Kirtanananda: I first saw Prabhupada in the summer of 1966. My roommate, Howard Wheeler, later Hayagriva, was walking to Second Avenue and met Prabhupada on the street near the Bowery. Howard recognized his dress as that of a holy man and asked him, “Are you from India?” Prabhupada said, “Yes. Are you from India?” Howard said, “No, but I just came back. My roommate and I took a trip to India.” Prabhupada told him that he was holding classes at 26 Second Avenue and invited him to come and bring his friends. So Howard came back and told me, and we decided to check it out. That next Friday night we went to the 26 Second Avenue storefront, and that’s where I first saw Prabhupada. He came through the door and sat down on the floor.
On Radhastami I was initiated along with Brahmananda and one or two others. That was not the first initiation but the second. The first initiation was on Janmastami, and I wasn’t there because I was locked up in Bellevue, a mental hospital. I had tried to get some welfare money the way a lot of my friends did, by saying that I was having mental difficulties and was not able to work. But I didn’t look like my friends. I didn’t look like a hippie. I had a shaved head, a sikha, and I wore a dhoti. At Bellevue they took one look at me and said, “Just sign here,” and they locked me up. I used to talk to Prabhupada on the phone every day, and once he said, “I am simply crying to Krishna, how have I lost this boy?” Prabhupada was so loving. At any rate, Allen Ginsberg sent me to a well-known psychiatrist who said that there was nothing wrong with me, that I was simply practicing Vaishnavism, a religious sect of India. But the doctors at Bellevue wouldn’t accept that. I said, “What do I have to do to get out of here?” They said, “Get your family to sign you out.” I called my family and said, “I’ve seen the light. I want to be a Christian. Get me out of here.” They came and signed me out, and at the first red traffic light I jumped out of the car and ran back to Prabhupada. Prabhupada got up and put his arms around me. He was very affectionate.
For three months in 1965, Howard Wheeler and I had been to India. In India, he and I used to sit on a rooftop, look down at all the cars, laugh, and say, “One thing I’d never do is to drive in India.” It’s like the height of a circus. It’s not for a Westerner. But when I met Srila Prabhupada in Calcutta the first thing he asked me was, “I’d like you to drive for me.” I said, “All right, Prabhupada, whatever you want.” And what did he want me to drive? A big, old Chrysler, about twenty-five feet long. I drove him around Calcutta in this old Chrysler. He told me, “Go down this way.” We went down that way, and I noticed that all the other cars were going in the other direction. I said, “Prabhupada, I think this is a one-way street.” He said, “It’s all right.” We kept going, and at the other end of the street was a policeman. The policeman said, “Stop.” When the policeman came over and saw Prabhupada, he said, “Oh, I’m sorry,” and gave him the right of way.
The spring of 1967 was the first time Deities came to New York. Prabhupada gave some simple instructions, and some of the devotees complained, “Oh, Prabhupada, so many instructions.” Prabhupada said, “I am not telling you anything. If I told you all the instructions that there are, you would faint.”
We got our first beads, big wooden beads, at a head shop. Prabhupada said, “They’re very nice.” I said, “They’re not tulasi, Prabhupada.” Prabhupada said, “They’re better than tulasi when I chant on them.”
Prabhupada told us, “If you brush your teeth with mustard seed oil and salt, you won’t get cavities. Even if you have a bad tooth, if you brush it with mustard seed oil and salt the worm will come out, and that will be the end of it.”
Coming from the airport, there was a sign along the road that said, “Detour, temporary inconvenience, permanent improvement.” Prabhupada laughed and said, “All we have received is the temporary inconvenience. There is no permanent improvement in this world.”
There was a boy named Stryadish who loved to eat chapatis. Then somebody claimed that Prabhupada said that one should only eat two or three chapatis. They told Stryadish, and he nearly went crazy. He went to Prabhupada and said, “What is this, two or three chapatis?” Prabhupada said, “You can eat twenty or thirty chapatis. That’s all right. An old man like me can only eat two or three. But if you can digest them and use your energy in Krishna’s service, you can eat twenty or thirty.”
Devotees were setting up Prabhupada’s desk, and Janaki asked, “Srila Prabhupada, where do you want the lamp?” Srila Prabhupada said, “Keep it there next to the picture of Prabhupada.” We all stopped because we had never heard Prabhupada refer to his spiritual master as ‘Prabhupada.’ Prabhupada saw that we were looking at him and said, “Yes, I have my Prabhupada too.” How much Srila Prabhupada appreciated his spiritual master.
What impressed me the most was Srila Prabhupada’s ability to turn everything into Krishna consciousness. No matter what you spoke about, he could relate it to Krishna. No matter where he was or what he was doing, he was always in connection with Krishna. He demonstrated Bhagavad-gita in practice. In the Gita Krishna says, “Always think of me; all that you do, do as a sacrifice for me.” That quality in Prabhupada made me realize his uniqueness. One humorous story in relation to that was when I accompanied Prabhupada to India. He asked me to wear my gray-flannel suit. This was a heavy, almost black, gray-flannel suit, and we went to India in July. When I got off the airplane in Delhi, it was like I was hit by a ton of bricks, because the air was so heavy and hot. Not only did Prabhupada have me wear this heavy, gray-flannel suit on the airplane but also when we went to visit an ashram or his God-brother in India. He would say, “Wear your suit.” He saw the suit as advantageous for Krishna.
When I accepted sannyas, I got a danda. Prabhupada said, “You are now Tridandi Goswami Kirtanananda Swami.” The word ‘tri’ means three. I said, “Prabhupada, there are four rods in my danda. What’s the fourth one?” Prabhupada said, “The three stand for the body, mind, and words, and the fourth is the jiva, the soul. We add an extra for the jiva because the jiva is always distinct. The jiva never merges.” Srila Prabhupada was always fighting the Mayavadis.
Prabhupada impressed me by his certainty. Prabhupada didn’t say, “I think,” or, “Maybe it’s like this” or, “Probably this.” For Prabhupada there was no question. For Prabhupada, “It’s this, it’s this, and it’s this.”
I once asked Prabhupada where we should dig for a well. He said, “Ask a local farmer.” In a way, that’s an important instruction. We shouldn’t bother the spiritual master with questions that can be easily answered by mundane experts. Krishna conscious devotees do not throw away the expertise of material persons, but they engage it in Krishna’s service. Prabhupada taught us that from the beginning.
Faith begets faith, but it’s Prabhupada’s faith that generates our faith.
Prabhupada’s compassion is that in his old age he left Vrindavan to bring us Krishna consciousness in the hell of New York. That’s compassion.
