“The main concern for Satsvarupa Maharaja this week continues to be the increasing level of pain in his left hip. Hopefully there will be some noninvasive program suggested by the orthopedic surgeon on Monday. The neurologist we saw this week is a real straight shooter, and he said Satsvarupa Maharaja was at the upper limit of the meds he can prescribe for Parkinsons. He feels that the symptoms so far are really no more threatening than those of old age, but there’s no magic that can be done, there’s no operation, no anything that will stop the slow progress of the disease. He feels that in general Maharaja can expect seven or eight reasonable years, but then after that there’s no guarantees, there will be a slow decline and an increase in management will have to be applied.
Hare Krsna,
Baladeva”
Who is such a fool that he will not take up this process of chanting Hare Krsna? The devotees of the Lord take up the mission of inducing people to chant. This makes them very dear to Krsna. But before inducing others to chant, one must chant himself under the instructions of the spiritual master. Srila Prabhupada has said that of all the instructions of the spiritual master, the instruction to chant sixteen rounds a day is essential. How about you, dear reader? Do you chant sixteen rounds? As a servant of my spiritual master and as your humble well-wisher, I beg you to do so.
******
One of the best times to chant was in the morning with Prabhupada. After kirtana he used to say, “Chant one round.” We did it together. He usually finished before we did, and then we all trailed off, even if we hadn’t finished the round.
******
I am a japa chanter. I do not chant at the perfect stage (suddha-nama), but I am very fortunate. I chant sixteen rounds a day and try to avoid offenses. I am bathed in Krsna’s mercy, hari-nama. It is the best way to approach Radha and Krsna and ask for seva.
******
I like to chant my japa alone, or at most with one or two buddies. Some places practice japa in a packed room with many devotees. At 26 2nd Ave., Prahbupada used to chant a round with all the devotees. But I believe Raghunatha dasa Gosvami and Haridasa Thakura practiced solitary bhajana. It is nice chanting alone with the Lord in intimacy. You hear your own sound vibration clearly, without mingling with others. It lends itself to good practice by the nature of its concentration. There are no hard and fast rules to chanting the holy names. Either with others or alone is allowable. I am just stating a particular preference.
******
I pray to keep attentive and to make my chanting more holy. It is sometimes difficult to meet Nama Prabhu at a deeper level. I’m counting the rounds. But I tried my best and did not falter in the basic execution. I’ll be able to chant twelve rounds before 5:00 A.M. That’s a decent pace. I am thinking of Prabhupada’s translation of Siksastakam: “It increases the ocean of transcendental bliss, and it enables us to fully taste the nectar for which we are always anxious.” I’m not in the ocean of transcendental bliss, but I am anxious for the taste of the nectar. I am praying to Krsna for effort and steadiness. I am calling to Him in my desperation. Please, Lord, let me keep steady and improve. Don’t let me slip.
******
A routine day, struggling to stay with Nama Prabhu, begging my mind to stay alert and fixed. I stay at a decent level and do not submerge beneath the water of consciousness. But I wish I was better, fresher in the realm of the Hare Krsna mantra.
******
A little faith will help us. We are in a great, dangerous position. We don’t know it because we are sleeping. Sometimes the person is killed while he is sleeping. It requires a third person to come and wake you and warn you. Hearing the Vedic mantra is required. The most important mantra is the maha-mantra.
******
The greatest welfare is to chant loudly so that others can wake up. If we hear the Hare Krsna mantra, it will cleanse the mirror of the heart. In the heart there is such a stock of impressions from different lives. Experience of material things is a dirty covering. There is the potency to hear and have the covering removed.
******
We should take help of the spiritual master. Lord Caitanya has given us this easy process. There is no loss if we chant. There are no hard and fast rules in the chanting. The gain is very great. If the mirror is covered with dust, you cannot see your face. Similarly, the heart is covered. If we try to clean, Krsna will help. Krsna is so nice as Paramatma, caitya-guru. He is always ready to help. He sends his representative from without. A little faith is required. There must be inclination.
pp. 178-80
Chanted thirteen rounds. Don’t get agitated and depressed over your lack of attention and devotion in japa. Be grateful for what attachment you do have and capitalize on that. Build up. You watch yourself merely counting—the minutes and seconds per round, the number of rounds, the time of day . . . the progress that any worker feels as he shovels his way or she types her way or he reads his way through a designated amount of work. Think of piece workers who get credit for so many items sewn. Any worker with his eye on the clock, waiting for the coffee break, the lunch hour, the five o’clock whistle …
There’s that level of my japa reality, but I assume there’s more. I know there’s more. I keep going with it yearly, my whole life is only one life-chapter in a career that may take many lives of improving chanting. (Krsna-prema could happen in a moment, or it could fail to happen for many births.)
I don’t want to fake my actual attitude. I mean, I shouldn’t be overly dramatic about my disappointment. I’m not that upset about it. It’s a long-standing fact that I’m not ecstatic when I chant, I don’t experience that Krsna and Krsna’s name are nondifferent. Yet I chant every day. I feel good about fulfilling that obligation.
I also dearly love the practice. If a nondevotee sees me chant, I feel worlds apart—how much I value these prayer-bead mantras, and how he or she cannot understand. If I cannot chant my mantras aloud and privately because I’m with the karmis, then I feel how I love japa, how it’s like my life and breath.
But we accept more as matter of fact, that we chant with no taste. “When, oh, when will that day be mine when my offenses ceasing,/taste for the name increasing—/when in my heart will Your mercy shine?”
When I read those lines, I think he’s describing me. But it’s no big deal. It’s like the way I accept my somewhat crippled left ankle or my headache syndrome. I live within those limits, and I don’t unnecessarily lament. If I can walk for an hour a day, that’s fine. I don’t expect to walk more than that. If I can go one or two weeks without clusters of headaches, that’s wonderful—and I try to get as much done as I can within that no-headache zone. But when the pressure starts coming again, I live with it. I have no other choice. The loveless, inattentive chanting is another part of my life and conditioning.
Besides, I have hope I can improve. It’s up to Krsna. Within my power is the ability not to worsen. I can occasionally do a japa retreat, and when I increase the quantity, I may notice (as I’ve been noticing the last two days) that I actually can be aware of the things my mind is focused on and I can curb them, or at least I can be aware. This morning I started chanting and also starting thinking about my book production. I noticed it and said, “Okay, you’re thinking about book distribution. It’s a nice thing to think about. But this is japa time.” That curbed the one line of thought. These little things come to me, and I am grateful.
Although I made fun of my duty-bound counting up of the Ekadasi quota, still it’s a virtue. Maybe I inherited it from my karma parents. I learned (rather late) to be an achiever and study for exams, to be a punctual worker. I can apply that and I count. It’s small-time, and I don’t mind if you joke about it. I’d rather be this way than slovenly and unable to take my quota seriously. I like to count. How many rounds done? How many left? How many minutes per round.
I don’t mind that I’m such a slow chanter, averaging eight minutes per round. But if I can go faster, that would be better.
That’s me, my hand of veins and bones and flesh, holding the beads on the cover of Begging.
So what? A penny for your thoughts.
Don’t pinch the housewife. Don’t cut off the mice’s tails in the fairy tale. Don’t make deliberate sense. Go back to your chanting without a crutch.
Walk and chant. You know all those corny commercial names they give to stores and products where they change the spelling into commercialeze pop language? Like Soap ‘n’ Suds, Stop ‘n’ Shop, Quik ‘n’ Eazee,—well today, for you, it’s “Chant ‘n’ Walk,” “Stop ‘n’ Talk,” “Count ‘n’ Sit.” No suds and no dogs, no broads and no shop, and no wise guy remarks. Shut up ‘n’ Chant. Close down and walk with mantras. Refrain from much time in writing or reading or anything else. It’s a day for sixty-four rounds. Get another one or two in wherever you can. And be an athlete or musician in bringing the mind back gently to hearing. Be a renounced person who humbly accepts whatever be can get, but who goes on chanting.
pp. 87-91
When devotees speak about the need for informal meetings, the already existing forms of communication may sometimes come in for criticism. Sometimes the daily Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam class is singled out as lacking in inspiration.
Certainly, Bhāgavatam lecturers and their audiences may improve their rapport. But hearing Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam is still the best method for removing doubts and dirt from the heart. When a learned Vaiṣṇava speaks from the scriptures and answers questions, the potency for self-improvement is unlimited.
Śrīla Prabhupāda personally introduced the Bhāgavatam class into ISKCON, and it is a time-honored method of communication. Thousands of years ago the sages at Naimiṣāraṇya heard Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam from Sūta Gosvāmī. Sūta Gosvāmī had previously attended the original Bhāgavatam classes held by Sukadeva Gosvāmī, who spoke to Mahārāja Parīkṣit at a gathering of learned devotees.
The successful Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam class requires an eager audience and a qualified speaker. Many of us have had the experience of enduring Bhāgavatam classes we found boring. Sometimes we think a speaker has not prepared himself well, or he uses the occasion to air his personal opinions under the cover of scripture. Admitting this, both audience and speaker of Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam can strive to improve their performance.
The Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam class can be a most personal, relevant, and effective way of spiritual communication. Let other methods of communication be encouraged, as long as they can make us more fit to chant and hear about Kṛṣṇa and perform devotional service. There is a time and a need to deal with topics that don’t belong in Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam class. But there is also a time to put aside all relative matters and hear the Absolute Truth.
We can never completely solve the difficulties of family, marriage, and community living. Human dealings are innately imperfect. The source of perfection is the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Kṛṣṇa, and He is represented by the teacher Vyāsadeva, who is represented whenever a qualified devotee speaks the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam.
Many devotees had their lives dramatically transformed by hearing a Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam class. When Śrīla Prabhupāda gave a lecture in January 1974 stressing the need to “distribute books, distribute books, distribute books,” several devotees in the audience vowed on the spot to dedicate their lives to that instruction. The Nectar of Devotion relates the history of a brāhmaṇa who heard that devotional offerings could be made in the mind, practiced mental worship, and so was personally brought by Lord Nārāyaṇa to Vaikuṇṭha.
The Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam message is most potent when spoken by a pure devotee like Śrīla Prabhupāda. But as Prabhupāda told us, the message is effective when spoken in disciplic succession by his representatives.
How can a speaker improve the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam presentation? I once wrote a letter to Śrīla Prabhupāda asking if it was advisable to rehearse and carefully prepare my Bhāgavatam lectures. Śrīla Prabhupāda replied: “It is all right to prepare your lectures, but you should also be ready to speak at a moment’s notice.”
It’s important for speakers to leave time at the end of their lectures so that the audience can ask questions. This is often the most enlivening part of the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam class.
As hearers, we should not demand novelty from Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam. Even if we have heard the same teachings before, that doesn’t mean we have fully realized them or we’re practicing them perfectly. Hearing the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam is a comprehensive practice. Prabhupāda states that one should hear the message with rapt attention, but for this one needs a pure mind. And for purity of mind, one should be pure in one’s activities, regulated in eating, mating, sleeping, and defending.
To be dissatisfied with superficial relations is a healthy sign. We should encourage one another to address and solve personal and community problems. Furthermore, we should realize the strength we can gain from the methods Prabhupāda has given us. Prominent among these is the daily hearing of Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam.
As stated in the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam (1.2.18),
“By regular attendance in classes on the Bhāgavatam and by rendering of service to the pure devotee, all that is troublesome to the heart is almost completely destroyed, and loving service unto the Personality of Godhead, who is praised with transcendental songs, is established as an irrevocable fact.”
Reading a little in the Namamrta with some feeling. And I think about taste. Could I discuss such a thing with R.S.? Say, “You know our philosophy has all the answers. Steve Galeburg said to me he didn’t want all pat answers to everything . . . ” Say I believe and accept and live in Krsna conscious teachings, but what do I feel? Or say I used to feel this more keenly and was more willing to tell the world with hopes of “converting” them to Krsna consciousness or at least I had faith that even if they didn’t join us and become devotees, people would become greatly benefited just to hear Hare Krsna chanting or to take prasadam. Where is that fervor? Gone with the old days of the Boston temple? Did it exist even then? I was always one who preferred to stay indoors and read . . .
You couldn’t very well discuss these things with R.S.. As soon as you say, “Our philosophy has all the answers,” he’d laugh. He can take on strong attacks to faith because he’s so philosophical, sees and analyzes in that light. Things come back to brahma-sabda as the best proof and so Krsna consciousness is the best knowledge. Epistemology.
So you can talk of other things at the Friday lunch.
What are you trying to say? I know worldly people, poets like C.K. Williams and so many others see Krsna consciousness as a—Whatever.
Here we are. Leave at 4:30 A.M. M. is waiting for a mechanic to come and he’s got washers and bolts, big ones, and they’ll tighten the parts under the van. Hope that will be good enough until the company sends us new parts in the mail. Sure hope we don’t break down on route to New York City or Philly. It’s my van, Stephen Guarino; although I don’t drive, I’m the owner.
Don’t want it that way, to be accountable. M says don’t worry, it will go all right. Whatever you own can get you into trouble but you need to have things . . .
If R.S. asks me what are you writing I’ll say, “I haven’t finished my memoirs with Srila Prabhupada. I’m writing comments on the letters he wrote me. Did one volume years ago and only recently continued it. It’s like a history of ISKCON for me in those years.”
But I’m not actually writing that. I could tell him, as his wife also hears, “I write poems. You know, of daily experience.
Poems. He once said he’d be willing to talk with me about a poem I wrote. He meant he’d be a teacher or critic. I didn’t want that. I can’t stand that.
And so I’ll have to think of a few luncheon topics, otherwise it will flow of its own as I ask him about his grown-up children, the one who was discharged from the Navy.
I write of the past but the present too. Well, May apples was my happy choice. I opened a dictionary at random and immediately turned right to the page where May apple appeared.
Those yellowish apples are edible but no one eats them. They grow along the banks of the Tuscarora Creek at Gita-Nagari. I’m not there, and can’t be. They don’t know why. It’s because I can’t be myself there; too much has changed. I have to move on but can always go back and visit.
Hare Krsna until you die. If Gour Govinda Swami can die, I can too. That’s the logic. It’s like saying that Socrates is mortal; Socrates is a man, therefore all men are mortal. But Socrates said he was immortal. You know what I mean. Don’t say “die” then. Say as the ISKCON World Review did, “ISKCON leader passing on.” Passes to where? That’s unknown. But as that Swami passed on, you will too. He went suddenly while discussing Krsna’s pastimes as Lord Jagannatha in Dvaraka. Clutched at his heart. Asked them to chant Hare Krsna. They did. In fifteen minutes he was gone, in Mayapura, on the disappearance day of Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati.
You have a little story of bare facts too. Your father, it says on his death certificate, died of a heart attack in Philadelphia in 1989 (I think). Mother is now eighty-five. They were both twenty-nine years old when I was born on December 5, 1939.
I was surprised to hear a Godbrother telling me what the astrologer said he was going through. I thought he was above that. He said, “Don’t trust anything Srila Prabhupada didn’t specifically tell us by 1977.” Well he didn’t teach astrology; only at the end of his life did he consult. And those predictions didn’t come true, they said he would live longer.
I say don’t bother with it. Keep your resolve not to get a horoscope done. I’ve stopped listening to jazz, and no horoscope, no women dallying and no serious interest in Christianity or any writer. If only instead I could be “into” prayer or hari-nama, or preaching sankirtana. At least I’ve got this writing.
(1/2 hour (afternoon), May 6, 1996, indoors at Samika Rsi’s house, 50 degrees, rainy day)
pp. 27-30
We are going to walk to the preaching center this morning for Prabhupada puja. I don’t think our “noises” there disturb anyone because all neighbors are commercial businesses and not there so early.
I’ve prepared to speak on Bg. 10.8, Lord Krsna is the Supreme Personality of Godhead. I pray to Him here, and to my spiritual master.
Krsna, Krsna, Krsna. In any prison or disturbing condition, let us think of You. At least utter Your names in the Hare Krsna mantra. Chant because our spiritual master told us to do so. I am not ideal enough to be spiritual master to others, but I try. Some may accept me that way, out of their submissiveness. I owe it to them to at least act in the “role” I mean deeply—a Vaisnava ISKCON sannyasi.
Dreamt a complete newcomer was very impressive and ISKCON leaders brought this man around to inspire everyone. He looked at me and diagnosed me to be suffering from separation from my spiritual master and I seemed to even doubt my spiritual master and Krsna’s existence. I replied to this newcomer that while the soul was open to his seeing in some ways, yet in other ways it was inscrutable. I could not accept that he was so brilliant as to diagnose me like that, especially at first glance. In the dream I was also walking behind Harikesa Maharaja, who was conversing with another leader. I said to them, “I am not a part of your conversation, but I overheard you say . . .” Perhaps I commented on the theme that we each have our part to contribute and should be accepted.
Trying here to get beyond the self-centered journal. But one has to cope and turns to journaling. When I write what matters to me. I at least get beyond paying attention to the TV comedy upstairs. What matters objectively? Give people Krsna consciousness. If we can serve Him, and think of Him, avoid illicit sex, etc. In town there are advertisements for a movie “Personal and Up Close”—man and woman kissing. I see it every day. I don’t have to mention similar things. I keep it out of my writing but it runs in my blood. I developed lumpy, red rashes overnight—is that from the city water system?
Hare Krsna comes straight from Krsnaloka. It’s almost impossible, it seems, to convince many people to seriously take up Krsna. consciousness. But after spending gallons of blood you do get a man and his wife like the Dubliners in whose flat we are staying. A few souls join and that’s worth it, plus the knowledge that you are pleasing Krsna and saving yourself and that even a little exposure to Krsna consciousness is very good for everyone. Bg. 10.8 purport is filled with Vedic references asserting that Narayana is the Supreme Person and existed before anyone or anything. We sometimes make fun of theistic meditators who think and feel merely the existence and greatness of God (neutral rasa), whereas we actively serve Krsna and think of Him always in that way. But there is something to be said for the deep contemplation on God’s greatness and existence. (I sure wish I could do it now instead of “hearing” this TV upstairs.) We may also run around serving Krsna and yet not follow the injunctions: smartavyah satatam visnur, always remember Krsna and never forget Him. Krsna consciousness allows us to be with Krsna by chanting and various services. And by preaching, if you do it right, you contemplate on God’s greatness and existence. We are not such mystics or meditators that we can sustain any other kind of being with Krsna—not in Kali-yuga. There is nothing less profound about the practices of bhakti-yoga provided you do them earnestly.
Chanting Hare Krsna is especially so.
pp. 187-89
The Kurma brahmana wanted to travel with Lord Caitanya and give up his home duties.
Is there something different I want to do or could do? So I could write about it? You could do something, make a break, a change. That might be an act of passion. But to maintain life in the mode of goodness is a different thing. Your writing does reflect your life. If “nothing is happening” in your life, you will reflect that in your prose. You’re bored, stagnant, dull.
Now starting off an attempt to write while sitting in an easy chair in a room of Baltimore house for one week, giving evening classes and reading some C.c. and eating mango mash.
Would I want to change my life? Go into a cave and chant sixty-four rounds a day? Rent a room in a dharmsala at Radha kunda? Of course not. Those are not acts acceptable for an ISKCON sannyasi. I have to make the right profile. Besides, I couldn’t maintain such a life.
I’m doing what is my speed and mode at present. Lots of luggage for comforts and reading and writing. Preparing to live out of a van in Ireland or Europe, provided the EEC doesn’t object to me as a US citizen. Get my residency there in Dublin, a front. So that life. You go here and there and lecture from his books. Therefore, you better read them. And . . . in between readings and travel, you put mango tidbits, drying towels, news from interviews and letters into here.
Write whatever you damn please after your sixteen rounds.
And I say hello hello
dour face dough face
doughty boy,
Hello to you too in your
dreams roughed up by
bullies, in your
dream of Harvard,
U.S. Navy and lost
in NYC. Hello and
wake to this room,
drink water eat not
too heavy.
Yeah, I get the idea of the Basic Sketch Book, or let’s say it’s dawning on me. It’s not a fixed concept. It’s floating my way like the morning walk we take near the Senior Citizens home on a dirt track, ’round and ’round I go “wogging” (a fast walk that’s in between jogging and walking). Like a racehorse I go and hear thrushes and birds whose names I don’t know, they sound happy in mid-May. Walk and pray. May Basic Sketch Book begin to exert its “yoga-maya” over me. As the cardinal sings, “Birdy-birdy-birdy.”
I can’t think so straight or concentratedly or analytically. Trying to make out Srila Prabhupada’s purport to Lord Caitanya’s teaching to the Kurma brahmana. Lord Caitanya taught him not to request to leave home and travel with Him. This is the mission of the Krsna consciousness movement, Srila Prabhupada states. We don’t tell people they have to move into our centers. Practice Krsna consciousness at home and as you do so, become a guru and instruct people in Krsna consciousness. This seems to mean you can be a preacher or guru in your neighborhood, or at least in your home. Preach—but in order to do that you don’t need to make radical social changes. Then Prabhupada says sahajiyas criticize preachers. Sahajiyas pretend to be meek sometimes.
pp. 60-63
You explained your success: “I never compromised
with anything which is not spoken by Krsna.
Did you mark, it or not?”
I marked it, Srila Prabhupada
and now you are marking me.
Please keep me despite my defects,
please don’t give up training me.
He lives in his books and in the
memories of his disciples, Professor Rochford said.
Some devotees dream of him.
The GBC says even an uninitiated bhakta
can dress the Prabhupada murti.
No one is stopping anyone from going to him
in his room in Vrndavana except
at 7 P.M. on the annual observance
of his disappearance.
And then it’s senior devotees only
(unless you can squeeze in somehow). I
was there, holding the arati flame,
standing by his rose-covered bed,
blowing the conch
in the room packed with his devotees.
And so my dear master, you have gone
to your nitya-lila, leaving us here
quarreling (thus proving personalism).
Sometimes the leaders get together and declare,
“Now we are cooperating as never before”
while others say the leadership is uninspired.
Prabhupada left in 1977.
It was what Krsna wanted.
I am finding my way
to serve you
in separation.
The individual and collective memories
of his disciples,
I want them both.
I must remember
that he rubbed my back when he sent
me to Boston.
Years later I learned
I was not a most favorite.
We’re all his favorites and anyone
can rise up in the transcendental competition.
Or better yet, don’t compete, cooperate.
I need to know I was alone with him.
He said and wrote things about me,
didn’t say of me “He’s a first-class gunda.”
But even the gunda has a place in his heart.
Collective memories I need,
Prabhupda nectar is everybody’s.
I will live in any memory
and make it my own.
It’s not my fault that I favor
Prabhupada’s statements that suit my way.
When he talks of writers and
how we should grow up and use our own
initiative. I like his rose-soft,
private expressions.
Don’t kill the ants he says and
he doesn’t turn the girls away;
he likes children, he remembers his
childhood, he sits with me in the
late-night plane terminal and when
a kid with a toy goes by he says,
“I used to have toys like that.”
I’m guilty of not loving him.
But I’ve stored up the memories.
We live in them
and in his books
in his service,
he leads us to eternal youthful Krsna.
Prabhupada’s my father telling me what I
must do. I don’t want to be surly to this
father. He really loves me and is
very wise. He loves Krsna
and the Lord loves him dearly.
Prabhupada is my mother,
makes capatis and puns better
than peanut butter and jelly sandwiches,
treats me tenderly,
asks for my well-being, “Sats-var-oop?”
I am his affectionate child,
selfish and wrong in many ways.
Seems I can’t be reformed.
Always some lacking.
I do some things well but
the report card says, “Could do better.”
Prabhupada is my teacher,
mystical guru,
inconceivable medium to all-
attractive Krsna in Goloka.
He has many concerns.
I demand something just for me.
I want him doting and sweet for all of us,
like sitting around in his room at 26 2nd Avenue
or Mayapur in the frankincense smoke
and talking of old days.
Prabhupada has to wrestle with
headstrong disciples,
give advice to intelligent ones—
those willing to sacrifice homeland and
comforts. He imparts marching orders to
them
and at those times I lag behind waiting
for the sweets.
He knows these deficiencies in me.
He said, “Satsvarupa is a perfect
gentleman but he cannot manage.”
He knows me from way back
and he has something for me to do.
Maybe I could cook for him,
re-learn the standard sukta prep,
or maybe this poem.
Prabhupada is moving toward the front gate
of the Mayapur campus surrounded
by many sannyasis and other disciples.
He is discoursing on his favorite theme—
bashing the so-called scientific theory
that life comes from matter.
Pancadravida is playing coy.
TKG is his right-hand man.
We all want our place not only with
Prabhupada on the walk
but in our zones of jurisdiction.
He has given us some power.
We think we’ve earned it.
He is a lion-tamer,
sometimes a babysitter.
He is also all alone on the front.
He writes his books for the common man
and for the Sanskrit scholar
and for the practicing devotee
and the already perfect devotee.
He writes for Ktsrp’s pleasure.
His Guru Maharaja is proud of him.
He gathers us and offers us
to his spiritual master’s mission.
In the distance the Bengali gurukula boys
see him and shout, “Haribol!
Prabhupada ki jaya!” and sing
their Gitar-gan.
He smiles and greets them, “Hare Krsna!”
There are controversies brewing
one about grhasthas and sannyasis,
one about siddha-svarupa in ISKCON.
There’s also a controversy in my own heart
and even today I’m confused.
Go on the walk with Prabhupada,
sit in his class, read his book.
Don’t hide from him.
Be ready to face the truth
and trust that he will honor your free will
and approve of your desire to write something novel
in parampara. He’s your friend.
But he is master.
pp. 173-76
Life in this room, rapid fan. Small bags. Sound of kirtana from the temple, Damodarastakam. I don’t dare go down. When I stand in the temple some young Indian devotee, out of formal respect for me, will start pushing away anyone who is standing in front of me. They clear a whole path, five people deep, so no one stands between me and the Deity. Then people start looking at me, the special person they are being asked to step aside for. No use asking the young devotee not to do it because if he doesn’t, someone else will. That’s how they are trained.
You fall for it
think yourself special
and you’ll come back next life
to take a position of power.
Fall for it and become a bug
next time. Be a word
pusher…a poet, a bug
I said
a movie producer,
a king, a politician, in any
material form it’s suffering.
When are you gonna wake
up and start chanting?
The fan, the fan…
Disciples to the left and right.
Them were the days,
John Young smoking cigarettes which I never did, clouding up my room and beer unto at end of night I had to turn on the Vornado fan to high exhaust and get it all out before I could sleep
sick and sad
but happy energy of youth to be able to hear Miles Davis in the morning. I am making this up. I had little time, rose at 6 A.M. (mother too, off to Manhattan, her job at Chase Manhattan) and study and travel to Brooklyn College, you doing okay…
Cope, Cope, COPE
I’m not the same person – yet am I not? So, now…A Big Spiritual Master. If this is true of me that I say crap I say it may be true of you. Would like to go from head to heart
and chant holy names.
You mean blue jays
and chipped tooth, the puberty ruined it all. I can’t tell even in these pages, it’s too low down how puberty ruined my innocence.
But you were a punk
corrupt even before that, slave to tongue sucking on ice popsicles and iced tea and pudding and blackberries
…
Srila Prabhupada praised English, said Hindi is for fanatics.
English for world-wide preaching,
But feelings in gut aren’t English or French or Guarino,
spill out
inchoate ache
small of back
Oh! Ah! Ow!
I howl (Ginsberg)
“My barbaric yawp”
poet’s cry,
heaven’s sigh
I can’t tell you how I feel just now
Not a cat in alley
or violin from his gut string
Lord
Lord
Brother ached…
It’s the mix of all these in my life, the mix and force
of all of it whereas
I am confused
And rather be alone
But it’s your fault you came to this world
you can’t BE God
people are suffering
from far worse than your
mild petulant moods.
Help them by tellin’ Krishna consciousness.
Okay, soldier your rifle
cover up your Druthers
and march as you’re supposed to…
Krishna Krishna Krishna
The lights just went out at 2:45 A.M.
Goshes Goshes I continue writing by flashlight
and bugs jump, in the spotlight hundreds!
Stop!
Stop!
I’ll write here later. Thank you for the feeling of
expression.
When you don’t for half a day, then you lose touch and it’s harder to write again. Especially the permission to express yourself and the access to your feelings. You get covered up, and I don’t think that’s good. I write to clear away the constant “snow.”
…
I am facing Lord Nrsimha. I ask Him now to…drive out bad thoughts from my heart.
When I went into the bathroom at 3 A.M. this morning, the moment I actually put the light on, bugs just started pouring in. The sink basin became filled with them, and they were bouncing off my body. I turned off the light to take my shower and toilet duty that way. But then I had to put on the light for other services like putting on tilaka and dressing. Again, the bugs started bouncing and I also started jumping around and exclaiming.
Tomorrow we’ll try a new strategy of just completely closing the windows because the bugs are coming right through the screens. Prabhupada talks about in his lectures, how in Mayapur during the night these creatures are born and live and die in one night and how in the morning you see heaps and heaps of bodies. Sometimes when I heard the lecture, I felt perhaps he was exaggerating when he said that there were thousands and thousands of bugs and heaps and heaps of bodies in the morning and that you could sweep them away. But now I see it’s true. Why don’t I take Prabhupada literally true on face value all the time? Just a matter of time before you find out that what he says is true.
pp. 33-36
My dear spiritual master,
Please accept my humble obeisances. All glories to Srila Prabhupada.
I recently read the following statement in the Caitanya-caritamrta and had some question about it:
“One can become perfectly successful in the mission of his life if he acts exactly according to the words he hears from the mouth of his spiritual master.” (Adi-lila, 7.72, purport). Only fools give up the service of the spiritual master and think themselves advanced in spiritual knowledge. . . . If a disciple thinks himself more advanced than the spiritual master, and gives up his orders and acts independently he checks his own spiritual progress. Every disciple must consider himself completely unaware of the science of Krsna and must always be ready to carry out the orders of the spiritual master to become competent in Krsna consciousness. A disciple always remains a fool before his spiritual master.”
I was trying to relate to this statement in our world of ISKCON where there now seems to be encouragement that one should find his own niche in devotional service according to one’s varna and asrama. I have been to college and have some worldly experience. I have been around the movement long enough to know what I want to do to serve Krsna. and I don’t seem to have any problem preaching. I don’t feel particularly helpless and I don’t want to waste your time asking a bunch of “foolish” questions. But it seems from this passage that I quoted that I might be in deep trouble with my mentality. You don’t seem inclined to tell us what to do with our lives anyway, so how can we resolve this problem? I am afraid that if I just remain a fool and wait for something to happen, “it” never will.
Your servant,
Dear Prabhu,
Please accept Srila Prabhupada’s blessings from me. Your question is interesting and thoughtful. You honestly admit that you don’t actually feel helpless, and yet Prabhupada seems to recommend helplessness in the purport you quoted. On the other hand, Prabhupada has also written that a Vaisnava is not a fool or an incompetent person. So there may appear to be a contradiction between confidence and the requirement to also feel helpless (or even hopeless).
You are mistaken if you think that your worldly experience or college career makes you ultimately a competent person. Really, what was your worldly experience? Perhaps you learnt how to get around in the world, how to win friends and influence people, how to make money, how to look out for yourself, how not to be cheated and so on. But this ability to survive among fellow materialists is a limited conception for surviving in this worldly struggle.
Prabhupada used to give the example that even a competent swimmer can only survive for a limited time in the vast ocean. There is actually an ocean of birth and death. I assume that you know this, since you also state that you consider yourself competent in terms of Krsna conscious preaching. You are perhaps also in illusion when you say that you know your way around the Krsna consciousness movement. To know how to superficially please a temple authority and get room and board in an ISKCON center, or to know the slogans and passwords like, “Jaya,” “Haribol,” or “Please accept my humble obeisances, Prabhu,” “Jaya Prabhupada,” as a means to get what you want—this is not real knowledge of the Krsna consciousness movement. The Krsna consciousness movement is the inconceivable river of love of God and distributing love of God which comes down from Lord Caitanya Mahaprabhu through Srila Prabhupada. It manifests as the ISKCON movement or the Krsna consciousness movement in this world, and that movement has its external and internal aspects. Do you really know everything about the Krsna consciousness movement? You sound like you have the “Indian disease,” by which Hindus think “I know everything about Krsna.”
I think that if you consider it more deeply, you will discover that your so-called material competence, as well as your knowledge of how to “deal with” ISKCON, is superficial.
You also state that your spiritual master doesn’t seem to be inclined to give you relevant instructions for how to lead your life. But as a spiritual master, he is not supposed to supply you information about prospects on the stock exchange, or when to conceive a child in marriage, and other material affairs. If you are so confident and competent, then get your act together on your own in those areas. But then, with a straw in your teeth, approach your spiritual master and say, “My dear Guru Maharaja, my life is running out, and I have not developed any spontaneous desire to serve Krsna. Although I have been moving around in the Krsna consciousness movement for quite a few years, I really have not learned how to respect the Vaisnavas and how to develop a taste for pure Krsna consciousness. Neither do I actually know anything about the spiritual identity of the spiritual master, or my own relationship to him as spirit soul. And yet I am puffed up. Please instruct me.”
Who were more competent persons in the world than Sanatana and Rupa Gosvamis? They were almost on the level of prime ministers in India. But when they approached Lord Caitanya with straws in their mouths, their words of humility were so moving that Lord Caitanya said, “The humility of these two brothers could even melt stone. Because I was very pleased with their behavior, I told them, ‘Although you are both very exalted, you consider yourselves inferior, and because of this, Krsna will very soon deliver you!'”
For myself, I don’t think I am so competent to guide you. I am also in the helpless position. But if we open ourselves to the instructions of Srila Prabhupada, our ever well-wisher, then he will guide us by his expert competence.
I hope that these words are of some help. Do not think that I am disinclined to tell you what to do with your life. As you inquire, I will try my best to assist you.
Yours in the service of Prabhupada,
To Śrīla Prabhupāda, who encouraged his devotees (including me) To write articles and books about Kṛṣṇa Consciousness.
I wrote him personally and asked if it was alright for his disciples to write books, Since he, our spiritual master, was already doing that. He wrote back and said that it was certainly alright For us to produce books.
I have a personal story to tell. It is a about a time (January–July 1974) I spent as a personal servant and secretary of my spiritual master, His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupäda, founder-äcärya of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. Although I have written extensively about Çréla Prabhupäda, I’ve hesitated to give this account, for fear it would expose me as a poor disciple. But now I’m going ahead, confident that the truth will purify both my readers and myself.
First published by The Gītā-nāgarī Press/GN Press in serialized form in the magazine Among Friends between 1996 and 2001, Best Use of a Bad Bargain is collected here for the first time in this new edition. This volume also contains essays written by Satsvarūpa dāsa Goswami for the occasional periodical, Hope This Meets You in Good Health, between 1994 and 2002, published by the ISKCON Health and Welfare Ministry.
This book has two purposes: to arouse our transcendental feelings of separation from a great personality, Śrīla Prabhupāda, and to encourage all sincere seekers of the Absolute Truth to go forward like an army under the banner of His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda and the Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement.
A single volume collection of the Nimai novels.
Śrīla Prabhupāda was in the disciplic succession from the Brahmā-Mādhva-Gauḍīya sampradāya, the Vaiṣṇavas who advocate pure devotion to God and who understand Kṛṣṇa as the Supreme Personality of Godhead. He always described himself as simply a messenger who carried the paramparā teachings of his spiritual master and Lord Kṛṣṇa.
Dear Srila Prabhupada,
Please accept this or it’s worse than useless.
You have given me spiritual life
and so my time is yours.
You want me to be happy in Krishna consciousness
You want me to spread Krishna consciousness,
This collection of Satsvarūpa dāsa Goswami’s writings is comprised of essays that were originally published in Back to Godhead magazine between 1966 and 1978, and compiled in 1979 by Gita Nagari Press as the volume A Handbook for Kṛṣṇa Consciousness.
This second volume of Satsvarūpa dāsa Goswami’s Back to Godhead essays encompasses the last 11 years of his 20-year tenure as Editor-in-Chief of Back to Godhead magazine. The essays in this book consist mostly of SDG’s ‘Notes from the Editor’ column, which was typically featured towards the end of each issue starting in 1978 and running until Mahārāja retired from his duties as editor in 1989.
This collection of Satsvarupa dasa Goswami’s writings is comprised of essays that were originally published in Back to Godhead magazine between 1991 and 2002, picking up where Volume 2 leaves off. The volume is supplemented by essays about devotional service from issues of Satsvarupa dasa Goswami’s magazine, Among Friends, published in the 1990s.
“This is a different kind of book, written in my old age, observing Kṛṣṇa consciousness and assessing myself. I believe it fits under the category of ‘Literature in pursuance of the Vedic version.’ It is autobiography, from a Western-raised man, who has been transformed into a devotee of Kṛṣṇa by Śrīla Prabhupāda.”
The Best I Could DoI want to study this evolution of my art, my writing. I want to see what changed from the book In Search of the Grand Metaphor to the next book, The Last Days of the Year.
a Hare Krishna ManIt’s world enlightenment day
And devotees are giving out books
By milk of kindness, read one page
And your life can become perfect.
Calling Out to Srila Prabhupada: Poems and PrayersO Prabhupāda, whose purports are wonderfully clear, having been gathered from what was taught by the previous ācāryas and made all new; O Prabhupāda, who is always sober to expose the material illusion and blissful in knowledge of Kṛṣṇa, may we carefully read your Bhaktivedanta purports.
I use free-writing in my devotional service as part of my sādhana. It is a way for me to enter those realms of myself where only honesty matters; free-writing enables me to reach deeper levels of realization by my repeated attempt to “tell the truth quickly.” Free-writing takes me past polished prose. It takes me past literary effect. It takes me past the need to present something and allows me to just get down and say it. From the viewpoint of a writer, this dropping of all pretense is desirable.
Geaglum Free WriteThis edition of Satsvarūpa dāsa Goswami’s 1996 timed book, Geaglum Free Write Diary, is published as part of a legacy project to restore Satsvarūpa Mahārāja’s writings to ‘in print’ status and make them globally available for current and future readers.