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Śrīla Prabhupāda replied, “When you begin your service and start publishing the newspaper, you will automatically understand what must be done. When a devotee accepts the responsibility of performing a service with the intention of pleasing Śrī Hari, guru and Vaiṣṇavas, then they themselves reveal all the necessary knowledge to him and invest him with the required competence to properly perform that service. There is no need to externally advise or instruct him on what must be done.”

(In remembrance of Srila Gadadhara Pandita’s disappearance we present this Bengali poem composed by Srila Bhakti Pramoda Puri Gosvami Maharaja which was first published in The Gaudiya, Vol.1, Issue 7. June 1950)

Puri-dhama. Why did Mahaprabhu choose to live in Puri-dhama? While here, He was always absorbed in the mood of Radharani in separation, crying constantly. He came here at the age of 24, He then spent six years traveling the length and breadth of India, and then the last eighteen years of His life here.

It just doesn’t happen that your consciousness is purified by any method other than the Holy Name. You must have steadfastness in the Holy Name, you must have developed a fixed devotional attitude – naisthiki-bhakti. Do you understand what I am getting at? Are you going to insist, “We need to relish the nectar of Krsna’s lila?” Your heart has first to reach a certain level of purity before you can reach Krsna’s pastimes. As long as it is filled with many different kinds of desires, lust, anger and greed, do you think that you will be able to experience the transcendental mellows? Have you arrived at the platform of pure goodness, suddha-sattva? That is why the Bhagavatam has stated: tada rajas-tamo bhavah – consider this point carefully.

Prabhupada was such a powerful personality. He spoke with such force that they would just sit in silence. Let them say whatever they want. Prabhupada’s philosophical conclusions are the highest. We must engage in worship according to these conclusions. Then they will understand. Everyone is trying to deviate from the truth in different ways. They try to deviate others and make them fall down from the path of spiritual life.

Within that womb based on its fruitive results are the six desires of material enjoyment that are its companions (the five knowledge-acquiring senses and the mental faculty). “Alas, all these will drag me into the dark well of material life”– when such fear arises in the heart of a devotee, the desire for material enjoyment will be vanquished in time, then the glories of the Lord, namely the devotional cultivation of hearing and chanting, attains immense maturity