Bhargava das Remembers Srila Prabhupada: Difference between revisions
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[[Category:Remembering Srila Prabhupada]] | [[Category:Remembering Srila Prabhupada]] | ||
[[Category:Living Devotees Remembering Srila Prabhupada]] | [[Category:Living Devotees Remembering Srila Prabhupada]] | ||
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==Prabhupada Memories== | |||
===Interview 01=== | |||
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'''To view the entire unedited video go to [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO6nO_BqSHs | '''To view the entire unedited video go to [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO6nO_BqSHs Memories 19 - Upendra, Visakha dasi, Bhargava, Sura]''' | ||
'''The full Prabhupada Memories Series can be viewed [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-Ajeil3NjKKgeN9-fxeWwQ here] and also at [https://www.prabhupadamemories.com www.prabhupadamemories.com]''' | '''The full Prabhupada Memories Series can be viewed [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-Ajeil3NjKKgeN9-fxeWwQ here] and also at [https://www.prabhupadamemories.com www.prabhupadamemories.com]''' | ||
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==Following Srila Prabhupada== | |||
===Interview DVD 05=== | |||
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'''Bhargava:''' Wherever you get people together there’s politics and I thought, “I’d better ask this question,” and I said, “Prabhupada, sometimes I have a question and it’s too detailed for the scriptures and the spiritual master isn’t around. What should I do?” He said, “If you chant Hare Krishna very nicely, all the answers will come from within.” | |||
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===Interview DVD 06=== | |||
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'''Bhargava:''' Two French reporters came to visit Prabhupada. One was an older man, and one was a woman probably in her early 30’s. Prabhupada didn’t tell pastime stories. Mostly he preached about you’re not that body, a lot of philosophical things, but he didn’t generally tell so many stories. This woman was sitting there, and he starts telling her the story about how this demon kidnapped 16,000 princesses and Krishna finally came and killed the demon. The princesses approached Krishna because they were really attracted to Krishna, and Krishna looked at them and He said, “Come on,” and that’s how Krishna ended up with 16,000 wives. So as I’m listening to the story I’m thinking, “This is a pretty incredible story to tell a reporter, especially in the Western culture where everything is so rationalistic.” But he told that story, and when he quoted Krishna as saying, “Come on,” that reporter’s face lit up as only a woman who had some experience in the world of heartbreak could understand. And even though the number of wives may have sounded so incredible, that affection He had towards those princesses touched that woman’s heart and she just lit up. It was beyond the rational, it was just on the level of an appreciation of the loving heart of Krishna by this very intelligent, very sophisticated French reporter; and it was a very wonderful moment. | |||
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===Interview DVD 10=== | |||
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'''Bhargava:''' Mauritius was developed by two devotees. It’s a small island off the east coast of Africa. Prabhupada said some very profound things in Mauritius. He was very serious with the young people who came to visit him. He didn’t like the idea of dependence on a cash crop. Sugarcane was the cash crop. His comment to those young people was “The first duty of a nation is to become self-sufficient.” And that was an extremely profound statement because if you look at the world situation and you look at so many of the trouble spots, it’s all about trying to exploit somebody else’s natural resources – like America and Europe trying to exploit the oil resources of other areas. And if each country would take that seriously, becoming self-sufficient, you wouldn’t have these major conflicts going on in the world. So when Prabhupada said that, it was extremely profound. When one of them asked, “What is your movement doing to help the world?” he said, “We’re taking animals and turning them into human beings,” and then he gave a very fiery lecture. Then at the end he told Brahmananda, “Take the tape of this and send it to Back to Godhead, and they should make an article out of this. The title of the article should be ‘First you make them human, then you talk about United Nations.’” | |||
Prabhupada really didn’t like being photographed, but he accepted it because it was useful for the publications. And he didn’t like being photographed when he was speaking, and he told me a number of times that it broke his train of thought. But I was very impulsive and very romantic, so I liked these shots where Prabhupada was speaking and he’d use his hands, these speaking mudras. At first I was using a Canon single lens reflex camera, and it’s kind of noisy. So he said, “No more ‘cut cut’ while I’m speaking.” Then later on when I was able to get a Leica camera, which doesn’t have the mirror that flops up, it has a much quieter shutter noise. And then when I photographed Prabhupada while he was speaking, he said, “No more ‘ch ch’ while I’m speaking.” So he could tell the difference between the cameras. He had a very refined sense of smell and a very refined sense of hearing. In South Africa, I set up a whole bunch of lights and I was photographing Prabhupada, and it irritated him because it was in a small room and I went overboard with all these flashes. I wanted to get really beautiful saturated color and everything bright. But I wasn’t discreet enough, and he got angry at me. Then the next day he got his books. These were joyous moments for Prabhupada, when he’d see the Bhagavatam manifest in book form. He was opening his books and he was looking at them, and he touched them with such delicate touch that you could see it wasn’t his book and he was just so happy that the Bhagavatams were coming out into the world. Because it was such a nice moment, I really wanted to catch some photos of it. I had a high-powered battery that didn’t really need any recharging on the flash, it was like an old press photographer’s unit, and I just fired off probably six or seven frames one after another. And from the day before and that day, it really irritated Prabhupada. So I said to Prabhupada, “Prabhupada, I’m such a fool.” He said, “If you are a fool, then go away. That is my order.” So I took it very seriously. I walked out of his room and then I put my camera down, and I went out of the temple at about six o’clock in the evening. As I was walking I was thinking, “Should I commit suicide? Should I drown myself in the Triveni? Should I exile myself here to South Africa and just do humble service?” Then about ten o’clock my mind cleared and I thought, “Prabhupada would never excommunicate me for taking too many pictures.” Then I got really embarrassed and I called up the temple, and I was out in the suburbs somewhere. I had walked for about four straight hours. They came and picked me up, and the next day I came back and they told me, “Prabhupada wants to see you.” This was the only time I didn’t want to see Prabhupada. I went into Prabhupada’s room and he said, “How come you didn’t come to the engagement?” I said, “Well, Prabhupada, I thought you said I shouldn’t come.” And he said, “I never said you shouldn’t come. But even if I said you shouldn’t come, still you should have come.” And the whole thing was just too emotional for me. I thought I had put Prabhupada through so much trouble just disappearing like that. Prabhupada spoke at Wits University for two nights in a row in Joburg, and the second night I went but I just took a few snaps from a distance with a long lens. This photographer who was an Indian man who photographed for the devotees down there, he was a Life Member, and he came up to me and he said, “Are you all right? Prabhupada was asking, ‘Where is Bhargava? Where is Bhargava?’” I had mixed emotions after I heard that. I was very happy that Prabhupada cared about me that much, but at the same time I felt very bad that he had to worry about me. After that, I was very standoffish about photographing him. | |||
I had come into South Africa in disguise. I had a shaved head, and I had to wear a cut-down woman’s wig and a safari suit that was two sizes too big. That’s all I could muster together before I left for South Africa from Mauritius. They would allow South African devotees to preach, but they didn’t like foreign devotees coming in because they saw them as potential agitators against the apartheid program. So I came in this way, and somehow or another I got through Immigration. It was a great miracle. Somebody had lost their passport, and they held everybody up for so long that they finally let everybody through without hassling too much. Anyway, when we were leaving the country, I left in a separate car and they asked us to wear these clothes that we had worn to disguise ourselves. So I went through Customs and Immigration in these clothes, and they didn’t care so much as we were leaving the country. So I went through ahead of Prabhupada, he didn’t see me in this outfit. And as I was waiting in the waiting room, Prabhupada came in. When I turned around, he looked at me and he saw me in this outfit and he bent over in a belly laugh laughing. I had never seen Prabhupada laugh like that. Then the laugh turned into a chuckle. And I knew he was laughing at how ridiculous I looked but at the same time, when it turned into a light chuckle, it was like the laughter was on two levels. The first level was how ridiculous I looked in that outfit. The other one was somehow he knew who I was spiritually, he could see my spiritual identity, and he was laughing at the material predicament I had gotten myself in in the material world, getting a material body. But it was done with affection, and it was a very touching moment. Anyway, I got Prabhupada to laugh, so that was nice. | |||
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Latest revision as of 13:12, 22 January 2022
Prabhupada Memories
Interview 01
Bhargava: The first time I saw Prabhupada was in Boston in 1972, about a month before I took initiation. I’d read Prabhupada’s books and enjoyed them, especially the old Bhagavatams. Although they had spelling and grammatical imperfections, their perfection was in sincerity. I read those books and thought, “Gee, I don’t know so many of the details, but I know that God could never overlook someone this sincere.” I trusted Prabhupada’s sincerity. I saw Prabhupada at the airport when he came off the plane onto an open, outdoor ramp. It was magical and dramatic. It was the end of the day, and there was a beautiful, golden sun on Prabhupada. The devotees gave him a huge, heavy lotus garland, and Prabhupada turned to the bunch of reporters there and posed. That started to bring out my cynical side. Being a photographer, I know how much people enjoy being photographed and being the center of attention. I could read it in their eyes. But when Prabhupada turned to face the photographers and pose there wasn’t a lot of ego in it. He was like a diplomat from Krishnaloka posing. That impressed me. The devotees had rented a room for Prabhupada at the Sheraton, but he decided that he didn’t want to go there. He said, “These hotels are like brothels.” Instead he went to the temple even though it was small, noisy, and crowded. (Devotees had come from New York and Montreal.) Prabhupada’s room was bare. It only had a thick foam pad and a little dais for him to sit. But he was happy. For him it was much more than a fancy hotel suite at the Sheraton. He wanted to be with Krishna and the devotees. That impressed me too.
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To view the entire unedited video go to Memories 19 - Upendra, Visakha dasi, Bhargava, Sura
The full Prabhupada Memories Series can be viewed here and also at www.prabhupadamemories.com
Following Srila Prabhupada
Interview DVD 05
Bhargava: Wherever you get people together there’s politics and I thought, “I’d better ask this question,” and I said, “Prabhupada, sometimes I have a question and it’s too detailed for the scriptures and the spiritual master isn’t around. What should I do?” He said, “If you chant Hare Krishna very nicely, all the answers will come from within.” |
Interview DVD 06
Bhargava: Two French reporters came to visit Prabhupada. One was an older man, and one was a woman probably in her early 30’s. Prabhupada didn’t tell pastime stories. Mostly he preached about you’re not that body, a lot of philosophical things, but he didn’t generally tell so many stories. This woman was sitting there, and he starts telling her the story about how this demon kidnapped 16,000 princesses and Krishna finally came and killed the demon. The princesses approached Krishna because they were really attracted to Krishna, and Krishna looked at them and He said, “Come on,” and that’s how Krishna ended up with 16,000 wives. So as I’m listening to the story I’m thinking, “This is a pretty incredible story to tell a reporter, especially in the Western culture where everything is so rationalistic.” But he told that story, and when he quoted Krishna as saying, “Come on,” that reporter’s face lit up as only a woman who had some experience in the world of heartbreak could understand. And even though the number of wives may have sounded so incredible, that affection He had towards those princesses touched that woman’s heart and she just lit up. It was beyond the rational, it was just on the level of an appreciation of the loving heart of Krishna by this very intelligent, very sophisticated French reporter; and it was a very wonderful moment. |
Interview DVD 10
Bhargava: Mauritius was developed by two devotees. It’s a small island off the east coast of Africa. Prabhupada said some very profound things in Mauritius. He was very serious with the young people who came to visit him. He didn’t like the idea of dependence on a cash crop. Sugarcane was the cash crop. His comment to those young people was “The first duty of a nation is to become self-sufficient.” And that was an extremely profound statement because if you look at the world situation and you look at so many of the trouble spots, it’s all about trying to exploit somebody else’s natural resources – like America and Europe trying to exploit the oil resources of other areas. And if each country would take that seriously, becoming self-sufficient, you wouldn’t have these major conflicts going on in the world. So when Prabhupada said that, it was extremely profound. When one of them asked, “What is your movement doing to help the world?” he said, “We’re taking animals and turning them into human beings,” and then he gave a very fiery lecture. Then at the end he told Brahmananda, “Take the tape of this and send it to Back to Godhead, and they should make an article out of this. The title of the article should be ‘First you make them human, then you talk about United Nations.’”
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