to raise our generation to spontaneously and naturally love Krsna and let the fragrance of the flowers of this garden intoxicate the whole world with Krsna Consciousness, Thank you very very much.