My dear Srila Gurudeva, Srila Gour Govinda Swami, please accept my humble obeisances to you, which I offer with my head in the dust and my heart in my mouth, fearful that, due to my wretchedness I might lose you and return completely to the material pool of disoriented souls, where beauty such as your love and kindness is so rare as to be conspicuous by its absence.
namo oṁ viṣṇu-pādāya kṛṣṇa-preṣṭhāya bhūtale
śrīmate gaura-govinda svamin īti nāmine
On this great occasion of the anniversary of your merciful birth here upon this planet we know as Mother Bhumi, it is the duty of those who are Sri Guru’s followers and disciples to glorify their sadhu-guru, but I know that the only way to really glorify a sadhu is to follow his instructions and via his mercy and instructions become his perfect servant, pleasing our Lordships, Sri Sri Sri Radha Govinda Mahaprabhu and working with all one’s heart to help save the conditioned souls from the evils of this world of birth, death, old age and disease; from this world of the two witches, bhukti and mukti (enjoyment and liberation).
But how can one such as I, glorify you, my dear sadhu friend? You are a pure devotee of my Lordships and I have absolutely no realisation of what that means. It’s comparable to a worm in stool glorifying the highest goodness. Did I say comparable? Really, it’s not something comparable, for I am just a worm in stool attempting to glorify your sweetness, your goodness and kindness that is beyond my ability to even remotely understand. I have so little realisation of who you are, my Gurudeva, my savior, my only hope.
Sadhu is the only hope for the conditioned souls such as I, for you demonstrate the spiritual world to us, and eventually even the dullest person can recognise that you contain a beauty that originates far beyond this world of selfish exploitation.
You came to us, in all our evil wretchedness, offering us your kindness, your instructions, your friendship; you came to save us from ourselves. By sitting at your feet for an extended period, month after month, listening to you speak each day, it soon became clear to me that sadhu-sangha is the only hope for the conditioned soul such as I, for it is only whilst in the constant association of a merciful soul such as your beautiful self, that one can be free from material desires; thus it is only by the association of a magnanimous sadhu such as yourself that one can chant the pure name of the Lord, free from all offences. You have made this clear to me.
The gift you have offered us is the greatest of all gifts, carried lovingly within the blessed container of your heart of hearts, all the way from the spiritual world down into the depths of this prison house of maya, where the lowest of the low, foolishly and desperately seek happiness amidst this ocean of faults and misery, the kali yuga.
But how can I glorify you, oh great soul? How can I show the world your greatness? By mere words, lip service; who will take notice? Nobody will take the slightest notice of a fool like me. Thus, having ignored your merciful instructions and kept on thinking that by making a half hearted effort to please you, by chanting, by a little humility, by reading and discussing Sri Srimad Bhagavatam, by duplicitously pretending to be a devotee, a disciple, yet only barely accepting discipline; not daring to venture too far outside of my comfort zone, by not giving my all for you as you have done for us. By cheating, I fooled myself that I was following your instructions, and now, many years later, I have still not chanted the pure name; many wasted years later, living in comfort without sadhu-sangha, I still fail to glorify you. Many years later, I cringe with embarrassment for daring to have the audacity to believe that a cheat such as I could ever please you in any way but the most meagre of ways.
And yet, because you are so merciful, so loving and so kind, you have continued to be merciful despite my wretched duplicity, despite my selfish indulgence in the very sense gratification that you warned me about, despite my pathetic pride, my all but useless endeavours to pretend that I could be one of your followers, thinking that I understood you when, in fact, I missed your point completely.
You want me to become like you; a magnanimous, loving soul, sweet and loving enough to be included in the association of Sri Sri Radha Krsna, a soul filled with compassion for the fallen conditioned souls but I myself have merely remained a fallen soul.
Yet still, I am able, by your mercy, to follow this bhakti-margha to some small extent, because of that beautiful heart that invited me into your world at Sri Bhubaneswar, because of the divine love that you showed to all of us. Any benefit I have gained from my efforts is because of your loving, magnificent heart; because you care more about us fallen souls than you do about your own welfare, and because you love all of us, unconditionally, without reservation. You are a real devotee of the Lord; you are the divine emissary of Lord Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu serving His innermost desire.
Thus, on this sacred day of your Vyasa-puja, I humbly offer you my wretched, diseased and blackened heart, and I offer you my deepest apologies for having failed to achieve the heights of divine love that you offered to me. Please accept my humble, wretched offering, and please, always keep that mercy flowing in all of our hearts so that one day, probably in some very distant future, I may become the asset of my Lordships, Sri Sri Radhe Radha Ramana, that you wished for me and for all others to become, and like you, engage others in helping to save the suffering souls from drowning in this ocean of distress, thereby serving the mano-bhistam of our Lord Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu.
Humbly yours my friend
A useless, lost soul, desperately trying to become of value to my Swamini
The worthless dog
tarunkrsnadas