Bhavananda das Remembers Srila Prabhupada

Prabhupada Memories

Interview 01

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Bhavananda: I first saw Srila Prabhupada in 1969. At that time the temple was on La Cienega Boulevard in Los Angeles. The afternoon that I went there Prabhupada also had come to the temple for the program. When he got out of the car and stood up, I was struck by the fact that here was a perfect person. Of course, at that time I was looking for a person who had perfect poise and perfect style. In my eyes perfection was external. I thought, “He’s perfect. He’s a perfect dresser.” He was also aloof even amidst turmoil. Not aloof in terms of being cold, but because he glided through chaos, because he was perfectly self-centered. Srila Prabhupada gave the lecture, and although I haven’t the vaguest idea what he lectured about, I got caught up in the enthusiasm he generated. After the lecture, he got down from his vyasasana and led us all in a line dancing around the temple room. Jadurani’s big paintings were on the wall, and he’d stop in front of each one, put his arms up, and sway back and forth. We were in a line behind him, swaying and screaming and jumping. He was so ecstatic. It was an extraordinary experience. As we know now, it was the most extraordinary experience possible within the material world. When I was in Mayapur, in the mornings Prabhupada would walk on the little raised banks between the rice fields. One morning when we were leaving the back of the building Prabhupada said, “Bhavananda [accent on the second syllable]. Do you know what Bhavananda [accent on second syllable] means?” Gargamuni Maharaj said, “Yes, it means one who’s absorbed in the ecstasy of bhava [accent on first syllable].” Prabhupada said, “No, that’s Bhavananda [accent on first syllable], but his name is Bhavananda [accent on second syllable].” Prabhupada said, “It means one who takes endless enjoyment in this material world.” I should have taken that as a warning. I said, “Prabhupada!” He said, “Yes, but that is because ‘bhava’ [accent on second syllable] means ‘birth in this world.’ That is a devotee. A devotee takes endless enjoyment in this material world because it offers endless opportunities for preaching.” When Prabhupada came to Los Angeles in 1970, we rented a little house for him on Formosa Avenue. Karandhar and I fixed it up. We built an altar, decorated it, and put up a curtain. I really wanted to see Prabhupada, but Gargamuni said, “No, no; when Prabhupada comes back from his walk everything should be ready, and you shouldn’t be there.” I kept saying to Karandhar, “I’d really like to see Prabhupada.” Karandhar said, “No, we have to do what they say, ‘Do your business and get out.’” But Krishna satisfied my desire, because— bingo! . . . Prabhupada walked in the door. Prabhupada looked at the altar and said, “Oh, very nice. You have done this?” I said, “Yes, Srila Prabhupada.” He said, “Just see the difference. You are designing. You can design a disco and go to hell, or you can design Krishna’s temple and altar and go to Vaikuntha.” Then we left, and I was happy. In the beginning there were two or three devotees from the temple in L.A. who would walk behind Prabhupada on his morning walks. Usually not much was said, but one time I was walking right behind Prabhupada past huge houses and cars on the palm-lined streets in Beverly Hills. My eye was attracted to all the magnificent mansions and gorgeous gardens around us. In fact, I was more attracted to that than to Prabhupada, and just as I was thinking that, Prabhupada coughed, turned, and spit with disdain right on the lawn of one of those big houses. So I learned that lesson. Prabhupada said, “I have so many palaces all over the world that I can stay in. Practically speaking, there’s no difference between the Goswamis and me in terms of our lifestyle. They stayed under a different tree every night; I stay in a different palace every night. They wrote, I write. Originally, I did not want to come here.” He was not talking about coming to America, but to this world. He said, “Krishna asked, ‘I want you to write those books. Come down and write those books.’” Prabhupada said to Krishna, “But I don’t want to go to the material world.” Krishna said, “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of everything. You write those books.” That was the first and only time that I’ve ever heard or read where Prabhupada actually spoke about Krishna speaking to him and how he didn’t want to go. When he spoke in that way the atmosphere was like nothing I’ve ever experienced. I once said to him, “Prabhupada, I am so lusty. My eyes go everywhere.” He said, “Oh that means you are going to go blind.” I said, “Blind to material nature I hope, Prabhupada.” He said, “No, blind.” In 1972, when we flew from Nairobi to Bombay, Shyamasundar prabhu forgot to put Prabhupada’s yellow-fever card in his passport. So when we arrived at the Bombay airport, the officials put Prabhupada in quarantine in a little hospital near the airport. I stayed with him, and the two of us were the only ones there. It was a lovely building with a big screened-in veranda and nice chairs. In the middle of the night Prabhupada would pace up and down the veranda and chant while I slept in the next room. Once, about 3:00 in the morning, I heard him say, “Bhavananda, Bhavananda?” Still half-asleep, I went to him. Prabhupada was furious. He had decided he wanted to go out into the little garden in front of the hospital, but a guard stopped him. He wasn’t allowed out, because they feared that a mosquito would bite him, pick up the yellow fever if he had it, and spread it around. Prabhupada angrily said, “Do something, do something.” What could I do? I was a pipsqueak. Yet he was insisting, “Do something. They have trapped me here. I have never been able to be confined. I cannot stand to be confined. It’s like a bird in a golden cage. It’s a lovely building, but I can’t go outside. Do something, do something.” I was upset that he was disturbed, but there was nothing I could do. I planted a lot of flowers and one or two hundred rose bushes in Mayapur. Then Gurukripa, Yasodanandana, and Gargamuni came to Mayapur from Japan just before the festival. They said, “God, what has he done? He’s planted some rose bushes!” The next day Prabhupada came and was ecstatic. Prabhupada walked around the veranda, looked over our land and said, “This is your success. When I am able to look out from this veranda and see flowers everywhere that is your success.” I told him that some devotees criticized me for planting them, and he replied, “No, you must have flowers. In Goloka, every tree, every plant, everything has flowers on it.” That’s why I object to some of the paintings in the Bhagavatam where they show English forest scenes although it’s supposed to be Goloka. I would tell them, “Prabhupada said that in Goloka there are flowers everywhere, but in your paintings there are no flowers on the trees.” It was so unbelievably hot in Vrindavan that I had a heat stroke and decided to go back to Mayapur. Prabhupada said, “All right, if that’s what you want to do. But who will do your service here?” I said, “Oh, Satadhanya can do it.” Prabhupada said, “That’s fine.” When I was on the plane going back to Mayapur I thought, “What is wrong with me? Why did I leave? The perfection of life is to serve the lotus feet of Prabhupada in Vrindavan. It was so intimate. Why did I leave?” I got to Calcutta and drove out to Mayapur. It was the seventh or eighth of July, and I was sitting in the garden, when suddenly there was a huge brouhaha. Huge numbers of Muslims attacked, and I shot them. We were arrested, and I was in jail for three weeks. I thought, “Oh God, I’ve destroyed Prabhupada’s entire preaching mission in India. What a nightmare.” I had one of my many nervous breakdowns. When Jayapataka saw me, he told me, “Prabhupada said you did the right thing. You were protecting the ashram and protecting the Deity. You absolutely did the right thing.” What a relief. Jayapataka also said, “Prabhupada said that, ‘They were coming to find the old man, and they arrested Bhavananda instead. He was in my place.’” Because when the police came, they ran right by us and went through the whole guesthouse looking for Prabhupada. Of course, he wasn’t there. It was nice that Prabhupada appreciated what I had done. Srila Prabhupada was taking his morning walk on the road in Mayapur when he decided to go to the Ganga. There was a fairly steep embankment on the way there, so I got down on the side of the bank and put my arm up. Prabhupada leaned on my arm, and I helped him down. Then he abruptly pushed my hand away. I was shocked. Prabhupada said, “That is what the Mayavadis do. They take the guru’s help and then reject the guru to become God. That is the Mayavadi.” What I understood was that Mayavadis are not even nice. For them to take someone’s help and then to push that person away means that they don’t have a concept of manners on a transcendental level. Jayapataka and I were in Prabhupada’s room in Calcutta when Prabhupada was trying to decide whether the temple should be called Mayapur Chandradoya Mandir or Chaitanya Chandradoya Mandir. He said, “What do you think?” I said, “Mayapur Chandradoya. I love that name because we want to make Mayapur famous along with Lord Chaitanya. This will popularize the word “Mayapur.” He said, “All right, Mayapur Chandradoya.” In talking about the big temple in Mayapur, Prabhupada said again and again, “I want a big dome.” He’d hold his hand up, “Big dome.” That was in 1976, after he’d been to Washington D.C. and had seen the United States Capitol building. A big dome is so imposing. But no one would listen to me when I repeated Prabhupada’s desire. I felt like Cassandra. Now they don’t have a big dome. I think they have the wrong kind of architecture. I don’t have any real say, but I can state my case, because it’s what Prabhupada told me. Prabhupada instructed me a lot about Mayapur. He wanted escalators. He would say, “Moving stairways. What do you call?” I said, “Escalator.” He said, “Yes, escalator; going up to different levels with the exhibits.” He definitely wanted that also, along with one big dome. And the universe was not such a complicated thing the way he described it. He said, “The universe should be hanging like a chandelier from the middle of the big dome.” All the specifics of what life is like on the hellish and heavenly planets and in Vaikuntha and Goloka should all be in exhibits going up along the inside of the building near the escalators. The main temple itself should be covered by one big dome. That’s what he wanted. During the festival the devotees were having a kirtan in the temple in Mayapur. They sang a tune that lent itself to saying Gadadhar (accent on first syllable). But it was one of those newer melodies. Prabhupada called me in and said, “They are singing Gadadhar (accent on first syllable) but it is Gadadhar (accent on second syllable).” I told everyone, but no one listened to me. They all continued to chant Gadadhar (accent on first syllable) because it was more syncopated for the melody. The melody shouldn’t take precedence over the name. At one point Prabhupada’s wife and daughter were having a lot of difficulty. They were living in her father’s house on Mahatma Gandhi Road, and there were some fratricidal wars. The family was dividing the house in half right through the bathroom. It was crazy, and his wife and daughter were frightened. Prabhupada’s son, Vrindavan Chandra, told Prabhupada what was going on, and Prabhupada called Tamal and me in and asked us to go to Calcutta to speak to his wife and his daughter and to invite them to live peacefully in Mayapur. We asked, “Prabhupada, you’re an internationally famous person. Won’t people criticize you if, as a sannyasi, your wife and daughter are living in the same place you live?” Prabhupada said, “That does not matter. An emergency transcends everything. It transcends all these sannyas things. And this is an emergency.” On the morning walks in Mayapur, Prabhupada would say, “Oh, I want that building there, and do this, and do that.” I would always say, “Prabhupada, where is the money coming from?” It was the only time he ever raised his voice to me, even though he probably should have done it a lot more. He said, “Why you are always worried about money? You do not think Krishna will provide?” Later that morning he called me into his room. Tamal and Gargamuni were there, and he said, “Our Bhavananda (he would always call me ‘our’) is always worrying about money. Now, I want you to see that he never has to worry about money again. Whatever he wants you give him, so he can develop Mayapur.” Prabhupada nailed Tamal and Gargamuni. We started giving out kichari, and then we built that big prasadam hall. Some of Prabhupada’s God-brothers criticized, “On Lord Chaitanya’s Appearance Day you’re supposed to fast, but you feed kichari to the pilgrims.” Prabhupada said, “We’re not eating, we’re fasting. But you can’t expect the pilgrims to fast. If I don’t feed them they’ll go to the tea stall and eat fish. They’re going to eat anyway, so they might as well eat prasadam.” But Prabhupada instructed that they had to eat everything on our land. He didn’t want the village people taking the kichari home, “because,” he said, “they’ll mix it with fish, and nothing will be accomplished.” Prabhupada’s God-brothers were so picky, but Prabhupada never gave in. He always had the correct answer. I was massaging Prabhupada, when Gargamuni Maharaj came in to see him. Prabhupada said, “Have you seen how Bhavananda is keeping a dead man alive? You should watch how he is massaging me. Practically speaking, I should be dead, but he is keeping me alive.” Gargamuni talked about different things with Srila Prabhupada, and he mentioned that they needed me in Mayapur. Then they talked about other things, and Gargamuni Maharaj left. By then I was massaging Prabhupada’s legs. I’m not saying this for my own aggrandizement, but at that time Prabhupada said, “This is the dilemma, whether I should continue to keep you here as my personal servant. Practically speaking, no one has ever served me as you have.” By now I was massaging his feet, and I started to cry because I knew what was coming. He said, “Whether my own bodily service is more important than the preaching, that is my dilemma. But I think you must return to Mayapur.” I was crying as I massaged his feet. I couldn’t help it, but my tears were falling on his feet. I thought, “Whoa, this is really extraordinary. Here I am massaging Prabhupada’s feet with mustard oil and my tears.” I looked up, and Prabhupada was also crying. He said, “No, it must be. You must go back. Mayapur is our preaching.” This is one that really doesn’t make me feel good, but I have to tell you. Late one night, three or four days before Prabhupada passed away, I was sitting on a chair in the room with him. He was resting, and there was a dim light on. At that point Prabhupada wasn’t able to see very clearly. He woke up and said, “Who is there?” I said, “It’s Bhavananda, Prabhupada.” He said, “Oh, Bhavananda. Don’t ever leave me. Stay with me forever.” Now, how do you think that makes me feel? I think about that a lot. It was so extraordinary. “Don’t ever leave me. Stay with me forever.”

To view the entire unedited video go to Memories 18 - Dina Bandhu, Bhavananda, Puskara, Yogesvara

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

Following Srila Prabhupada

Interview DVD 02

Bhavananda: All of this happened, all these three huge ratha carts, all generated out of this little teeny San Francisco center. You really couldn’t call it a temple, it was just a storefront. It was teeny. Imagine the energy, and there was no consideration of yourself. You just never thought about yourself, “Oh, I’m tired,” “Oh, I’m wet,” “Oh, I’m cold.” You just got on with it. You couldn’t disappoint Prabhupada. But I got all the temple presidents to spend $100 each and buy these white gardenias, those big beautiful highly scented gardenias. Each president stepped forward and gave him a huge white gardenia garland, just covered with gardenias. We used to be able to do that – go into an airport and just rock it down. Everything was for Prabhupada. We didn’t know anything else, we didn’t know anyone else. We were like clean slates. He taught us everything. We had no outside influence. Look at that. He’s dancing right in the airport. Why? Because he got a wonderful welcome and the devotees were so enthusiastic. So you reciprocated, and the more you could do for him the more he would reciprocate in kind. I saw this really nice shimmery peach silk satin cloth, but it was actually an upholstery cloth. But it was beautiful, so I wanted that. So I bought that, and I insisted…Madhudvisa was tearing his sikha out…I insisted on buying real pearls. I wanted to make real pearl buttons and a real pearl button on the side…you know, the little strap that goes under his chin on his Prabhupada hat…a real pearl there. So Madhudvisa, mumbling and grumbling, gave me the money. And when Madhudvisa brought the cloth over, Prabhupada looked at it and said, “As you dress me, so I shall dance.” It was wonderful. Devotees were leaving, they were blooping. There were devotees just crying and walking down that road, down to the bottom of the mountain, and just leaving. These were devotees who were totally dedicated to Prabhupada. There’s no other reason for them to be in this movement. There was nothing except Prabhupada. So every devotee that you see in this film, they’re there because of Prabhupada. They’re in the movement because of Prabhupada. No one else, nothing else. And suddenly these men announce to us that Prabhupada has left and is never coming back, we’ve offended him. The mood was chaos.

Interview DVD 04

Bhavananda: This is the beginning of the construction of the first guest house at Mayapur. That was what you call the Lotus building. It was designed in Calcutta by an architect named Mr. Gujarati, who lived on the other side of the pukur from Albert Road. He designed that nice building and showed it to Prabhupada and he said, “Yes, this is a nice building.” He said, “Build it.” And this man, Mr. Gujarati, he had lines in his forehead and Prabhupada said, “Oh, you have natural tilak. It’s a very good sign.” We were still living up front in the straw house. We lived up in that straw house for a long time, even when the Deities were in this temple on the ground floor. That would be the summer because that’s Kalbaishakh season with those big cyclones. It would be so hot, and then these huge black clouds would come up, and then it would just be this heavy downpour, and then you’d have some freshness for a few days. They wanted devotees to come down from Calcutta and Mayapur for a pandal because they had no devotees there. So I took Radha-Madhava from here and that other Lord Chaitanya that Tarun Kanti Ghosh had made for us, and we went down and set up the pandal there. Prabhupada was looking at the Deities and he turned to me and he said, “Is that Radha-Madhava?” I said, “Oh, yes, Prabhupada, we brought Them from Mayapur.” “Anyway,” he said, “you should not take from Mayapur, but what’s done is done. When you take Them back, They are to stay there forever.” At the Radha-Govinda Temple, Prabhupada’s childhood temple in north Calcutta, Prabhupada did a series of lectures in the evening. The Mullik family, which was the family he was related to who owned the temple and one of the great zamindar families of Bengal during the time of the British Raj, they lived across the street and, of course, Prabhupada was raised in their house. They all came to the program. The whole atmosphere…it was like Prabhupada was the grandfather or the great-grandfather, and they were so respectful. The way they came in, their heads were always covered, the way the women bowed down, the men were nicely dressed and standing in the background, and everyone was very attentive to Prabhupada because he was their relative who was now world famous. Prabhupada’s mood at this meeting was very familial, he was very gentle with everyone, it was just like family. There was a very loving side to the whole relationship between him and the Mullik family. And, of course, those Deities, Radha-Govinda, were Prabhupada’s childhood Deities. This was the temple where he played as a child, where he had his Rathayatra Festival, and he worshiped these beautiful Deities that they have there still, Radha-Govinda. They are the Deities that Prabhupada said called him back to India. You know in the ‘60s, he went back to India. He said, “Radha-Govinda have called me back,” and that’s when he started all his major Indian preaching.

Interview DVD 05

Bhavananda: Prabhupada said, “You should distribute prasad, let people know that we are giving out prasad.” And the first time, this was ’72, Prabhas used to cook it and we’d put it in buckets and people came with their little bowls and we had leaf plates, and Prabhupada watched through his window because it was right below his window. “Yes, this is very good, prasadam distribution.” So this was the first Food for Life, so to speak. Now, of course, I was asking someone about the prasadam distribution. They said, “Well, not so many people come anymore because the whole area has become so prosperous due to ISKCON.”

Interview DVD 07

Bhavananda: One day on the veranda outside his room at Mayapur, Prabhupada was saying to us, “You have all been sent by Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Thakur to help me in spreading this mission.” I said, “Srila Prabhupada, how can that be? We were born into the most low kinds of families, raised on meat and all sorts of abominable things. How could we have been sent by Bhaktisiddhanta Thakur?” Prabhupada looked at me and he said, “That was only superficial. When you heard the Holy Name, you immediately came running.” Prabhupada was walking down the road from the Lotus Building to the front gate, and we had planted some banana trees and one of the banana trees was turning yellow. Prabhupada stopped and looked at it, and he looked at me and he said, “When you are head of the ashram, you are responsible for feeding all the residents of the ashram. This tree needs water.” He said, “Plants live on water, that’s their food. So you are responsible not just for the human residents but all the residents.” He said, “You make sure that this tree receives water.”

Interview DVD 09

Bhavananda: I had gone to America to form a little collecting party for Mayapur. So in Los Angeles Prabhupada had arrived from somewhere, and he was up in his quarters. Most of the devotees had gone out on chanting, on sankirtan, and I was staying in a room opposite the temple. I was looking out at the temple and at the dusk with the evening star and I was thinking, “Jeez, I’d like to go up and see Prabhupada, but I don’t want to just burst in on him.” And just as I was thinking that, Upendra came walking out of the temple across the street and he looked up and he saw me and he was waving me to come. I opened the window and he said, “Oh, Prabhupada wants to see you.” So I went up to see Prabhupada, and it was very sweet, very quiet. Prabhupada wanted to know about Mayapur, and we were talking about Mayapur. And he was saying how he used to visit the Caitanya Matha but it was very difficult for him because when he visited the Caitanya Matha, he’d have to stay in the room with all the brahmacaris on a chowki bed and he said, “Their noses were always working.” He said, “This world is a horrible place, but Lord Krishna said to me, ‘You come down and write those books.’ And I said, ‘Oh, I do not want to go there. It is a horrible place.’ And Lord Krishna said, ‘No, no, you come down and write those books. I will take care of everything.’ And I said, ‘No, no, I do not want to go there.’ But He insisted, ‘You come down and write those books. I will take care of everything.’” So he said, “You just see how Krishna has taken care of everything for me.” That was a great revelation, an extraordinary thing that Prabhupada was saying. And I looked at Upendra and he looked at me, and it was just electric, the atmosphere.