20240117 Address to Devotees from Ahmedabad in Bengali

mūkaṁ karoti vācālaṁ paṅguṁ laṅghayate girim
yat-kṛpā tam ahaṁ vande śrī-guruṁ dīna-tāraṇam
paramānanda-mādhavam śrī caitanya īśvaram
Harihi oṁ tat sat

Jayapatākā Swami: Who all know Bengali here? Those who know English raise your hand. Hindi? I am sorry I am sorry am not able to give much time for you. If you have any questions, you can ask and I will try to answer them.

Question: We are very fortunate that we have your darśana and it is Śrīla Prabhupāda’s mercy we are seeing you, the direct representative of Śrīla Prabhupāda. I want to know how much strength you get from your spiritual master. You are struggling so hard and serving the paramparā. How do you gather so much enthusiasm and strength to serve even in this condition?

Jayapatākā Swami: I have seen how Śrīla Prabhupāda expanded the Hare Kṛṣṇa movement. And Śrīla Prabhupāda gave us the teachings of Lord Caitanya. And Śrīla Prabhupāda desired that we should distribute the teachings of Lord Caitanya. Lord Caitanya wanted that His teachings should be followed. Śrīla Prabhupāda had visited Māyāpur, he wanted that Lord Caitanya’s teachings be expanded. Many people did not know Lord Caitanya. Lord Caitanya lived in Bengal. He was in the place of Śrīla Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura. Lord Caitanya lived in different places. One more question.

Question: If our family members are not very favorable to our doing lot of service and preaching and go out and serve you, how do we continue with our services?

Jayapatākā Swami: There is a saying in Bengali - Big big monkeys, big big stomachs… Hanumān was very strong. He went to South India and went to Laṅka from there. We desire that I should be able to jump like Hanumān. But we are not able to. We have big, big stomach that is why we cannot jump. Our desire is that we should do a lot of things. But if do devotional service then everything will be good. That we are not able to do maybe. Here we have Sītā Rāma Lakṣmaṇa and Hanumān Deities. And we have Śrīnāthajī and Rādhā Govindajī as well. This way we want to serve Lord Rāmacandrajī and Śrīnāthajī. Haribol! Nitāi Gaura! With the mercy of Nitāi Gaura we get the mercy of Lord Rāmacandra and Śrīnāthajī. You can write down your questions and I will reply later.