I am very grateful for this opportunity to speak a few words. We are celebrating the 500th anniversary of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu’s acceptance of sannyasa. He left His home in Navadwip, His beloved widowed mother, His loving beautiful chaste wife, all of His intimate associates, and Navadwip itself which is non-different than Vrindavan. He broke the hearts of those who are most dear to Him, to perform the supreme sacrifice of giving Krishna bhakti, Krishna prema to the suffering people of this world. In that same spirit, here in Sri Navadwip, Mayapur, Srila Bhakti Siddhanta Saraswati Thakur Prabhupada accepted sannyasa and left his home in Mayapur to go to Calcutta, and traveled to so many materialistic places all over India, to carry on the mission of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu. And our own beloved Guru maharaj Srila A C Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, he followed that same spirit. He accepted sannyasa and left his home in Vrindavana. At the Seva kunj, in the temple of Jiva Goswami, like Caitanya Mahaprabhu, with a begging bowl, he left Vrindavana, to plead and beg the conditioned souls of this world to accept the treasure of pure bhakti.

When he was on the Jaladuta, the cargo ship, somewhere in the middle of the Arabian Sea, he suffered several heart attacks, sea sickness, no medical help. When he gained the strength, he wrote in his dairy that, “I am feeling so… so great separation from Sri Vrindavan dham, and for my beloved Lords Sri Govinda, Gopinath and Radha Damodar. But I am here on the order of my spiritual master, Srila Bhakti Siddhanta Saraswati Thakur, to fulfill his mission which is the mission of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu, to spread the nama sankirtana movement and love for Krishna throughout the world. Srila Prabhupada wrote, “I have no qualification to do this. I am completely dependent on their mercy, so very far away from Vrindavan. And we all know the struggles he endured. He signed his beautiful poem on the Jaladuta, his prayer to Krishna, “Your insignificant beggar, A C Bhaktivedanta Swami.”  - that’s sacrifice.

A few years later in Los Angles, it was the disappearance day of Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Thakur. Srila Prabhupada explained to all of us, a summary of Bhakti Siddhanta Saraswati Thakur’s life, and his own relationship with his Guru maharaj, Saraswati Prabhupada. And at the end of the lecture, he said, “I am very old. And I could die at any time. But you are very young. Take this mission of Srila Bhakti Siddhanta Saraswati Thakur Prabhupada as your heart and as your soul. And after I depart, carry it on. Spread it throughout the world.” Srila Prabhupada, the sacrifice of his life is the qualification of practically every single person in the western world to receive Krishna consciousness. The unbelievable sacrifice of service in separation from his guru and Sri Vrindavana, is the qualification for the vast majority of people, even in India today, to receive the treasure of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu’s mercy.

And individually, personally to all of us, what did he ask in return? With a begging bowl of his heart and hand, he begged us, he pleaded with us, to cooperate together to spread this message of Lord Caitanya, this mission of Bhakti Siddhanta Saraswati Thakur Prabhupada throughout the world. That’s all he asked of us. Just follow these teachings and share them with others. Sometimes Srila Prabhupada would weep when he would speak about Bhakti siddhanta saraswati thakur Prabhupada in separation and other times he would say, I feel his presence in my life at all times in my life. Lord Caitanya taught us here in Nawadwip and again in Sripuri at Gambira, the beauty of the PRINCIPLE OF UNION IN SEPERATION the pains of separation from our beloved, bring his presence so deeply alive within the very core of our hearts – ‘To love is to serve, to serve is to please the object of our love’, Srila Prabhupada made it so clear. You can show your love for me, by how you cooperate. And for what purpose does he want the cooperation, so that individually we can actually taste the sweetness of the holy names.

As Sripad Bodhayan maharaj was so beautifully explaining.

trinad api sunicena, taror api sahishnuna
amanina manadena, kirtaniya sada hari

to be humble, forgiving and tolerate and be respectful to all that spirit of servitude is what that cultivates our heart, so that the seed for the taste for the holy name can actually grow. And Srila Prabhupada wanted us to help the suffering people of this world by giving the treasure of Bhakti. In the Srimad Bhagavatam, in the story of Lord Siva drinking the ocean of poison, it is said that there is no service that  pleases the Supreme Lord more than the willingness to accept difficulty and even suffering as an act of compassion to others. All of our acaryas they lived by this principle. It was Mahaprabhu’s principle, when Saci Devi Vishnupriya and all the devotees were weeping incessantly with absolute broken hearts when he left Navadvip, swam across the ganga and ran to Katwa to take sannyasa, He feels the pain of His devotees as His own pains but he endured that for the higher principle of compassion. Prabhupada endured heart attacks and strokes and poverty and death threats and separation from Vrindavan to be in the filthiest and most sinful cities of the world in that same parampara of compassion and he is begging us to assist him to cooperate together without duplicity without egotism to spread Krishna prema through the chanting of the holy names...

Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare
Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare

And this day the disappearance day of Srila Prabhupda, it’s the day that more than any other day of the year we deeply focus on what Srila Prabhupada’s disappearance from this world, means individually and collectively, in my life and in our lives. It is the day when we can pray, pray from our heart of our hearts for the opportunity to reciprocate with grateful hearts with the love we’ve been given.

Thank you very much.