Cittahari das Remembers Srila Prabhupada

Following Srila Prabhupada

Interview DVD 06

Cittahari: I went on this morning walk, and I was sitting next to Prabhupada. There were only a few of us. Prabhupada was looking out at the people all going to work along Saint Kilda Road, and they were all dressed up in their suits, men and women. It was one of the very up-market parts of Melbourne, and all these people were dressed up and all rushing off to work. I was sitting next to Prabhupada and I remember I was looking out thinking, “Oh, how fortunate I am. I’m here with Prabhupada, I’m here with the great pure devotee of the world, and there are all these people just going off like mudhas to work.” Then Prabhupada was looking out at them too, and then Prabhupada turned around to me and I saw that he had tears running down out of his eyes. He looked at me and he said, “How can they be saved?” That was the most important question Prabhupada ever asked me in my life. I’ve been dwelling on that ever since – how can they be saved? So while we were thinking of how fortunate we were, Prabhupada was purely thinking of the people who he couldn’t connect with because of the barriers they put around themselves in different ways. We were in the gardens on a morning walk. I was having a bit of trouble chanting my rounds. I was thinking how difficult it was to follow the regulative principles, and I remember I… I very rarely asked Prabhupada questions, but on this occasion Prabhupada was talking about transcendental anxiety and I said to Prabhupada, “Is it transcendental anxiety, Prabhupada, when you’re worried because you can’t get your rounds done or you’re worried about following the four regulative principles and things like that?” Prabhupada said, “No.” He said, “That is material anxiety. Transcendental anxiety is where Mother Yasoda is worried that Krishna may get attacked by a monkey, she said, or fear for Krishna. It’s anxiety for Krishna, it’s not anxiety for yourself.” He said, “That’s mundane.” So Prabhupada cleared me up on that one. I always realized from then on that all my anxieties are basically material.

Interview DVD 08

Cittahari: My uncle, Father Wallace, he was a Jesuit; but he was in charge of the whole of Victoria, so he was the head Jesuit. I said to my mother, “I’d like to get my uncle to meet Prabhupada.” So somehow she got that arranged. My mum was pretty good at arranging those things. So my uncle came, and we were all sitting around in Prabhupada’s beautiful room on the beautiful blue carpet. And he was sitting back on the chair, and he was quite an elegant sort of a guy and a very good speaker as the Jesuits are pretty well trained in philosophy. Prabhupada spoke philosophy with him quite a bit, and he seemed to be able to follow the thread of it and answer it, which most people when they met Prabhupada, they kind of lost it. Prabhupada was probing into what they understood and they couldn’t understand what they believed themselves, but he seemed to have some belief himself. Anyway, it went on for about three quarters of an hour, having a pretty lively conversation but jokey too, a lot of laughter and so on. Then finally the session was over, and he got up and shook hands and left. We were all sitting around Prabhupada, and Prabhupada was sitting there just kind of rocking a bit. I said, “Srila Prabhupada, what did you think of my uncle?” Prabhupada looked at us all and he smiled and he looked at me, he said, “A very pleasant drunkard.” And that was…we just all cracked up laughing because when immediately he walked in, Prabhupada must have picked up he’d had something. And I wouldn’t be surprised if he was a regular drinker. He had that kind of look, his face, a bit over-reddish. Yes, it was pretty well strong through the whole order at that time, I’d say, the whole Catholic church. That was the one thing the priests could do, have a good drink. The way Prabhupada could crack a joke was really amazing.