Giriraj Swami Remembering Gunagrahi Dasa Goswami

Giriraj Swami: Hare Krishna. One small act of His Holiness Gunagrahi Maharaja has really touched me, and as you can see, it has stayed with me for many years. But in towards the end of 1999, I had a cardiac bypass surgery in Santa Barbara, and he just left a like a really sweet message. I guess because I hadn’t had that much association with him, it really made a deep impression on me that he did that. I think I will read a little something I sent for his memorial program in Vrindavan, and that will, so, I give an outline of…

LETTER to Gunagrahi Maharaja

My dear Gunagrahi Maharaja,

Please accept my humble obeisances. All glories to Srila Prabhupada, to your life’s long service to him, and to your divine departure to his lotus feet. When you are leaving Dallas to go to India in the face of your cancer you gave me the opportunity to see you off. When you were traveling in India and dealing with so many issues and developments, you gave me the opportunity to communicate with you regularly. When you returned to Vrindavan to stay, you allowed me to accommodate you and your staff in my house in Raman Reti where you instituted your wonderful nightly kirtans. And when you were ready to leave your body you gave me the opportunity to serve you indirectly, when you moved to the Bhaktivedanta hospice which I helped establish. Now you have gone to Srila Prabhupada to serve him and his lords. And I pray that you will give me the opportunity to serve you there too. Maharaja, I love you. Hare Krishna.

With appreciation gratitude and love your eternal aspiring servant,

Giriraj Swami

COMMENT

Then one of my disciples wrote a very nice appreciation of Gunagrahi Maharaja, which I would like to share with you. And in it, he quotes Maharaja’s Vyasa-puja offering to Srila Prabhupada. Not the one that Chakri Prabhu read, but the one from the year before. Which is really very instructive and touching. So, this is from Raghava Pandit dasa, a disciple in South Africa.

OFFERING by Raghava Pandit dasa

Dear Guru Maharaja,

Please accept my humble obeisances. All glories to Srila Prabhupada. A few days ago, I saw a clip of you and others bidding farewell to Gunagrahi Maharaja; he was on his way to Vrindavan. I never met Maharaja, but I’ve always found his talks deep and profound.

About a year ago, I read a blog post of his, which was so inspiring that the words came alive for me in a very mystical way. Here is the posting. The title is Happiness and Stained Glass. Srila Prabhupada says, “If one is situated in real Krishna consciousness, he can face the most severe type of adversity and remain completely undisturbed,” Journey to Self-discovery.

It is easy for us to smile when things are going our way, but spiritual advancement allows us to be happy at all other times as well. Here is a nice quote in this connection “People are like stained-glass windows; they sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is light from within” I will read it again “People are like stained-glass windows; they sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is light within"—Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. And that was the end of that blog post.

Then last year, I found his Vyasa-puja offering very inspiring. It is inexplicable why the words of some devotees touched me more than others. I read only a handful of offerings last year, and Maharaja’s was one of them.

OFFERING to Srila Prabhupada by His Holiness Gunagrahi Swami

Dearmost Srila Prabhupada, when I was a little boy, I knew nothing about the soul. All I thought was that when you die you don’t exist anymore. This frightened me some nights, I would lie awake crying after my mother had tucked me in. I would call out for her, and she would run up the stairs, hold me in her arms, and ask me what was wrong. “I don’t want to die,” I repeatedly sobbed. She would rock me back and forth, patting me on the head saying, “Everything will be alright, don’t worry. Everything would be all right.” I would finally lie back down, emotionally spent, and go to sleep. But that anxiety and the depth of my heart still remained.

As I grew older, I became so absorbed in sense gratification that I stopped thinking about death, nor was the subject ever dealt with in high school or college. When we all started experimenting with mind-altering drugs at the university, we would stay awake at night speculating about what was reality, and again the subject of death came up. But this time I somehow got the idea that we were all eternal. And that hey, maybe we were even God himself or itself. The idea of becoming God sounded pretty damn good, somehow, though it never seemed to work in my practical life. Quite the contrary, my suffering and confusion only mounted. Then that day of days finally came. “guru-kṛṣṇa-prasāde pāya bhakti-latā-bīja,” you lit up my life with the magic of the holy name. I had never seen or felt anything like it. Nevertheless, it was still so hard to let go of my desire to enjoy. Maya had to beat me to the ground to get me to finally crawl helplessly through the doors of your temple. At last and finally, I came to understand the real meaning of death, of the self, and of God. 

After many lifetimes, that deep-rooted fear of non-existence that comes to an end. Nowadays, death once again is very much in the forefront of my mind. My health is declining and the doctors say the disease is terminal. But even if it is, the purification it has put me through has been saving my life, my real life. More than any bodily cure I could ever have found, for along with my illness, you have come to purify me, forcing me to learn very hard and painful lessons that I had always so stubbornly avoided. You are also so mercifully flooding me with the most wonderful support of your loving devotees.

On account of the above, being faced with death has thus become one of the best things that has ever happened to me, rather than the unthinkable misery I did not know how to confront when I was young. I am reminded of how the Fifth Canto of Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam so graphically explains that it is becoming the general rule in Kali-yuga, that relatives and friends of so-called loved ones who are dying are often able to think only of how they themselves will benefit from their dear one’s demise. They have neither the knowledge nor the desire to comfort and uplift their lifelong companions, when they are about to leave this world. Thus, multitudes are dying in loneliness bewilderment, and despair. There is no doubt that I had remained. 

COMMENT

Excuse me.

OFFERING (continued)

There is no doubt that had I remained embedded in the culture I was brought up in, I would now be suffering the same fate. I would have had the same fears as always, not knowing where to turn for the answers and not feeling the genuine affection I would have so desperately needed. But you intervened and picked up this lost, sobbing spiritual child and held him in your arms, and you have been rocking him back and forth ever since. You have instilled within me that tranquility and faith I had always been looking for. I am at last convinced that, yes just as my mother always said, everything will be alright.

Your most grateful servant,

Gunagrahi dasa Gosvami

COMMENT

And Raghava Pandit concludes,

OFFERING (continued)

Sometimes it is said that the truth sits on the lips of a dying man. I felt that Lord Krishna had imbued His personality in Gunagrahi Maharaja’s personality with a special sweetness. And I feel fortunate that his words could inspire me further in Krishna consciousness.

Your servant,

Raghava Pandit dasa

COMMENT

So, I mean throughout all of Maharaja’s time in India, I was in regular communication with him. Often on Skype or at least on WhatsApp. But just I think a little before he became very weak at the end, in Houston, we made a, like a Skype call to him, with Indradyumna Swami, BB Govinda Swami, Bada Hari dasa was there, Kosa Rupa Mataji was there and I was there. And so, Indradyumna Swami was recalling different incidents, different experiences they had, including that one in Sarajevo when they were attacked. And BB Govinda Maharaja he uh he really wanted to be there at the end, with Gunagrahi Maharaja, so he told them, you know Maharaja you better wait for me to get there because if you don’t wait for me I am going to kill you. And then, and I was thinking, you know what I am what am I going to say, but when Gunagrahi Maharaja, when it was my turn, he was just like exuding or overflowing with that affection that so many devotees have mentioned. He just kept talking about me, I didn’t have to say anything. And he said, “You are soft like a powder puff” and I didn’t remember what he said, but in a way, it was, yeah, it was just so touching, and it was like such a memorable exchange. And then as it was, you know, right after the kirtan fest in Houston, Govinda Maharaja flew to Vrindavan and was there, and yeah we could all see those kirtans at the end. Even how he was placed in samadhi. And because are really exemplary. 

And you could see at the end, like even though he was just, you know, skin and bones and in a way he was supposed to be unconscious. But you could see at the very end he was actually chanting. You could see his mouth moving, is actually chanting. And yeah, kirtan, it was just it was his life.

And so, from the beginning he was inspired by kirtan and inspired others with kirtan and then he left in the midst of a wonderful kirtan. And during that last period, I think Bhakti Bringa Govinda Maharaja led kirtan for like eight or ten hours. It was just phenomenal, and he was really shouting in Gunagrahi Maharaja’s ear and Rtadhvaja Swami was there, and he said, he was so touched that. Of course, Govinda Maharaja felt especially indebted to Gunagrahi Maharaja because Gunagrahi Maharaja made him a devotee. So, that was very strong in his consciousness. But yeah, it is just really like shouting in Maharaja’s ear, he just didn’t want to take any chance that anything else could enter Maharaja’s mind but the holy name: Krishna, Radhe and Krishna Radhe, Radhe Shyamasundara. And yeah, Rtadhvaja Swami was there holding his hand. Radhanath Swami, there is so many exalted souls there. Bhurijana Prabhu had gone, especially to be with Maharaja and Rtadhvaja Swami also had gone, especially to be with Maharaja, and they were with him and supporting him you know, to the end and after the end.

So, his example, I mean, I am just in a way, it is like it. They say about an iceberg, you are just like touching the tip of the iceberg; there is so much more under the surface of the water that we haven’t touched in this talk. But yeah, he is a real kirtan man, he was a real Prabhupada man, he was a real preacher.

One thing I think of, that was in Houston, there is a very sweet devotee named Kamala Manjari, and she had two sons, sorry two children: a daughter named Mohini, was initiated by me as Madhuri Radha, and a son who was called Jigar and he was initiated by Gunagrahi Maharaja as Vrindavan Bihari dasa. But their father, Kamala Manjari’s husband, was a very peculiar, volatile, angry temperamental person. He never went to the temple. But when Gunagrahi Maharaja was in Houston, he would make a point of spending time with that man. And that also really touched me, you know because the man, I mean, I met him a couple of times, you know, but he wasn’t an easy person to deal with. But Gunagrahi Maharaja like so compassionate and so kind that he would make a point of spending time with him.

Which actually reminds me of something that His Holiness Damodara Swami wrote about Gunagrahi Maharaja, which I think I will read because it deals with aspects of Maharaja that probably a lot of us have only maybe some indirect or peripheral experience of. There is very much a part, although it did come up a little bit in the talks. But I think I will just read that and conclude with that.

OFFERING by His Holiness Damodara Swami

Many of you reading this have been inspired and blessed with the association of Raghunatha and Kaustubha. 

COMMENT

Raghunatha I think probably a lot of you know Raghunatha is initiated by Damodara Swami and Kaustubha was initiated by Tamal Krishna Goswami.

OFFERING (continued)

If you have, then you have some debt to the person being honored here. That will become apparent; in a sense, Maharaja was one of the last of the real old-time sankirtana generals those who set lofty goals in the mission of Srila Prabhupada and moved heaven and earth to achieve them.Thirteen years ago, Maharaja invited me to Argentina to preach. I gave classes twice a day in the ISKCON temple, a very humble place that had been their residents for over twenty years. Maharaja had only been there a short while, but within a few years, he marshaled, pushed, and led the forces of the yatra to acquire and renovate, to attach petite hotels in the center of Buenos Aires in order to create arguably one of the most successful temples in South America.

Shortly thereafter, a struggling yatra was flourishing. When Raghunatha became inspired to join the Hare Krishna movement, which in those days meant living in an ashram, he moved to the ISKCON Gītā-nagarī farm in Pennsylvania. Gunagrahi Maharaja happened to be visiting there at the time. Maharaja thought, “Why should one with so much potential to communicate Krishna consciousness be stuck on the farm” So, he brought Raghunatha to Washington DC, where Maharaja’s Krishna fest program daily performed dynamic kirtan on the mall in front of the Smithsonian.

A few months later I got a call from him, Maharaja I had rather not start a straight-edge band again to spread Krishna consciousness through his music. It is called “Shelter ''. We soon will tour all over the USA, I can’t do this alone; please come with me.

COMMENT

Just as a little note to show you how popular shelter and Raghunatha were I was visiting my sister’s home in Santa Barbara and she had a son who was I don’t know maybe thirteen years old at the time and he had a couple of his friends over and somehow they ended up talking about Raghunatha and his band, and I said, Raghunatha, I know Raghunatha. “You know Raghunatha? Wow, you know Raghunatha.” 

OFFERING (continued)

So, Gunagrahi Maharaja phone Damodara Swami, “Maharaja I had Raghunatha start a straight edge band again to spread Krishna consciousness through his music. It is called Shelter. We soon will tour all over the USA. I can’t do this alone; please come with me. That was another striking thing about Maharaja. He would engage people so freely; he had such big plans, and to execute them, he needed help. In the course of that, he engaged so many people, brought them into really exciting service.

Soon we were traveling all over the USA with Shelter as the headliner band and three other minor straight edge bands arranged by Raghunatha, including Inside Out, which was led by the then-unknown Zack de la Rocha, who would later become the leader of the seminal band Rage against the Machine. From Shelter, literally hundreds and hundreds of young people started to fill the pretty much barren ISKCON temples in North America. Shortly after that, Shelter expanded the scope of its program to bring the disaffected youth throughout the world to the path of bhakti through Raghunatha’s effort, which was the brainchild and inspiration of Gunagrahi Maharaja.

The mission of Srila Prabhupada, which suffered so much after his passing away, was revitalized in America and much of the world. It is a service that is not acknowledged nearly to the degree that it should. There are preachers in quotation marks, and then there are preachers, in italics, those whose very life breath is dedicated to giving people the jewel of devotion.

Maharaja left no stone unturned to personally and without judgment reach out to anyone he thought he could inspire to serve the mission of Srila Prabhupada. It is a rare quality. Dotting the globe, especially in the Americas, are countless devotees who came to the lotus feet of Srila Prabhupada only by the compassion, insight and personal effort of Gunagrahi Maharaja to make them Krishna conscious. One of those numerous jewels is Kaustubha Prabhu, the senior educator at the Bhakti Center. Maharaja visited him in his apartment on Havemeyer Mayor Street in South Williamsburg, arguably the most decrepit and dangerous neighborhood in New York City at the time, where he inspired that young man, Dave, now Kaustubha, to travel with him and soon commit himself to Srila Prabhupada’s mission. 

Two days before Gunagrahi Maharaja left this world in Vrindavan, surrounded by devotees chanting the holy name, including his loving godbrothers, I got a call from Kaustubha asking me if I could find a way to send a letter to Gunagrahi Maharaja expressing his gratitude. I immediately dictated his letter through WhatsApp to a friend helping to care for a Maharaja, who played it for him. The following day, I got a message from Gunagrahi Maharaja with all the strength he could muster in the most heartfelt voice, a short message for Kaustubha came “Love and gratitude to you in my heart love in my heart, so much love in my heart, so much.”

Bhurijana Prabhu, who taped the message, described that as Gunagrahi Maharaja was losing strength and was practically incapable of uttering a single word more, Maharaja uttered almost inaudibly: “So much, So much gratitude” while placing his hand on its heart, indicating his love. Each word had almost a raspy, whistling quality that seemed to slightly peak and get higher at the end of each phrase, as the air needed to produce the words continued just a short while after finishing the phrase he wanted to produce. True gratitude is the budding of our real self. In my mind, the depth and humility in which Maharaja spoke was coming straight from his eternal identity with Krishna. It was the humble and loving voice of a resident of Vrindavan. When I heard the tape, I somewhat broke up. I remember the deep humility, gratitude and affection Maharaja had for Srila Prabhupada, those who followed his footpath and for almost anyone with a spark of devotion.

Mainly, I reflected on his affection for me. Maharaja’s passing was perhaps the most glorious departure of the devotee in ISKCON since the passing of Srila Prabhupada and Srila Gour Govinda Maharaja. It made me reflect on the qualities he demonstrated that attracted such extraordinary mercy.

COMMENT

I will read it again.

OFFERING (continued)

It made me reflect on the qualities he demonstrated that attracted such extraordinary mercy to have that glorious departure. Gunagrahi Maharaja was exceptionally humble. Although he was quite senior to me, he always treated me as his superior. Although out of humility, he also never hesitated to correct me if anything I did wasn’t a reflection in his mind of the highest ideals of presenting Krishna consciousness to others. For example, my sometimes raggedy Vrindavan dress rightly disturbed him, and he would tell me so. Like everyone, he also made mistakes, but there was nothing in the very depth of his heart but the mission of Srila Prabhupada. And he bowed down to the feet of anyone with even a spark of desire to assist in that mission.

Gunagrahi Maharaja was endlessly attracted to the holy name and deeply loved by his godbrothers, friends, and disciples. It seems at times more than anything else he was the friend of the poor. He just had this special type of affection for the downtrodden and motley, those who seem to be surviving in Krishna consciousness only by his compassion and inspiration.

COMMENT

When I visited San Diego, I heard that about him, that he was always surrounded by sort of low lives, and he was somehow, he was just sustaining them, and maintaining them, and uplifting them in Krishna consciousness. And there is a footnote here:

OFFERING (continued)

An astrologer once told Gunagrahi Maharaja that throughout his life he would be surrounded by low-class people. He understood this to be the many people he extended himself to, whom otherwise it seemed could never make the standards required for spiritual life. He loved them and called them his homeboys.

Sometime before he left, I also received a message from him. It began with the heartfelt, in somewhat unusual phrase: “Love you honey.” He spoke  about what I meant to him. He said that Srila Prabhupada was the center and acknowledged that I may not be able to come immediately because of my service, although obviously, he wanted that. I had some previous commitments to two festivals that are already organized, where people had already even booked tickets to fly in and participate. I had moved up my ticket to fly to India when those commitments were to be finished, but as soon as I got the message that he was now beginning to leave, I booked my flight to leave the next morning to India from Colombia to be with him. Unfortunately, he left just a few hours after I booked my ticket. I pray he will forgive me for not being there at his side.

I bow my head to the lotus feet of the illustrious Vaishnavas such as Bhurijana Prabhu, Rtadhvaja Swami, Govinda Maharaja, and Radhanath Swami, who dropped everything to be at his side.

COMMENT

Thank you. All glorious to Srila Prabhupada and the pure devotees he brought on the path of devotion and then took from this world to directly serve them, Krishna.

All glories to Gunagrahi Swami.

Gunagrahi Maharaja ki! jaya!