By Murari Das
Due to the unlimited causeless mercy of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, Guru and the Vaisnavas, I was able to visit Sri Mayapur dham for this years Gaura Purnima 2008 festival. This was my third visit to the dham. I attended the last 6 days of the festival period. This year, as announced by H. H. Kavicandra Maharaj during the last few days of the parikram, the number of parikram attendees was one of the largest for many years. Thus the festival turn-out overall was also quite large and there was an acute shortage of accommodation. This fact for most people is a cause of celebration and not annoyance, since it shows the steadily growing number of pilgrims to Sri Mayapur Dham.
Any sincere practicing member of ISKCON will be greatly inspired by the large number of senior devotees and Prabhupad disciples who have been attending the successive festivals over the years. Spiritual life is not easy, and, this being the material world; any practitioner is definitely in the minority going against ‘the current’. Yet to see the senior members of our movement and Srila Prabhupad’s disciple’s staunchly sticking to the path of devotional service after all these years, remaining committed to Srila Prabhupad’s mission and serving devotees with a selfless attitude is such a great inspiration for all of us. This always makes the biggest impression on me at each visit to Mayapur. They show us, by practice, how to dedicate our lives to Srila Prabhupad’s mission and thus steadily make progress on the path back to Godhead.
Mayapur is the most important place in the Universe where the Lords most recent incarnation descended to inaugurate the Sankirtan movement meant for freely distributing the most important commodity in all existence, love of God. After many births and deaths if one is fortunate, he can get a chance to come here to be purified and associate with great Vaisnavas, past and present. In this way one can begin his path back to Godhead. Regrettably, I am so unfortunate, that whenever I think of visiting Mayapur during the festival period, I only think of enjoyment and not of increasing my devotion to Krishna. At least in this visit though, I was beginning to realize this fact, and become somewhat put-off with this attitude. Although the mood of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu was kirtan, Prasadam feasts, and dancing, I think to stay in Mayapur and not do this with a humble mood of devotion in Krishna Consciousness but in a mood of gross enjoyment is a waste of such a valuable opportunity to adavance in Krishna Consciousness. I sincerely pray to Guru and Gauranga to have a more devotional mood when I next visit Mayapur if I am able to get the mercy to visit again.
Devotees attending the festival came from countries all over the world, from all the continents. They came together and co-operated for the pleasure of Srila Prabhupad to serve all other visiting pilgrims and glorify Lord Gauranga. What percentage of the world’s population were they? Indeed only the very few fortunate people got the mercy. Why is that? This is because of us. As H. H. Jayapataka Maharaj mentioned; everyone should make a commitment to bring one more person to the festival next year. Preaching is the essence of our movement. Srila Prabhupad mentioned that this is a preaching movement. We are running out of time and the conditioned souls are being tormented more and more by the material energy. The best and most effective way to preach and influence the most number of conditioned souls is to distribute Srila Prabhupad’s books. Once Prabhupad mentioned that; our only success is due to these books. I thought about how the festival would be more and more ecstatic with more and more devotees. I especially feel great bliss honouring prasadam in the prasadam hall with so many devotees from all over the world. Instead of just keeping it to ourselves, why don’t we all make more effort to enable other souls to experience the mercy of Lord Chaitanya? Because if we don’t, then who will? This is the only way to try repay Srila Prabhupad for him having saved us, according to his own words. Krishna is also most pleased by this activity of preaching.
When visiting any holy place one of the most important activities is to hear from the holy persons about transcendental knowledge. By attending the morning Srimad Bhagavatam class and hearing attentively, our intelligence becomes purified and we are less influenced by maya, the material energy. This also goes for all spiritual activities. Primarily, chanting the holy names. I realized in this visit that it is important to maintain good sadhna even in the holy dham or we can be overcome by the material energy. Actually it may be more important here in this particular time since so many activities are going on during the festival that if we don’t finish our minimum (at least) number of ’rounds’ in the morning, we may not end up being able to finish them till night time. Therefore to stay and follow the whole morning program and finish our sixteen rounds of the holy names within the morning period will keep us in a healthy spiritual consciousness. This is something I did not do and I felt the effects, thus I came to this realization. Another thing to do would be to try to maintain at least 1 hour or at the very least 30 minutes of reading Srila Prabhupad’s books. This is an important part of trying to maintain a devotional mood in the dham as opposed to a mood of sense gratification. Another thing is that if we try to maintain our sadhna in this way we will be able to gracefully return to our services in our temples when we return, otherwise we may find it a little difficult to continue our respective services. Even leaving aside these benefits, in any holy place, any devotional service performed gives much more spiritual benefit to the devotee so that is reason enough to continue with our sadhna here.
Visiting Mayapur also means visiting Mother Ganga, a dear devotee of Krishna. The supremely sanctifying river Ganga is considered very sacred and important to all Vaisnavas and Chaitanya Mahaprabhu had many pastimes there. How fortunate we are that she is flowing right outside our main ISKCON campus, giving all the devotees a chance to be purified by bathing in her waters. Most devotees take the opportunity to bathe and chant their gayatri mantras here. During my first visits I was not that appreciative and did not take the chance to bathe too many times. However, by practicing devotional service, we get so many realizations and I am now beginning to understand my good fortune to have access to bathe in the Ganga. After so many lifetimes of accumulated sins one can get a chance to be purified and gradually reduce our sinful reactions by bathing in Ganga. I feel fortunate to even know about the glories of Mother Ganga let alone even to be able to bathe in her waters. It is mentioned in the Sastra that even thinking about Ganga is purifying.
Srila Prabhupad wanted all ISKCON devotees to attend the Mayapur Gaura Purnima festival every year so that they could all chant the holy names together in Satsang. Although it may not be practical for all devotees to attend every year, it is important to attend periodically. Mayapur is ISKCON’s spiritual world headquarters. Mayapur is non-different from Sri Vrndavan Dham and Sri Jagannath Puri Dham. By coming on pilgrimage here one gets a chance to be purified and to advance in devotional service. I also like to come to take association of so many of the visiting devotees.
*Mayapur Dham ki Jay! Sri Gauranga Mahaprabhu ki Jay! Srila Prabhupad ki Jay! All Glories to the festival organizing team. Saturday, 29th March 2008.*