From Sri Mayapur Chandrodaya Mandir! Date: February 23, 2014 Speaker: HH Gopal Krishna Goswami Subject: The Glories of the ToVP
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HH Gopal Krishna Goswami:
Hare Krishna. Prabhupada after establishing (audio break) importance of Krishna consciousness and in 1971 the first piece of land was purchased in Mayapur. Prabhupada purchased 5 acres of land that he got with great difficulty. In 1972 the first Gaura Purnima festival was held in which about 50 devotees took part.
Prabhupada had this great desire to fulfill Nityananda’s prediction. We just heard, Nityananda Prabhu had told Jiva Goswami, that very soon there will be an outstanding temple which will appear and it will engage the entire world in the eternal service of Lord Caitanya. And our acaryas endeavored to realise this prediction. As you just heard Thakura Bhaktivinoda had predicted a day will come when devotees from different countries, and he named the countries, will come to Mayapur and Bhaktisiddhantaji also had this great desire that this adbhuta temple should be created in Mayapur.
Prabhupada opened many temples around the world but only Mayapur that he addressed as the world headquarters. The spiritual capital of ISKCON or the Vatican of ISKCON. And Prabhupada in many of his letters highlighted the importance of Mayapur. I collected three extracts from Prabhupada’s innumerable quotes that I would like to share with all of you.
In one of those Prabhupada’s letter he says, “the Krishna consciousness movement has established a center in Mayapur, the birth site of Lord Caitanya Mahaprabhu, to give everyone a great opportunity to go there and perform a constant festival, sankirtana yajna and to distribute prasadam to millions of people and for the spiritual emancipation. This is the mission of the Krishna consciousness movement.” So Prabhupada talks about Mayapur center and what its goal should be, to attract everyone to spiritual life.
Then he talks about the Vedic Planetarium. Sivarama Swami very nicely described the purpose of what the planetarium is going to reveal. “Now we all together make this Vedic planetarium very nice so that people will come and see. From the description in the Srimad Bhagavatam we will prepare this Vedic planetarium. My idea is to attract people of the whole world to Mayapur.” So Prabhupada wanted Mayapur to be an international center where people from the whole world would come to gain understanding of the Srimad Bhagavatam.
And Prabhupada also wanted that this project be built with the efforts of the whole world. So Mayapur as we know is very unique. Mayapur is the place where Caitanya Mahaprabhu, the most merciful of all incarnations appeared. So based on the desire of the acaryas, Prabhupada had this great desire that a very unique outstanding temple be built in Mayapur.
Giriraj Swami revealed that once Prabhupada was having a massage in Calcutta, and he approached Prabhupada and said, “Prabhupada, what do we have to do to please you?” and then he offered two suggestions. He said, “I think if we distribute books and help build the Vedic planetarium, you will be very happy.”
And Prabhupada smiled and said, “thank you very much. You’ve understood my mind”
So Prabhupada had this great desire. This was one of Prabhupada’s anxiety, how to build this Vedic Planetarium. And in another lecture Prabhupada said, “if you help build this Vedic planetarium, then Bhaktivinoda Thakura will come and take you, where? Back to Godhead.” [Hari Bol! applause]
So, we know through innumerable lectures, letters, darshan that Prabhupada gave, the importance of building this Vedic planetarium. And this is going to be the biggest temple built in the last several hundred years.
So as you can see, the project has made some good progress, we’ve been talking about the Vedic planetarium for a long time, the adbhuta temple for a long time. Prabhupada when he was on the planet he even laid the foundation stone. Then due to several problems (audio break) on the project, is almost complete.
And as you know we came this far due to the magnanimous donation help given by Ambarish. He knew this was Prabhupada’s desire. He took Prabhupada’s instruction to him very seriously and he made a big sacrifice in contributing generously to bring the project to this point. As we can see the project is not finished, is it finished Bhavananda? (laughter) No! I think it was a good idea to have the class here, this was Praghosa Prabhu’s idea. So all of you can see the condition of the project. As you can see we still have to do a lot of work. We still have to make efforts to complete this project.
And one of the instructions that Prabhupada gave was, one of the comments he made regarding this project was, that this project will be built from the donations from the whole world. So, we have a lot of work to do. I think we should endeavor to increase the awareness of the Mayapur project, Mayapur city to the whole world. We should all become ambassadors of Mayapur and increase the awareness around the globe.
So there are several schemes that the fund raising department of the Mayapur project has started and I thought that if you got involved in fund raising, ultimately fund raising is necessary to complete this project. If we all endeavor and realise that in India we have a big responsibility, if we all endeavor globally then I think it should become possible. How many of you think that we should endeavor globally to make this complete?
So there are various schemes, Vrajvilasa Prabhu is in charge of fund raising, he can explain the various schemes to all of you, my main purpose was to request everyone to take this responsibility, to try and complete this project. The building the way it stands doesn’t look very impressive, once it is complete, it will look very very impressive.
So if we all try, maybe Vrajvilasa Prabhu can, is Vrajvilasa here? He can give you all some explanation, forms etc, various schemes, they have a golden brick scheme, they have a square foot scheme, they have see these notes, if you cant afford much you can sponsor these different bricks, each brick is only 10rs. If you sponsor 5 bricks you have to give 50rs. If you sponsor 100 bricks you give 500.
There are various schemes and my request is if all of you can familiarise yourselves with these schemes and try and help complete this project. This project has to be completed and Krishna is giving all of us a chance to engage in His service, to be an instrument in completing this project.
You all have been hearing the glories of Mayapur dhama and once this project is completed it will attract thousands and thousands of people to Krishna consciousness. As it is the Mayapur project is attracting so many people to Mayapur. Everyone that comes to Mayapur walks away with a very very favorable impression and you can imagine what the response is going to be once the whole project is complete.
So let us all try to work together to complete this project. We should all think that this is ‘our’ responsibility to help complete this project and I think if we all sincerely try Krishna will help and from our side we will try our best in India to also increase the awareness and the help that temples can give.
One of the things we can do is to invite dignitaries to come and see this project also and we are going to try and bring foreign dignitaries. Last year, our Poona temple was inaugurated by the President of India, who hails from Bengal and while we were having prasada we spoke about his coming to Mayapur and he promised me he would come. I think we should follow up and bring him here on a suitable occasion and let us all work together to complete this project.
Hare Krishna!