Pariksit das Remembers Srila Prabhupada

Following Srila Prabhupada

Interview DVD 04

Pariksit: When Prabhupada would come to the temple in New York, one of the first things that he would like to do was to speak with the artists and see what paintings had been done. Because his translation was such an important part of his service to his spiritual master, he was always very enthusiastic to see what progress we were making. On one occasion, we were all sitting in his quarters and the walls of his quarters were lined with the paintings, and that was one of my favorite times. Maybe there were 8 or 10 of us that were working doing the paintings for Bhagavatam at the time, and we had the opportunity just to sit with him and to discuss each individual painting and he would make suggestions on them and corrections. Whenever I was painting, I was always listening to Prabhupada – either listening to Prabhupada chanting or Prabhupada’s lectures. From the time I went into the Art Department in the morning to the time I left, I always was listening to Prabhupada. Sometimes I would be sitting there painting or just meditating on what I was going to be painting, and I would think how fortunate I was just to be able to hear Prabhupada and just wishing that the whole world could hear the way I could hear and have that experience. I remember one time I was doing a drawing of Lord Chaitanya. It was a drawing for the painting for Chaitanya-caritamrtaof Lord Chaitanya dancing in front of the Rathayatra cart, and all of a sudden I felt that I wasn’t doing the drawing. I realized the drawing was being done by some power other than me and that my hand was being guided.