Achyutananda das Remembers Srila Prabhupada

Prabhupada Memories

Interview 01

Achyutananda: There were many swamis who came through New York in the 1950s and ‘60s. Some of them were celebrity gurus, some were yogis, but they were all mayavadis. They were clever but didn’t explain the entire nature of the Indian culture at all. They’re what’s called “pancha-pasaka”. They believe bhakti is only an artificial practice that you do until you merge. At that time there were also some Buddhists. I remember one Buddhist came through and there were macrobiotic restaurants, and this Buddhist said, “I eat everything. What do you mean ‘Zen’ food?” So there were a lot of phonies and they had the “squinty” eyes. A lot of people went for that. There was Dr. Mishra whose book my father read. In my house we did yoga. We had several Bhagavad-gitas but they were all interpreted in the mayavad way. The best one was from the Theosophical Society that had a picture of an abbreviated Universal form of Krishna. The verse said, “I hold all these worlds like pearls on a thread with a fraction of Myself”, or something to that nature from the ninth chapter. At that time we were experimenting with drugs. Some people were just partying with drugs but many were using them because the symptoms of the drug were similar to the external symptoms of a liberated soul. You see things as equal. You have universal consciousness, cosmic consciousness. These were things we were trying to achieve and we all thought that if you meditate long enough, then “Bing”, the light goes on and you walk around with a “high”. We visited several swamis like the Rama-Krishna mission on 72nd Street. So people had many crazy ideas. We had no direction. None of the yogis gave any sadhana. They ate meat. Swami Nickleananda also translated the Gita but he smoked cigarettes. They all had the attitude, “Yatamat-tatapat”. In other words, “Do whatever you want.” Then someone told me there was a swami on 2nd Avenue chanting “Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare. I said, “I never heard of that”, but I went one night to the 26 2nd Avenue storefront and I peeked in. I asked a couple standing next to me, “Is this 26 2nd Avenue?” They said, “Pilgrim, your search has ended.” It was a sign. I went in and everyone was chanting. I sat in my lotus position. When I saw Prabhupada I thought he looked like the CEO of the universe. He sat on the floor in his plain saffron robes and gave a lecture about giving up all false designations. He said that this was the cure for human society. I kept coming a few more times and I would put forth to Prabhupada all the mayavadi arguments. He blasted me back one by one. His teachings are our gift. The eastern philosophy is generally understood that everything merges into void. That answers so many problems. The western religion, like George Carlin the comedian, states that there is an invisible man up in the sky and He has ten rules, and if you don’t obey them, you go to hell and you burn forever. And He always needs money. He’s all-powerful and all-knowing. But He just can’t handle money, so all the preachers are asking their congregations to give more. So there is one side, which is a personal God, and one impersonal. We generally sided with the impersonal since there were no rules. Some of the arguments that we all presented were that if God is unlimited, how can He have a form? Form is limited. Right away Prabhupada would just cut through that. He didn’t care about being flattering at all. He would say, “This is lack of knowledge. This is ignorance.” Then we’d say, “Well, in your religion you say God is . . .” “This is not a religion, this is knowledge.” He would make many comparisons to the sun. He would ask us, “The sun has form?” “Yes.” “And the sunlight is unlimited?” “Yes.” “The two exist simultaneously. A spark of sun cannot become the sun planet. A light bulb cannot become the powerhouse. Yes?” “Uh, huh.” “Similarly, if there is a magnifying glass you can make fire. Bring down the sun.” This is a guru. Bhaktisiddhanta coined the term ‘blazing sadhus’. The guru is the transparent via medium. Krishna is talking through an empowered soul. In these early days, Kirtanananda and I were the cooks. Srila Prabhupada taught us preparations one after another. He showed us how to prepare a spice that is pronounced “chank”. In America we’d pronounce it “chaunce”, but actually it is pronounced “chank”. It would smell so much that the neighbors and the landlord would complain. You would want to get it smoking and then you put in your vegetables or drop it in the dhal. We were cooking breakfast, a big pot of cereal, and then lunch. You could never tell what Prabhupada was going to do next. While reading the Nectar of Devotion, we read one of Krishna’s qualities is “gravity”. I thought this meant that He is serious, but Prabhupada said, “Krishna isn’t serious.” I looked back down at the page and it said, “Gravity is that you never know what a person is thinking.” So one day Prabhupada said to Kirtanananda and me, “We should have a Sunday feast and invite the yoga schools.” But earlier that day, Prabhupada came up to the kitchen and said, “Let me see what you have.” In the small apartment kitchen with four burners, and a refrigerator, we did have a big pantry closet. I opened the door of the pantry and told Prabhupada, “We have a hundred pounds of sugar, a hundred pounds of potatoes, hundred pounds of flour, hundred pounds of rice, and a hundred pounds of brown rice for the health people.” He responded with a “Hmm..” You couldn’t tell what he meant. That night the crowd was packed into the storefront and Prabhupada gave a Bhagavad-gita lecture on “yoga-ksemam vahmy aham,” where Krishna says, “I carry what you lack and preserve what you have.” Then he said, “In our kitchen we have hundred pound rice, hundred pound sugar, hundred pound potato, hundred pound everything we have, and we are just chanting this Hare Krishna maha-mantra. You karmis, you are working so hard in your office jobs. Do you have hundred pound sugar? You don’t have hundred pound anything!” That’s when Kirtanananda and I knew that’s why he came up to inspect the kitchen. This was an example of Prabhupada’s gravity. Prabhupada told Brahmananda, “We must have one sign board with changeable letters so we can tell people the times of the classes.” Brahmananda came back an hour later without a sign board and said, “Swamiji, sign boards cost fifty-five dollars and we don’t have money for rent!” Prabhupada shot back, “Get one sign board!” So Brahmananda came back with a black sign board that had movable white plastic letters. That night seventy-five people showed up. I passed the donation basket and it came back full of money. Sometimes we would explain to Prabhupada that we had to buy a machine or we had to get a machine fixed. Prabhupada would tell us, “You have this disease.” He then told us a story to explain what he meant. “Once there was a big storm and a fisherman came to a man’s house and said, ‘Let me in, its storming!’ The householder opened the door and said, ‘You can stay here, but that net and that basket stinks so you have to leave it outside.’ In the middle of the night, the fisherman paced up and down. The householder asked him, ‘Why can’t you sleep?’ The fisherman responded, ‘I have to have that smell. I have to be with my supplies.’ The householder said, ‘Okay, go. The storm has stopped. Go take your smelly things.’ Just like that fisherman, you Americans think you have to have your machines.” There was a big jug of water that couldn’t stand up. Prabhupada said, “Give me some cloth”. He rolled up the cloth to make a donut, put the jug down on the cloth and stabilized the jug upright. He told us, “You do not have this kind of intelligence. You always need a machine.” When we were starting the Vrindavan Krishna-Balaram temple, I was talking to Gurudas and I said, “What if we put our power and all of this money into acquiring Radha-Damodar temple and have something small in Raman Rati?” He said, “Yeah, let’s ask Prabhupada.” When we told Prabhupada our idea he said, “I cannot think of anything small, that is my disease. Everything must be big. Even when I was managing for Dr. Bosh’s laboratory, my plans were bigger than he could supply.” Sometimes people ask me, “How can I please Prabhupada?” I would always respond by saying, “I don’t know specifically, but I know that Prabhupada liked big. In other words, do something big and important.” Prabhupada said there are rituals, functions and procedures, but the main thing is to offer with your love. The only mantra he gave us at the beginning was, “Namo brahmanya devaya, gobrahman hitaya-cha, jagat-hitya krishnaya govindaya namo namaha.” He said offer with that. One day a box came with a Jagannath murti and we didn’t know what to think of this abstract art. Prabhupada said, “Everyone bow down. This is Jagannath, Lord of the Universe.” Later he told Bon Majaraj, his God-brother, “I have given them Jagannath because He does not have strict archanam.” (worship) A lot of devotees from Christian backgrounds would ask, “How did Lord Chaitanya die? How did Krishna die?” Prabhupada put on such a bitter face and said, “It is not important. It is distasteful. But He went into a temple and never came out.” He told us that the main thing was that Jesus’ death was the culmination of his lila, his purpose, his mission, but that Lord Chaitanya and Krishna’s purpose is not dying.” When Prabhupada first suggested the deities, I remember Hayagriva said, “If you want marble statues, you can go to the Catholic church.” Prabhupada responded with, “Hmm. They are not ready for deity worship.” One time in Vrindavan a gentleman asked me to meet a mayavadi named Akhananda Swami. He was a formless, huge baba, a pure Shankara mayavadi. His followers would look at him and say, “Namo Narayana namo”. They were calling each other Narayana, and I would look around and think, “Do I look like Narayana? Do I have four arms?” Akhananda looked at me and sarcastically chanted, “Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna.” I felt like everybody in the world should chant Hare Krishna, but not this guy. It was so disrespectful. A man said, “Try to ask some questions.” I said, “I have no questions because if I ask a question, he will talk maya about it.” I told all of this to Prabhupada on a morning walk. He thought that was a very strong move and that Akhananda must have been very insulted. I said that I didn’t care and Prabhupada appreciated that. In 1968 Prabhupada went back to America from Calcutta going over the Pacific and he left me with the keys to the Radha-Damodar temple. It got lonely since most people there didn’t speak English. Prabhupada’s God-brother, Bon Maharaj was there, however, and he spoke English even though he didn’t lecture much. One day another American, named Rishikesh did arrive. He had been initiated in America and had escaped or deserted the army. He had been through boot camp and he told me the scenes in the movie “Full Metal Jacket” actually occur. He said they make you sleep with your gun, which you give a girl’s name, and simply experience a hellish time. I found out later that some lieutenant said to him, “Kid, you’re not going to make it.” He told Rishikesh how to get out and then he made it to India. Bon Maharaj, I believe, in a way lied to him by saying, “If you stay with me, you’ll be protected and if you leave then I’ll turn you in.” What Rishikesh didn’t know was that the Indian government would have given him asylum as they accepted anybody who was in legal difficulty. Bon Maharaj was really teaching siddha-pranali, giving Rishikesh an idea of his eternal identity at the first initiation. He was talking more about this and other things and he was disrespecting Narayana, not understanding the tattva between Narayana, Krishna, and Goloka Krishna, Vaikuntha, etc. Later on though I had found out that he had sent Rishikesh out to collect donations for Bon Maharaj’s school. Prabhupada wrote to Rishikesh, “If you stay there it will be your spiritual death.” There is more to that letter but Prabhupada used very harsh words. He did instruct him, “Go to Mayapur with Achyutananda and the only person I consider dependable, is my God-brother Sridhar Maharaj. Achyutananda knows him well.” Rishikesh didn’t go but I thought, “Now is my chance to be with Sridhar Maharaj” and that was around 1968. I understood from Srila Prabhupada that the spiritual master has a supernatural quality that is genuine in that when he speaks, everyone will hear it in their own way. He explained that whatever rasa you are, you will pick up on that and take to it. That is to be realized later. It was a tradition and system of giving siddha-pranali at the initiation up to Bhaktisiddhanta. But those disciples that came to the six Goswamis, Vishvanath Chakravarti, Jagannath das Babaji, and Bhaktivinode Thakur, were already very advanced Vaishnavas. They immediately understood the position of Krishna-tattva, Bagavat-tattva, so that all of their studies up till then fell into place, connecting the dots. Then a guru can tell you that you seem to have a dasya, sakya, vatsalya, madhurya rasa and give you an identity. Bhaktisiddhanta by that time of kali yuga’s onset did not give it that way. He presented the notion that “You are a servant and that with your practice and sadhana, your eternal identity would be revealed to you.” When I asked Sridhar Maharaj, “Can you tell me my guru maharaj’s rasa?” He said, “Yes, I can tell you but now I am feeling a little weak.” He made me wait a whole day and the next day I came to him and he started lecturing me. I said to him, “I thought you were going to tell me Prabhupada’s rasa.” “Oh yes, it must be madhurya because of his attraction to kirtan.” The position of mahant (chief priest) of Radha-kund in India was established by Jiva Goswami and Raghunatha. Jiva Goswami purchased the land of Radha-kund, Shyamakund and 150 cottages around the area. The rent from those cottages would support the puja of Radha-kund. That’s the way a temple was set up in perpetuity. In time, that was taken over by families and then babajis and then pseudo babajis. In 1880 in Vrindavan, Bhaktivinode Thakur met Jagannath das Babaji who was about one hundred years old. It was well-known and accepted that Jagannath das Babaji was a maha-bagavat-purush. Jagannath das Babaji finally opened up and said to the mahant, “You have been keeping women. I know it and you have been doing it and I am leaving! I’m going to set up in Navadveep.” That was as big as the Pope saying he was leaving the Vatican and going to stay in Paris from now on. That was certainly a major event at the time. What I have heard is that the current mahant, for a fee, will give anyone a gopi name. There was a whole group of Europeans who came and they all got their name. Two of them were life-long friends and one asked the other, “What is your new name?” The other explained, “My new name is such and such gopi, and I wear green, and have bangles, and I serve Lalita in this way making garlands, and I married so and so gopa.” The other friend said, “That’s my name too.” They talked to the forty others and they all had been given the same name. So the mahant was just selling names and this has been going on for centuries. It is an embarrassment to Chaitanya Mahaprabhu’s movement. Even when I was traveling in South India, people thought Chaitanya Mahaprabhu’s movement was an erotic Hindu hippie style. We were invited once by a South Indian playboy and he thought we would be hippies and we’d have parties there. When we showed up, we were just sannyasis and brahmacharis chanting, so they were disappointed. In this regard, Srila Prabhupada would say, “It is the business of Maya to make our Krishna consciousness movement look ridiculous.” Some people were saying that the guru was God. I had heard that one year they forgot Prabhupada’s Vyasa Puja and they made him a birthday cake. Prabhupada was very angry and said, “I’ll come back tomorrow and do it the way I taught you.” “What way was that?” “You worship the guru like God.” So the devotees went the other way saying that the guru is God. One time the devotees were asking Prabhupada, “Is this going to happen, is that going to happen?” Prabhupada looked at me and said, “What do they think, I’m God?” Well, some of them did. At the 26 2nd Avenue temple, we would let anybody up to see Prabhupada because he would win them over. Jadurani was learning guitar and folk music from Rev. Gary Davis, who was a pastor and also had some popular gospel records. He came up to see Prabhupada and there were others. But then we let one man up who seemed normal but when he went upstairs he turned wild and he said, “Today at 3:30 I was higher than you.” This guy was stoned and Prabhupada said to him, “Please accept my humble obeisances. I have to work now, please leave.” The man said, “I’m fearless. I’m not afraid of death!” Prabhupada said, “Do you cross the street at the green light?” The man said, “Yeah”. “Then you are afraid of death.” Prabhupada in the beginning would often describe Krishna consciousness as the “unconditional state of consciousness”. It was perfectly in tune with what we all thought drugs could do to you in that when you were on drugs, you were beyond inhibitions. When the first canto came out we read that Sukhadeva Goswami walked around naked and not affected by anything. I thought to myself, “That’s what I want to be when I grow up; to not need any material things for myself and to be totally independent.” Prabhupada wasn’t imitating anyone. He had no act. He wasn’t performing. He was genuinely there and you could tell because his answers came right off the top of his head. Or, he’d hand you the Bhagavad-gita, “Go to this chapter and read it.” He wanted us to get used to reading so that we’d know these were not his ideas. A big personality at that time was Krishnamurti and it was all his own thoughts. Prabhupada was very much against that. Not having an authority, someone could say anything and, therefore, is just his opinion. Prabhupada wanted us to know that what he spoke were not his opinions. Prabhupada had a mystical quality that when he would give a lecture, he would cover every point of the lecture, from the jiva to Lord Chaitanya who had a loving relationship to Krishna, to Radharani, the demi-gods, to the position of the material nature. He would cover everything. Quite often it would come to the point where he would say, “If you do not catch up on Krishna’s lotus feet, again you will fall back into the ocean of maya.” He would make a gesture like throwing a stone into the ocean. I also would say, if you were to take any three or four of Prabhupada’s books, take off the covers, shuffle the pages, and pick two or three pages, you’d read the whole philosophy. He covers everything and every point. He kept saying, “You will keep falling into the ocean of maya. One day I was in a store with Brahmananda and another fellow who had been at the temple said, “I don’t like this and that. This is all nonsense!” He walked out and slammed the door. I said to Brahmananda, “He fell back into the ocean of material illusion.” Brahmananda then made the sound, “Bloop”. That is how “Bloop” was created and it became our word when someone was leaving the temple. “Look at that guy, I think he’s going to bloop.” “Boy, I hope I don’t bloop.” “Where’s so and so?” “Oh, he blooped.” So we were up in Prabhupada’s room and Prabhupada asked, “Where is that boy, Michael?” Brahmananda said, “Oh, he blooped.” “Bloop? What is this ‘bloop’?” We all looked at Brahmananda as if to say, “You tell him, you made it up.” He said, “Well, you’ve been explaining that we fall back into the ocean of maya like a stone makes the sound when it hits the water, ‘bloop’. We’ve been saying that when somebody leaves, they ‘blooped’”. Prabhupada responded, “Well, if he blooped, what can we do?” He immediately picked up on it. And that is how “blooped” got invented. A challenging reporter once asked Prabhupada, “What do you do? You walk on water? Do you turn water into wine?” Prabhupada said, “There can be beautiful woman here naked, you will be attracted, I will not.” Then another reporter asked, “What’s the purpose of human life?” Prabhupada said, “To enjoy.” He of course meant to enjoy with Krishna, not materially. But the answer was like that. I would have said, “To surrender to the spiritual master, follow the regulations, give up meat and become a devotee.” Prabhupada simply said, “To enjoy.” A disciple of one of Prabhupada’s envious God-brother’s told me that his guru said, “Well if Lord Chaitanya wanted to spread the Hare Nam over the whole world, why didn’t He do it Himself?” I told this to Prabhupada and his response was, “Because He saved that glory for me!” That was a very bold statement. One time in Calcutta, Prabhupada asked, “Where is Devananda?” Someone told him that he was washing his dhoti. Prabhupada started to laugh and laugh exclaiming, “Devananda is washing his dhoti!!” He just kept laughing and then finally he stopped. The devotee asked why he was laughing. Prabhupada said, “You never know why I laugh.” You can never figure out the mind of a paramahamsa. When we established the deities in Calcutta, I was standing next to Prabhupada during the arati and Prabhupada’s face just melted in ecstasy. I pointed out to him that they had put the flute in backwards. Prabhupada said, “Krishna is all powerful. He can play from either end.” Bhavananda told me an incident when he was with Srila Prabhupada at a big department store in the West. There was a revolving door in the middle and two swinging doors on either side. A man with a lot of bags got into the revolving door and Prabhupada got into the section behind the man. As they went around, the man with the bags in the next section stopped and fumbled with his bags so now Prabhupada was trapped. He was stuck in the revolving door. Bhavananda ran out the side door, came out onto the street and Prabhupada was standing there with his cane, and the man with the bags was still stuck in the revolving door. I asked Bhavananda, “How did he get out?” He exclaimed, “I don’t know!!” I understood that a mystical power was at hand. I only saw Prabhupada relate to Sridhar Maharaj as opposed to his other God-brothers. I could say that I did meet many of the living disciples of Bhaktisiddhanta and they were all great souls. But none of them had the ability to preach in the West. They could not say to a reporter, “Enjoy”. Bhaktisiddhanta said to Sridhar Maharaj, “I’ve sent some men to England and they came back in suits. They are being converted. Now you go, and I know that you’ll keep it pure.” But he never went. He was very proud of Prabhupada and supported him. I never heard any criticism of Prabhupada’s books from his Godbrothers. They were envious or they didn’t like that women were together dancing with the men. Prabhupada’s response to this was, “When you go to the West to preach, you’ll see!” But they never went. He would invite all of his God-brothers to come and join us. Some of them were living in miserable and pathetic shacks, but there would be a big sign outside their shack that read, “Krishna Chaitanya Gaudiya Institute”. The pauper is proud of his penny. One time Prabhupada and I visited Lalitprasad, Bhaktisiddhanta’s brother, who looked exactly like their father, Bhaktivinode Thakur. In his house I saw some of the hand written books written by Bhaktivinode Thakur. At that time Prabhupada was living in Bhaktivinode Thakur’s birthplace in Birnagar. Prabhupada said, “We will take care of you. We will develop this place. It will be an international center.” Lalitprasad said, “Yes, but I must be guru. You must step down and I must be acharya.” Prabhupada said, “Okay”, and we left. Prabhupada then looked at me and said, “I didn’t believe it, that even after giving up lust, desire for prestige lingers on even to the end.” When I asked him, “What broke up the Gaudiya Math?” Prabhupada said, “They were always worried who was going to give initiation. They couldn’t wait a few years until a guru manifested?” He said, “My God-brothers were fighting over material properties and money.” When discussing other lecturers and gurus, Prabhupada would say like he did to some of the people who had just come from a Krishnamurti lecture, “So, what did he say?” Their responses were vague. A few weeks later they would come back and he’d say, “So, what did he say in his lecture?” They would respond, “He was talking about problems.” Prabhupada said, “And?” Then they stammered trying to answer. Prabhupada said, “Just see. If it can’t be said in simple language, then it is bogus.” He would say that a lot. He could say it elaborately but he could also say it in simple terms. For example, “Krishna is the integral, the ingredient and the cause of all causes, the efficient cause of everything.” We knew what those words meant but not in this theological content. In simple terms he would say, “I see you, I see your father. Your father had a head and two arms as well as his father. Were any of your ancestors, some formless power?” That was another thing that impressed me about Prabhupada. He was completely poor and insolvent and yet he was blasting all the mayavadis who said, “All the religions are one.” The Ram-Krishna mission begins by saying that all religions are the same. Prabhupada would say, “We do not accept that. We reject that.” He was not flattering anybody. He was not watering down anything. We all could have walked out, but he wouldn’t have changed. In the beginning when the Back to Godhead magazine was out for only a few months, we came to Prabhupada asking, “Would you write an article for the magazine as the founder?” He said, “Are all your articles based on what you’ve heard from me?” We said, “Yes.” He said, “Then I write all the articles.” This is the relationship, “achintya bheda abheda tattva”, (inconceivably, simultaneously one and different) between the guru and disciple. In the beginning Prabhupada would say to us, “Now stand up and say something about Krishna consciousness.” With that in mind, we were always thinking about what to say when we went out to distribute the Back to Godhead magazines. People would ask us so many different questions and we’d respond somehow. Once a sankirtan mataji told me that she met a big biker fellow and she showed him a book. He said, “What’s this?” She said to him, “You want to go to heaven or hell?” He said, “I want to go to heaven.” She then asked him, “So you think in heaven there’s a slaughter house and they eat meat with blood all over?” He said, “No.” She handed him the book which he accepted and said, “Read this.” She said to me, “I don’t know why I said that. It just came to me.” Sometimes it appears that Krishna puts words in your mouth. Prabhupada would always ask for questions after his lectures. One time we didn’t have any and he said, “You must have some questions. Try to put some question. You know everything?” Another time he finished the lecture and he asked, “Are there any questions?” There were no questions so he said, “How can there be any questions?” He had covered everything. A lady asked Prabhupada, “But I have so many doubts.” He said, “Doubt is a symptom of intelligence. Keep asking questions. This is not blind faith.” But then after that crazy man had confronted Prabhupada in his room, he told us, “Do not bring up any crazies.” This was the first time that he was giving us some responsibility in that we had to know who to bring and who not to bring to him. At that time Prabhupada was reading Caitanya-caritamrita and he was discussing the chapter of Srivasa-sangat where only special devotees of Mahaprabhu were allowed into that association. So the storefront on 26 2nd Avenue was like the Srivasa-sangat to us. Prabhupada asked us on a couple of occasions, “Are you going to take initiation and then go away? Or are you going to stay and learn and practice?” We would always wonder why he would say that because of course we’d stay and learn and practice even without the ceremony. What is the need for the ceremony? He said, “The ceremony is needed to make an impression on the mind. But otherwise it is not necessary.” Prabhupada thus impressed upon us that initiation is not simply about throwing ghee but rather a spiritual practice and study. To take initiation just to say, “I have a guru” is not recommended. Some people are looking for gurus who don’t ask for too much dakshin (donations) or who say, “If you can’t chant sixteen rounds, chant one.” But Prabhupada was uncompromising when it came to the spiritual principles for his disciples. In some of the letters Prabhupada would write me, he would just tell me where he was going. “I’m going to Paris, then I am going to Hamburg and they have a center in Boston or Canada.” But then a letter came saying, “I am coming to India.” Another letter said, “I may not come back to India. I may live on and pass away anywhere in the preaching.” But then a letter came saying that Jayapataka would come to join and we were going to set up in India. I realized then that the preaching was going to be big and he was going to do something very important in India. While in Gujarat Prabhupada said, “We are eating and offering the finest food in the world to Krishna. These dishes have been made for centuries and offered to Krishna.” Tamal asked Prabhupada, “Is this food good for you?” He said, “It is not good for me, but good for my tongue.” While I lived in India I did meet Prabhupada’s former family. Prabhupada had left a monthly amount to all of his family members so that they wouldn’t come with some claim. He took care of them very well. They were Vaishnavas. There wasn’t a single event whereby Srila Prabhupada didn’t push on this movement. I tried to calculate that Prabhupada probably composed about a hundred pages of literature a week. It seems impossible to write so much, run a movement, have lectures, and travel around the world. My comment about Prabhupada’s rasa is that madhurya rasa doesn’t mean just talking about gopis. It means getting on a boat bound for a foreign country at seventy years of age with about nine dollars in his pocket, and making a world-wide mission. Prabhupada spoke to a gentleman from India who said, “Oh, you are here preaching?” He said, “Yes, I have disciples, we have temples all over the world. There is a famous singer who has chanting Hare Krishna on a record that is world-wide. Our magazine is selling thousands of copies a month. And none of this had happened yet. He said, “It is just a matter of time.” Also to his God-brother, O.B.L. Kapoor, before he left to America said, “I will tell you when I come back, what my formula was to be a success.” And when it was a success and he came back, he said, “The formula is: trinad api sunichena taror api sahishnuna amanina manadena kirtaniyah sada harih One should chant the holy name of the Lord in a humble state of mind, thinking oneself lower than the straw in the street; one should be more tolerant than a tree, devoid of all sense of false prestige and should be ready to offer all respect to others. In such a state of mind one can chant the holy name of the Lord constantly.” In the early days all the devotees shared one bathroom. There’s a picture somewhere of devotees standing in line to use the bathroom and Prabhupada has his towel and he is fifth or sixth in line waiting. We didn’t know. When Prabhupada would use the word “unconditional being”, he exemplified what it meant to be an unconditional being. He had no effects of this material world. We didn’t know how to behave with him, and he wouldn’t tell us. That’s how humble he was.

To view the entire unedited video go to Memories 54 - Achyutananda das

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

Following Srila Prabhupada

Interview DVD 07

Achyutananda: I’ll tell you this. From the time I met him in the Lower East Side until his passing, he didn’t make a single mistake. And he once said something like this about his guru. He said, “Even when he was wrong he was right.” Every step advanced the Society. I had to take a running leap across a rice paddy ditch, and Prabhupada once did it in one step. And we looked at each other, “How did he do that? How did he do that?” One thing, when Prabhupada came to the marble Mayapur temple, he praised Bhavananda. He said, “Thank you for keeping everything very clean. Management means just keep everything clean.”