Guru-purnima Evening Program

Devotee 1: We are worshiping guru, actually all the gurus of our paramparā, and as we look back at them, we see such greatness. I think from our perspective, sometimes we look back and we see them getting greater and greater, all the way back to the beginning. And we also talk about handing down the knowledge as a mango from the top of a tree, one hand to another hand to another, so it comes down with all its sweetness, unbruised, and unchanged. But as we look back, it also is moving forward, and in each of them, they are giving, they are granting, they are bestowing upon their disciples all of their sweetness and all of their knowledge. With each step, it is gathering more knowledge, more sweetness. Actually, as we come down to Bhaktivinoda and Srila Prabhupada, it is all of their collective wisdom, all of their collective beauty, all of their collective sweetness that we find in the most personal, embodied real way, right in front of our eyes, right before us, who we can worship, serve, and also serve with and assist in his service. 

I just know that we are all feeling very blessed, and privileged to be in that position. We are seeing you, all the sweetness, all the beauty and all the knowledge of all the acharya predecessors [Applause]. 

Devotee 2: I recently read something that I thought illustrated some of the themes of today, the glories and the mercy of the spiritual master because part of their glories is where we had found ourselves before meeting you and the devotees. In the middle of the 19th century, the British Poet Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote these lines. The first two verses are where we find ourselves:

“I falter where I firmly trod,
And falling with my weight of cares
Upon the great world’s altar stares
That slope thro’ darkness up to God.
 
I stretch lame hands of faith and grope
And gather dust and chafe and call
To what I feel is Lord of all,
And faintly trust the larger hope.”

And then by the mercy of the Vaishnavas, we meet our spiritual master, and through him, all the spiritual masters, and we find ourselves at his lotus feet. The poet goes on:

“And so may this place retain us still,
And he, the much beloved,
Again, a Lord of large experience
Trained to riper growth our mind and will.
 
And what delights can equal
Those that stir the spirit’s inner deeps
When one that loves but knows not,
Reaps a truth from one that loves and knows.”

The guru knows and loves Sri Krishna from his own guru, and he mercifully passes that knowledge on to us and that love. 

Our tradition is so wonderful and so personal that our spiritual master can be our friend and our father, as well as our teacher. It blends all of those so beautifully. I was really thinking that we have one father, and in the spiritual tradition that word “Father” takes on so many beautiful meanings. We found one with such great integrity and compassion. 

We all have no higher purpose than to follow and serve such a one. That is the highest purpose on this earth; to follow that one guru that represents God in this world, who has a relationship to God, and with the previous gurus, can lead us back home, back to Godhead. 

On this day, we can truly express our hearts. All glories to the spiritual master. And we have one verse from Queen Kunti from CC Madhya: “Among all the living entities wandering throughout the universe, one who is very fortunate, receives by the mercy of the spiritual master and the mercy of Krishna, the seed of devotional service.”

Hare Krishna.