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Dear Devotees,

 

Please accept my humble obeisances. All glories to Srila Prabhupada.

 

My name is Samik Rsi Dasa (ACBSP) and I have been an ISKCON devotee since 1972 when I came to the USA to practice Medicine. Since then I have tried to serve the movement in various capacities such as Temple President (1996-2010) in Towaco, New Jersey as well as other services by the mercy of Srila Prabhupada and the Vaisnavas.

 

I am approaching you simply for your blessings, input, advice and direction on spreading Srila Prabhupada’s mercy to the traditionally underserved members of society such as resident of towns that do not have ISKCON temple and also smaller villages.

 

NEW PREACHING MODEL – “CABINET TEMPLE”

I would like to introduce a preaching concept to spread Srila Prabhupada’s movement to not only the large cities but also to the smaller population centers such as medium towns, college towns, and even villages. The idea is to establish a “portable ISKCON center” or Krishna mini-temple in the form of a large cabinet that serves as a small altar with pictures, offering space, chanting paraphernalia, tilak and a set of Srila Prabhupada’s books in the local language.

 

We envision many such “centers” throughout India and perhaps other places in the world as well. Since there is no need for obtaining real estate or building or maintaining temples or elaborate puja the overhead for maintaining these preaching centers will be very low.

 

These centers would be placed primarily in homes, businesses, factories etc. of people who are very supportive and favorable to the movement’s goals and would like to offer some space for this service. The active preaching work would be done at the centers either by the host or by our own ISKCON preachers who can travel to the various centers to give support, encouragement, advice and association.

 

If for any reason an established host devotee feels that the center may have become difficult to manage, then this could be moved easily to another host in that area who may want to serve in this capacity. This model may even evolve into a rotational model where a number of hosts may keep the temple for a certain number of months in the year.

 

The goal of this model is to inject the essence of Srila Prabhupada’s teachings with minimal hindrances that are typically faced in the traditional establishment of temples and go straight to the hearts of people.

 

INSPIRATION

I was inspired to pursue this mode of preaching after visiting many large temples in India and around the world and seeing that they are being visited by thousands of people. But what I felt was missing is the personal one-on-one attention and follow-up for those fortunate souls who have some desire to see the Lord in our ISKCON temples but there was not enough man-power to attend to each individual. This model takes Krishna to their homes and into their hearts via preaching from Srila Prabhupada’s books in their own environment and in their own language.  Similar models are used by successful Christian churches as well who have established “reading rooms” around the world. These reading rooms are rented or purchased real-estate, but our model will not need any real estate funding.

 

FIRST STEPS

We envision starting with a small pilot program where we would make some contacts with devotees and supporters who are willing and eager to provide some space that would remain accessible on certain times of the day, manage the “cabinet temple”, have periodic discussions/kirtans or other preaching activities to the extent that they can manage. These members will be given full support by visiting ISKCON devotees.

 

We will establish a charitable trust fund only for this specific purpose.  I will commit seed funds to get this project rolling.  If Krishna so desires, the project would be such that it could sustain and even perpetuate itself. 

 

HUMBLE REQUESTS

In my own life, when I came to America in 1971, I could have very easily become materialistic and absorbed fully into the so-called Western lifestyle with no spiritual future. But by the immense causeless mercy of Srila Prabhupada who came into our lives, we were saved and continue to receive his kind mercy. I personally feel that I can never repay back to Srila Prabhupada what he has done for us, but at least I can make some attempt to spread his transcendental teachings to as many people as possible with the resources as our disposal. We have no other motive than to please Srila Prabhupada.

 

The key advantage of this “cabinet temple” model is that it gives the greatest spiritual “bang for the buck”. So for every dollar invested we would see immediate return on investment in the form of direct preaching. To establish a traditional temple or even preaching center involves so much effort and capital to obtain the land and building. But this model by-passes that largest hurdle and goes straight to the point.

 

In this way we are hoping to bring to reality Lord Caitanya’s famous prediction of spreading Krishna Consciousness in every town and village.

 

Please pass this letter on to other Vaisnavas who you feel would be enthused by this project and would be interested in helping in any capacity.

 

Thank you again for your kindly giving your time to read this.

 

Yours in the service of Srila Prabhupada,

Samik Rsi Dasa

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Mailing Address:

Shyam S. Mahajan

53 Carlton Drive

Parsippany, NJ 07054

 

Tel: 973-989-9233 (US)

E-mail: samikrsi@yahoo.com