Bhagavan das Remembers Srila Prabhupada
Bhagavan: I had just finished all my classes to attend medical school, so I had some free time. My girlfriend Krishna Bhamini at this point started taking a class on the Bhagavad-gita with Rupanuga, who was teaching at the University of Buffalo. She came back one night and said she couldn’t understand a lot of the names in the first chapter, and she asked me to take the class with her to help her understand some of the content. I said, “Okay.” During one of the classes, Rupanuga said, “Prabhupada is coming to speak at the university. Do you want to attend?” I said, “Sure.” Krishna Bhamini and I had recently listened to Richard Alpert (Rama Das) and Timothy Leary, so we were moving in that spiritual direction. Prabhupada had just come to America and his English was laden with Indian pronunciations, so we didn’t really understand anything. We just said, “Okay, we’ll just listen to the sound.” After the lecture we drove to Rupanuga’s house and that’s when we personally met Srila Prabhupada. You could see Prabhupada’s goodness, first of all, as a person, and the world needed more of that. So many people were searching for guidance in the ‘60s to get away from the manipulative, materialistic, ladder-climbing definition of success.
Then we followed Prabhupada to Ohio State University where he spoke with Allen Ginsberg. After that, Rupanuga said, “Well, why don’t you come to New Vrindavan? Prabhupada will be there and you can get initiated and married at the same time.” We happily agreed to his proposal. When I got Prabhupada’s darshan for the first time, I told him I had just been accepted at Wayne State Medical School in Detroit, and I asked him, “What do you think I should do?” He said, “Go, be a doctor.” After the initiation we moved to Detroit and got an apartment near the medical school. Part of our daily activities, outside of my schooling, was to go to the Wayne State campus to chant and play guitar. All of a sudden people started coming and our program became very popular. It became difficult for me to balance both my education and my devotional service on campus. Then one day at medical school they gave us our cadaver to dissect, and I thought, “I can’t talk to this guy. Maybe I will leave this and I’ll just focus on starting a temple.” But that was fifteen years in preparation that I had to renounce. When I was eight years old, I was going to the Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year) service with my father back in Buffalo, and I remember walking with him and wondering, “Does God ever have a female connection?” I didn’t know the appropriate word at eight years old, but what I meant was a conjugal relationship between a man and woman. I always remember wondering about that question as I was growing up. So when Prabhupada presented the philosophy of Radha and Krishna, I said, “Okay, here is the answer I sought after twenty years.” The whole idea of reincarnation and the permanence of the soul connected me pretty quickly to Prabhupada’s movement. At that time we had already established getting up in the morning, doing arati, having class, going out on sankirtan, and distributing Back to Godhead magazines. That was the simple program. Eventually our preaching program expanded to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where there was a whole group of LSD hippies that we turned into devotees. Everything started progressing from there to the point where it got big enough that Prabhupada wanted to visit us in Detroit. We were at the airport to greet Prabhupada and there were hundreds of devotees that came. When Prabhupada entered the airport, everyone was just so intense. I think that was the first time I ever cried. It was a universal feeling of excitement there, and he was extremely happy with the reception. But then when we got outside to have him picked up, the car we had arranged to drive him to the temple was late. Prabhupada waited a few minutes and he didn’t like that. In general he didn’t like waiting for anything. He said, “I’ll just take a taxi.” Then right at the last minute the car came. But it taught us a lesson that he valued time. Later, as he would speak, he impressed upon the devotees that his time was limited here. He didn’t like the waste of material and he didn’t like the waste of time. I think he stressed with most of us not to waste facility, not to waste funds, not to waste food, not to waste time, but to have a quick learning curve on many subjects. Otherwise, he would be there at some point in the learning curve to make sure that it didn’t peak, but rather flattened out so that we could learn the lessons as quickly as possible. On this visit Prabhupada stayed at the house of an Indian member. One gentleman of the Indian community gave us a set of Bhagavatams in Bengali that I gave to Prabhupada, and those were the ones that he used in his translation work. Somehow or other I was an instrument in getting him those books that he used to translate the Bhagavatam into English. I didn’t realize at the time what the extent of our involvement with Prabhupada’s books would be because we didn’t really have that many books at the time. He stayed for a day or so and then I think he went on to New Vrindavan or Chicago. Nara Narayana and I decided the Detroit temple would have Jagannatha Deities. Prabhupada would always teach us that Krishna is everywhere. With that in mind, we ended up going to a junkyard, finding three rail road ties, and carrying them back to the temple. Then Nara Narayana carved the Jagannatha Deities out of that lumber and it was like Krishna was manifesting out of the column. Prabhupada loved those Deities. He would explain that Krishna is within every molecule and every atom as the Supersoul, so consciousness is within everything. Krishna manifests from the elements in the form of the Deity when the spiritual master appeals to the Lord to reveal Himself. He used the example of the authorized mailbox in that if you put your letter in an authorized mailbox, not just any box, you could expect the letter to reach its destination. He would explain the Goswamis’ relationship with their Deities and how the Deity would speak with them, how the Deity would move, how the Deity would walk with them. The Western mind may have difficulty grasping this concept. But when Prabhupada described the Deity, backed with Vedic knowledge and ancient histories, it was not that difficult for everyone to accept it. Prabhupada was seeing the movement starting to expand and that was one of his great pleasures—seeing the movement expand, seeing books being distributed, and seeing devotees working together, which was rather unique for people of such diverse backgrounds. Prabhupada instilled a high level of bipartisanship wherein you don’t define yourself by divisions; you define yourself by some common understanding. Prabhupada brought a unification that was important at that time. That was one of his important gifts. Especially today you can see the whole world is divided. It was a very unique experience for all of us to be with Prabhupada those eleven years and feel the unity of all countries. That was Bhaktivinode Thakura’s vision—that all countries would be united under one banner. Srila Prabhupada made that happen by bringing together all colors, all races, all nationalities so that everything was focused on making the world a better place through Krishna consciousness. One day we came back from sankirtan after a hot day in Detroit. We were all sweaty and beat. I was upstairs taking a shower, and a devotee knocked on the door and said, “Srila Prabhupada’s on the phone.” I thought I didn’t hear him right. I asked, “What do you mean?” He said, “No, you need to come.” So I wrapped a gumcha around myself and went downstairs. Again I asked, “What do you mean?” He said, “Prabhupada’s on the phone.” I picked up the phone. He said, “Bhagavan das?” I said, “Yes Prabhupada. What can I do for you? How am I supposed to serve you?” I was shocked really. He said, “Oh! There are many things that you will do, but right now you are supposed to come here. I am trying to form a reorganization of our society and you need to be here.” I said, “Okay, I’ll come as soon as I can.” I called Rupanuga and said, “I just got a call from Prabhupada.” He said, “Me too.” I said, “What’s this about?” He said, “I don’t know.” We met Prabhupada in Los Angeles where he told us, “I want to make a Governing Body Commission like my Guru Maharaj formed, and I want you to participate in that.” Karandhar was also part of the meeting and he was an extremely intelligent person. He was another one who impressed me and I realized how intelligent all the devotees were. So that meeting was the beginning of the organizational entity we now call the Governing Body Commission as desired by Srila Prabhupada. At the same time there was something going on that taught us a lesson about detail. There were a series of events taking place that more and more gave Prabhupada the feeling that he was being minimized. One day he went to his quarters and the girl who was cleaning his rooms had turned his picture upside down. He walked in and was shocked. Then Prabhupada went down to the temple room and someone had put salt in the caranamrita. Then we went back to his room and a devotee had asked him how come he had never responded to his letter? He called in Gargamuni and the other temple leaders and asked, “Why haven’t I received this letter?” He found out that the temple authorities were going through his mail and selecting things that they thought Prabhupada should and should not see. We were witnessing all these things, but we weren’t that detail oriented or advanced in our consciousness at the time to realize the seriousness of these actions. The issue at hand originally started when Prabhupada sent Achyutananda to India. Achyutananda had written back to some of his god-brothers that in India some of Prabhupada’s god-brothers didn’t like that he was being called “Prabhupada” by us, his disciples. They thought that title was reserved only for Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati. Then Prabhupada said, “This is why I wanted you separate from my god-brothers because there is a lot of envy.” Well, we really weren’t used to the word envy. We then thought, “Who are these guys in India? What does this have to do with us?” Prabhupada thought that through Achyutananda’s letter the poison had entered, and it seeped through to other people that were in management at the time, to diminish his stature. Then one book was printed in New York where his full name did not appear and his title as the “Founder-Acharya of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness” was totally eliminated. Prabhupada stopped his translation work because he felt that the movement at this stage had received a coronavirus to the heart. He was just beside himself figuring out what to do. He decided that he had to get away. So he called us in to say, “You are the GBC. You manage.” Then on top of everything, when his secretary at the time who was filling out the immigration form, asked Prabhupada, “Have you ever committed any criminal activity?” Prabhupada looked at me and said, “What did he just ask me?” He looked at me and said, “See the poison is everywhere. Everywhere.” And he said, “I have to leave right away.” When Krishna does one thing, many things are done at the same time. You can’t always see all the layers. Prabhupada had always been thinking about going back to India and getting people trained in India to come back to America and Americans to go to India, so he used this as a reason to start the whole India yatra. Prabhupada had talked about having a daily ISKCON newspaper. So we went and bought a printing press and we started putting things together in the basement at the Detroit temple. I told Prabhupada, “We are trying to do a newspaper like you said.” He said, “Oh! I see you like printing.” Then he said, “We are having some difficulty in France with the books, so it’s time for you to change location. You go over and be the GBC in Europe now.” After establishing a center in Paris, we invited Srila Prabhupada to come and bless us and the citizens of France with his presence and wisdom. We arranged for him to speak at the Salle Pleyel, which is a concert hall that seats over two thousand people. All the devotees from Europe came, as well a large segment of the locals, including quite a number of communists. We put up a big vyasasan on the stage and received some negative feedback from the crowd. One of the rebellious communists yelled out, “Why are you sitting on the throne? Why are they bowing to you?” Prabhupada responded, “When you know the science of God as well as I do, then you can sit up here and they can bow to you.” The guy immediately sat back down and the crowd remained silent for the rest of Prabhupada’s lecture. Afterwards Prabhupada said, “Maybe in these big meetings I’ll just sit on a mat because they can’t understand all this.” It was interesting, however, to watch him remain undisturbed. He said, “A Vaishnava is like the ocean. It may get ruffled on the top layer with big waves but underneath stays calm.” Prabhupada knew Westerners are easily agitated and ready for the fight, so he taught us that lesson. I had sent Narottamananda, my friend from college, to India to buy beautiful Deities that Prabhupada installed. For the installation ceremony Pradyumna made all the bathing paraphernalia and he used giant bowls for all the bathing substances. From the vyasasan, Prabhupada said, “Why did you make such a giant amount? That’s unnecessary. Just make a little. What are we going to do with all of this?” It got back to that issue of how Prabhupada did not like waste. Everything was a lesson. One part of the lecture had a light side, however. Prabhupada said, “We are calling the Deities Radha-Parisisvara. Paris and French girls are the most beautiful in the world. So Krishna has come to get some French girls.” Prabhupada had a good sense of humor. We were able to go on morning walks with Srila Prabhupada while he was with us in Paris. There was a nice park nearby the temple, but we also lived in an area where there were the upper end prostitutes. So whenever we’d go on the morning walk, they would also be around. Prabhupada would thus always tell the story of Haridas Thakura and how the prostitute tried to entice him, and his response was, “I will be with you as soon as I finish my rounds.” Srila Prabhupada would always use his surroundings for preaching opportunities. The first time I remember being chastised by Prabhupada was when I walked into his room in Bombay to ask for a loan to buy the New Mayapur temple in France. He asked me why I didn’t know that the building materials at the temple there in Bombay were being eaten by termites. And it wasn’t casual. He was very serious as he said, “You came all this way and you didn’t notice that the contractor is giving us bad lumber?” It was a chastisement. The lesson was that if you work for Prabhupada you are supposed to be a detailed person. At one point he said, “The best student is the one who doesn’t need to ask a question but just knows what to do. The next best is he who asks a question so he knows what to do. In last place is the person who thinks he knows what to do but doesn’t really know what to do and makes a mess of everything.” He was concerned that everybody should be as concerned as he was about everything. Prabhupada, of course, saw everything as Krishna’s energy, so nothing should be wasted or misused. When he went into the temple bathrooms in Mayapur and he saw they were being misused and unclean, he would get upset. He wanted perfection in the sense that he wanted everybody to pay attention. He didn’t want sleepers. The point is that he was involved in the temples in Vrindavan and Mayapur, unlike in America where he let us get rented buildings. The temples in India were his personal properties, and he taught everybody how to be detailed down to the paisa, which is a fraction of a cent. The morning walks in India were not like the fun morning walks that you go on where everybody would compete to be up front. Everybody on the morning walks in India was competing to go to the back of the group of devotees. Prabhupada would look over all the accounting books and then he would find discrepancies of dollars. Sometimes it was discrepancies of paisa, and he would call the bookkeeper up front, he would call the GBC up front, and he would call everybody and say, “Why don’t the books balance?” It was to that degree that he cared for everything because he knew how hard the devotees in America were working to collect money for the building projects. He felt that he had to protect their service and not let anything get wasted. So he never let us take taxis. We always had to take the bus or the train. Even when devotees got a donation from their parents, he wouldn’t let them spend it on taxis or fly to any place. We had to take the trains. He taught the principle that caring means frugality. Actually he said at that time, “Attention to detail is the sign that you care, and if you are not attentive to detail, your work doesn’t mean anything to you.” Well, for Krishna everything has meaning. There is nothing that happens that’s not supposed to happen or is without meaning. So in doing these bookkeeping details and buying raw materials and accounting for everything, he was teaching us that everything has a purpose, and Krishna sees everything and so does Prabhupada. What I learned by being with Prabhupada was that whatever you focus on, that ends up manifesting. Whenever Prabhupada needed something and he focused on it, we would find that it happened. That was particularly true when it came to personnel. I saw when Prabhupada got the land to build his magnificent temples, all of a sudden Surabhi Maharaj appeared out of the blue. He was a brilliant architect who was just starting to come into his element when he met Prabhupada. Prabhupada pushed him to design the Bombay and Vrindavan temples. For me, to watch him was like watching Krishna or Prabhupada. It gave me faith in the process to see that there is a controller behind everything, and that controller is moving souls to be at the right place at the right time. That was always amazing to me—to see how these devotees would appear in Prabhupada’s life to execute his vision. Prabhupada wanted friendship among the devotees. He stressed many times that in Krishna consciousness, unlike in material life, you don’t get ahead by putting someone else down. You don’t think you are more by making someone less. He liked the idea of cooperation and friendship. One time he saw Nara Narayana prabhu and me hugging, and he said, “That’s the way it should be—embracing, not fighting.” But, of course, that’s the ideal. Prabhupada went to Switzerland even though he must have had the foresight to understand what was going on. It was suggested to Prabhupada, “Why don’t you go to Switzerland for vacation? It’s beautiful there.” However, when Prabhupada got there, it was freezing. He went up to his room and it was cold there as well. He complained that he was like a prisoner. And then they couldn’t find anything for him to eat. He was cold and he was hungry. Then he said, “Well, Bhagavan must be in France, so have him come.” There are two parts to this story. One, he hadn’t eaten. So I had the devotees prepare a huge feast that we carried on the airplane. When we arrived at night time, Prabhupada got up out of bed happy to see us. I said, “Prabhupada, we brought you some prasadam.” He got up and just ate like he hadn’t eaten in a week. [laughs] The other part of the story was that the two GBCs had taken money from the book fund or the temple fund that had been allocated to purchase properties, and instead they decided that they were going to invest the money in the gold market. Tens of thousands of dollars went into the Swiss Bank to purchase gold. When Prabhupada found out about this, he was upset. “How do you know it’s going to go up? What if it goes down? This is gambling.” “Oh, Prabhupada! This is for sure. Gold is going up…” and this and that. I was there to reinforce the fact that they needed to go back to the bank, sell the gold, get their money back with no loss, and use it for the purpose for which it was originally intended. Prabhupada always reined everybody in because he thought Westerners were pretty independent minded compared to the Indians who would act in a more cautious manner. Americans acted like it was the wild, wild west—“We are going to do this!” In the end Srila Prabhupada got out of Switzerland and flew back to New York. He got to eat and he got to get his money back. [chuckles] When Kishori dasi told Prabhupada about the teachers being abusive to the children, he was obviously upset with that. He told her that the parents were the best to raise the children. There was the theory that the best way for a child to learn to love Krishna is to send that child to gurukula. He saw the potential that the teachers could represent the parents. Prabhupada was looking at the ideal, but then there was the reality. The reality was that we had teachers who were not yet fully trained to be devotees nor were they necessarily trained to be teachers. That’s when he said, “Parents are the best to keep the children.” But there were so many kids coming in and there was no facility to teach them. The parents were reluctant to send them to public school, but our schools were not really ready at that time either. That was a learning experience, which unfortunately caused a lot of pain to a lot of people that are still recovering from it. The lesson is that when you assign someone a service, you cannot mistake their potential for their current level of proficiency. Children are not something that should be experimented with. If parents or teachers don’t know what to do, there are alternatives to the gurukula. Children could stay with the grandparents or they could go to educational school. And devotees could be trained to be first-class teachers. But in ISKCON everything was coming so fast and furious—build the temple, print books, teach children, meet politicians. It was just a lot all at once. Prabhupada knew that his time was limited, and as it turned out, he was here only eleven years. That’s not a long time to try to do what he did. He had the entire vision in his mind from the very beginning. He knew exactly what he wanted to get done, so he would try to put everyone who came his way into a position. He didn’t wait for everybody to be perfect. “If you can take the responsibility, take it and run with it.” That was how he had to deal with his movement. Prabhupada entrusted Rupanuga, Karandhar and me to be the original BBT trustees. He insisted that he didn’t want changes to his books, and if there were to be any changes made, they had to go through him. In an unusual move, however, he let me design the European books the way I wanted, which was different from the way he typically designed his books. He just gave me that facility. Regarding the editing, since I was an editor for parts of Krishna Book, I can speak from experience that Prabhupada just wanted the books edited so that when they were read they sounded like English, not like Indian English. That was the point. He wanted the English to flow. He wanted the sentence structure to be proper. People misheard things on the tapes and they typed things incorrectly. He didn’t want English mistakes in his books. On the other hand, he didn’t want editing beyond proper English, except when there were obvious mistakes, like “planet of the trees” instead of “planet of the forefathers.” But it was difficult to edit according to Prabhupada’s wishes even when Prabhupada was present. But especially after Prabhupada left the planet, making changes is difficult because every devotee is on the lookout for changes. Questions surrounding editing of Prabhupada’s books still have not been dealt with. Is the editing just to make the English better? Or are ideas being presented in a sentence that were not even there in the original? Prabhupada gave us some guidance on this subject when he explained how the Goswamis handled a similar situation. When they wrote a book, even if there was some minor mistake, they just left it alone and the reader had to figure it out. In translating the books into foreign languages, there are always going to be some differences, especially languages like Canadian French and French, South American Spanish and Spanish in Spain. Prabhupada would give the editor leeway in that regard, and the editor had to translate based on an understanding of Prabhupada’s intent. That’s why it’s so important that the English translation and editing be faithful to Prabhupada’s original intent because everything else comes from that. It’s a very sensitive issue not to over edit or under edit. Prabhupada’s main concern was that his books sounded correct to a scholar. He didn’t need us to get into his thought process and add to it or subtract from it. He just wanted his books to be grammatically correct English. Prabhupada once commented, “Krishna consciousness is simple for the simple and complicated for the crooked.” It’s better to err on the part of simplicity without thinking that we need to dig deeper and go beyond what’s right in front of us. Bhaktivinode Thakura once said, “Man’s glory is in common sense.” Common sense was a good aspect of Krishna consciousness. Science basically has become, for the most part, atheistic. Prabhupada wanted the Bhaktivedanta Institute to show that behind everything is the superior intelligence. Sadaputa prabhu, from the Bhaktivedanta Institute, created that beautiful theory that you can’t get more by starting with less. You have to have more knowledge, or the field of knowledge has to be complete, and from that comes everything else. Mathematically he was showing that greatness has to pre-exist for everything else to happen. The complete information has to exist so that it comes down in different forms of information. Srila Prabhupada was extremely proud of his scientist devotees. Prabhupada saw Mayapur as a chance for all the international devotees to come together and appreciate that they were born out of a dream of Bhaktivinode Thakura. Prabhupada’s vision was to make the dream of Bhaktivinode Thakura a reality, that people of all nationalities and races would come together in one place. Prabhupada got to see that vision fulfilled during the festivals. He received immense satisfaction in the understanding that we were born out of a dream—just like Vishnu sits on the ocean and dreams the creation and from that everything manifests. The dream of a powerful person is the subtle form of its manifestation. So Mayapur manifested and the temple manifested and devotees from all over the world manifested. It was the way that Prabhupada wanted to keep things from breaking down into partisanship: “My temple.” “Your temple.” He wanted Mayapur and Vrindavan to be everyone’s temple so that everybody would participate financially and intellectually, united in a common purpose in Mayapur. He understood that people are different, and they are going to adhere to their differences and think that one difference is better than another. Mayapur was a way that the differences would be flattened and everybody could realize their commonality. Prabhupada saw the failure of religion as the inability to nail down what we have in common. Whether it’s the Hindus or the Christians or the Muslims or whatever—they just saw the differences between the religions. Prabhupada used to say, “You can call the sun whatever name you want; it’s still the sun.” Today everybody is looking at the differences and it’s getting ugly because religion has failed. One of Srila Prabhupada’s final instructions to us was that we would show our love for him by how well we cooperated with one another. However, sometimes we forget that instruction and end up with disputes within our society, such as trademark infringements, how to take initiation and from whom, who actually holds the copyrights to Prabhupada’s books, and who actually owns the temple properties. Devotees are still fighting in court today to the tune of multi-million dollars over these issues. Prabhupada often stated, “I am ISKCON,” so basically devotees are using Prabhupada’s money to fund these disputes. Prabhupada told the story of the disciple that put on a big birthday party for his guru. It was very elaborate and the guru said, “How did you do this?” The disciple said, “It’s all your mercy.” By saying “all your mercy,” it meant he was taking money from the merciful bank account of his guru. Prabhupada always saw funds as laksmi. It wasn’t meant to be given to lawyers, who were not devotees, to do the work the devotees were supposed to be doing. He would be like Lord Nrsimhadeva, and whoever was spending money without his authorization, he would bifurcate them. That’s why he wanted to create his will, another way to ensure commonality. Prabhupada, when preaching to his guests, especially religious leaders, would always try to see the commonality of things. Quite often Prabhupada would ask, “Do you believe that you shouldn’t kill?” They would almost always respond, “I agree you shouldn’t kill.” Then Prabhupada would jump right in and ask, “Then why do you kill?” They would become confused and say, “Well, we don’t.” This happened in France when Prabhupada met with Cardinal Danielou. Prabhupada and the Cardinal would argue back and forth about whether the word killing applied to animals as well as humans. Prabhupada tried to bring him into agreement, but at this time, at least, he wasn’t successful in convincing the Cardinal. Prabhupada, however, tried to ensure at least for all his disciples to imbibe a commonality of understanding. He did that through his books and through his projects. He wanted everybody to see that they were doing it for him, but he was doing it for us. Prabhupada had a deep regret and disappointment that his god-brothers didn’t really understand Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati’s vision and mood to get together to help him by forming a GBC and going out to preach. So Prabhupada tried to work with them within India. But he was affected by the fact that immediately after Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati’s disappearance, they all went their own way, claiming their turf and starting legal battles. As an example, Tirtha Maharaj was training up his son to become a lawyer with the idea to gain control of land and property. Prabhupada had the attitude about his god-brothers that they were good at breaking things, but they were not good at creating things. That was his experience. So Srila Prabhupada decided at some point and I’m paraphrasing, “This is over and I am getting out of here.” He said, “One of my god-brothers went to London and he failed, so maybe I will go to America and maybe fail some place new.” He was a little humorous about it. One time we were outside Prabhupada’s door and he was having a shouting match with one of his god-brothers. They were talking about Prabhupada’s way of doing things—either about engaging women in Deity worship or using the “Prabhupada” title—but they were yelling. Then Prabhupada came out and he said to us, “I can do this, but you cannot ever criticize my god-brothers.” It was interesting how Prabhupada wanted the GBC meetings to be run and how resolutions were decided. In the beginning it was very simple. We would meet, we would make resolutions, we would take them to Prabhupada, he would reject about fifty percent of them, and then he made us redo everything. [laughs] He didn’t want the meetings to be like a prolonged corporate meeting. Prabhupada didn’t favor having many GBCs because he preferred unanimity on issues and then he would just put the dot on the i. Sometimes he would criticize, “Why are you meeting forever? Just make it simple; get to the point; it is not that complicated.” Consensus becomes complicated with power issues. Power issues have to do with manpower, money and land. So when people’s security and position become affected by resolutions, it becomes like any government, and that happened even within Prabhupada’s presence, what to speak of how hard it was after he left. We heard that Prabhupada wasn’t feeling well so he was going to skip coming to New Mayapur. That stressed out everybody. I said, “Okay, let me go see what I can do. I’ll go see Prabhupada in London and see what happens.” When I arrived, Prabhupada was in his room. He was happy to see me, but he said he wasn’t feeling well. I said, “Prabhupada, it’s really warm in France now. You won’t have any problem with the cold.” He uttered, “Hmm.” I said, “Well, we have all the printing there.” “Hmm.” “We are growing our crops.” “Hmm.” And then I said, “I have an elevator right to your room so you won’t have to walk.” He said, “That’s very nice! See, Bhagavan is the supreme controller. I will go.” [chuckles] So that was historic. During his arrival lecture he said, “If I had not come here, I would have missed a great thing.” That made all the devotees really happy. During Prabhupada’s final months he went to Rishikesh, and then he got sicker there, and then he went to Vrindavan. He went to Bombay to see how that was and then he came back to Vrindavan. It all shows a very important point. Prabhupada wanted to see Bombay established and the Deities installed. He got to see Vrindavan happen and the Deities installed after many disappointments. We got to see how Prabhupada handled frustration and disappointment. We also got to see that no matter how hard we try in life we may not complete our task. His main task was to finish the Tenth Canto of the Srimad-Bhagavatam, and he worked his whole life to that end. Perhaps he would have done it if he hadn’t given us other books, but he felt those books were also important, and that’s why he did the Krishna Book, in case he didn’t live long enough to finish the Tenth Canto. In the end he tried his utmost. He showed us that whatever our task was, we should give it everything we could until our last breath. Not just figuratively, but in reality, he was on his bed, with his last breath, translating the Tenth Canto. But he didn’t get to complete that. And he didn’t get to see the opening of Bombay for which he fought so hard. He got to see his rooms a little bit. He didn’t get to experience the culmination of the great fight that he went through to get the property and to see the final result of the beautiful temple complex in Juhu. That was a valuable lesson for devotees to learn—don’t judge your success by whether you complete the task, but by how you tried with the right intent to do it. We got a chance to see a person who was empowered to do something special. Every devotee who was there during Prabhupada’s lifetime got to see and experience his potency. I don’t know how it is today, how people understand who Prabhupada was and is. As generation after generation comes and goes, sometimes it gets a little dimmer. The books are there of course. Unlike the life of Jesus, we have videos, movies, and we can see everything. But to be there with him in the struggles and in the challenges was a whole other world. To see how he dealt with success, how he dealt with challenges and misfortune, and the pain that he went through on behalf of Krishna was just part of that first generation’s enlightenment. When Prabhupada would see someone leave, he felt great regret and sorrow, hoping that person would come back to continue his or her spiritual path. When he wanted the temple in Bombay and they were trying to cheat us and attack the Deities and break the temple down, with great determination he felt anger and frustration on Krishna’s behalf. Imagine his emotions when the devotees in Mayapur got attacked by the Muslims and they broke the hands of the devotees and they practically raped one of our ladies. Bhavananda had to take a shotgun out and shoot and subsequently was arrested. And Prabhupada, up to his last breath, was having to deal with all of this, and he was showing us that no matter what our situation is, Krishna is going to test us. You don’t get to be one hundred percent peaceful here. That’s not the game that we signed up for. Srila Prabhupada was always selfless. He never did anything for his own aggrandizement. He was always wanting to give, and when it appeared that he was receiving something, it was more to teach us the principles of humility, how to inquire, and how to keep our egos in check. He was overflowing with knowledge and vision. Although you lived a lot for his smile and his approval, you knew when he was chastising you that it wasn’t to hurt you and it wasn’t to penetrate your faith. He was pretty strong, and a lot of times it shook some devotees because you felt the full weight of your actions. You learned that what you do affects not just you or not just him, but what you do can have ramifications for everything. So we all knew that. We all learned that lesson one way or another. But the most striking feature that I saw in Srila Prabhupada was that he was always absorbed in Krishna consciousness. He always thought of Krishna. He several times mentioned how there was never a time that he didn’t think of Krishna. Because he was a self-realized person and full of Krishna bhakti, he was like a ripened fruit where at every moment you could touch Prabhupada and Krishna would come out. |
To view the entire unedited video go to Memories 80 - Bhagavan
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