Reading the 2nd Dutch translation of "Prabhupada - your ever well-wisher" (0),
itself a abridged version of the full "Śrīla Prabhupāda-līlāmṛta" (1)
Some extracts, taken from the EN edition (1):
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Struggling Alone (2)
At Commonwealth Pier, Śrīla Prabhupāda wrote another Bengali poem, entitled “Mārkine Bhāgavata-dharma” (“Teaching Kṛṣṇa Consciousness in America”). Some of the verses he wrote on board the ship that day are as follows:
My dear Lord Kṛṣṇa, You are so kind upon this useless soul, but I do not know why You have brought me here. Now You can do whatever You like with me.
But I guess You have some business here, otherwise why would You bring me to this terrible place?
Most of the population here is covered by the material modes of ignorance and passion. Absorbed in material life they think themselves very happy and satisfied, and therefore they have no taste for the transcendental message of Vāsudeva [Kṛṣṇa]. I do not know how they will be able to understand it.
But I know that Your causeless mercy can make everything possible, because You are the most expert mystic.
How will they understand the mellows of devotional service? O Lord, I am simply praying for Your mercy so that I will be able to convince them about Your message.
All living entities have come under the control of the illusory energy by Your will, and therefore, if You like, by Your will they can also be released from the clutches of illusion.
I wish that You may deliver them. Therefore if You so desire their deliverance, then only will they be able to understand Your message. …
How will I make them understand this message of Kṛṣṇa consciousness? I am very unfortunate, unqualified, and the most fallen. Therefore I am seeking Your benediction so that I can convince them, for I am powerless to do so on my own.
Somehow or other, O Lord, You have brought me here to speak about You. Now, my Lord, it is up to You to make me a success or failure, as You like.
O spiritual master of all the worlds! I can simply repeat Your message. So if You like You can make my power of speaking suitable for their understanding.
Only by Your causeless mercy will my words become pure. I am sure that when this transcendental message penetrates their hearts, they will certainly feel gladdened and thus become liberated from all unhappy conditions of life.
O Lord, I am just like a puppet in Your hands. So if You have brought me here to dance, then make me dance, make me dance, O Lord, make me dance as You like.
I have no devotion, nor do I have any knowledge, but I have strong faith in the holy name of Kṛṣṇa. I have been designated as Bhaktivedanta, and now, if You like, You can fulfill the real purport of Bhaktivedanta.
Signed – the most unfortunate, insignificant beggar,
A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami,
On board the ship Jaladuta, Commonwealth Pier,
Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A.
Dated 18th September 1965.
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STRUGGLING ALONE (3)
Philosophically at complete odds with Prabhupāda, Dr. Mishra accepted the Absolute Truth in the impersonal feature (or Brahman) to be supreme. Prabhupāda stressed the supremacy of the personal feature (or Bhagavān), following the Vedic theistic philosophy that the most complete understanding of the Absolute Truth is personal. The Bhagavad-gītā says that the impersonal Brahman is subordinate to Bhagavān and is an emanation from Him, just as the sunshine is an emanation from the sun planet. This conclusion had been taught by the leading traditional ācāryas of ancient India, such as Rāmānuja and Madhva, and Śrīla Prabhupāda was in disciplic succession from Madhva. Dr. Mishra, on the other hand, followed Śaṅkara, who taught that the impersonal presence of the Absolute Truth is all in all and that the Personality of Godhead is ultimately an illusion. Whereas Prabhupāda’s theistic philosophy accepted the individual spiritual self (ātmā) as an eternal servant of the supreme spiritual being (Bhagavān), Dr. Mishra’s view accepted the spiritual self as not an individual. Rather, his idea was that since each person is identical with God, the Supreme Brahman, there is no need to worship God outside oneself. As Dr. Mishra would put it, “Everything is one.”
Prabhupāda challenged: If each of us is actually the Supreme, then why is this “Supreme” suffering and struggling in the material world? Dr. Mishra would counter that the Supreme is only temporarily covered by illusion and that through haṭha-yoga and meditation one would become enlightened, understanding, “It is all the Supreme.” Prabhupāda would again challenge: But if the Supreme could be covered by illusion, then illusion would be greater than God, greater than the Supreme.
Prabhupāda considered Dr. Mishra a “Māyāvādī” because of his inadvertent acceptance that māyā, illusion, is greater than the Absolute Truth. For Śrīla Prabhupāda, not only was the impersonal philosophy unpalatable, it was an insult to the Personality of Godhead.
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STRUGGLING ALONE (4)
In his solitary wanderings, Śrīla Prabhupāda made acquaintances with a number of local people. There was Mr. Ruben, a Turkish Jew, who worked as a New York City subway conductor. Mr. Ruben met Prabhupāda on a park bench and, being a sociable fellow and a world traveler, sat and talked with the Indian holy man.
Mr. Ruben: He seemed to know that he would have temples filled up with devotees. He would look out and say, “I am not a poor man, I am rich. There are temples and books, they are existing, they are there, but the time is separating us from them.” He always mentioned “we” and spoke about the one who sent him, his spiritual master. He didn’t know people at that time, but he said, “I am never alone.” He always looked like a lonely man to me. That’s what made me think of him like a holy man, Elijah, who always went out alone. I don’t believe he had any followers.
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Seeing him from a distance – a tiny figure walking Manhattan’s streets and avenues among many other tiny figures, a foreigner whose visa had almost run out – we come upon only the external appearance of Śrīla Prabhupāda. These days of struggle were real enough and very difficult, but his transcendental consciousness was always predominant. He was not living in Manhattan consciousness, but was absorbed in dependence upon Kṛṣṇa, just as when on the Jaladuta he had suffered his heart attacks, his reading of Caitanya-caritāmṛta had supplied him “the nectarine of life.”
He had already succeeded. Certainly he wanted to provide Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa a temple in New York, but his success was that he was remembering Kṛṣṇa, even in New York City in the winter of 1965–66, whether the world recognized him or not. Not a day went by when he did not work on Kṛṣṇa’s book, Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam. And not a day went by when he did not offer food to Kṛṣṇa and speak on Kṛṣṇa’s philosophy of Bhagavad-gītā.
Lord Kṛṣṇa says in Bhagavad-gītā, “For one who sees Me everywhere and sees everything in Me, I am never lost to him, and he is never lost to Me.” And Kṛṣṇa assures His pure devotees that, “My devotee will never be vanquished.” There was never any doubt about this for Prabhupāda. The only question was whether Americans would take notice of the pure devotee in their midst. At this point it seemed that no one was going to take him seriously.
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STRUGGLING ALONE (5)
Śrīla Prabhupāda did not attach much importance to lecturing where the people who gathered would hear him only once. This was the main reason he wanted his own building in New York: so that people could come
regularly, chant Hare Kṛṣṇa, take
prasādam in his company, and hear him speak from
Bhagavad-gītā and
Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam..
Harvey Cohen and Bill Epstein were friends. Harvey was a freelance artist, and Bill worked at the Paradox. After Harvey had been to Prabhupāda’s place at Dr. Mishra’s yoga studio a few times, he came by the Paradox and began to describe all about the new swami to Bill and other friends.
More info on Harvey Cohen:
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STRUGGLING ALONE (6)
Harvey offered Prabhupāda his studio on the Bowery... Harvey had decided to leave the city and go to California, but before leaving he offered his loft for Prabhupāda to share with David Allen.
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Prabhupāda lived on the Bowery, sitting under a small light, while hundreds of derelicts also sat under hundreds of naked lights on the same city block. He had no more fixed income than the derelicts, nor any greater security of a fixed residence, yet his consciousness was different. He was translating Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam into English, speaking to the world through his Bhaktivedanta purports. His duty, whether on the fourteenth floor of a Riverside Drive apartment building or in a corner of a Bowery loft, was to establish Kṛṣṇa consciousness as the prime necessity for all humanity. He went on with his translating and with his constant vision of a Kṛṣṇa temple in New York City. Because his consciousness was absorbed in Kṛṣṇa’s universal mission, he did not depend on his surroundings for shelter. Home for him was not a matter of bricks and wood, but of taking shelter of Kṛṣṇa in every circumstance. As Prabhupāda had said to his friends uptown, “Everywhere is my home,” whereas without Kṛṣṇa’s shelter the whole world would be a desolate place.
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The musical kīrtanas were especially popular on the Bowery, since the Swami’s new congregation consisted mostly of local musicians and artists, who responded more to the transcendental music than to the philosophy. Every morning he would hold a class on Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, attended by David Allen, Robert Nelson, and another boy, and occasionally he would teach cooking to whoever was interested. He was usually available for personal talks with any inquiring visitors or with his new roommate.
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For the Bowery crowd, sound was spirit and spirit was sound, in a merging of music and meditation. But for Prabhupāda, music without the name of God wasn’t meditation; it was sense gratification, or at most a kind of stylized impersonal meditation. But he was glad to see the musicians coming to play along in his kīrtanas, to hear him, and to chant responsively. Some, having stayed up all night playing somewhere on their instruments, would come by in the morning and sing with the Swami. He did not dissuade them from their focus on sound; rather, he gave them sound. In the Vedas, sound is said to be the first element of material creation; the source of sound is God, and God is eternally a person. Prabhupāda’s emphasis was on getting people to chant God’s personal, transcendental name. Whether they took it as jazz, folk music, rock, or Indian meditation made no difference, as long as they began to chant Hare Kṛṣṇa.
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Article appeared in a June 1966 issue of The Village Voice:
https://vanipedia.org/wiki/Srila_Prabhupada_in_the_Media_-_1966#Swami_Bhaktivedanta
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Although Prabhupāda’s home had suddenly become an insane terror, the street at its door was also a hellish, dangerous place. He was shaken. He could call Dr. Mishra’s, and they might take him in. But that chapter of his life was over, and he had gone on to something better. He had his own classes, young people chanting and hearing. Was it all over now? After nine months in America, he had finally gotten a good response to his preaching and kīrtana. He couldn’t just quit now.
A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Mahārāja, whom everyone knew and respected in Vṛndāvana as a distinguished scholar and devotee, who had an open invitation to see the vice president of India and many other notables, now had to face starkly that he had not one friend of stature in the United States. Suddenly he was as homeless as any derelict on the street. In fact many of them, with their long-time berths in flophouses, were more secure than he. They were ruined, but settled...
This is what it meant to be working without government sponsorship, without the support of any religious organization, without a patron. It meant being vulnerable and insecure. Prabhupāda faced the crisis as a test from Kṛṣṇa. The instruction of Bhagavad-gītā was to depend on Kṛṣṇa for protection: “In all activities just depend upon Me and work always under My protection. In such devotional service be fully conscious of Me. … You will pass over all the obstacles of conditional life by My grace.”
Breaking Ground (7)
The hippies (in the Lower East Side) had turned from the suburban materialism of their parents, the inane happiness of TV and advertising – the ephemeral goals of middle-class America. They were
disillusioned by parents, teachers, clergy, public leaders, and the media,
dissatisfied with American policy in Vietnam, and
allured by radical political ideologies that exposed America as a cruel, selfish, exploitative giant who must now reform or die. And they were
searching for real love, real peace, real existence, and real spiritual consciousness...
Notions about Eastern cultures and Eastern religions were in vogue. Through drugs, yoga, brotherhood, or just by being free – somehow they would attain enlightenment. Everyone was supposed to keep an open mind and develop his own cosmic philosophy by direct experience and drug-expanded consciousness, blended with his own eclectic readings. And if their lives appeared aimless, at least they had dropped out of a pointless game where the player sells his soul for material goods and in this way supports a system that is already rotten.
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The Puerto Ricans in the neighborhood would look in the window at Harvey Cohen’s painting and then blankly walk away... But there were young people around who had been intrigued with the painting, who went up to the window to read the little piece of paper. Some of them even knew about the
Bhagavad-gītā, although the painting of Lord Caitanya and the dancers didn’t seem to fit.
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Prabhupāda uses the cars to give an example: When a car momentarily comes into our vision on Second Avenue, we certainly don’t think that it had no existence before we saw it or that it ceases to exist once it has passed from view; similarly, when Kṛṣṇa goes from this planet to another, it doesn’t mean He no longer exists, although it may appear that way. Actually, He has only left our sight. Kṛṣṇa and His incarnations constantly appear and disappear on innumerable planets throughout the innumerable universes of the material creation.
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“Kṛṣṇa consciousness” was Prabhupāda’s own rendering of a phrase from Śrīla Rūpa Gosvāmī’s Padyāvalī, written in the sixteenth century. Kṛṣṇa-bhakti-rasa-bhāvita: “to be absorbed in the mellow taste of executing devotional service to Kṛṣṇa.”
Breaking Ground (8)
Prabhupāda spoke of the necessity of purification for spiritual advancement. “It is not enough merely to chant holy words,” he said. “One must be pure inside and out. Chanting in purity brings spiritual advancement. The living entity becomes impure because he wants to enjoy material pleasure. But the impure can become pure by following Kṛṣṇa, by doing all works for Kṛṣṇa. Beginners in Kṛṣṇa consciousness have a tendency to relax their efforts in a short time, but to advance spiritually you must resist this temptation and continually increase your efforts and devotion.”
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Carl Yeargens knew something about initiation from his readings, and he, more than the others, knew what a serious commitment it was. He was surprised to hear that Swamiji was offering initiation, and he was cautious about entering into it. He knew that initiation meant no illicit sex, intoxication, or meat-eating, and an initiated disciple would have new responsibilities for spreading the teachings to others. Carl was already feeling less involved since the Swami had moved to Second Avenue, but he decided to attend the initiation anyway.
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He had them repeat, one word at a time, a Vedic mantra of purification:
oṁ apavitraḥ pavitro vā
sarvāvasthāṁ gato ’pi vā
yaḥ smaret puṇḍarīkākṣaṁ
sa bāhyābhyantaraḥ śuciḥ
śrī-viṣṇuḥ śrī-viṣṇuḥ śrī-viṣṇuḥ
The initiates tried falteringly to follow his pronunciation of the words, which they had never heard before. Then he gave the translation:
“Unpurified or purified,
or even having passed through all situations,
one who remembers the lotus-eyed Supreme Personality of Godhead
is cleansed within and without.”
Breaking Ground (9)
One night, a group of about ten hippies from Millbrook came to Swamiji’s kīrtana. They all chanted (not so much in worship of Kṛṣṇa as to see what kind of high the chanting could produce), and after the lecture a Millbrook leader asked about drugs. Prabhupāda replied that drugs were not necessary for spiritual life, that they could not produce spiritual consciousness, and that all drug-induced religious visions were simply hallucinations. To realize God was not so easy or cheap that one could do it just by taking a pill or smoking. Chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa, he explained, was a purifying process to uncover one’s pure consciousness. Taking drugs would increase the covering and bar one from self-realization.
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OTHER biography: "Śrīla Prabhupāda Lilamrta As It Is"
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