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.”
