iMonk | October 2008

Navadwip, India — Sunday, October 19th

Preparation

Srila Gurudeva is not feeling well enough to travel, so he sends Janardan Maharaj, Mahananda Prabhu and me to the Sri Chaitanya Saraswat Math in Navadwip this morning, to prepare for Srila Guru Maharaj's big Vyasa Puja celebration on Thursday.

We are shown to our quarters when we arrive, and as we walk past the book room on the ground floor, I see a nice welcome message on the whiteboard. This bulletin board (updated daily by Damayanti Devi Dasi) also has this excerpt from Sermons of the Guardian of Devotion III:

Who, or what, is a Vaishnava?

"Vaishnava" means a purifying agent who emanates goodness, absolute goodness, everywhere — through his movements, his words, his actions, everything: deed, thought and word (kaya, mana, vakya). A Vaishnava is an agent of auspiciousness (te vaisnavah bhuvanamasu pavitrayanti). There are so many Vaishnavas, and by their chanting the Holy Name, by all their practices and by their whole lives, they are like so many purifying agents.

By proper knowledge, proper dealings, and proper conduct, they set everything in its proper position and create adjustment in the domain of maladjustment. This world is maladjusted, and the balancing agents, the unifying factors, are the Vaishnavas. Just as there is a germ, a virus which spreads a particular contagious disease, so there must be the opposite of that, something which emanates only a pure and healthy atmosphere, and that is the Vaishnava.
—Srila Bhakti Rakshak Sridhar Maharaj

This is why Srila Gurudeva has sent us here, I think: to inoculate us and to purify our consciousness in the pure and healthy atmosphere of the Union in Separation samadhi mandir where Srila Guru Maharaj is absorbed in a deep state of profound meditation.

How can we prepare to properly honor, appreciate, and glorify Srila Guru Maharaj on his holy appearance day if we are not first adjusted in our proper positions by these purifying agents of auspiciousness?

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