Shyamananda das Remembers Srila Prabhupada

Following Srila Prabhupada

Interview DVD 08

Shyamananda: The first time I met Srila Prabhupada, I met him in Burnett Street. Upendra asked me up to go and see him. I sat down after offering my obeisances, and Srila Prabhupada looked straight at me and said, “So you’ve had doubts?” And I hadn’t said a word. So it was obvious straight away that I was in the presence of someone quite extraordinary because I did have doubts and I hadn’t expressed them. I said, “Yes, Srila Prabhupada. I really like to chant but I have a lot of trouble with the Hindu mythology, with people with four heads flying around on swans,” was exactly what I said. He sat back and put his hand back behind his head, played with his sikha and sort of looked up. Then he looked back at me and he said, “So don’t worry about that. Just chant and everything will be fine.” So that was the first instruction he ever gave me. I took that very seriously, and I started chanting 32 rounds a day and I took it on board as best I could. Then from that point, the next time I saw him was in Sydney. Someone had told him I was an artist and he said, “So you are an artist?” I said, “Yes, Srila Prabhupada, I’m a painter.” He said, “Could you design a temple?” I was young so I said, “Yes.” So he got me to come around his desk and sit right next to him. So I sat down next to him, and everyone was askance. They were all quite taken aback. And so was I, I was trembling. I remember everything was trembling. He took out all these small black and white photographs of Vrindavan and particularly the temple where he lived, the Radha-Damodar temple, and showed me the photographs, and he asked me to design a temple for Vrindavan. He gave me this whole…there must have been 50 photographs. So what happened is I went away and designed a temple, but I didn’t stick to the Radha-Damodar format that he gave me and I designed something far too modern. In the end, I produced a huge architectural model and everything, none of which I’d ever done before, so it was really quite wonderful because I was only 22. But he was very kind through the whole process and very supportive. And he did mention that when you do something with the mood of service, it’s not necessary that it be carried out for the service to reach fruition because the actual engagement in that mood was the thing that mattered. So he was very encouraging. One of the nicest engagements I remember was when we went to Tarrawarra Abbey. It was a Trappist monastery up in Yarra Glen up the back of Melbourne, and those monks were in silence up until the end of the ’60s. So they were very strict vegetarian. At the Franciscan monastery, Prabhupada spoke quite pointedly about not killing, which he tended to do around Christian people because “thou shalt not kill” was the point at which he would enter the engagement with them. But at Tarrawarra he didn’t. He spoke in a much more relaxed manner, and I never saw him so comfortable among men that weren’t actually devotees. There was a point in the evening where he was sitting on a couch and the monks were sitting around him, and he actually had his arm over the back of the couch around one of the monks’ shoulders virtually and he was sitting up. When Srila Prabhupada was relaxed, he was extremely relaxed; but he had a very regal bearing. And like anyone who has a great regal bearing, when they relax it’s extremely attractive because it’s intimate, it’s not something that you’d normally get to see. Prabhupada’s bearing in public was impeccable, and I very rarely saw him let that go and just relax. I also saw in that moment how Srila Prabhupada was not sectarian. It was always about the principles. If the principles were being applied and lived, then he would embrace that in whatever form that took; and he had a remarkable way of speaking to that part of everybody. When you read the qualifications of a Vaisnava – always respectful to others – and you read those things and those words, you can take them superficially or you can take them very deeply. And in moments like that, I got to see very deeply what something like that really meant – the profound respect for the sincerity of those souls. And these monks put on such a feast for us and they went to so much trouble, and he was so happy to see that and just to be amongst men who were trying to love God and were following some rules and regulations. I could see that he felt a degree of comfort and affinity that I never witnessed before or since. It was absolutely wonderful. There was a time when I dressed the Deities. I dressed Them very much in the mood of those Kangra paintings from India, the very simple paintings where the actual lila is very strong in the painting. They’re not very realistic in the way a Western person would think, but I find them much more realistic in terms of the mood. So I remember there was a lot of very delicate white flowers dancing around, and Krishna had this big turban. A photograph got sent to Srila Prabhupada and when he saw it he said, “Whoever dressed these Deities was directly inspired by Krishna.” So Krishna was very kind to me because I had no qualification at all. I still don’t. I had no understanding. There were a lot of much more serious people around that had a much deeper grasp of what was going on than I had. But Krishna was very, very kind, and Srila Prabhupada always made sure that that knowledge was passed on to me one way or another so that the encouragement and the support was very clear. So when we got to the Melbourne temple, it was very much that way as well. He was very pleased here. That’s one thing I think should be said very clearly. He publicly praised Madhudvisa Swami in particular for the effort he had put in, and it was a wonderful thing to see because he didn’t often give praise openly in public like that. That wasn’t a common thing. At that time, Madhudvisa, he did a lot to consolidate the chanting of the Maha-mantra in Melbourne. Like all of us, there’s times when we can serve very well and then there’s times when it’s not so easy, and I’m sure there’s been a fair degree of difficulty along the way. But certainly during that period he was able to inspire so many people, and Srila Prabhupada was visibly pleased with that. The movement has had a lot of ups and downs and devotees have come and gone and life goes on, and yet that paradox exists. The people that were touched by Srila Prabhupada, you’ve only got to scratch the surface and you can see that they’re still touched. And that’s continued for decades after Srila Prabhupada has left this world. When Prabhupada touched us most deeply and spoke to the heart and soul of a person, the self, and awakens that awareness of what the self is and what its function is and what its goal is in this world, those things have never diminished over time. They actually, if anything, gain clarity and the taste deepens and sweetens with age. It’s not constrained by a historic dynamic. Certainly history was made, there’s no question about that. But the real history that was made was the way Srila Prabhupada touched such a remarkably diverse range of people and held them the way he did.

Interview DVD 11

Shyamananda: There’s two things that Srila Prabhupada gave me. One was personal association, and the other was some attachment for Vrindavan for whatever reason. Upendra got in touch with me when Prabhupada was in Vrindavan and was starting to become very sick and it became very clear he was going to leave soon, and I actually went to Vrindavan and spent time with him there. That was the first time I ever went to India. And courtesy of Tamal Krishna, I got to spend a lot of time with Srila Prabhupada personally, and I was able to do little things to help. That was a remarkable time. There was one moment in particular which stands out and has always remained with me, that normally Srila Prabhupada would give instruction in a very straightforward way by speaking to you. But by now he was very, very sick, and he actually had to be picked up and rolled over in bed and carried because he was getting ready to leave. And I’ll never forget this. We were on the roof of his apartment in Vrindavan, and my job was to burn…we had a pot of…I’m not quite sure what it was, but I was burning it to keep the mosquitoes away. There were peacocks cawing in the background and the smells of Vrindavan and the feeling of the air and the weight of warmth that the air in India has. I was sitting at Srila Prabhupada’s feet looking along his body at him, and I had a moment, I guess a cathartic moment. I didn’t speak outwardly, but I spoke very clearly in my heart and I said, “Srila Prabhupada, what am I doing here? Why am I here? Who are you?” And he sat up by himself, and he couldn’t do that at that point. And for 10 minutes or more, a long time, he just looked at me and he spoke without speaking, and I heard his voice inside my heart. And he told me exactly what I was doing, why I was there, who he was and what was happening. And when he had finished, he lay back down as if nothing had happened and again had to be moved and rolled over. That was the last instruction he gave me, and it was like nothing I ever saw with Srila Prabhupada in all the time I was with him. It was honestly mystical beyond measure. There was no way you could describe that as a normal interaction with anybody. It was profoundly intuitive, and he defied all material logic by sitting up and doing what he did. And he sat bolt upright, straight, and stared and didn’t stop staring while he spoke without speaking like that. And it was very clear, very basic, there was nothing odd or nothing mixed up with the madness of my mind in there. It was lucid. You are the eternal servant of Krishna, and Srila Prabhupada was nondifferent to Vrindavan. There was no point of distinction between Srila Prabhupada’s mood, his motive, and what Vrindavan was. They were the same thing. Everything made sense then. Seeing Srila Prabhupada in Vrindavan was the most amazing thing. I’ll spend many lifetimes coming to grips with that, I’m sure.