Vyasa-puja Lecture: This is what I desire

(Kadamba Kanana Swami, 25 April 2017, Radhadesh, Belgium, Vyasa-puja Lecture)

oṁ ajñāna-timirāndhasya

jñānāñjana-śalākayā

cakṣur unmīlitaṁ yena

tasmai śrī-gurave namaḥ

My spiritual master always chastised me or he used to chastise me that when I did not start with some prayer like that, then he would not even listen to my offering. That is why I said it.

Last year put my life a little bit on the slippery slope so to speak. Normally you sort of have a life expectancy. Every one of you in the room has a life expectancy. You sort of think, “Well, you know, probably I will live so many more years,” but then when you get some disease like that you are just not so sure anymore. Now it is gone, it is all good, it is all clear but still I am not sure how long it can take. So I have a new sense of wanting to use my time nicely and also wanting to use our relationship nicely. I may live to 99. Who knows? Although I hope not. 99? But whatever…

Without trying to put a gloom over this whole festival obviously, it spun my mind around a little bit over the last period. So I had to start to think, “What if I have very little time, what would I do.” So I am thinking like that – I want to write more books and I am going to work on that. I have made a little book for you which is just quotes. We have made books before for the Vyasa-puja and they were excerpts from my lectures and the blog and they were nice but this time I am giving you something else. I am giving you a selection of all the quotes that I have collected over a long period of time. So actually I have tried to pack up interesting things in one book because I thought I want to give this. Something that is the result of my work – my digging in the minds of the scriptures and taking out some things that I thought are nice, valuable, important or interesting and give those to you. That is the idea.

I have already spoken this morning, I will speak again, I will get plenty of opportunities to say many things. One thing that I want to say is that it is up to you. It is up to you to take it, to make something of it. Yes, I would like now that our relationship becomes more serious. This is the phase in my life where I am getting older. A Vyasa-puja is also a birthday. I am getting older here. 64! So let us try and really do something more than just being around in the Hare Krsna movement, let us just try and take advantage of this Krsna consciousness movement. This is what I desire!