Yasodanandana das Remembers Srila Prabhupada

Prabhupada Memories

Interview 01

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Yasodanandana: I had read Prabhupada’s books and, unlike all the other Bhagavad-gitas that I had read from many yogis and swamis, Prabhupada’s was very clear and precise. He explained Krishna, the Personality of Godhead, and the nature of the soul in a very convincing way. The other versions of Bhagavad-gita, even the entire Rig Veda by some Sanskrit scholars, were not appealing or convincing. But Prabhupada’s book was potent. His words really touched the soul. So when I first saw Srila Prabhupada in New York, it was incredible to link with this person and be in his presence. His spiritual potency was there, and his attraction was magnetic. He was able to channel the slightest spark of sincerity and bring it to Krishna. When Prabhupada first introduced the “namaste narasimhaya” prayers, he said that they were for the protection of his movement. While he was singing them, some Indian lady in the crowd started to sing om jaya jagadisha hare. Prabhupada interrupted the prayer and said, “Who has said this?” He said, “No, no. Not om jaya jagadisha hare. It is jaya jagadisha hare. Don’t concoct.” Prabhupada was very specific about that, because various Hindus sing arati prayers with the words om jaya jagadisha hare. Then Prabhupada chanted the “namaste narasimhaya” prayer in a very grave tone, repeating each and every word. It was an ecstatic experience to see and hear Srila Prabhupada introducing this new, potent, transcendental prayer and showing the devotees how to sing it to protect his movement. The next time that I had a chance to meet Srila Prabhupada was in Calcutta in the summer of 1971. I was in his room with Bhavananda, Jayapataka, Revatinandana, and a few others. This was one of the first times I had a chance to ask Srila Prabhupada a question. I said, “Prabhupada, there has been considerable controversy over your statement that materialistic scientists never went to the moon. A lot of people don’t understand this. We accept your statement. I am your disciple so I accept it. I firmly believe it. But how do you explain this?” Prabhupada put his hand up in the air and said, “As far as I am concerned, they never went.” He elaborated on why they hadn’t gone, saying that the moon is a luminous, self-effulgent body, and it is contradictory to say that they had recovered some dark dust and stones from a luminous body. He also said that according to the Vedas and the Bhagavatam, you cannot go to another planet without a suitable body. You cannot force entry to another planet. For example, he said, you cannot force your entrance into America. You have to go to the immigration department, get a visa, and then you can come in. He gave another example about the days of the week. In all ancient cultures the week starts with Monday, the planet of the moon, which indicates that the moon is first. He said that they did not go to the moon but to Rahu, a planet between the moon and the earth. “They cannot access the moon,” he said, “for the moon is far above the sun.” When Prabhupada first announced this, Purushotam, one of Prabhupada’s servants, brought a TV set into Prabhupada’s room to show Prabhupada the entire moon landing. Prabhupada still said, “They cannot go there.” Over that incident Purushotam had left Krishna consciousness and gone on to other pursuits. But Prabhupada did not compromise. The first time Prabhupada started the annual Mayapur meetings, there was a little hut near the entrance gate where he stayed and gave darshan to the devotees. We stayed with him for hours there, asking questions and hearing his answers. Many of Srila Prabhupada’s God-brothers came to see him at that time, because Prabhupada had the idea of engaging his god-brothers. He wanted to make an alliance, a united front, so all the Gaudiya Vaishanavas could preach together. The Mayapur project was his way to unite his Godbrothers and have them participate in this plan. Some of Prabhupada’s Godbrothers criticized him for using the name “Prabhupada.” His God-brothers requested us (Gurukripa, Shyamasundar, Rishikumar, Tamal Krishna Maharaj, Prabhasha, and others) to leave the room. We were outside watching what was going on through the bamboo and straw walls. Voices were being raised. Prabhupada rang his bell and asked his servant to get his stationery. He was speaking in Bengali, explaining. The words “Prabhupada” and “Swamiji” were spoken many times. Afterwards, Prabhupada called us into the room and gave the example that, “In the spiritual world Radharani is the topmost gopi. She is the favorite of Krishna, and all of the other gopis assist Her. There is no envy whatsoever. Everybody is assisting the favorite gopi of Krishna, Radharani. In the same way, if one is a true devotee he does not become envious like some of my God-brothers.” Prabhupada was not pleased with their materialistic, critical attitude toward him. He said, “I do not call myself Prabhupada. My disciples call me Prabhupada.” So, on the one hand, Prabhupada tried to engage his Godbrothers, and at the same time he firmly tried to protect his disciples and preach Krishna consciousness. Once Prabhupada asked Subal Swami, a scholarly devotee, “Please describe the three kinds of Vishnus.” Subal Maharaj quoted from the Bhagavatam and gave an elaborate explanation of Maha Vishnu, Garbhodakashayi Vishnu, and Kshirodakashayi Vishnu, as well as Their functions. After that, Prabhupada was speaking in Hindi with his God-brother, Dr. O.B.L. Kapoor, and they were laughing. Dr. O.B.L. Kapoor was shaking because in India when they appreciate something, sometimes they shake their head in a seemingly negative way. Subal was wondering what was going on. Prabhupada was very appreciative of the wonderful explanation. He was pleased that his disciple had explained the philosophy so nicely. He said, “Just see how they have learned.” His reciprocation was very sweet. In the morning, after a Nectar of Devotion lecture, Prabhupada was sitting in the courtyard of the Radha Damodar temple near the samadhi of Rupa Goswami, when some simple, devoted Brijbasi villagers came. They were very attracted to Prabhupada and had an incredible exchange with him in Hindi. We were thinking, “Who are these people? They are not initiated, they are not even devotees, they are not even in ISKCON, they are not this, they are not that.” But Prabhupada spent over an hour talking and laughing with them. He experienced increasing ecstasy over the course of this hour. We couldn’t understand what they were saying, but they talked about Krishna, Mother Yasoda, Nanda Maharaj, the gopas, the gopis, the Yamuna, this and that. Prabhupada was in total bliss. Later Prabhupada said that some of these people were liberated souls, exalted transcendentalists, although they looked like ordinary village people. This was one way Prabhupada taught us to be respectful to the inhabitants of the Dham. Once Prabhupada told Gurudas that when he was staying at the Radha-Damodar Temple he had a chance to look at some of the original manuscripts of Jiva Goswami and Sanatana Goswami. Prabhupada said to Gurudas, “If you knew the contents of these books, you would faint.” This was another manifestation of Prabhupada’s mercy. He revealed a glimpse of the transcendental potency of the Goswamis’ literatures. In January of 1973, Gurukripa and I went to Bombay, where Prabhupada was residing near the ocean at Kartikeya Mahadevia’s house. We told Prabhupada that we had gone to Madurai, South India, where we were given a wonderful facility by a wealthy man. For fifteen days we preached and tried in every conceivable way to make Life Members and raise funds for the Vrindavan temple, but we hardly got anything. We made two Life Members in three weeks. Then we went to the next city, and all we did was have kirtan, hear and chant, and within three days we had made twenty-two Life Members. We couldn’t understand it. In one place we tried so hard, we worked, we preached, and we couldn’t do anything. In the next place we just sat on our bottoms, and all the money came. We related this incident to Prabhupada, and he said, “The problem with you two is that you’re too attached to the result. Our business as devotees is to try to please Krishna. If you are very sincere, Krishna will personally make sure that you become successful. You just try. Whether there is success or failure is not up to you, it is up to Krishna.” In this way Prabhupada was very encouraging. At one point Prabhupada started a mock debate. He said, “Let’s say that I don’t believe in Krishna. I don’t accept your shastras. You prove to me that there is a God.” I was so dumb. I said, “Well, Prabhupada, it says in the Brahma-samhita . . .” Prabhupada became a little angry. “No shastra.” I said, “Everything comes from a cause and . . .” Prabhupada said, “No, no. You don’t know.” The other devotees tried to answer, and he said to them, “You also don’t know. None of you know.” He asked me, “Do you have a father?” I said, “Yes.” He asked someone else, “Do you have a father,” “Yes.” Then he asked, “Does your father have a father? Does your grandfather have a father?” Prabhupada argued on this basis, that any intelligent person can see that there is God, the cause of all causes, by looking for the original father. There must be a father from whom everyone originates. Prabhupada was very kind in that way. At one point Prabhupada started to talk about Krishna’s intimate childhood pastimes, how He showed Mother Yasoda the Universal Form within His mouth. As Prabhupada described this, he started to cry profusely. Then he described the pastime of Krishna killing Putana, and he explained that even though Krishna was a baby, He was able to kill such a gigantic demon, and how that is the transcendental potency of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Krishna. Prabhupada was crying. This was the first time that my understanding crystallized. It became a bit more like a realization. We knew that Prabhupada was a very exalted, saintly person and a great preacher. But this time I felt that Prabhupada was actually experiencing these pastimes with Krishna. We read them and think, “This is very nice and very sweet.” But Prabhupada was actually experiencing the transcendental pastimes of Krishna in his heart. And although he was always enjoying these sweet realizations of Krishna, he was preaching Krishna consciousness in a practical way. That was Prabhupada’s mercy. After the 1976 Mayapur festival, the GBC decided to send Rupanuga Maharaj and me to Australia. When I came to Vrindavan in the summer of ’76, I told Prabhupada that I was on my way to Australia. I had already made arrangements for a visa and a plane ticket. My body was in India, but my mind was already in Australia. Prabhupada said, “What is this Australia?” So I described to Prabhupada, “Well, the GBC decided to send me. They wanted somebody to go and preach there.” Prabhupada said, “I will write them a letter.” He also said, “If you want, you can still stay here. That is okay.” For about a day and a half Prabhupada played with me like a father would play with his son. He told me, “If you want to stay, you can stay. It’s very nice. If you want to go, you can also go. It’s very nice.” After some time I thought, “What is this? Prabhupada is telling me, ‘you can do this or you can do that.’” I went to Prabhupada one afternoon and said, “Prabhupada, you have told me that I could go there if I want and I could stay here if I want. That is confusing. Please tell me what you want me to do.” Prabhupada pointed at me and raised his voice, “Yes that is what I want to see from you. This is the attitude I want from all my disciples. You just do what I tell you to do.” I took it as Prabhupada’s mercy. He wanted me to stay in India to work in the gurukula and preach. At night he would frequently talk about how he wanted his gurukula system to work, how he wanted the children to be fed, how they should be taught, what he wanted them to do, and the outline of a varnashram society. He wanted our society to have a place for the children who may not be inclined to be brahmans. At one point he mentioned masonry, carpentry, organic gardening, and taking care of cows. He said, “We should have a wide variety of engagements, a multileveled arrangement so that all of these children can stay within the Krishna conscious movement.” Prabhupada’s vision for his gurukula program was something very precise and detailed. At one point he told me, “This gurukula program is the most important program in this movement.” I said, “Prabhupada, didn’t you say that distributing books and so many things are important?” He said, “Books are very important. We distribute books to make devotees. But these children are already devotees. You have to train them.” He attached special importance to training our devotees’ children. He also commented, “The children of these children will be real devotees.” So he attached great importance to the gurukula project and to giving Krishna conscious children special training and care.

To view the entire unedited video go to Memories 05 - Brahmananda, Yasodanandana, Sudama, Gopavrindapala

The full Prabhupada Memories Series can be viewed here and also at www.prabhupadamemories.com

Following Srila Prabhupada

Interview DVD 04

Yasodanandan: Prabhupada’s room at the Radha-Damodar temple, you can see behind, there were these little holes that let the wind come through and you can actually see behind in the courtyard. So Shyamasundar’s daughter, Saraswati, was there, and she was pulling on the shirt of a little Bengali gentleman and she was telling the gentleman, “Who is Krishna? Do you know who is Krishna?” And the gentleman had this amused look on his face. Saraswati may have been 4 or 5 years old at the time, she was very young. Prabhupada was looking and we were looking, and the man was amused that this little girl would ask him that. Then she told him, “Krishna is the Supreme Personality of Godhead, and you should surrender to Him.” And Prabhupada said, “Just see, she is a guru. She is preaching about Krishna.” In 1972 in December, Srila Prabhupada went to the house of one Vaisnava gentleman named Karttikeya Mahadevia. This particular gentleman had some very nice apartment, luxurious apartment, fronting the ocean. So Srila Prabhupada went to his place and stayed there, it was pretty spacious quarters. Quite a few devotees every night would come there. So we went to see Srila Prabhupada. We had come back from a trip to South India. We had gone to Madurai, Coimbatore, Bangalore, several places, and Prabhupada said, “Someday I want to go there and see.” So Prabhupada said, “You please make arrangements to take me there someday.” I said, “OK, Prabhupada.” Then we told Prabhupada, “Well, Prabhupada, we’ve been to some place in Coimbatore and we worked really hard and we were going to so many places and we were trying to make Life Members, but we could hardly make any Life Members. And we went to some other place and we hardly did anything, we just sat in the room and chanted, and we ended up making 20 Life Members. So we don’t understand this.” Prabhupada said, “You don’t understand because you’re too attached to the result.” Then Prabhupada quoted that verse from Bhagavad-gita, karmany evadhikaras te ma phalesu kadacana, that you do your duty but don’t be attached to the result. And Prabhupada said, “You leave the result to Krishna.” Prabhupada said, “You leave the result to Krishna, act sincerely, and if you’re very sincere, Krishna Himself personally will see that you become successful.” And Prabhupada said, “But you have to understand this is not simply about an amount of money. You do the service and Krishna will judge, Krishna will decide.” Then Prabhupada said, “My Guru Maharaj one time told me that even if there is not so many people, we can preach to the wall. That doesn’t matter, we can preach to the wall.” Prabhupada said, “You just go on preaching, that’s all. You just be sincere, preach, and Krishna will make it successful.”

Interview DVD 06

Yasodanandan: The installation of the Deities of Radha-Madana-Mohana occurred in August of 1976. We discussed with Prabhupada and made an arrangement to get 12 South Indian Ramanuja Vaishnava brahmanas under the leadership of Sampath Kumar Bhattacharya who were very versed in these ritualistic ceremonies of how to open a Vaishnava temple. When Srila Prabhupada came from the airport, they gave him a very grand reception and they actually performed acharya puja. There is even a recorded lecture where Srila Prabhupada discussed how in this age there are very few brahmanas left but he was pleased that in South India, he considered that there were still some bona fide brahmanas. Prabhupada had a very interesting conversation in his room with some of these brahmanas. He requested them to arrange to take Srila Prabhupada to all the major temples of South India. “I want to go there and re-establish varnasrama dharma in South India.” And Srila Prabhupada was preaching to them how it was the responsibility of these educated scholarly brahmanas, very cultured people, to take this up and preach to the local people. And Prabhupada said, “I will come and show you.” But overall Prabhupada was very pleased with the opening of the temple, and on the Vyasa Puja Day there was a grand ceremony, so it was a pretty blissful experience.

Interview DVD 10

Yasodanandan: Everybody was talking about this one devotee named Ananta Rama Shastri. He was a Vaishnava. He was a great Sanskrit scholar. The title Shastri is a title that’s given to people who have received some degrees in Sanskrit learning, and he could literally read Sanskrit just like we read English and he could speak Sanskrit. So when Prabhupada heard about him, he brought him to his room and he was preaching to him. At one point, Prabhupada wanted him to come and assist him to translate some of the Sanskrit purports of the acharyas. Not that Prabhupada needed help, but he was trying to engage him. So every night Prabhupada told this devotee…they would go around the Mayapur temple with cow dung and some incense and conch shell, and they would chant the Purusha Sukta and take this cow dung and incense to chase the mosquitoes with this devotee chanting Sanskrit. And Prabhupada was very happy with that, they would go to all the floors. And also every morning this devotee, before the Bhagavatam class, would chant certain Sanskrit hymns. He had composed a Bhaktivedanta Stotram or hymns of praise to Prabhupada. It was very melodious and very sweet, and Prabhupada wanted the devotees to learn a few verses from that. Prabhupada said, “These verses should be taught to the gurukula children and to the devotees.” There was one, krsnaika-ceta mada-moha-vinasa-karin, there are four or five prayers. The entire Stotram was 23 verses, but it was six specific prayers that Prabhupada wanted the devotees to learn. What happened is several months later when I went to Vrindavan, we taught some of these Sanskrit prayers to the gurukula children and we chanted them in front of Prabhupada, and Prabhupada was very happy with that. But those particular prayers were a major contribution that Prabhupada greatly appreciated and wanted that introduced, and some devotees still chant those.