Spiritual Combustion: Heartfelt Reflections From Jagannatha Puri | HG Vaisesika Dasa | 20 Feb 2026

To put on a yajña takes a lot of work—any kind of yajña—and to take it down takes a lot of work. The middle portion is often very short. Again, in a fire yajña, there’s only a few spoon fulls that go in, but getting all the ingredients (especially if you have to grow them yourself) and then cleaning up afterwards is the heavy lifting. But the combustion—spiritual combustion—happens in the middle, and this is one of the five most important practices according to Lord Caitanya Mahāprabhu. I feel like we had that combustion because of the hard work of Śraddhā Devī Dāsī ,team members, and Divyanāma Prabhu—working, all of them, constantly. I’m in on weekly meetings for planning, and then I hear Śraddhā with her team. I see Divyanāma Prabhu constantly planning also for his team. And this is a confluence of different teams coming together; it’s just been really nice. I hear Nirākulā in the other room on meetings, and the detail that Śraddhā goes into to plan these is astounding to me, and many of you mentioned those types of things. I don’t know if you could hear out there, Śraddhā, but a lot of people were appreciating that you had a motherly presence and you were attentive to every detail. Really, it’s your tenacity and your very deep devotion that shows up in the way that you lean into your service completely. I couldn’t be more grateful, and all of us feel that way too. So thank you very, very much for giving such sacrifice so that we can achieve this yajña that is irreplaceable in our lives, in our sojourn, in our journey back to Godhead. Thank you very much. Divyanāma Prabhu, Vṛndārikā Ramāi, and their team—they have dedicated their lives, or a good portion of them, to putting on Yātrās. And just in the way things have come together over the years, we have now three Yātrās a year. They’ve just evolved. But they didn’t just evolve, just like the material world and all the species didn’t just evolve—there’s an intelligence behind it. Divyanāma and Vṛndārikā Ramāi are attached to the dhāma. They have spent a lot of time in the dhāma, and it was good fortune that they ran into Mukhāravinda in the Istanbul airport distributing books one day. Believe it or not, they were in transit, and that’s—without all the details—how we met. Then one thing led to another, with a ride from their house to the airport about starting the Youth Yātrā. I had always wanted to do it; didn’t know how it would ever happen, but then Kṛṣṇa sent them and they said, ‘We’ll do it.’ Now there’s been a merging of Yātrās, and we have added on in October to the wonderful UK devotees coming together, and I get to spend time going around with that other Yātrā, and now these Yātrās are coming together. Kṛṣṇa has definitely got a plan, and we’re really grateful to you and Vṛndārikā Ramāi. Thank you very much for the tireless service you do. Back at ISV years ago, we used to have Devotee Appreciation Day, and we would come together once a year, I think, to try to appreciate the devotees. Every time driving home, I would look at Nirākulā and say, ‘Why am I so exhausted?’ It was really hard, because we all have this feeling—I’m hearing it from everyone—you want to try to mention everybody. It’s like seeing all the preparations that were just offered to Lord Jagannātha and then thinking you can eat them all. It’s impossible to glorify the devotees enough or appreciate them enough. And I always walked away feeling like, ‘Oh, I could have done more.’ And that’s exactly how I feel now—for all of you, that we came together to render service and create this environment. It’s a miracle. It’s a spiritual miracle that will be imprinted in our hearts forever.