namah om visnu-padaya krsna-presthaya bhutale
srimate gour-govinda-swaminiti namine
he guro jnana-da dina-bandho
svananda-data karunaika-sindhu
vrindavanasina hitavatara
prasida radha-pranaya-pracara
Jaya Srila Gurudeva!
My dear Srila Gurudeva,
Yet again I find myself in the lowest position as I think of your glories. From this place I offer my repeated danadavats at your divine lotus feet.
I am lower than usual this year, because for the first time ever I didn’t write an offering for your most auspicious and wonderful Vyasa Puja (which was three days ago). My feeble reasoning was that, every year in my Vyasa puja offerings I say how I am doing nothing to serve or please Your Divine Grace, but that this coming year I will change, and I will begin doing something, some real seva. However, the next year comes, and the next year and I find that all I am doing in each annual Vyasa puja offering is I am simply repeating the same statements but I am actually doing nothing. No improvement.
This year I was feeling that simply repeatedly expressing my good intentions is valueless, so this year I shouldn’t write such an offering, rather I should be determined to act instead. Actions speak louder than words. My intention was that I will definitely begin publishing the new-look newsletter and start other projects this year. So this year I shouldn’t write an offering; next year, once I am again doing some seva, then again I will write.
But now I am feeling terrible. The opportunity arose and yet I didn’t write anything glorifying Your Divine Grace. How could I not do so? And what happens if yet again I fail to do anything of any value for your service and pleasure this year? I have much experience of my delaying, procrastinating nature.
Even though I have such great examples amongst your disciples of those who are really dedicating themselves to your service, to glorifying you, still I am unable to do anything myself. Such a useless fellow I am. (it is for my benefit that I can name a few of these disciples now – Gunacuda and Nalini, Sadhika & Maha shakti Matajis, Sacinandana & Caitanya candra prabhus, Nimai Pandit and Manjumedha, Titiksu and Jayanti Sri, Acaryaban & Haravalli, Madhavananda, Nru hari prabhus and Murli Krsna Swami are some obviously active disciples that come to mind. Great examples.)
And yet I am so useless that I can not even write a simple offering once a year to glorify Your Divine Grace – to glorify the one who has given me everything. I have hit a new low.
So yet again this year I find myself in the usual position of having done nothing for Your Divine Grace, even though I am totally in your debt. My desire is there, however, to do something to begin to please you and to start the process of beginning to pay back something of the debt I owe to Your Divine Grace. I do desire to improve, I do desire to serve and please you.
In my heart and mind perhaps foolishly I aspire for ‘higher things’ in spiritual life, even though I am just about on the first rung of the ladder. But anything is possible by your grace. In fact everything is possible if Your Divine Grace wants it to be so. It is entirely by your grace, and only by your desire that I can advance in any way along this bhakti patha. So why not aspire for the highest? You can give that if you wish to the totally undeserving. In fact it can not happen any other way.
So I am lazy and pretty useless, but knowing of your causeless loving kindness, I live in hope that one day I will receive that causeless mercy.
Your stupid servant
Janeswar das