Prabhupada Letters :: 1972 a.c. bhaktivedanta swami |
16 August 2007 Wednesday, 16 August, 1972 Los Angeles My Dear Jayadeva, Please accept my blessings. I beg to acknowledge receipt of your letter dated August 10, 1972, and I am very much pleased to hear that you are making spiritual progress and you are more serious to attend to the real matter of your life. Go on in this way, reading, chanting, worshiping the deity, and offering the fruits of your labor to Krishna, and attend Mangala Arati at the temple and classes as much as possible, and very soon you will feel yourself becoming perfectly happy. This spot life is meant for becoming God conscious and there is no other purpose or meaning to life outside of this. So now you have got the right spiritual master, the process I've given you, so now it is up to you. If you really want to achieve the goal of your life, then become very serious to always pursue it at every moment and not be distracted by anything false. Sukadeva is the president now in Seattle temple, so if you can assist him in his management and other programs, kindly give him your help. Hoping this will meet you in good health. Your ever well-wisher, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Labels: Seatt;e, spiritual master letters | 10:57 |16 August, 1972 Los Angeles My dear Upendra and Citralekha, Please accept my blessings. I have received your letter dated 6 August, 1972 along with the balaclava hat. The hat is very nice and it is now cold in London it also had some immediate use. But now I am in Los Angeles and the weather here is very warm so I have kept the hat in London for my use whenever I shall go there. I am very happy to hear that both of you are becoming happy in your Krishna Consciousness spiritual life, and that in general everything is going on very nicely there in Australia. Hoping this will meet you in good health. Your ever well wisher, A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami ACBS/ldd letters | 10:56 | 16 August, 1972 Los Angeles Dear Tejiyas and Gurudasa, Please accept my blessings. I have received your joint letter dated 6th August, from Vrindaban and I am very glad to hear that everything is going nicely there. Regarding the questions by Tejiyas, unless there are local men in Delhi who are interested and who will do the work, then it is all right to attempt to expand there by renting building, etc. But on our own attempt that is not good. And this also applies to the pandal program. It will be expensive, so local persons must come forward to cooperate. Last time Dalmia and others were there, and they gave us all assistance. Therefore the program was very successful. So if such men are willing to come forward again to help us and organize everything, then we should try for it, otherwise, it is too much endeavor. My plan is to come to Vrindaban sometimes near the 12th or 15th of October for the Karati Varta and I want to sit down there in the Sri Radha Damodara Temple until some time near the end of November. I will lecture daily in the courtyard on the Bhakti Rasamrita Sindhu, especially for the benefit of the devotees. So you can make arrangements in that way. Regarding your questions about the marble tablets, in 1955 I went to Vrindaban and stayed at Nathagaon temple. In 1961 I moved to Radha Damodara temple and I am still living there. I have sent you the plans approved by me, and you may submit them to the municipality and request them to very quickly approve so we may start as soon as possible. When they have approved, Saurabha may come there to give you some help in the beginning. I think by now Tamala Krishna may be there with one engineer for getting the work started. There must be some tangible progress made by the time of my arrival so that I may see the work being done. Hoping this meets you in good health. Your ever well wisher, A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami ACBS/ldd Labels: building, management, Vrindavan letters | 10:55 |16 August, 1972 Los Angeles My dear Sukadeva, I have received your letter dated August 7, 1972 and I am very happy to note that things are improving more and more there in our Seattle Center. Yes, the program of increasing book distribution is very much appreciated by me, and especially if you can preach very widely to the university students nearby to your place, that is the best program. Try to get a course of instruction in the college and preach daily in a scholastic way. If we can attract this student class of men by our preaching work, that will enhance everything and we are very much in need of intelligent preachers for expanding this movement all over the world. I want that you all my advanced disciples become very bold preachers and take up this task of saving the fallen humanity from its worst condition of sinfulness. If you simply convert the leaders of your country to our philosophy, then the whole world will follow and be saved from ruin. Otherwise, they are all doomed to become animals like hogs and dogs. So you preach like that, very strongly, to especially the hippie class of men and the student class of men and convince them to give up their sinful activities and find out their real perfection of life in this Krishna Consciousness movement. Now I am concentrating on translating of Srimad-Bhagavatam and wish to not be any more distracted. But if there is opportunity, I shall be very glad to visit your center in the future. Hoping this will meet you in good health. Your ever well wisher, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami ACBS/ldd Labels: college preaching, Seatt;e letters | 10:55 |16 August, 1972 Los Angeles My dear Nityananda das, Please accept my blessings. I am in due receipt of your letter dated August 4, 1972, and you may know I have just arrived here from London. I am very pleased to hear that all of the programs there in New Orleans center are improving more and more under your capable supervision. Especially I am glad to note the judges decision in your recent court case and the nice words that he has used to describe our movement. Yes, that is the case, he has said rightly. So you may distribute a copy of the judges statement and the testimony of the child to all of our centers around the world. I am very glad to hear that you are training the devotees nicely in our philosophy and I also fully approve of your system for management. It appears in all respects that everything is going well at New Orleans center and I am so much pleased upon you for helping me in this way. So far the repayment of loan, we are not very much for big, big houses, especially if they become burdensome. Our first program is for preaching, and if we have to simply work for paying money for a house, that is not very much desirable. So you pay the loan at your convenience, better to concentrate on preaching and not so much for making money for repaying the loan quickly. Even if it takes some years to pay, at least you will not be always in anxiety where to get money in that way. But if you can repay the loan in two or three years time, and save so much interest money, that is a very good plan, provided it is easily done. Regarding your questions, in the sense that they do not belong to disciplic succession, in that sense Christ, Buddha, and the others are not bona fide. But because they have got some special power we accept them as bona fide. Just like Buddha. We accept him as the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Sometimes they play like that because they may have to. Although they are bona fide, they play sometimes as unbona fide. For example, we reject Buddha as unbona fide, but we accept him as an incarnation of God. We worship Lord Siva as a Vaisnava, but as a demigod we reject him. But to speak the truth, these personalities are not bona fide because who is caring for them? This so-called resurgence of feeling for Christ by the young people is due to our Krishna Consciousness movement. They are seeing that the foreigners are here, there is some national feeling and they think why not our Christ? Whatever they are doing we do not approve. But that does not mean that they should stop their work, this factionalism will go on. But one can see by the results. It is better not to talk with these people. Better let them remain as Christians and Buddhists, we do not want to convert them. You tell them that if you stick to Christ you will come out all right. It is better to avoid these comparative studies. Hoping this will meet you in good health. Your ever well-wisher, A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Labels: Christians, management, New Orleans letters | 10:54 |16 August , 1972 Los Angeles My dear Turya dasa, Please accept my blessings. I beg to acknowledge receipt of your letter dated August 1, 1972 and I have noted the contents carefully. Yes, I shall be very glad to hear that you have installed the Deity of Lord Jagannatha, Subhadra, and Balarama, provided you and your wife are going to stick there in Mexico City and you will not go away. I have heard that you are well qualified to worship the Deity at highest standard and this is very much necessary. One who is worshiping the Deity must be always attentive and mindful of his occupation at all times. He must never for one moment forget his duty of serving the Deity at every moment and strive always to please the Lord. If you are willing to stick there in Mexico City, along with your good wife, and do the needful for worshiping Lord Jagannatha and take all responsibility, then I have no objection if you install. Hoping this will meet you in good health. Your ever well-wisher, A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Labels: deities, Mexico City letters | 10:53 | |
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