A Long Overdue Update and Looking Ahead to the Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura Retreat

It has been a long, long time since I’ve written here on Vine of Devotion, and I finally got a chance, so I wanted to share a little life update and my plans for the near future.

For many months, I kept telling myself, “I just need to focus on getting the new Gauḍīya Gīti-guccha ready for print. Only then will I allow myself to worry about everything else (like Vine of Devotion postings, the Gauḍīya Kirtan app, and the upcoming Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura retreat).”

But I never dreamed that even after all this time, we STILL wouldn’t have the songbook ready for the printers. As the months passed, my stress steadily increased. Looking back, though, I’m actually very happy we took this extra time. The Gīti-guccha is in pretty good shape now. Two days ago, I sent the indexes for layout, which was the last major task left. If all goes well, the book should be ready for the printers in the next few days.

If we had rushed to get it ready for Kārtika, I would have been left with some very long-term regrets, like not including the Gaurāṅga-stava-kalpadruma. We really don’t want to change the page numbers after this edition, so everything needs to be as close to perfect as possible. Once it does go to press, I’d love to tell you about some of the features of this 1,300-page songbook. It’s one of the most exciting projects I’ve ever been involved with. Now almost all of Śrīla Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura’s songs will be available in many thousands of devotees’ homes all over the world, making it much easier for people to sing, study, and live with them daily.

Now, with the songbook finally heading to press, there are three big and urgent things waiting for me:

1. The Songbook Links: Throughout the Gauḍīya Gīti-guccha, I’ve included links to 22 online resources containing all the songs that couldn’t fit into the book (1,300 pages was already pushing it 😅). There are also guides for learning melodies, meters, pronunciation, etc. So now I need to translate all of those songs and prepare the guides so everything is ready by the time people receive the book.
2. The Gauḍīya Kirtan App: My friend Aditya, who is building the new Gauḍīya Kirtan app, works at Facebook and has a very intense schedule. This is the only window of time he has free to work on the app with me for a while, so I need to get him all the songs and new translations soon. We are rebuilding everything from scratch.
3. The Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura Retreat: You may have seen the post I wrote about the retreat we’re holding in mid-February. We opened registration in the middle of Kārtika, and now I need to think carefully about how to structure the classes I’ll be giving.

I’d love to say more about all three of these, but I think the Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura Retreat is the most relevant for the Vine of Devotion community, so I’ll focus on that here.

Developing the Bhaktivinoda-gīti-dhārā workshop together

Because of the first two projects, I’m going to have very little time to prepare the retreat's Bhaktivinoda-gīti-dhārā class, in which we’ll go through many of the songs written by Śrīla Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura. I think the most effective way to make sure I carve out the time, and hopefully prepare something meaningful, is to involve all of you who are interested in helping shape it.

The goal of this workshop is to inspire us all to make the songs of Śrīla Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura an intimate part of our daily life. I want to think of ways that we can order our lives so that these songs are able to accompany us throughout the day, and that real direction, inspiration, and attachment to them naturally develops from spending time with them. I’d like to find a way to categorize his songs and help you discover which ones, within those categories, might be most relevant for you to focus on. Ideally, over time, his songs won’t be something we only turn to when it’s time for bhajanas, but something that lives in our minds and becomes part of our daily inner life.

I haven’t settled on the exact structure of the course yet, and I’m very much still in the brainstorming stage. Right now, one idea I have is to create a questionnaire or form that helps you identify which songs might be most relevant for you personally. You could choose them yourself, or I could help you choose, since most of the songs are still very fresh in my mind after working on the songbook.

If you’d like to know more about the Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura Retreat, which will be taking place from February 15 to 21 in Śrīla Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura’s home at Surabhi-kuñja in Godruma, and which will feature a range of classes offered by different devotees, you can take a look here:

There are only 12 spaces left, so if you’d like to join us, please book your spot soon.

I’ll also be starting the daily live Bhaktivinoda-gīti-dhārā sessions on Zoom and YouTube again in the very near future. I’ll make another announcement here on Vine of Devotion before I begin, so stay tuned.

Before I close, I’d really love to hear from you. Did the little I say about making the songs of Śrīla Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura an intimate part of daily life spark any ideas for you?

If this Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura song workshop could be anything you wanted, and if I or the other teachers were able to do whatever would be most helpful for you, what would that look like? What would you most hope to get out of it?

Feel free to write in the comments and let me know. I really want to help shape this around what would be most nourishing and practical for you.

I’ll be sending emails here about these topics hopefully on a weekly basis. Thanks for reading to the end. Śrīla Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura ki jaya!