Praṇāmas by the Author

First of all, I beg to submit
to the lotus feet of my spiritual master,
Oṁ Viṣṇupāda Śrī Śrīmad Bhaktisiddhānta
Sarasvatī Gosvāmī Mahārāja,
who has opened my spiritual vision
and eradicated the darkness of ignorance
by his forceful message of the transcendental world.
It is only by the mercy of His Divine Grace
that I have been able to remove
the impersonal calamity.

I offer my most sincere obeisances
unto the lotus feet of the Lord of Lords,
who is the protector of all surrendered souls.
The Supreme Lord is always anxious to bestow
upon us the fortune of unalloyed love of God,
untouched by such deviating processes
as dry speculative empiric knowledge
or the unsatiated desire for fruitive activities
meant only to acquire temporary material gains.
He is the supreme leader of the chain of disciplic succession
in the line of Śrīla Ānanda Tīrtha.
He is worshiped by Śrī Śrīman Advaita Prabhu
and Śrī Śrīman Haridāsa ˇhākura,
who are incarnations of Mahā-Viṣṇu
and Brahmā respectively.
He delivers His devotees, such as
the brāhmaṇa leper Vāsudeva,
from all ailments.
He is the deliverer
of Sārvabhauma Bhaṭṭācārya
and King Pratāparudra,
who were suffering from the pangs
of material renunciation
and enjoyment respectively.

I offer my most sincere obeisances
unto the lotus feet of the Lord of Lords
who superficially accepted
the renounced life of a sannyāsī
to make the brāhmaṇa’s curse effective.
In the garb of a sannyāsī, He initiated
the transcendental ecstasy of spontaneous love of God
as was felt by Śrīmatī Rādhārāṇī
in Her amorous desire to meet Śrī Kṛṣṇa.
In the quest of such spontaneous love of God,
the Lord relinquished the association
of His eternal consort Śrī Lakṣmī Viṣṇupriyā-devī,
who was dearest to Him and whose mercy is most ardently sought after by all true devotees of God
and even by the denizens of heaven.
The Lord accepted the renounced order of life
in accordance with the foretelling inculcated
in the Mahābhārata, the Vedas, and the Śrīmad Bhāgavatam
in order to bestow His causeless mercy upon us,
who are addicted to the false enjoyment of
fame, glory, the opposite sex, and wealth
in this material world.