Bhaktivedanta Hospice Celebrating One Year of Service

Radhanath Swami: We are very grateful for all of you who have come, especially Her Grace Malati devi, His Holiness Giriraj Swami Maharaja, and to all of you. Srila Prabhupada came to Vrindavan when he was about sixty years old, and when most people are retiring from life, he spent six years here—more than that—preparing to fulfill the glorified mission that his gurudeva had given him. When he was sixty-nine, he departed from Vrindavan for Mumbai and Calcutta, Mayapur, back to Calcutta, and then he sailed to the West on the Jaladuta.

When Srila Prabhupada, in the early days, around ‘67 or ‘68, he became extremely ill and his disciple, Kirtan ānanda Swami, he brought him to Vrindavan because Prabhupada told his pure disciples at the time the best place for him to leave this world was Vrindavan and also if it was Krishna’s wish, the best place for him to get well and carry on the mission would be Vrindavan. So Prabhupada left America then. Most devotees had hardly been practicing bhakti for a few months, at most a year or two, and their guru was leaving with the great likelihood that he was coming to Vrindavan to depart from the world. He stayed in his rooms in Radha-Damodara, but with the atmosphere of Sri Vṛndāvana-dhāma, his health became very strong again. For about the next ten year he was travelling throughout the world. Srila Prabhupada became [well?] and stayed with us until 1977. He came to Vrindavan. He just made a trip to London with the plan to go to Gītā-nagarī in America, but his health was not cooperating so he especially chose to depart from this world here in Vrindavan.

Srila Prabhupada taught how to live a life of Krishna consciousness, how to give our life in Krishna consciousness, and how to depart from the world in Krishna consciousness. And in Srila Prabhupada’s disappearance, he entrusted with all of his sincere and dedicated followers for all generations to come as their mission. He established the Krishna-Balarama temple to give people an opportunity from all over the world to come here and learn how to live in Krishna consciousness. By the inspiration they gained—Krishna-Balarama temple and the association of devotees—they are meant to go all over the world and learn to give their lives in Krishna consciousness, which means giving Krishna to others. 

And Bhaktivedanta Hospice is a facility to accommodate devotees who have given their hearts and souls and lives in devotional service to have the best possible care—physically, emotionally, and spiritually—so that they could depart surrounded by loving devotees in Prabhupada’s embrace at the lotus feet of Krishna-Balarama here in Ramaṇa-reti, Prabhupada’s eternal home. If you depart this world in Prabhupada’s home then the purpose of returning to Prabhupada’s home beyond this physical body [is fulfilled?]. Of course we know anywhere a devotee in the world passes his or her life, physical life, it is supremely all auspicious if the devotee has given their lives to devotional service. But still, it is our tradition to come to Vrindavan to pass from this world or Mayapur, Puri, the holy places. 

His Holiness Giriraj Swami had a loving disciple, Arca Vigraha devi, and she was passing and at that time her concern, her care for people and Giriraj Swami’s love for the Vaishnavas, put the seed in his heart, a place to care for devotees who decide to come to pass in this world in Vrindavan. I believe it was in his home in Carpinteria in California we discussed this and now devotees of Bhaktivedanta Hospital as well as our congregation in Mumbai, especially Krishna-candra and others were very enthusiastic to take full responsibility. At the beginning other people were kind of taking responsibility and we were in the background helping but then the people who were. . . sometimes in our sampradāya people in the background end up in the front without even knowing what happened. 

It was an incredible effort to put together this hospice physically, the building, to deal with all that it takes in a little place like Vrindavan in Uttar Pradesh in India to build this facility to train people in hospice care. Actually from a medical perspective, staff, people, pharmacy, medical care, it is actually a gigantic project as far as responsibility. And we very, very deeply and firmly believe in Prabhupada and Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and our acharyas’ message that service to vrajavāsī is a very, very, very dear service to Krishna. Chaitanya Mahaprabhu wanted us to never ever consider vrajavāsī to be ordinary people. [When I was first here?] when Prabhupada chastised some devotee for getting into an argument with a vrajavāsī and he told him to leave Vrindavan. And many of these vrajavāsī are really from birth, they just in their own special, unique way love Krishna. 

So we wanted this hospice to serve the vrajavāsī and to serve those devotees in ISKCON who have given so much of their lives and souls and may, after giving everything materially, they don’t get much in return. They just get blessings. And these devotees at the hospice, they are not going to become rich, they are not going to become famous, but they are dedicating so much money they have dedicated, so much endeavor to build, so much endeavor to maintain for the purpose of being instruments of those blessings, instruments of Prabhupada, Radharani, and Krishna’s blessings here in Vrindavan upon devotees who are in that final journey, the ultimate journey home, back home, back to Godhead.

So these are the principles and the inspiration of the Bhaktivedanta Hospice. We would say project but nothing but love and care and gratitude toward Vaishnavas. 

My reason for speaking and being here today is simply to offer my deep and most heartfelt gratitude to all of the devotees who are part of this because it is a thankless task. Very few people know this. Some people even criticize but these devotees are giving their lives to perform a very, very intimate beautiful service and one of the most difficult services to help people to leave behind this material world forever and enter into Radharani’s and Shyamasundara’s loving embrace. Those who were not from Vrindavan, coming from cities and other places to live here and to stay here, to be under the pressure of being surrounded by dying twenty-four hours a day, it is a great sacrifice, and you are doing it out of love, devotion, sevā. So we just want you to know that we recognize you, put your feet on our heads, and with so much love and gratitude, we are here to express that. 

Thank you very much. And we would like Giriraj Maharaja and Malati devi to speak something and Vishwarup Prabhu, you can say something about the particular services in brief.

Malati devi: Hare Krishna. I am an uninvited guest. I just happened to find out that there was something at the hospice. I wanted to see one of the patients who is a friend of mine so I happened to be here. Two or three weeks ago in Mumbai there was a presentation to the North American GBC representatives regarding the hospice and when I was hearing the amount of endeavor that was put into establishing this very impressive building, which is more than a building—it seems a little impolite to call it just a building. If it was a temple you wouldn’t say a building—and the amount of attention in planning how to take care of the various types of people meaning local people, foreign people, etc., ISKCON people when they come here. There was one lament that Krishna-candra Prabhu had expressed and he expressed to me how this beautiful first-class facility is underutilized and the main reason was from what I can understand is that people weren’t really aware. 

So I knew I was coming to Vrindavan shortly and one of my desires was to become more familiar with the hospice. The day I came I was quite surprised because I have a friend here in Vrindavan who doesn’t speak English and I don’t speak Hindi but we are friends since the nineties, since I first met her here. The communication is coming through the heart and I see her usually in the temple. But I hadn’t see her for a few days and I was wondering where she was. And when I came here, there she was. She was quite happy. Her name is [Hasti Tusti?] devi dasi, eighty-five years old, a disciple of Gopal Krishna Maharaja, a very lively, strong-hearted lady who was very happy to see me and as I was happy to see her.

I took my little tour and I felt that I want to be able to do some service to the hospice and the service that I could see would be as Krishna-candra had expressed the need for awareness for the hospice. So to become aware you need to know about the place.

I was appreciating details like the fact that when you built the building, you had to redo your architect plans to accommodate the trees so the trees wouldn’t be eliminated. So I was thinking when I heard that, if this attention is given to the trees what to speak of the attention that will be given to the fortunate souls who come here.

My head at the feet of all those who are staying because I think staying in Vrindavan idealistically is fantastic but with one hole in the ground it can be a little challenging sometimes [?], especially for people who are coming from the city background. Radhanath Maharaja mentioned there are some people who are fully dedicated to serve this mission. And to see Srila Prabhupada sitting here with us and that was the first person I saw when I entered the hospice, he was the first person, which is just like at Bhaktivedanta Hospital when you first enter you see Prabhupada. My first visit at Bhaktivedanta Hospital as a patient in a fairly acute situation, so I didn’t know if I was coming or going, but when I entered through the doorway and I saw Srila Prabhupada, it really didn’t matter, I felt everything was all right. So, kind of linked to the hospice, and seeing Srila Prabhupada, that same feeling is evoked. I am very honored to be sitting here with all of you and I hope that if there is some way I can assist in creating awareness for the hospice, it would be my great honor to do so. Hare Krishna.

Giriraj Swami: It is a great honor and privilege and pleasure to be here. We were here last on Lord Balarama’s appearance day to open the hospice and now one year has passed and the activities of the hospice are continuing in a very exemplary way which is to the credit of the staff, the doctors and nurses, and administrators—all the staff. It is often easier to create something than to maintain it. It was not easy to create the hospice but if maintenance is more difficult than creation then how much more difficult it will be to maintain the hospice. But these dedicated devotees have really stuck together and stuck with the project through all the different sorts of trials and tribulations that are inevitable in life.

Our whole practice of Krishna consciousness is tested at the time of death. Srila Prabhupada used to quote a saying that whatever sadhana and bhajana you do in your life will be tested at the time of death. Death is the final exam. Therefore it is the most critical time in a person’s life and the devotees entrusted with the care of the person—physical, emotional, and spiritual—have a great responsibility and also a great opportunity to help a soul achieve the ultimate goal of life. 

From the material point of view, it is a trying situation to care for a terminal patient. In ordinary medical professions, the doctors and nurses attend to the patient in the hope that the patient will get better and return to a normal, happy life in the material world, but in hospice care every patient dies and it is a different mood. Even in the West, they don’t have hospitals and hospices together because the mood is too different. The mood of taking treatment to get better to go back to life as it was before the hospital doesn’t go well with the mood of the hospice patients. So they always keep the two divisions separate.

For the soul to detach itself from the body is a very difficult process and it may be a painful process, but the devotees who help the soul through the process are the best friends and well-wishers of that soul and not only the individual who is leaving the body but it is a very stressful and trying time for the family members and other loved ones of the patient. And so the hospice staff also supports them to some extent—physically and emotionally and spiritually. So it is an opportunity to serve devotees and their loved ones and sometimes their loved ones are not so much devotees. But I have gotten reports from devotees whose parents have come to Vrindavan and left their body here that their family members became transformed just on the extent by the Vrindavan atmosphere but to the greatest extent by the love and care of the devotees. They have never seen such love and care ever before in their life. In one case, the brothers and sisters of a devotee remarked that, “We always thought that you left the family and we were the ones taking care our parents, but actually now at the most critical time we see you are the one who is taking of our parent and all of us.”

So it can be a very transformative experience even for friends and family members to see the love and care of the doctors and nurses and volunteers for the patients and their families.

But it requires spiritual realization. It requires realization that the soul is different from the body and the reason hospitals or even more so hospices are dreaded is because people identify with the body and ordinary people, if they hear the word hospice, “Oh no, not hospice. Don’t talk about hospice, because it means defeat. It means that you are giving up hope of fighting the disease; you are admitting defeat in the face of the disease. We don’t want that,” because they identify with the body. They don’t have any concept of life beyond the body. But the devotees, doctors, nurses, volunteers—anyone involved in any way—they know that the real person is not the body but the soul and that the bondage of the soul within the body is actually a miserable condition and that if the soul becomes free from the repetition of birth and death in varieties of material bodies, that’s the best thing that could ever happen to the soul.

Once a newspaper reporter challenged Srila Prabhupada that, “Your philosophy is very negative. You are very negative about the world.” And Srila Prabhupada said, “Our business is to go to the prisoners and tell them that, ‘The jail life is not your real life. You should get out of the jail and be free.’ So is that negative? That’s very positive.” So, it is actually a very positive experience to leave the body if in the process you are becoming free from this imprisonment in the jail of material existence, in the physical body, and it is that knowledge, that realization and that faith that propels all the devotees involved with the project and makes each case a glorious opportunity to help that soul go back home, back to Godhead, and to help everyone connected with that soul to realize who they are and what the real purpose of life is.

So I too, like His Holiness Radhanath Swami and Her Grace Malati devi dasi, put my head at the feet of these devotees. It is easy to get a good idea although the way the world is going it seems pretty easy for a lot of people to get bad ideas but I shouldn’t say that. Let us say it is easier to get a good idea than to implement it. And these devotees have implemented it and not just implemented it in the act of creation but they’re implementing it every day, every hour, every minute, every second as an ongoing process. And we are eternally indebted to them. 

Although it is true that not everyone is aware of the hospice yet and as they become more aware they’ll come and take more advantage, but the fact that it is here gives great hope and encouragement to the devotees, to anyone who knows about it, because the time will come for all of us. As Srila Prabhupada said in his last days here in Vrindavan, he said to one of his young disciples, “Don’t think this won’t happen to you.” It will happen to all of us. And just knowing that this facility is there, that care is there, it gives great hope, and that care, we have focused on critical time of leaving the body, but that care is needed in every respect. We need hospitals with devotees based on that type of care. We need to help old people as they become less capable to take care of themselves. They may not be terminal patients but old age can mean you lose your ability to take care of yourself gradually. So we need that sort of care. We need that spirit of care to extend to every area of a person’s life. But because everything is tested at the time of death, everything culminates at the time of death, we have begun this project.

Again, the devotees involved with this project are special, great personalities. I really feel honored and blessed to be associated with them if only in a small way. I’m sure that they will get immense blessings from Srila Prabhupada, from all the devotees, and ultimately from Sri Sri Krishna-Balarama who are so eager to get Their lost sons and daughters back to Them. Hare Krishna.

Sri Sri Krishna-Balarama ki jaya!
Srila Prabhupada ki jaya!
Gaura-bhakta-vrnda ki jaya!

Vishwarup dasa: Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare/ Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare.

I feel honored and grateful for the wonderful opportunity that was offered to us in 2006 when this project came to us and we felt very, very enlivened. We felt that Srila Prabhupada is actually honoring us with more and more service—more intense service, more crucial service. That is why I am very grateful to my gurudeva, Radhanath Swami Maharaja, His Holiness Giriraj Maharaja for thinking us to be a little capable of handling this and I am sure only with their blessings some result is seen here. 

In this hospice we serve people who are terminally ill, those who have a life expectancy to be six months or less and all those who are having terminal disease but life expectancy more than six months, they stay at home. So we have inpatient care here and we have home care. About 80 percent of people who are under registration they reside in their homes and we provide care at their homes regularly. Our team visits their home. 

Then we have a very unique care called respite care which means when the caretakers of the terminally ill people get exhausted—physically, mentally, sometimes emotionally and financially—so to give them a break in their service, the patients are received here, taken care by the hospice team for fifteen days, and the caretaker team goes for rejuvenation. Maybe they go to their children, they do yoga, they sleep, come back again fully rejuvenated, take the patients back home. That’s called respite care.

The fourth care that we give is most important, essential aspect of this hospice care is the end of life care. The end of life care means when the active dying process starts there are so many emotions that take place, and some big transition for the soul to leave the body and go away. At that time unexpected emotional upsurges take place. So we have a package of service which is well designed and well planned and very practiced end of life care which is meaning spiritual care and about 10 percent of medical care for comfort management that we also offer here. 

The last one is bereavement care. When the patient leaves, when the devotees leaves, his near ones and dear ones who get affected emotionally and spiritually, we offer care for over thirteen months. That means till the first anniversary of death when the family members relive the whole event again. So one month later on that, till that time we take care of them, as per their families. We follow them up. 

These are the types of activities we do here. And the care that we provide, there are also four kinds of care. One is the medical care which is mostly 100 percent directed towards comforting the patient. There is no guarantee or assurance to anybody that the patient will get well from the disease, but to make him comfortable and make his journey back home comfortable with pain free situations, emotionally and physically, and caring for the caretakers who are nearby family members. So our hospice offers complete wholesome care. We take care of the patient who is dying and care of all the people who are taking care of the dying person. They also undergo lots of very unexpected emotional ups and downs. Some are angry, some are depressed, some are frustrated. The patient is also sometimes angry, sometimes depressed, sometimes accepting. So all these different kinds of emotional trauma are taken care here and this is what hospice is. 

I read in Bṛhad-bhāgavatāmṛta that this place is Ramaṇa-reti where Krishna and Balarama are playing here and having fun and frolic, I read such an assuring and enlivening statement that Krishna-Balarama, Their Lordships, when somebody dies and leaves their body in this Ramaṇa-reti area, it is said that They leave Their play and come running to embrace that soul who has left their body here. It is a very, very enlivening statement. 

I thank our, my dear friend Madhava Nanda Prabhu and Dr. Almish who is working in Bhaktivedanta Hospital who has, with his wife Madhuri, left Bombay and come all the way to stay here fulltime and for their lives in the service and Krishna-candra Prabhu who has dedicated himself completely. We feel honored that if we can be of any use to help people to be embraced by Krishna-Balarama, Their Lordships in the end, it will be our greatest fortune. Srila Prabhupada’s disciples, Srila Prabhupada’s followers and the blessed vrajavāsī who have dedicated their lives in service to Krishna and Radha, we feel it is a great honor and privilege to comfort them in their last challenging moments of their life and to help them to remember Radha and Krishna. Their remembering can be hampered by the pain so help them to break free and to remember and to assist in every possible manner so that they can remember the Lord at their last passing moment. Sometimes Guru Maharaja mentioned that it is like all the way taking them to the door of Godhead and then Krishna will decide to take them in. 

So we thank everybody especially Maharaja for this wonderful service. I am a very proud participant of this group. We hope that we will be able to do our job nicely. We only pray to the devotees that our consciousness remains always humble with a service attitude and we can serve the devotees all the time in the future. Also it is my privilege that because of this service Giriraj Maharaja is in touch with us and we can speak to him regularly and get guidance. We are deeply honored. Thank you so much. Hare Krishna.

Srila Prabhupada ki jaya!

Madhavananda dasa: I am very grateful that all the Vaishnavas are here, especially Malati Mataji, Giriraj Maharaja, and Gurudeva.

Hospice is a sobering place, always, but in that sobering place also, today we have an induction program that when somebody new joins as a team member of the caretakers, they are given an induction. So today we are inducting Krishna and Balarama in the care. The team is getting completed today. They are here and Vishwarup Prabhu said that They come and embrace the person who leaves their body here but now They have decided to come earlier than that and stay here. It is basically these two Deities, They are going and visiting the patients everyday on the. . . we have a temple, a moving temple. So They will be going and blessing the patients who are admitted and They will be encouraging them that, “Don’t worry, We are here.” 

So I would just like to say that much only that it is a very happy occasion that Krishna and Balarama are joining the team of caregivers. Hare Krishna.

Sri Krishna-Balarama ki jaya!