My seventy-five year old disciple and his wife
have made the great sacrifice
of travelling a long distance
to visit me in Stuyvesant Falls.
My disciple has had to suffer
multiple physical maladies over the years,
including serious heart trouble,
temporary blindness for six weeks,
removal of his gall bladder,
and radiation treatment for
his prostate gland.
Inevitably, he becomes despondent
by his condition
to the point of obsessively dwelling
on where his next birth will take him.
I gave him some advice, which I said
might be difficult to follow,
but he should try.
I paraphrased a verse from
Srimad-Bhagavatam 10:14:8:
One who goes on suffering miseries
considering them a token reaction
for his past activities,
and who goes on worshiping
the Lord with love,
is guaranteed to
become purified and
go back to home, back to Godhead.
He liked hearing this and agreed
that should be his attitude.
At lunch yesterday he preached
to a young devotee,
who is a member of Rama Raya’s
New York City harinama party
who is visiting us for a few days.
He tried to impress upon
the young man the power of chanting
the holy name.
He reviewed with accurate details
the perils ISKCON went through
in the 1970s and 1980s.
He described the danger of the
deprograming movement
where devotees were kidnapped,
and which resulted in
the Robin George case
where ISKCON was threatened
with the loss of its temples
in a huge legal suit.
Then he described the persecution
of the Russian devotees
by the government. In both cases,
he pointed out how by chanting
Hare Krishna in public, the devotees
were saved from catastrophe –
the Robin George case
was settled out of court
and the Soviet Union
eventually dismantled.
My disciple is himself
very devoted to chanting japa.
That is his main sadhana
and he daily chants extra rounds
over the minimum quota.
He expressed his indebtedness to me
for linking him to the sampradāya
by initiation, without which,
he would have no shelter
and be a condemned man.
I very much appreciate his loyalty
and pray that he can endure
his many physical illnesses
in old age.