Figuring out what I'll be doing in Gaurābda 537
For us, in the line of Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu, the day of His appearance is the real New Year. What’s 2023? The real year for us is Gaurābda 537! I didn’t start off this year very strong because, after Gaura Pūrṇimā, I got pretty sick and didn’t do much else other than watch silly YouTube videos while I waited for my body to get better. Now, finally, I’m feeling well and ready to swing back into action. After a long, two-week gap, as I sat down this morning to get started with my computer sevā, I realized that I’m not fully clear on what I should be focusing on in this year of 537. So, in this Ekādaśī Eve posting I’ll be figuring out my plans for the year. If you find any of this too boring, feel free to skip to the last section, where I mention a new study program I'll be starting.
Searchable Book and Article Archive
One thing I am dying to have is a searchable archive for all the books and classes of Śrīla Prabhupāda, Śrīla Gurudeva, Śrīla Śrīdhara Gosvāmī Mahārāja, and other ācāryas, as well as all the various devotional periodicals like Rays of The Harmonist.
Imagine if you could type some keywords and be able to sift through hundreds of books to find the perfect quotes of our guru-varga. This would be an absolute dream for writing articles and preparing classes!
I’d like to make it in a format that can be flexible enough to easily move around to different note-taking applications like Evernote, Notion, Obsidian, etc. It’s a big job. If you’d like to help me with this, I could really use a hand!
New Gauḍīya Gīti-guccha & tithi kīrtan book
Anita Didi recently told me that we’ll likely be ready to reprint the Gauḍīya Gīti-guccha by Kārtika this year. It’s been ten years since the last big update to it, and I’m feeling it’s time to finally again make some bold changes like adding new songs and adjusting the organization. Sudevī Dīdī (Kishori Mohan's wife) had the idea to simplify the organization of the book just by subject (Guru, Vaiṣṇava, Rūpa Gosvāmī, etc.) rather than by language. I’ll make some Table of Contents samples to get all your feedback.
I thought it would be nice to also make a supplementary book with special kirtans to sing for tithis throughout the year, starting with Nadiyā Udaya-giri for Gaura Pūrṇimā and the Śrīvāsāṣṭakam for Śrīvāsa Paṇḍita’s appearance day. There are so many wonderful kirtans to sing on these appearance and disappearance days, which you’ll have a difficult time finding online or in any printed book. I think it would be such a nice addition to the devotees’ observance of these festivals to have every song for every special occasion ready for when the day comes. Would you like to have a book like that?
Other GVP books
The projects in this category are books that other devotees prepared, on which I’ll be doing a fidelity check of the translation.
- All of Gurudeva’s articles from Gauḍīya Patrikā and Bhāgavata Patrikā – Śrīvāsa dāsa translated over twenty articles that Gurudeva wrote, beginning from the year 1951. He still has some more articles to translate for this, but it’s nearing completion.
- Chār Ācārya Evaṁ Gauḍīya Darśana – Śravaṇa dāsa from Hawaii translated the first half of this book, which describes the lives and philosophies of the four Vaiṣṇava sampradāya ācāryas. Prema Prayojana prabhu is translating the second half, which goes deep into Śrīman Mahāprabhu’s Gauḍīya siddhānta, the culmination of the other four philosophies.
- Ujjvala-nilamaṇi – This is GVP’s biggest, most exciting project currently. The whole book has been translated, and now the editing and fidelity checking is underway. I’ll be helping this enormous project in a very small way, checking little sections here and there.
Gaudiya Kirtan app and website
I don't want to write too much about this project now because it might a while until I'm able to give this full focus again. I'm hoping that sometime this year, we'll be able to turn GaudiyaKirtan.com into a well-functioning web-application so you can have everything currently on the Gaudiya Kirtan app (plus more) in your browser.
I'm praying that Kṛṣṇa sends some developers so that we'll be able to update the mobile app. At the moment, the mobile app is on hold. Whenever a developer comes, I'll share more about our plans for it. Out of all the projects I've ever been involved with, this one is closest to my heart and the thing I'm most excited to work on. But since I'm not a developer, I'm fully dependent on others to push out new features and updates.
Kirtan and article recordings
All the paid subscribers to Vine of Devotion have been extremely patient with me. But I shouldn’t keep testing everyone’s patience like I’ve been doing. I am long overdue in sending kirtan recordings to everyone. My voice is still recovering from this Navadvīpa parikramā but, as soon as it is ready, I’ll be sending everyone kirtan recordings again.
I’d also like to continue making voice-overs for various Rays of The Harmonist articles like I did for “One Must Correctly Identify a Vaiṣṇava”. It’s my dream to one day have a Rays of The Harmonist website with recordings for all the articles.
Daily Śrī Caitanya-bhāgavata & Śrī Caitanya-caritāmṛta readings
In less than two months, we’ll complete our reading of Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam. For a long time I’ve been wanting to read Śrī Caitanya-bhāgavata with Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Gosvāmī Prabhupāda’s commentary and Śrī Caitanya-caritāmṛta with Śrīla Svāmī Prabhupāda’s purports. I thought once we complete the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, we could read these books both together, moving chronologically, or maybe read one in the morning and the other in the evening.
Reflecting on my past śloka-learning
Something I’ve been craving for a long time is to learn ślokas (or any devotional topic like that) from a teacher in a group. I’ve only had this opportunity a few times in my life. When I was barely a teenager in Kārtika 2002, Sundar Gopal Prabhu taught me and a few of the other Badger boys definition ślokas. It was so exciting every time we got a new verse from him, which we’d write down in our index-card śloka books. He would make custom translations just for us and explain all the words in a very clear way. I still have all those verses he taught us memorized.
A couple years later, Nanda-kiśora started teaching Gauḍīya Kaṇṭhahāra in the New Braja Village school. However, that didn’t last long for me because I soon left gurukula to stay in the maṭha. While I was in the maṭha in those years, I was never taught any verses. Śrīpāda Premānanda Prabhu had me memorize Bhagavad-gītā verses on my own. When I would finish memorizing a complete chapter, then I got to recite all the verses to him, but I lost enthusiasm after the 8th Chapter. Then, when I was in Jagannātha Purī in 2011, Vaṁśī-vadana Prabhu (now Bodhāyana Mahārāja) taught me, Prema-pradīpa, and Sūrya-kānta ślokas on various topics, like the rarity of human life and bhakti-tattva. He was a great teacher. But soon he got so busy with preaching activities, he wasn’t able to continue.
Those four instances that I mentioned were all very brief, yet I remember them all so fondly and I crave for more of that. A couple years ago, I got fed up with the laziness of my brain, letting it spoil for so long. I didn’t have enough motivation to keep memorizing things on my own, so I headed up a study group. Although I wanted to be the student and not the teacher, that wasn’t an option for me, so I ended up trying to teach the verses.
In that śloka group, we learned many definition ślokas (what is bhakti, śraddhā, etc.), ślokas on the topic of vaiṣṇava-aparādha, and various praṇāma mantra verses. That was nice, yet I wasn’t able to give enough time, due to various other sevās I had.
Last year, I did a program to go through the verses of Rūpa-śikṣā, and that was how this Vine of Devotion page began. It was a lot of fun making YouTube videos for this program, yet when we got midway through it, after having learned about a dozen verses, my phone was stolen and we had to abruptly stop. A friend of mine very generously donated her iPhone, so that I can start making videos again. I think we can start up the Rūpa-śikṣā program in a couple months, if anyone would like to join that.
My devotional study plan for now and the next few months
This year I'm hoping to study Sanskrit with some friends and start more śloka-memorization programs like before. For now, I am thinking to proceed with learning the four verses from the Padma Pūraṇa on the ten offenses to the holy name:
satāṁ nindā nāmnaḥ paramam aparādhaṁ vitanute
yataḥ khyātiṁ yātaṁ katham u sahate tad-vigarhām ।
śivasya śrī-viṣṇor ya iha guṇa-nāmādi-sakalaṁ
dhiyā bhinnaṁ paśyet sa khalu hari-nāmāhita-karaḥ ॥
guror avajñā śruti-śāstra-nindanaṁ
tathārtha-vādo hari-nāmni kalpanam ।
nāmno balād yasya hi pāpa-buddhir
na vidyate tasya yamair hi śuddhiḥ ॥
dharma-vrata-tyāga-hutādi-sarva-
śubha-kriyā-sāmyam api pramādaḥ ।
aśraddadhāne vimukhe’py aśṛṇvati
yaś copadeśaḥ śiva-nāmāparādhaḥ ॥
śrute’pi nāma-māhātmye
yaḥ prīti-rahito’dhamaḥ ।
ahaṁ-mamādi-paramo
nāmni so’py aparādha-kṛt ॥
Would you like to learn these with me? I’m planning to do half a verse every week. So it’ll take two months to fully memorize these four verses. By the time we finish this, it’ll be time to begin the Rūpa-śikṣā program again. If you’d like to memorize these verses with me, click to join this WhatsApp group:
In the next few days, we’ll memorize half of the first verse, satāṁ nindā nāmnaḥ. You can share your recitation of it in the WhatsApp group and then on Tuesday (21 March) at 8:30PM, India time, we’ll get together to discuss it on Zoom.
I’ll share a recording of how to recite the verse and Śrīla Viśvanātha Cakravartī Ṭhākura’s and my Gurudeva’s purport in the WhatsApp group. See the verse with word-for-word and translation here.
Thanks for taking the time to read all this. It is very enthusing for me to be able to share my plans and ideas with you. I hope you’ll join me on this learning journey. I’m also very interested to hear what your ideas and plans are in this year 537. Please write in the comments, and let me know!
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