By Dravida Dasa
January 14, 2015
Dear follower of Srila Prabhupada,
Please accept our humble obeisances. All glories to Srila Prabhupada!
Kindly submit your homage to Srila Prabhupada for his Vyasa-puja book by April 15.
In addition, if you’re a direct disciple of Srila Prabhupada, please check out www.sptributes.com to learn about a Vyasa-puja book open to all his disciples. The deadline for submission to this book is also April 15.
The standards for submitting an offering to the traditional Vyasa-puja book (the one published by the Bhaktivedanta Book Trust) are as follows:
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*Absolutely no offerings will be accepted after April 15, 2015.*
Offerings must be in English.
Please restrict the length to a maximum of 3,000 words.
Please omit all diacritics on words that can be found in the VedaBase. It’s easier for us to put them in. If you quote a verse from outside the VedaBase or compose original Sanskrit, please include diacritics.
Do not “recycle” an offering — no offerings from previous years will be accepted.
The Vyasa-puja book is meant for glorifying Srila Prabhupada, not venting grievances. The BBT reserves the right to reject an offering it deems inappropriate or to ask for a rewrite.
When writing an offering on behalf of a temple or other unit, please try to write in such a way that the other devotees in your unit can also identify with the offering.
Who may write an offering?
1) Governing Body Commissioners
2) Sannyasis
3) Authorized representatives of ISKCON temples, preaching centers, farms, gurukulas, BBT offices, and “others,” such as BTG magazine and ISCOWP (this is not a complete list). If there is some doubt, we will request you to send written authorization from your GBC representative.
4) No multiple offerings. For example, a temple should not enlist all its bhaktas to write offerings under the temple heading. Joint authorship (2-4 devotees) of a single offering is fine.
5) Please make sure you tell us where the offering originates. For example: New Vamsi-vata (the Madagascar farm community), NOT just New Vamsi-vata. If we don’t know where the offering comes from, we will not print it.
6) Always leave a double space between paragraphs. If you want some special formatting, submit your offering as an attached file in Microsoft Word or RTF format.
7) Submit your offering by emailing it to Dravida Dasa at dravida108@gmail.com.
Offerings may be submitted any time from now until April 15, 2015. We will confirm receipt of your offering by e-mail. If you do not receive a confirmation, resend it.
The BBT is not responsible for lost offerings.
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Hoping this meets you well, I remain
Your servant,
Dravida dasa