One day in June of 1977, Śrīla Prabhupāda sat in his garden at the Krishna-Balaram Mandir in Vṛndāvana, India, conversing with a few devotees. Although for months he had been manifesting external symptoms of ill health, he still enjoyed sitting here with his disciples, while aromatic jasmine blossoms scented the air and the fountain gently splashed. He had been discussing various topics, including how modern, godless civilization was a society of two-legged animals. Speaking of life in India as he had known it as a child, he described a simpler way of living, and he began recalling some of his childhood experiences.
At his birth, he said, an astrologer had predicted that at age seventy he would leave India and establish many temples. Prabhupāda said he hadn’t understood this prediction for many years, but that by Kṛṣṇa’s grace he had gone to America (at the age of seventy) to execute the order of his spiritual master. In America, the result of his preaching had given him great hope, and he had obtained permanent residency there, expecting not to return to India.
One of Śrīla Prabhupāda’s disciples present, Tamāla Kṛṣṇa Goswami, spoke up. “Do you regret having come back to India?”
“No,” Śrīla Prabhupāda replied. “My plan was to stay in America, but Kṛṣṇa’s plan was different. Therefore when I was coming back I was speaking to Dvārakādhīśa [the Kṛṣṇa Deity in ISKCON’s Los Angeles temple]. I said to Dvārakādhīśa, ‘I came here to preach. I don’t know why You are dragging me back.’ So I was unhappy to leave, but Kṛṣṇa had His plan.”
Śrīla Prabhupāda went on to say that by following Kṛṣṇa’s plan of leaving Vṛndāvana and then, after preaching in America, coming back to Vṛndāvana, he had gained the most wonderful temple, the Krishna-Balaram temple in Vṛndāvana.
“You always came out victorious,” Tamāla Kṛṣṇa said. “I have never seen you defeated. In Bombay, for example, it seemed to be an impossible situation.”
“Yes, no one was interested,” said Śrīla Prabhupāda. “Who could see that such a big project would come up?”
“Only you could see that,” said Tamāla Kṛṣṇa. “You and Rādhā-Rāsavihārī [the Kṛṣṇa Deity at ISKCON’s Bombay temple].”
“But still I was determined.”
“They should write a book about that,” said Tamāla Kṛṣṇa.
“It is history,” Śrīla Prabhupāda added. “That is worth writing about. Māyāpur also.”
The first part of this volume of Śrīla Prabhupāda-līlāmṛta is an attempt to fulfill Prabhupāda’s desire that a book be written about the struggles undergone for establishing a wonderful temple for Kṛṣṇa in Bombay, as well as in Māyāpur and Vṛndāvana. It is a history worth writing about.
This history is worth telling not only to Śrīla Prabhupāda’s intimate followers, but to the whole world. After all, it is for the benefit of people everywhere that Śrīla Prabhupāda struggled against great obstacles to establish these three important ISKCON temples – in Bombay, in Vṛndāvana, and in Māyāpur. For Śrīla Prabhupāda, “temple” meant not only a building but a center of highest learning, an institution for teaching the science of God. He saw that people were mad after material progress with little interest in understanding their spiritual identity; they identified themselves with the material body. Centers of spiritual learning and culture, therefore, were of prime importance in liberating people from their bodily identification.
Śrīla Prabhupāda’s plan had been to transplant the seedling of India’s spirituality in the West and then to return the healthy plant to its native soil, where the teachings of Lord Kṛṣṇa had become confused by persons misrepresenting Vedic culture. In reawakening India’s own culture, Śrīla Prabhupāda wanted especially that there be wonderful temples of Kṛṣṇa consciousness, temples for everyone’s benefit.
This story is worth telling in that through it we learn of the mind and actions of a pure devotee of the Lord. We cannot expect to imitate such a great, empowered devotee as Śrīla Prabhupāda, but we can read about his activities in this volume, and that will inspire us, and show us how, by persistence, hard work, and patience, we can become successful in our attempts to regain our forgotten Kṛṣṇa consciousness and become pure devotees of the Lord.
This history is worth writing about also because to hear of Śrīla Prabhupāda’s activities is naturally very relishable. Hearing about the activities of Lord Kṛṣṇa’s pure devotee is as relishable and purifying as hearing about Lord Kṛṣṇa Himself. Simply by reading and appreciating Śrīla Prabhupāda-līlāmṛta we will purify our hearts and advance in spiritual enlightenment.
Although the first part of this volume focuses primarily on Śrīla Prabhupāda’s establishing of three major temples in India, these chapters also describe his varied activities as the world-traveling leader of his burgeoning International Society for Krishna Consciousness. Śrīla Prabhupāda wanted the Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement on every continent, in every city, in every town and village. So although Śrīla Prabhupāda’s establishing of his three main Indian centers provides the theme, the reader will also find Śrīla Prabhupāda actively representing Lord Kṛṣṇa and the disciplic succession in Los Angeles, Nairobi, New York, Melbourne, Paris – all over the world.
The second part of this volume begins with a biographical synopsis spanning 1970 to 1975, highlighting two major activities of Śrīla Prabhupāda: book production and book distribution. Meanwhile, however, Śrīla Prabhupāda was active in many other ways, and specifically he divided his time between America and India.
In America, where Śrīla Prabhupāda had the most disciples, the most temples, and the major front for his book distribution campaign, he toured and preached. Because his spiritual master had ordered him specifically to preach to the English-speaking world, he had begun his movement in America, he wrote in English, and generally preferred to speak in English – even when in his own country before thousands of Indians.
Śrīla Prabhupāda’s preaching throughout America, especially in these later years, was mostly for the benefit of his disciples. He wanted to put the Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement into their hands now that his movement in the U.S. had strength and maturity. This is your country, he would tell his disciples, and you know best how to preach here. But just to guide them and inspire them, he was lecturing, talking with reporters and university professors, purchasing properties, and simply being with his disciples as their leader, field commander, and worshipable master.
In India Śrīla Prabhupāda continued managing ISKCON on a practical, daily basis. Without his scrutiny in all manner of practical affairs – from financial to legal, from cleaning to cooking, from receiving guests to hiring construction workers – things would not be done properly, his disciples would be cheated, and ISKCON would not be appreciated as pure Vedic dharma. With great difficulty he had begun his three major ISKCON centers in India – Bombay, Vṛndāvana, and Māyāpur – and he had laid a foundation of bold, ambitious plans. But that would not be sufficient. ISKCON in India had not yet developed to the point where Prabhupāda could say, as he had said to his disciples in America, “Now it is in your hands.” Now it was in his hands. And to accomplish his goal, he assumed his feature of the exacting taskmaster, the relentlessly sharp-sighted temple manager.
That was his means. His end was to have his disciples actually take the management into their hands. But they would have to manage his way. As he would sometimes say to his leaders, “Do as I am doing.” That lesson, once learned, would establish an ISKCON that would flourish even if he relinquished the reins, an ISKCON that would survive even after his passing away.
But Prabhupāda’s direct guidance was still required, and not only for showing his disciples how to manage ISKCON in India or how to preach in America, but also for protecting his Society from internal strife and schisms. And in this volume we see Śrīla Prabhupāda expertly unify ISKCON during a trial of divisive party spirit.
Śrīla Prabhupāda’s life followed rhythm: touring, preaching, and managing interspersed with periods of writing and translating. The two types of activities were not always compatible, however, since one was fast-paced and vigorously outgoing and the other intensely meditative. But both were necessary. In fact, one of Prabhupāda’s goals in traveling throughout the world and painstakingly training his ISKCON leaders was to ultimately stop traveling, stop managing, and just sit in one place and write. But until such time, he was prepared to rise shortly after midnight wherever he was and write. Occasionally, however, he got a special opportunity, as in Hawaii in the summer of 1976, where for one month his ISKCON management stopped and his writing progressed at more than double the usual pace. But such quiet periods were the exception. As Śrīla Prabhupāda said, “Not in this lifetime.”
Still Śrīla Prabhupāda didn’t begrudge his burden of touring and managing. He relished the struggle. In June of 1976, when his health was poor and his disciples pleaded with him to rest for several months, he was unmoved. And when they persisted, he affirmed, “I want the benediction to go on fighting for Kṛṣṇa – just like Arjuna.”
Śrīla Prabhupāda’s fighting, his writing, his traveling back and forth between two worlds – East and West – was for uniting both those worlds in Kṛṣṇa consciousness. He saw himself as transplanting Vedic culture from East to West, an amazing feat in itself. But he was also reviving Vedic culture in India. His plan: to unite the East’s Kṛṣṇa conscious culture with the West’s prosperity and technological advancement, and thus benefit the entire world. India, due to poverty, was lame; and America, due to spiritual ignorance, was blind. Alone they were incomplete. But if the two cooperated – the blind carrying the lame man on his shoulders, the blind guided by the lame – then both could progress happily.
Prabhupāda was also uniting two worlds in yet another way; he was uniting the material world with the spiritual. Some five hundred years before, Śrīla Rūpa Gosvāmī had enunciated the philosophy that the entire material world, being an emanation from Lord Kṛṣṇa, is nondifferent from Him, and when the material world is linked with Kṛṣṇa in devotional service, it regains its spiritual nature. Śrīla Prabhupāda fully embodied that principle, utilizing the latest technological achievements in transportation and communication, striving to spiritualize the entire material world. As Śrīla Prabhupāda had written in his Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam purports,
Therefore, all the sages and devotees of the Lord have recommended that the subject matter of arts, science, philosophy, physics, chemistry, psychology and all other branches of knowledge should be wholly and solely applied in the service of the Lord. Art, literature, poetry, painting, etc., may be used in glorifying the Lord. The fiction writers, poets, and celebrated literatures are generally engaged in writing of sensuous subjects, but if they turn towards the service of the Lord they can describe the transcendental pastimes of the Lord. … Similarly, science and philosophy should also be applied in the service of the Lord. … Similarly, all other branches of knowledge should always be engaged in the service of the Lord.
Śrīla Prabhupāda was specifically empowered to teach the entire world how, by linking everything with Kṛṣṇa through devotional service, they could enjoy the essence of the spiritual world even in this life. This, Prabhupāda said, was “the one switch that will brighten everything, everywhere.”
This final volume of the Śrīla Prabhupāda-līlāmṛta concludes with Śrīla Prabhupāda’s last year on earth, 1977. At the beginning of the year he heard news of a conspiracy against his movement in the West, the so-called anticult movement. He gave fearless direction to his devotees how to combat the bigotry, compared it to the attacks Kṛṣṇa Himself had to face from the asuras, and was pleased to hear of an important New York State court decision completely vindicating the Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement from charges of “brainwashing.”
The last chapter recounts Śrīla Prabhupāda’s final lessons, as he spent his last days in his Vṛndāvana residence. Abstaining from food in his last months, he taught exemplary lessons in how a human being should ready himself to leave his body and return to the eternal spiritual world by always chanting and hearing about Lord Kṛṣṇa. And by allowing his disciples to associate intimately with him in these last days, he taught final instructions in love, a love that endures beyond death.
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