Dear Śrīla Prabhupāda,

Kindly allow me to join your followers in offering unreservedly humble, prostrated obeisances at your blessed feet. By bowing respectfully to you, I am always reminded of my good fortune to be your servant and the servant of your servants.

In my written Vyāsa-pūjā offering to you last year, I reflected on your use of the term “pastimes” to translate, and thereby bring to life for us, the Sanskrit term līlā. Today I want to reflect on another striking phrase that you very often used, namely, “back home, back to Godhead.” I’m particularly struck by the connection of “home” with “Godhead,” and while the twofold expression “back... back” carries significance (with philosophical implications that became controversial after your departure—an issue I won’t visit here!), it is this notion of “home” as the place of ultimate and everlasting perfection that I find so striking and inspiring. It is at once a reference to familiarity and to its opposite—a place that is entirely different and indeed contrary to all with which we are familiar in this temporal world. Yet incomparably more so than in this world, “home” in the spiritual world is the place of belonging.

While reflecting on your connection of “home” with “Godhead,” recently traveling from Māyāpur to Europe, I spent a few days in your home city, Kolkata. There, amidst the unique blend of faded colonial tradition, settled and accepted squalor, and (since recent years) faceless high-rise multi-national investment, I dared to wonder if for you there would have been any connection between this city and the “home” that you invite us to join you in, Kṛṣṇa’s transcendent, eternal abode of ever-expanding abundance, charm, and joy. Though perfectly detached from this world in every respect, it was in Kolkata that you saw and were absorbed in the deities Rādhā-Govinda; where you, as a slightly older child, organized Jagannātha Rathayātrā; and where you imbibed the spirit of devotion that your father showed in his daily life. So how could there not be a connection, for you, between your home city and the eternal home of Krishna’s abode, despite the glaring difference (at least for me) between this run-away city and the bucolic scenes of Vṛndāvana?

One of my objectives in visiting Kolkata this particular time (just before Gaura Purnima this year), was to purchase bamboo suitable for preparing a sannyāsa daṇḍa. Although I cannot trace out in any logical sequence how it came to be so, I attribute to your on-going deep kindness upon me, that I now take up this responsibility to accept the vows of sannyāsa, as you have done in your lifetime (in 1959, at around the same age as myself at present) by way of example for your dedicated “preachers” and to follow the order of your guru-mahārāja, commanding you in dreams. Sentimental as it may have been, I found myself to be happy like a small child to be making these preparations for sannyāsa in your home town.

As I reflect on these two themes—sannyāsa, and “back home, back to Godhead”—I am thrilled at this thought, how you have facilitated us all—whoever takes your guidance to heart—to find true renunciation by engagement in Kṛṣṇa’s perpetual service, thus enabling us to realize and indeed participate in making our true home with the Lord and His devotees. As the sannyāsa āśrama is the āśrama for permanently leaving behind the temporal “home” that we all imagine to exist in this world, and as it is a strong impetus to make all the world one’s home for serving Kṛṣṇa and inviting others to serve Kṛṣṇa, so the shelter (āśrama can mean “dwelling”) of sannyāsa is a momentous impetus to reach out, to make the grand leap, to that place you have shown us so nicely to be our final home, ever sheltered at the lotus feet of Śrī Śrī Rādhā-Madanamohana—Śrī Śrī Rādhā-Govinda—Śrī Śrī Rādhā-Gopīnātha, who are your permanent shelter, your permanent home.

On this present occasion of your appearance celebration, my prayer is that I may be blessed by you to be able to ever hold fast to the vows that the sannyāsa daṇḍa represents, keeping these as vows of the heart, always feeling the connection to your home that is actually Vṛndāvana, through your on-going guidance, wisdom, and stern orders. And I pray that, by properly representing you and the sannyāsa āśrama that you boldly introduced to us, I may sustain at least a fragment of the vigor, resolve, and enthusiasm that you showed, to do my part in attracting others to take up and effectively engage with the process of going “back home, back to Godhead,” remaining always “captivated by this information” (as you wrote in your Gītā 15.6 purport) that there is a spiritual world (which is also a “spiritual sky” and a “spiritual kingdom”) to which we belong and to which we may eagerly aspire, by finding my way steadily along the path that you traverse with the profoundest confidence.

Your humble servant,

Krishna Kshetra Swami

(formerly Krishna Kshetra Dāsa)