Jai Hari das Remembers Srila Prabhupada

Prabhupada Memories

Interview 01

Jai Hari: Guru das and the devotees were so nice to me during their sankirtan on Oxford Street. They said to me, “We’re going to Ascot to see our spiritual teacher. Do you want to come?” I said, “No problem.” Of course, I was trying to act casual, but sitting in front of Srila Prabhupada, I was nervous. Instead of just bowing down as I was told to do, my knees gave way and I collapsed. I think it was Mukunda who introduced me to Srila Prabhupada by saying, “This is Raz,” which is the name my parents gave me at birth. “He has been coming to the temple for a few days and is taking an interest.” Srila Prabhupada looked at me and said, “So, which country are you from?” I said, “I was born in Pakistan.” He asked me, “So you come from Muslim family?” I said, “Yes, Srila Prabhupada.” He said, “Well, we don’t have Muslim disciples in the movement. So maybe you can be the first?” [laughs] That’s why I was named Jaya Hari das after Hari das Thakura because he was the first Muslim disciple of Lord Caitanya. Now that I am older, my private life, my personal life and my business life are centered around what I’ve learned from being in Prabhupada’s presence. He was the father I never had. He could look me in the eyes and know exactly what I was going through. Whether I was frustrated, whether I was tired, whether I was feeling anxious, whether I was feeling happy, he knew. He could just look into my eyes and he knew.

I asked a few questions about karma and why certain things happen in the material world, such as corruption, civil wars, poverty, hunger, etc. He said the answer to those questions is that man himself creates these adversities. There is no need for these things to happen if people were to follow Krishna consciousness. He said that there would be peace and enough food for everyone. Prabhupada also answered the question I asked him once about the issue of eating meat. I asked, “What’s wrong with eating meat?” He said, “If you go to the abattoir, slaughterhouse, you will see the chemical and the emotional trauma that the animal goes through. It affects you.” He explained that if someone approaches a cow or a sheep or an any animal for slaughter, the animal feels the pain. The animals know that you are coming to kill them and they are scared. They are fearful and the human being is eating fear. They are not eating meat, they are eating fear. Prabhupada explained that man himself is such an aggressive being because he has existed by eating fear. When you eat a steak, all that blood actually contains fear. That was how Prabhupada answered my question.

I always felt that out of respect I would only speak to Prabhupada when spoken to. So, if he said to me, “Jai Hari, how are you? What are you doing?” I would say, “I distributed twenty Krishna Books over the weekend.” He would say, “That is wonderful! You are the best book distributor in Europe. [chuckles] How can you sell twenty Krishna Books in one weekend?” I replied, “Well, Srila Prabhupada, actually I don’t just sell the books, I sell the prasadam as well to go with the book. I give people a Simply Wonderful sweet, so when they have a taste of the Simply Wonderful, they want a taste of the Krishna Book as well.” He just laughed and said, “That’s the way we should sell our books. That is the secret of selling our books—with prasadam.”

I always looked up to Srila Prabhupada as a father figure. He was somebody who knew me better than I knew myself. Whereas I was thinking of tomorrow or the next week, he was thinking about the next year and planning my future. He showed me the way to channel my talents in Krishna’s service, and he gave me courage and faith in myself. I wasn’t afraid to organize a bookstand in Frankfurt, Germany, for the Frankfurt Book Fair. I organized that myself single-handedly with the advice from Mukunda, Guru das and Shyamasundar, and I knew I could not have done that without the shakti provided to me by Srila Prabhupada.

What you felt when you were with Srila Prabhupada is that you were in the presence of someone who was pure.

To view the entire unedited video go to Memories 73 - Bhakti Caitanya Swami, and the UK Yatra.

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

Following Srila Prabhupada

Interview DVD 01

Jai Hari: One of the highpoints of that installation of the Radha Krishna Deities at the time, was also my personal initiation. If I remember, I was probably let's say the third or fourth brahmachari to be initiated by him. But initiation was to me very very personal because I was at a very young age— 16 and a half, 17. It was Srila Prabhupada after meeting him that I became attracted to Krishna consciousness, because before then I hadn't really had any interest in spiritual life apart from doing a little meditation under the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi but that was when I was at college. And for some reason Prabhupada came to me like a father figure more than as a spiritual teacher. He could see that I was at a very very young age, he could see I was very vulnerable, So he didn't really preach that much to me about philosophy or about Krishna or whatever. It was much more of a son father relationship. And he was more concerned about my personal well-being, my health, my age. That's how I was drawn to him. I thought, "This is the man I've been looking for all my life. And it was through his guidance and support that I've managed to carry on what I'm doing now. Even now at my age—55, 56— the principles that he taught me of humility, forgiveness, kindness, caring, are still there in my everyday existence. I don't think if I'd met Srila Prabhupada when I was 16 and a half, 17 that I would have probably survived physically beyond 19, 20 or 21 years of age, because that the way things were in those days— you lived dangerously doing whatever you were doing and you died young. And Prabhupada came and saved me from that sort of existence.

What was striking about that time in Bury Place, with Srila Prabhupada being there, was that it was like a family. The brahmacharis were all like my brothers. The brahmacharinis were like my sisters. The elders, like Yamuna, Malati were like my mothers. For me, it was like being in my real home. I finally thought to myself, "This is what I've been looking for for the last 16 years. This is home." It felt like home, because nobody patronized you or told you off for doing something that you shouldn't do. Everybody supported each other. It was very very much like a family. But in due course of time that family got bigger as the years went by And I think that's probably where it became perhaps sometimes a bit impersonal, whereby younger devotees that joined didn't have the experience of association of senior devotees to nurture them. And this is where I was very very lucky, is because Prabhupada nurtured me. He knew the kind of qualities I had: whether I was restless, whether I had doubts, whether I was scared, whether I had issues emotionally, Without even me saying anything verbally to him, he knew it and he would say something. "So you have a problem with something?", or "Are you ok?" And I would always think to myself, "Well how did he know this, that I had an issue with something?" But he knew it just by looking into my eyes. He had that ability to just look into people's eyes and know exactly what they were thinking or what they wanted to do. Travel was one of them that I wanted to do, so he encouraged me to travel, whether it was to Paris, to Amsterdam, to Los Angeles, wherever. There was never, oh you can't do this, or you're too young for this, or this isn't allowed. He gave me the encouragement and inspiration to just do it and get it out of my system. And perhaps you made a mistake; that's neither here nor there. The fact is that it's the experience of doing it. So if you have made a mistake... It's like Prabhupada always said, "You can make one mistake, but never make the same mistake twice." So in that respect, he was forgiving and he knew that no one was perfect. Mistakes can be made very very easily. The day of that initiation was amazing, absolutely amazing. It was just so purifying and awe-inspiring. I'll never forget that day—it changed my life completely.