720616 - Letter to Madhudvisa written from Los Angeles

Letters by Date, 1972

Tridandi Goswami
A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami

Camp: Los Angeles, ISKCON
Date: June 16, 1972

My Dear Madhudvisa,

Please accept my blessings. I am in receipt of your letter dated June 9, 1972, from Melbourne, and I don't think [handwritten] you have yet got my last letter to you at Sydney. I am very pleased to hear that you are utilizing your good experience for introducing the Rathayatra Festival in Australia, I shall be very pleased to see the photos how it is going. I fully approve of your program for traveling, now you combine the sanyasi requirement for traveling extensively, and at the same time as GBC man you shall be my personal secretary for maintaining the highest level of Krishna Consciousness amongst the devotees in your zone. I am very much concerned that the devotees should be given all good instruction and knowledge of Krishna Consciousness, that is the duty of the GBC man. GBC should not be so much concerned about preaching to non-devotees, better to utilize time and train the devotees, especially the responsible officers, and they can go out for preaching to non-devotees and making new devotees. But if they do not have any knowledge, how can they go out and preach? So you GBC men are my selected few for insuring that what I am doing will be carried on very nicely for the pleasure of Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. So now you must all my senior disciples and leaders become very, very much aware of your grave responsibility to the human society for delivering them from the clutches of catastrophe, and be always cool-headed and utilize every moment in the best manner possible. I am successful only because I am following strictly the orders of my Guru Maharaj, and I do not deviate. Therefore people respect what I am saying and they listen because I do not say one thing and do another. So now you are doing my work and you shall be like me and be yourselves the worthy representatives of our disciplic succession.
I am very much stressing at this point that all of my students shall be very much conversant with the philosophy of Krishna Consciousness, and that they should read our books very diligently at least one or two hours daily and try to understand the subject matter from varieties of angles. We are holding our morning class here in Los Angeles in the temple and I am speaking from 7 to 8 am, and the process is that we are going through some chapters of Srimad Bhagawatam by taking one sloka each day, and reading the Sanskrit aloud, each word is pronounced by me and repeated by the students and then altogether we chant the sloka several times until we have learned it. And then we discuss the subject matter very minutely and inspect it from all angles of approach and savor the new understandings. So you introduce this system in all of the centers in your zone, and you will discover that everyone becomes very much enlivened by these daily classes. Read one sloka and discuss and then go on to the next sloka on the next day, and so on, and even you discuss one verse each day it will take you 50 years to finish Srimad Bhagawatamin this way. So we have got ample stock for acquiring knowledge. And if the students get knowledge more and more, they will automatically become convinced and very easily perform their duties for tapasya or renunciation of the material bondage, and that will be their successful advancement in Krishna Consciousness. So I want that advancement amongst all of my students, so you are responsible that the standard will be maintained.

[text missing]

If Tusta Krsna is so much anxious to acquire a press for New Zealand, there is no harm. I have written to him to use his better judgement in the matter. If you wish to take the small 12-inch Radha Krsna Deities in the parade, that is all right.

Hoping this will meet you in good health.

Your ever well-wisher,

A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami