Garland Seva by Guest Author: Bhakta David Heal

I was blessed to make garlands for Sri Sri Nitai-Gaurasundara last night and also for Srila Prabhupada and Srila Bhaktisiddhanta. As I was working on the garlands, I thought of Bhakta David Heal, who is a florist up in Virginia. I wondered if he had ever been engaged in the delightful service of making garlands for Their Lordships and the Acaryas. I just received a WhatsApp message from him today. He gave me permission to share his post on my blog. From Bhakta David: "I always love serving the deities in the flower department. I remember a few years back when I was in PV (Prabhupada Village) for Janmastami. There weren’t many devotees around that year. I picked marigolds all day a couple days before and made all the garlands for decorating the altar and vyasasana. I spent many hours stringing marigolds by myself while listening to Srila Prabhupada's lectures. I also made massive pamades (big round spheres of marigolds to hang from the garlands as added accents). It was so blissful for me. I was extremely tired at the end, but I couldn’t sleep! When I laid down to rest that night I wept with joy because I was overwhelmed with emotion having served so intensely for days. What a gift Prabhupada Village has been for me. Hari Hari!"

Eternally Playful

 I have a hard time surrendering to going to bed at night. I always feel like I'm going to miss out on something fun. 

In the spiritual world, people are always playing and having fun. We are originally from the spiritual world, so that is what we're used to. We are used to an atmosphere where everyone is joyful, joking, playing and having fun all the time. So it's natural for us to expect happiness and joy around every corner. It is natural that we feel anxious to return to that place where we used to always have fun at every moment.

Tonight I am praying, "My Dear Lord Krishna, You are the most fun Person and I am Your eternal servant. I am meant for giving You pleasure and by giving You pleasure, I feel pleasure. My Dear Lord, if You so desire, please allow me to experience the pleasure of always giving You pleasure."

When we pray to return to our natural engagement of rendering loving service to Krishna, Krishna hears our prayer, and He arranges for us to be engaged in various kinds of service for His pleasure. By pleasing Krishna, we become happy. 

Tomorrow is the appearance day of Srimati Radharani, the Supreme Goddess who is eternally engaged in the most pleasing pastimes with Sri Krishna. We can pray to Srimati Radharani to involve us in those loving pastimes. She can show us how to please Krishna and thereby become pleased ourselves.

"My Dear Srimati Radharani, if you so desire, please engage me in some pleasing service to Lord Sri Krishna. I hope in this way He will become pleased, and you will also become pleased. By pleasing Lord Krishna and you, I will experience the bliss that is natural to me."

To be eternally playful is our natural propensity, an important feature of our eternal relationship with and service to Krishna. So it's to be expected that we want to play all the time. But while we're here in the material world, we have to practice regulation and adherence to duty in order to learn how to transcend material proclivities and desires. Upon achieving freedom from identification with the body--the bodily concept of life--and giving up all material inclinations and hankerings, we will come to the level of pure goodness. At that point, life becomes full of joy, and we experience the natural affection for Krishna that is native to our heart.

So I'm telling myself tonight, Go to bed. Leave your desires to stay up and have fun in the care of Srimati Radharani and Lord Sri Krishna. They are the original authors of all fun activities. When you become regulated in your duties, performing your work for their pleasure, you will eventually become purified so that you can resume your eternal duties in the spiritual world--as an assistant to the Lord and His eternal consort Srimati Radharani in their pastimes of eternal play. Till then, take rest.  

Give Up Meat-Eating

"Those who are animal killers, their brain is dull as stone. They cannot understand anything. Therefore meat-eating should be stopped. In order to revive the finer tissues of the brain to understand subtle things, one must give up meat-eating." (Srila Prabhupada, Lecture, London, August 24, 1973) 

Forgiveness

Krsna is the most forgiving Person and we are part and parcel of Him. If we want to forgive someone, He helps us to forgive. If we know that resentment is counter-productive to our happiness and we want to want to forgive, He helps us want to forgive, then He helps us to forgive. We can't do anything without Krsna's help. We can't even be Krsna conscious without Krsna's help. So we can't forgive without Krsna's help. And if we work with Him to forgive, He will fill our heart with such satisfaction that we will be inclined to come to Him again and again to ask for His help whenever we have trouble forgiving someone. 

Rama's Monkeys

The monkey servants of Lord Rama want nothing more intensely than to see Sita and Rama reunited. That's why they're willing to give up their lives to help Rama defeat Ravana and get Sita back. To those warriors, reuniting Sita with Rama is worth everything, including the loss of their lives.

Of course, there is also the desire of the Lord to relish different mellows, including viraha, or separation. If the Lord desires to taste the intense sweetness of separation from His beloved, then the devotee assists Him in that arrangement. But always, the devotee is desiring to see his Lord, the King of his heart, reunited with His beloved Queen, the Queen of the devotee's heart.

The Welfare of Others

My husband often quotes Srila Prabhupada as saying, "The mind becomes peaceful by thinking of the welfare of others." I find that when I pray for someone , I automatically feel soft-hearted because praying for someone puts my mind in a compassionate mood. The December book distribution marathon has already started in many temples around the world. Everyone gets into the act, so to speak, of approaching strangers and offering them a chance to take one of Srila Prabhupada's books. Today I had a tiny realization. When we distribute Srila Prabhupada's books, we are thinking of the welfare of others in a deeply significant way. We are giving them an opportunity to make the decision to leave this material world, to escape the endless cycle of repeated births and deaths, and return home, back to the spiritual world where they came from and where they belong. I thought, If I want to give someone a book, and I simultaneously pray for the person to have an open mind, if I pray for that person to want to take the book, then before I offer them the book, maybe if I pray to Krsna, Krsna will hear my prayer, and maybe He'll help this soul feel attracted to taking the book. Maybe Krsna will help this person desire to take the book. I am guessing that this praying-before-approaching-a-person is probably a normal procedure for sincere, seasoned, successful book distributors, but for me. this realization is like an "Ah-HAH" moment.

Self-Effulgent

At a Bhakti-Vrksha program near Udupi which my husband and I attended, one devotee in the audience raised his hand and asked my husband to tell about his remembrances of Srila Prabhupada. My husband told the story of how in Mayapur in early 1977, Srila Prabhupada had circumambulated Sri Sri Radha-Madhava three times, ringing the bell each time, and had then begun to dance in front of the Deities, jumping up and down with his arms raised in the air. At that time, Srila Prabhupada emitted a striking effulgence--bright as the light of the sun--from his entire body. My husband is not the only devotee who saw it.

My Prabhu then went on to tell how he had read recently in the Srimad-Bhagavatam about the Nava-Yogendras, the nine sons of Lord Rsabhadeva who were self-effulgent, shining rsis, fully Krsna conscious and bright with their own natural light that emanated from within. This light emanating from the bodies of those nine great sages was described in the eleventh canto of Srimad-Bhagavatam. King Nimi had invited the Nava-Yogendras to come to his palace and when they came to visit the king, he saw how effulgent they were and his heart became filled with ecstasy:

"Overwhelmed by transcendental joy, the King humbly bowed his head and then proceeded to question the nine sages. These nine great souls glowed with their own effulgence and thus appeared equal to the four Kumäras, the sons of Lord Brahmä." It is explained in the purport that the effulgence emitted by the Nava-Yogendras was not due to their ornaments, but rather sourced from their natural brightness as realized souls: "Çréla Çrédhara Svämé has pointed out that the word sva-rucä indicates that the nava-yogendras glowed from their own spiritual effulgence and not due to their ornaments or any other cause." (SB 11.2.27) This information underscored my husband's experience of seeing Srila Prabhupada, a fully Krsna conscious, self-realized soul who emitted a dazzling effulgence that emanated in all directions from his body, and also substantiated that such an effulgence, when manifested from the body of a self-realized soul, is not produced by his jewels or ornaments or any external, material source. It is the natural light of the soul.

Srila Prabhupada many times used the term "self-effulgent" to mean glowing with natural light. He ascribed this description to Lord Sri Krsna, to the spiritual planets within the spiritual sky, and also to a true acarya. 

We are all self-effulgent sparks of Lord Krsna "The individual soul, being part and parcel of the Lord, is also self-effulgent" (SB 11.2.27 Ppt), but our natural glow is hampered by our material mind. "The material mind is not a figment of the empiric imagination. It is a real envelope and has to be completely discarded. It will not do to imagine this enveloping darkness as possessing anything in common with the light. The material mind is like a sheet of impenetrable darkness that completely shuts out the light of the soul. The soul is by his nature self-effulgent and has nothing to do with the material mind which acts as a screen to cut off the light of the soul from the view of the observer who uses the mind for such a purpose. This is fact and not a hypothesis like the so-called 'truths' and 'facts' conceived by the material mind in the vanity of its ignorance. The spiritual realisation of the categorical difference and relation of utter incompatibility between mind and soul is the first unique experience on the threshold of the awakened spiritual life." ("Thakur Haridas" Part I, BTG Magazine #14, 1967, from the book Shri Krishna Chaitanya by Professor Sanniyal) 

When we become fully Krsna conscious, completely uncovering our love for Krsna, then our natural brightness shines from within our hearts. This is the meaning of "self-effulgent" as it pertains to the individual soul. Not only are we souls naturally shining with spiritual light, but it is our duty to return to our natural state of pure Krsna consciousness so that our native effulgence can again manifest.