Sunday, July 13, 2008

My story of Sadness

Hear, O Lord, my story of sadness. I drank the deadly poison of worldliness, pretending it was nectar, and now the sun is setting on the horizon of my life.

I spent my childhood in play, my youth in academic pursuit, and in me there was no sense of right or wrong. In young manhood I set up a household and settled down to the spell of material enjoyment. Children and friends quickly multiplied.

Soon old age arrived, and all happiness departed. Subjected to disease, troubled and weak, all my senses are feeble now, my body racked and exhausted, and my spirits downcast in the absence of youthful pleasures.

Devoid of even a particle of devotion, lacking any enlightenment — what help is there for me now? Only You, O Lord, friend of the fallen. I am certainly fallen, the lowest of men. Please, therefore lift me to Your lotus feet.

Were you to judge me now, You would find no good qualities. Have mercy and judge me not. Cause me to drink the honey of Your lotus feet and thereby deliver this Bhaktivinoda.