Dear Gurumaharaja,
Please accept my humble obeisances. All glories to Srila Prabhupada!
Today is my first birthday, after you so kindly accepted me as your disciple today, one solar year ago. The fact of the matter is that i am doing (practicing) vani-seva. There are days that i wish to have personal association, but at the same time i like the background, for i know that i am foolish, quarrelsome and falsely proud, and it would show and hurt my foolish pride. Then again, revealing would purify me faster that it happens now.
Sometime i have some small questions, but then i don't wish to bother you with them here. Or i think about them for a day or more, and then get a satisfying answer somehow or other. Todays question for instance, if milk creates fine braintissue that you need for spiritual understanding, whereas in gita it is said that knowledge comes from Krishna, and knowledge is functioning in the subtle body which milk cannot influence. How to reconcile?
HpS - ASA - AGTSP paoho. As we would understand it the mind, subtle body, can use the finer brain tissues, just like you may have a color picture on your computer screen but it is different when you can print it when you have a color printer. In our conditioned life we are absobed in our gross body so even though we may have subtle assests we can recognize them unless they are manifest on the gross platform.
These are small questions, but perhaps important enough, these little doubts on the path. Generally, i make progress, a little, day by day. I feel it. It makes me happy and strong and more determined. A few times my daily program got messed up, but nothing serious, and the irregularities lasted at the most about five days. It is certainly remarkable after my hedonistic years, and the messy life it left me with. Many little encouragements and adages i picked up from your classes remain in the back of my mind, and i feel the intimacy of vani-seva that way. This is my wealth.
I'll stop here, though i could say more. I just wish to say that i am very happy to being your servant, even though saying that doesn't really have the implied corresponding feeling. Perhaps next year. Still, i remain,
Ever your aspiring servant,
Raghava Pandita dasa
PS. With unpleasant emotion i take note of your uncomforts and bodily ailments, but i take solace in knowing that the suffering of a devotee is not of this world, and i take it as such. I wish you are fully transcendental to it all. I am happy to read your reports of sankirtan, and i know many details and things can hardly be communicated, such as your contributions to ISKCON's education. I feel happy for all who will benefit from that. Please forgive me for my silly or improper remarks, my Dutch brazen rajas. I beg you for your blessings to become fearless, loving and tactful in spreading Krishna consciousness. How could i not beg from you, even though it feels superficial and sentimental?
With kind regards.
HpS - ASA - Happy Birthday. How are your wife and child? Are you driving Taxi? We are trying to develop some Sankirtan that will be exemplary so that it can be of some inspiration in your efforts also. Beyond that if you have any specific suggestions or contributions to what we are involved in, then please let us know.
For the body, allergy, chest cramps, arhythmias, we take it as just regular functioning of the machine. It has to be adjusted and of course growth and death are natural. Death is disassembling the machine to be used in producing another machine. Thank you so much for your association. It is very enlivening to all of us! How is you Yatra? Are you involved in communication?
