Standard Prayers

This chapter is not a songbook section in the usual sense but a working set of the pranama mantras and invocatory prayers recited daily in Gaudiya Vaishnava temple programs, gathered here as a reference alongside the site's other, author-organised books. It opens with the obeisance to the spiritual master, om ajnana-timirandhasya, offered here to Srila Prabhupada, then the prayer to Srila Rupa Gosvami and the Mangalacarana, vande 'ham sri-guroh, before the pranati verses of the disciplic line in turn: Srila Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura, Srila Gaurakisora Dasa Babaji, Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakura, and Srila Jagannatha Dasa Babaji. It then moves to obeisances to the Vaishnavas, to Gauranga and the Pancha-tattva, to Krishna, to the presiding Deities of sambandha, abhidheya, and prayojana, Madana-mohana, Govinda, and Gopinatha, and finally to Radha. The chapter also carries the maha-mantras — the Pancha-tattva mantra and the Hare Krishna maha-mantra — followed by three eight-verse prayers: Samsara-davanala, Srila Visvanatha Cakravarti Thakura's Sri Gurvastaka; Krsnotkirtana, Srila Srinivasa Acarya's Sad-gosvamy-astaka; and Ceto-darpana-marjanam, Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's own Siksastaka as recorded in the Chaitanya-caritamrta. It closes with Srila Prabhupada's two Bengali poems from his 1965 voyage to America aboard the Jaladuta. Where this site's other chapters gather songs by the poet who wrote them, this one gathers prayers by the role they play in daily worship — obeisance before instruction, invocation before kirtana.