Hansadutta das Remembers Srila Prabhupada

Prabhupada Memories

Interview 01

Hansadutta: Srila Prabhupada was sitting on his bed and I was sitting in front of him. I said, “Swamiji, I’m so nervous I can’t sleep. I couldn’t sleep this night or last night or the night before last.” He said, “Ohhh. That’s good.” He leaned forward, looked me right in the eye and said, “Actually our aim is to make sleeping zero, eating zero, defending zero, and sex zero. We don’t preach that, but that is the aim.” That was my first one-onone instruction from Srila Prabhupada. wanted them to cooperate with the rest of the movement. It was a nice mood.

In the Gurudeva prayer we sing, “Your mercy is all that I am made of,” and that is our factual experience. When we were in India, Kirtanananda was preaching in Gorakhpur but he did not like India. He wanted to go back and he wrote a letter to Prabhupada complaining and asking for permission to go. I related the contents of the letter to Prabhupada and Prabhupada said, “Write him an encouraging letter. Encourage him.” I wasn’t fond of Kirtanananda and I would have liked him to go back to America, but since I was Prabhupada’s secretary, it was my duty to carry out Prabhupada’s order. I went to my room, sat, and thought, “What would Prabhupada say? How would he use words to enthuse and encourage his disciple, Kirtanananda, so that he would feel determined to stay?” Meditating like that, I finally wrote the letter. We sent it, and within a week or two we heard that Kirtanananda was completely transformed. He was totally enlivened because of the letter he had received from Srila Prabhupada. From that I could understand that we were being trained to think and speak and act with Srila Prabhupada’s spirit. This is how disciples are an extension of the mercy of the spiritual master, just as Bhaktivinode Thakur’s song says, “Your mercy is all that I am made of.” Now we have cell phone technology so when we speak something here, it goes from one relay station to another, relay, relay, relay. In fact, you can call anyone in any part of the world because the relays are set up so perfectly, so transparently. That is how the Krishna consciousness movement expands. Prabhupada has transmitted the original transcendental message and it has been received and then relayed by his disciples. And in that process we are purified, trained, and formed. We are all following in Srila Prabhupada’s footsteps, although at the same time every one of us is an individual person with unique characteristics and qualifications and a unique relationship with Srila Prabhupada. It’s not that we’re mindless followers. Writing that letter was a deep lesson for me.

To view the entire unedited video go to Memories 47 - Twenty Disciples Remembering SP

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

Following Srila Prabhupada

Interview DVD 01

Hansadutta: So when Prabhupada came, they rented him a small room and I got the opportunity to spend maybe it was five days with Prabhupada. It was just a room, and then it had a little side alcove where there was a sink and a place where you could cook something. So I slept under that sink and in that area. The first night I was so nervous I couldn’t sleep. About one in the morning I heard Prabhupada rustling and getting up, and he didn’t turn on the light or anything and he started chanting on his beads. So I wondered, “What should I do? Should I get up or pretend I’m sleeping?” I didn’t know what I should do so I didn’t do anything, I pretended I was sleeping. But the next day the same thing happened, I was so nervous I couldn’t sleep again. So when Prabhupada got up and started chanting, then I also made myself known. So Prabhupada, he turned on the light and he said, “Oh, you are up?” I said, “Well, Prabhupada, I’m so nervous I haven’t been able to sleep.” And he said, “Oh, that’s good, very good.” He said, “I think sleeping is a waste of time.” He said, “I don’t like to sleep.” He said, “And I don’t like my disciples to sleep.” Then he said, “Practically speaking, our aim is to make eating zero, sleeping zero, sex zero and defense zero. We don’t say that, but that is the aim.”

Interview DVD 02

Hansadutta: I remember in one town where we arrived that the whole town had closed shop, the mayor came, everyone came to the train station. In other words, the whole town closed down to greet us, to greet Prabhupada. I don’t know whether it was the mayor but some dignitary said that even if Indira Gandhi had come to this town, she would not have received the reception that they have organized for Prabhupada. Especially this program in Surat, every day they would take us to a different part of the town to do harinam, and the devotees were received like they had just flown in from a heavenly planet. It was just overwhelming. I remember at one point I started weeping because I could understand that this is what is meant by Lord Chaitanya’s mercy and the flood of the sankirtan movement. Because just a few years before we were just on the street, vagrants and hippies and whatever. The potency of Prabhupada was manifested through his early disciples in settings like Surat in India where people by the thousands, they were hanging out the window, off the roof, in the street. It was packed wall to wall, just enough room for the devotees to pass through. But they were so enchanted and mesmerized by the presence of the devotees chanting Hare Krishna, you could understand that this was because of Prabhupada. We were just following behind him like little ducklings follow the mother.

This is a very ancient festival. Prabhupada told us it goes back many, many thousands of years. At this time, all the holy men they come and they gather because there’s a very auspicious constellation; and if you take bath at that time, you’re guaranteed liberation. I remember asking Prabhupada whether that was really true. Prabhupada said, “Yes, it’s true.” He said, “But we didn’t come here for that because we’re already liberated. We came here to preach Krishna consciousness.” But I did go for the…because I wanted the guarantee. I went, and you have to go early in the morning about four o’clock. And there are no lights, it’s very cold, the wind is blowing because it’s wintertime, and just hundreds of people are wandering towards the river. It was a really sensational experience. Here you can see Srila Prabhupada is shaving. There was no hot water available. Of course, perhaps someone heated a little water up for Prabhupada. But the amazing thing was that Prabhupada, at such an advanced age, came to this place with so many devotees to live in a tent. Everyone was living in a tent and it was wintertime, it was cold. Of course, during the day it warmed up a bit because of the sun. But it’s also said that on a certain day in the course of this festival it rains and, sure enough, when that day came it rained. And so it was really miserable after that because everything was damp and very difficult to keep warm. So here we see Srila Prabhupada and the devotees getting ready to make a visit to the local Gaudiya Math. Of course, Prabhupada lived in Allahabad for a number of years and he had a business there, and he told us also later that he donated the deities there. But I remember what struck me when we went there that day was there was Prabhupada in the lead and then there was eight or nine rickshaws following behind, again like little ducklings. Wherever he went, we followed behind, that was our relationship, never knowing exactly the full significance of what Prabhupada was doing. But as I said before, looking back now, it’s clear to me that Prabhupada knew exactly. It was like a great campaign that he had planned and been carrying out.

Prabhupada, on another day, he took us all through…not all of us but I know I was with him, and we drove through the city and he pointed out different places where he lived and where his business was and things like that. I remember one day Prabhupada told us that many yogis come here and some of them are very old, up to 300 years, and he said that they appear just like young boys so you wouldn’t recognize them. He said two came to see him, and they told him that they lived in the jungle with some tigers.

Interview DVD 04

Hansadutta: This festival, we had made a lot of promises to the authorities regarding how we would conduct ourselves, things we would and wouldn’t do. So we had set up these tents. This is the one, with those yellow tents. In order to secure these tents with the lines you can see that come from them, we just drilled holes into the cement and drove iron stakes, pegs in there, which was a total no-no for the authorities. But anyway, the festival went off, it was really sensational with so many people. Prabhupada was very pleased, there was no doubt about it. But the following year they absolutely would not give us any leeway for performing a festival. It took some time for them to regain their trust in us.

Interview DVD 05

Hansadutta: One of the leading figures in the Rosicrucian movement in Paris came to see Prabhupada, and he was quite naïve because Prabhupada kept saying, “So what is that?” and “What does that mean?” as if Prabhupada had no idea about anything. It was a technique that he was employing; and me and Yogesvara, we started to get the giggles and we were sitting behind the man, because whatever the man said, Prabhupada would say, “Why?” Anyway, after leading this person on and on and on, finally Prabhupada said, “So what is the ultimate?” He said, “It’s indescribable.” Then Prabhupada said, “That means you don’t know.” But still the man never became put off by Prabhupada. He thought that Prabhupada really wanted to learn about the Rosicrucians. It was really very funny. Another point that Prabhupada said, “So what is the highest thing?” He said, “Well, it’s a flame.” Prabhupada said, “A flame?” “Yes.” Prabhupada said, “Why a flame? Why not a person?” But like I said, the man never caught on that Prabhupada was just pulling him along into this endless forest of foolishness.

Interview DVD 06

Hansadutta: Prabhupada came and we picked him up in a fleet of Volkswagen buses which were all brand new because our sankirtan activities were fabulously successful, and Prabhupada was very impressed by that. When we rolled into Schloss Rettershof, the owners, who kept horses and had an academy for training horse riding and jumping, for some reason they took it upon themselves to line up with their horses and when Prabhupada came by, the horses all made a bow. They were obviously very well-trained horses. Prabhupada really liked that, and we also, of course, liked it.

Once we were taking a walk. So because I always had a frustrated and irritable kind of mood on account of so many obstacles being put up by German authorities, I said to Prabhupada, “You know, Prabhupada, sometimes I think I would rather be engaged like a ksatriya in killing people than preaching.” Prabhupada stopped and looked at me and he said, “Never do anything in anger, and don’t touch politics.” Sometimes Prabhupada would refer to the history that Parasuram, he drove out the ksatriyasand that they settled in this part of the world, especially Germany. He remarked that the Germans are the most intelligent people on the planet and that their Sanskrit scholars actually are better than Indian Sanskrit scholars, and he pointed out that the philology of German is identical or almost the same as Sanskrit. One thing he used to say, even after he visited Germany, whenever he would see Himavati or myself he would say, “What is that? Trinken und rauchen. What is that?” I would say, “Prabhupada, it’s drinking and smoking.” “Yes, yes, I saw everywhere trinken und rauchen.” He noticed that early in the morning they had beer vending machines and that people were drinking beer in the morning. One day he said, “Yes, I saw in Germany the man urinating on the street.” He said, “How degrading. What is this civilization? The man is urinating on the street.” So some devotee commented, “But Prabhupada, in India they pass urine and stool in the street,” and he said, “That’s different, that’s different.”