“This week was relatively uneventful. There were no doctor’s appointments or major crashes. The headache count was up a little, but sleep was completely irregular. One night Satsvarupa Maharaja got up at 1:00 A.M. after taking rest at 6:30 P.M. The next night he got up at 7:30 P.M. after retiring at 6:30. He had breakfast at 11:30 P.M. and then took a shower. He rested again from 4:00 A.M. ‘til 7:30 A.M. and then had breakfast again. The schedule changes every day. Still the page count keeps rising as he chips away every day at writing his new series. This is one particular manifestation of Parkinson’s, and it is a different test for everyone.”
Hare Krsna,
Baladeva
If you would like to help, please contact Kṛṣṇa-bhajana dāsa at [email protected] or [email protected] and we will find you a service that utilizes your talents.
You got guts
gentlemen,
you love this life.
Glad I brought them here. My friends
in the life of chanting.
******
Remember that haiku?
Reposing on a desk
they invite me once again
my red japa beads.
That got published, and a famous American haiku-ist called it “inviting.” Nowadays, they (beads) are hardly out of my hands. They are being used, worked, shiny, old reds. I use a glove so I don’t get a bleed, sore skin.
You a fireman?
You a Harvard student?
No, I is a chanter in
a Scottish stop, in
a “mark cottage” with friends
doing the best we can.
We were nonsenses in this lifetime and previous lives.
But we are devotees, pure spirit souls eternally. Don’t
eulogize maya more than Krsna.
Krsna is kind
to come in His holy name.
In His pastimes in
Kali-yuga, by Caitanya’s
grace. All hail Hare
Krsna, chant and chant—
it will work upon you.
******
I have a thorough “realization” that we don’t feel “anything” because of our solid block of nama-aparadhas. In this situation, we go on with it. I don’t have such dramatic hopes and let-downs. What am I, more experienced or less?
******
This room is private. I am the first one up in the house. Light the candles. Go. The meter on the wall records the use of electricity by dials and by a circular thing with a marker on it. My japa motor runs like that too, recording the count. And does it record a cost I have to pay?
Hope to get through the day of sixty-four, but if I’m physically not able, I’ll have to accept that too. I’m here recording a desire to do it, at the start.
******
In case you wonder why I don’t write more during the day, it’s a choice, either pen, a few words or do more japa. I can’t seem to think it’s worth it to stop my habit to continue increasing the quota. I’ll be glad to tell in pen at least twice a day, here at the start and when I reach sixty-four and can say, “We did it.”
And one can sketch the chanters. Don’t make fun of him or claim that a complicated real person looks like your sketch. It’s just a way to express. Hmm.
******
108 beads in a loop around his head. Merry, safe japa is the best way to go. We are on a week-long vrata and so far so good. We invite you to join us sometime. Seems a great way to associate and help others, get a secluded house and turn on some friends.
******
I decide today to be Prabhupada’s devotee and I decide that I will chant today, but when this sixty-four vrata is over, I do want to get back to more reading of his books. That’s an example of something you do today. It’s like a declaration for affecting the future, but each day you have to renew it. That’s a good word, huh? Renew. Renewal. Krsna conscious renewal. Every day I say, Yeah, this is what I want to be. This is what I want to do. Write down a line of all the items: Prabhupada disciple, devotee of Lord Caitanya member of ISKCON, and within that, non-managerial sannyasi preacher, traveler, writer, retreat taker. Hare Krsna.
******
Sukadeva Gosvami continued: My dear king, the chanting of the holy name of the Lord is able to uproot even the reactions of the greatest sins. Therefore the chanting of the sankirtana movement is the most auspicious activity in the entire universe. Please try to understand this so that others will take it seriously. —Bhag. 6.3.31
pp. 57-63
Prabhupada is often quoted as describing the present system of democracy as “demon-crazy,” but it is simplistic to think that this sums up Prabhupada’s whole attitude towards democracy. He also described a system of democracy as it appeared in Vedic culture, one that would consider the votes of the learned persons in society. Democracy as it is applied today is ridiculous and ineffective, and it actually slows down the process of government.
A simple example of how the vox populi hinders the government’s ability to protect the citizens can be seen in something so simple as the seatbelt law in the United States. It has been proven that people who have car accidents while wearing seat belts survive with less injury by a significant margin as opposed to those who do not wear seat belts; yet, the American population considers it an interference of their civil liberties to have the government impose seat belt legislation, even though the government is doing so to protect the citizens. The United States government, which has such a grandiose image in the rest of the world, cannot even pass laws to protect its own citizens from killing themselves.
It is hard to imagine Maharaja Pariksit having to deal with such issues. And even if he did, he was not the autocrat of a submissive, trembling kingdom; he was the servant of the brahmanas who gave him good, detached, Krsna conscious advice.
According to the Vedic version, monarchy is the best form of government. But Prabhupada also recognized the fact that nowadays, no Krsna conscious monarch is available, so representational government is necessary. His main point was that those who possessed the power to vote should be educated in the process of government and also in spiritual culture. Otherwise, what is the meaning of their sentimental votes? In India when Indira Gandhi’s dictatorship was voted out, people were hopeful about the democratic society. But Prabhupada was not. He spoke about this:
Again elections, as if election will change their quality. Let them remain rascals and simply by election replace one rascal with another rascal. Let them remain rascals but get votes… The population is śva-viḍ-varāhoṣṭra, and they are giving vote, another big paśu. This is democracy… The tiger was president. Now the lion is president and both of them are animals. Where is the man, the human being?… They say, “Oh, now there is lion. Now the tiger is driven away.” Now there is lion. This is going on.
Srila Prabhupada-lilamrta, Vol.6, p. 301
It appears that Prabhupada advocated democracy within ISKCON, however. He told Hayagriva that monarchy was out of date in this age. He said that if you have to live together, you have to work together In Kali-yuga, everything should be managed by society.”
Aside from the statements in Prabhupada’s books, there were many occasions when we saw him in action, willing to confront the political mentalities of different people. Once, in 1971 in Calcutta, Naxalite terrorists threatened Prabhupada’s life; they saw that he was rekindling the religious spirit by his pandals and thereby undermining the principles of Communism. One night, the Naxalites came to the pandal and protested the seating of the dignitaries on stage. Pushing and shoving broke out, and Prabhupada agreed to meet with the Naxalites. Although they were hostile at first, Prabhupada patiently explained the concepts of Vedic communism; they became interested and allowed his meetings to continue without further disruption.
Prabhupada also met with Professor Kotovsky in Moscow and discussed the difference between applied socialism and Vedic communism. Kotovsky claimed that varnasrama could not work in a socialist country because only the ksatriya (administrative) class and the sudra (working) class were present. Prabhupada admitted that this was a problem and he told Professor Kotovsky that as a brahmana, the professor had the duty of establishing the other classes. “If you do not divide the social order, there will be chaos.”
In July of 1972, Prabhupada was lecturing to an audience of mostly student radicals at the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris. When he mentioned that the French have a history of being revolutionary, the audience cheered. “Therefore,” Prabhupada continued, “you should look into Krsna consciousness, the revolutionary movement for reviving God consciousness.”
Srila Prabhupada also experienced preaching to the peace movement in the 1960s and 1970s in America. His audiences had reservations about his preaching that Arjuna’s fighting was the perfection of God consciousness. America was in the throes of the Vietnam War protests and the idea of a holy war was not very attractive to most young Americans. Prabhupada pointed out that the Vietnam War and the Battle of Kuruksetra were different, because Krsna was personally present at Kuruksetra asking Arjuna to fight. Still, his audience wondered why Prabhupada wasn’t protesting the Vietnam War. Prabhupada replied that his message was more urgent. The Vietnam War was only one karmic reaction, one symptom of a diseased society. Only Krsna consciousness addressed the whole problem. A so-called peace devoid of God consciousness is worse than fighting in Krsna consciousness.
pp. 7-11
Proud and true, I’m reclusive. Some people are sociable. I remember when I used to stay at Samika Rsi’s home in Stroudsburg. It was good—writing all day for several weeks, no lectures, take a morning walk in “The Woods.” But once SR mentioned to me that he wanted me to act more like a member of the family so that his younger son was free to walk in and talk with me. I was unfriendly, unapproachable. In my books I give intimacy, but not in person. Call it a lacking, but that’s how I am.
Write your life. Nothing short of that. The whole day (I can’t write in my sleep) and hours throughout the day, and every day of the year. You worried about the volume you are creating, and the problem this presents for the reader, but you can’t stop. Your life into writing. I need it for myself. Each piece I do is in the art of the journal, prose poem, informal essay, joke, satire, direct communication, prayer . . . . And as I do it, I discover myself. I uncover some block of maya. Who will read it? I will. And I can’t even worry whether someone will read it all. I must do my offering for Krishna and keep the hand moving.
Who knows what’s going to happen? A scribe tries to write it down and save it. Make a portrait of a good man who helped. There are many people like that. It’s inspiring to meet them. If the world could know more about them . . . so the scribe tells. Sometimes novelists invent a person they think worth remembering—another way he can live and be passed through future generations.
But I don’t know any persons like that, or I am not so generous to see them that way. I can’t tell of them in an unreal, idealistic way. Therefore, I write of myself, not about one of those self-sacrificing good persons worth remembering. But I am a scribe. The scribe writes the daily life of the scribe. I’ll tell ya again, this ain’t an ordinary diary. It’s a dirty diry and Lu-lu’s diry, it’s Artlines, Baltinglass. It’s something you don’t know coming at you like a friendly missile, a constant pounding.
What I am doing uses the form of daily writing to express poems and shouts.
Wiggling his hands
the sworn-to-silence monk
made a clear speech
that he was not pleased
with me. I hand-
signaled back—“Go
fly a kite.”
A Godbrother said Giriraja Swami has attained the highest achievement—he’s “a Prabhupada man.” I dry-weep with envy, admitting it’s true. He walked beside Srila Prabhupada on Juhu Beach, like Krsna and Arjuna on the battlefield of Kurukshetra. Another Godbrother, a friend, said of me that I was a “clay-footed zonal-acarya.” How true. I’ve learned lessons, and from pain too. The main lesson is how to avoid writing in a self-serving way. How to be truly self-deprecating and humble.
O Krsna, the mind is still filled with so many things. The words moving and changing, but I’m committed to free writing, which takes the first ones as best. They are the unaltered raw. If they are too wrong and embarrassing, we can change them later. Here they come like bats out of the cave, flying down to Mexico. Whatever I see, someone has seen before me, and said it too. But it’s also unique, the combinations. Our Lord comes with His varieties of lilas and devotees.
Friends, equals, some juniors—those are the ones I mostly write to. My seniority is barely maintained as the years go by. I forget my small stock of Sanskrit slokas as they increase theirs. They get bhakti-sastri diplomas and attend Vaisnava colleges where they receive systematized education. And I wrangle over my disappointments and try to open these things for others.
You are not a God-man. You are a med taker, excuse maker. I see you shuffling from room to room with your shoulders bent forward. You’re no winner. But who knows. Maybe those books will reach out to people who haven’t yet come along.
I am one of you. I know what it’s like. I’m on the same road.
It is God’s gift to us conditioned souls that we may go out the gate of a little house and walk up a road in the early morning, seeking His personal presence in the holy name. It’s such a perfect time of day, with the first light showing that the sky will be clear, while the farm buildings are still in silhouette. The late summer trees are full and wave their branches in the breeze. It’s the same every morning, but it’s also new and different. As every minute passes, it becomes a little lighter.
With the coming of the sun goes the most private and secluded time of day. I always stop and note it and try to stay with it like a prayer. It is not a full-blown prayer fully directed to Krsna, but a beginning prayer that leads to the others. Krsna knows I am thinking of Him. He knows I wait to come to Him, even while all I seem to do is stare into a creek in the pre-dawn light and hear the water coursing over the rocks.
tṛṇād api sunīcena
taror api sahiṣṇunā
amāninā mānadena
kīrtanīyaḥ sadā hariḥ“One should chant the holy name of the Lord in a humble state of mind, thinking oneself lower than the straw on the street; one should be more tolerant than a tree, devoid of all sense of false prestige, and should be ready to offer all respect to others. In such a state of mind one can chant the holy name of the Lord constantly.”
It would be hard to choose only one verse of Siksastakam as the most important, but if we were hard-pressed, we would probably choose this one. Krsnadasa Kaviraja calls this verse the thread upon which the holy name is strung. Lord Caitanya informed Ramananda Raya that this verse was the perfection of love of God. No matter what the rasa, every pure devotee worships Krsna in this mood. It is perhaps the most “practical” of the Siksastakam verses. It teaches us how to chant.
Of course, the instruction is not external. This verse doesn’t instruct us how to pick up our beads in our right hand and how not to touch them with the index finger. Nevertheless, its instruction is meant for all who sincerely wish to approach the holy name. Even if we can’t apply it due to our poor-heartedness, this verse makes it clear to us why we can’t chant for any long duration of time. We lack the humility.
Prabhupada once said that if most people were asked to go on chanting constantly, they would go mad. Constant chanting can only be practiced by an advanced devotee. Here, the advancement is described as thinking oneself lower than the straw in the street. That means giving up the false prestige that comes with the material body. “I have an American body. I have money in the bank. I have gained material education. I have a wife and family and a house.” Or, “I have a sannyasi’s danda and a reputation. I have published some books. I practice austerity.” Give it up when you chant! Stop thinking about the busy world in which you are a manipulator and a mover, an exchanger of money and goods. Stop being puffed up.
But because we spend about twenty-two hours a day being puffed up, it’s hard to switch suddenly and become humble when we pick up our beads. Therefore, this instruction is not just for the japa period, but it is the life of the chanter. If we really want to chant, we will have to live with humility. It’s not something that can be affected by an imitative physical posture or a look in the eyes or sound in the voice. It has to come from the heart and from our actions.
Because Lord Caitanya directs us in this way, we can start by thinking over what He means and take it seriously. He doesn’t want puffed up devotees chanting His names. Consider the facts, how you have come to this world out of the misuse of your free will, how you persist in thinking you are this body and that the body’s possessions are yours. Feel how wrong this is. Feel the illusion of it. Then begin the smallness. Small is beautiful—be lower than the straw on the street.
We may look at the words and try to explain them one by one, but that is not the way to enter the spirit of this verse. Of course, analysis has its place, but at some point, we have to stop all analysis, read the verse, and try to be there.
I’ll say it to myself: if I want to go on chanting, I have to be humble. If I’m serious about wanting to improve my chanting, then I have to be tolerant—tolerant of interruptions to chanting, tolerant of my low state, tolerant of the fact that I can’t make rapid advancement. Tolerant, but always working to improve. I have to tolerate the austerity of that work. And in relationships with others, check yourself from your superiority complex. You are not special. The holy name is special. You are less than ordinary. Lord Caitanya is magnanimous. He is giving you this wonderful opportunity. Why not be intelligent for once in your life and take up the chanting in earnest? That would be a great success in the midst of my many failures.
pp. 95-102
Go further, to Lord Caitanya,
ideal preacher of Srimad-Bhagavatam
whose teachings are summed up—
He worshiped Vrndavana land
and the best worship is by the Vrajavadhu
gopis of Vrndavana
and Srimad-Bhagavatam the best scripture and
krsnas to bhagavan svayam,
His tenets and ecstasies and
His Six Gosvamis . . .
Stooping in the sun, I will go again
to Vrndavana in cold weather write some poems
but not free of this Western influence junk.
If I meet an ex-American living there
who seems to be now a Hindu Gaudiya
I won’t believe him and that’s why I
blow these choruses of my own I mean
play/sing them to right notes and
beat, it’s for Krsna consciousness
we desire, goodbye to all
else. We’ve been gone from the world
thirty years and millions of years and species
so now it’s coming right and you
want to play it strong until your end, no harm,
don’t skip it, tell it
what Bhagavad-gita says
and how you tried but missed.
We know you, old sailor we know
you. As I return to house, Madhu is
laughing on the phone and I sneak in here.
Room-warmth fogs my glasses
and I don’t know. (While sleeping for
fifteen minutes after breakfast
I was sure it was nighttime
but gradually convinced myself that
I still had morning shed time and lunch
to live for.
But it was also sweet thinking that the day was over
and a night of sleep and dreams lay ahead.)
The spider the hider
I hope when I go back there
he’s not in the same place,
then my karma will be relieved.
You think you are free of all
reaction knowing that you are an
admiral retired from the Naval
Air Force of Candy Kids ISKCON.
But you could still get it for killing
a living entity. You know what happened to
the rsi. He almost got shafted
in real life with a real sword.
Spared at last minute.
I don’t want to suffer for killing
the liddle widdy spider,
the beautiful disgusting spider with
his umbrella-like unfolding joints
He entered my life so
gallantly gliding down
the column of cable spit.
Reading Bhagavad-gita,
you came to the end.
Morality is with Krsna
even though He asked Arjuna to fight and kill.
Victory is on the side of Krsna and the Pandavas,
and riches too because He is God. Read that book
you fool, and stop fooling around so
much thinking you’ll get revelations in
dreams and nature scenes
and from the text of your brain
to the spot in your heart. You’ll be forgiven for
the accidental manhandling of a spider
if you engage yourself fully
in the Lord’s service.
Chant and hear the names of
the Speaker, Krsna, Krsna, and be aware
you are tiny
and you love Him
and He loves you.
Words can grab you and flash new
realities by their combinations
but Krsna and Vyasa have put them together
in the best language, Sanskrit,
and with the ultimate siddhanta
so what are you looking for
in the garbage heap, the jnanis
mud pile, the sandbox
of errant motions and emotions?
Srimad-Bhagavatam, I’ve been through it
sixty or a hundred times maybe.
I can keep going back to Prahlada and Dhruva and
the Visnu avataras and I don’t claim now
that I’m only interested in the Tenth Canto
and only in the gopi-rasa chapters.
I like that Krsna in Vrndavana
is the ultimate but
why go into extra books?
My friend Bhurijana said in all cantos
Krsna of Vrndavana is actually the goal.
You can see it if you read carefully in
sequence connecting the
chapters and the flow but for that
you’ve got to study hard.
Another way is to just read my master’s
purports because he’s always coming quickly to
Krsna in Vrndavana no matter what book
he’s writing or translating. You soon hear
Krsna’s names, Krsna’s service and some
mention of the pure devotion of the
gopis which was never surpassed
because they loved Krsna in
separation all the time, they never forgot Him
even when they were angry in lover’s quarrels.
They worried that His soft feet might get hurt by
the pebbles in the forest.
My master says it
and I don’t like to hear others touch on
these topics.
Such a tender lila,
it’s to be uttered by the one you love
when you revere and trust. I can’t
explain why it’s so
exclusive but something just dissolves
and disappears when I hear from someone else.
(And my devotion to my master
starts to be shaken.)
It was that way
when I first heard an Indian karmi
telling me some krsna-lila
in Boston. I wanted to plug my ears.
I told you about the spider and
about Draupadi’s bellowing
waiting to be petted, fat
olid tons of cow just outside
our door and young Jayananda
talking to me in twilight as
I come home. He says, “I just got
back from school.” They don’t have
much school but I can’t understand what else
he’s saying because he’s Irish
and I’m from New York
and he’s jabbering like a kid
at the door to his Mammy’s house.
The only word I could make out
was “Moksa-rupa,” the name of his teacher.
As I smile falsely, pause
with my stick and start to walk
to my door, he says
tenderly, “Haribol,”
and I say the same back.
The Irish robin is a cutie
smaller than the U.S.A. one and with a
subtler tint of orange-red only on his
head and neck. He’s a little fella on
the branch of a tree
where I walk by. Oh, it’s mid-December
and this land is still like autumn with
leaves wet and piled but it gets frosty
near every night. I say Relax Stefan,
relax. But also You’re not Krsna conscious
enough so how can you relax?
Srila Prabhupada says the devotee
is daring and active
he doesn’t get caught up in material upheavals
good or bad, he takes misery
as his due and figures it’s minimized—
he thanks Krsna for happiness
to comfortably serve Him,
he’s stitha-dhi-muni, and
like the tortoise, he pulls in his limbs.
I spent an hour in that shed.
The sun was coming down.
It is very nice to be alive with
a safe heart beating in your chest and
contemplating going to India
where you’ll wear a winter coat
and where you will step
in cow dung as you do here
and you’ll be lucky if you live
to write of it. O Krsna,
this servant is light years away yet
catching Your beams of mercy,
tracing the frosty lines,
my words like matted grass frost,
like frozen panes of ice
and me inside with You
and Your Gita.
Author’s Note
This book employs a persona, a wanderer who writes photo assignments and who keeps an abstruse diary. This persona is fictional. Although his preaching is in Vaisnava parampara, his fears, mental life, and mood are not literally those of the author.
—SDG
People waiting for a bus in the morning. That one girl seems to be checking to see whether her shoes look okay. Most people are warmly dressed—most wear long coats. There’s an obese woman, a woman with a child—they’re all gathered. Prabhupada says our most cherished and apparently permanent gatherings—the close family and friends—are no more meaningful than this brief encounter of people standing in the winter around a bus stop. Material nature brings us together as wind and waves group straws at sea. Then we are separated and driven apart.
What’s he selling there, flowers to bring to your boss or put on your computer desk?
The guy who built the station, who built this world
made-functional for the 1990s wasn’t me.
“I got out of it,”
says the preacher.
“I photographed it from across
the street,” says the photographer.
“I only lived here,” says humankind.
I lived and died here.
Remember
Our Town?
The dead looked back
by Art’s arrangement) and saw their activities alive.
The girl said (sending a chill up your back),
“Why weren’t we kinder to one another? Why didn’t we live our lives properly? Didn’t we know we’d have to die?
We could have made a better job of it.” How?
We could have chanted Hare Krsna while
waiting for the bus, and wished them well, those fellow travelers.
Well, wish them well now.
Metro architecture. I’ve never been underground in D.C. People take the underground in the eerie light to go to work. It’s lonely there too. Sometimes wait alone—not completely alone. The light patterns reflected on the ceiling are ominous. How do we know that guy crouched in the corner wouldn’t want one of Prabhupada’s books? We don’t. Would you have the guts or the compassion to find out? That’s the essential point about this photo. The train will come in a minute or two and you’ll have lost your chance. How will you justify it?
A homeless man writing in the park. I identified with him, sitting there on his belongings. Is he writing a letter home? His personal epic? One of those dreams in which everything is a fable of his own existence? Who can write like that? Only those who have at least a spark of faith that even if they are never published, one day they will be appreciated, or at least understood.
The statue, the bare tree—winter makes life more difficult. Someone like this could probably always go to a Christian shelter for a meal. But does he accept Christ? Has he been bathed “in the blood of the Lamb”? Those preachers interfere. They want to claim that it’s their laying of hands upon him in the name of Christ that’s giving him salvation.
Perhaps he’d rather stay and write in the park, a Kafka in his dreams. Or it could be simpler. Perhaps he lent someone ten bucks once and he’s trying to collect up on it. Or he’s writing to his brother who lives in Rio about a woman he once knew, or about sex or food or pain or the cold. The self runs to soothe itself by crying out from the mind. Yes, everything can be traced back to the mind.
Oh, this man isn’t writing, he’s reading a book. The grass is withered, the paved stones hard, the manhole cover secured by the underground world. There are just too many people in this world for the average citizen to give a damn about any of them. We have too many troubles of our own. Let the government provide for them or let charities do their work.
Prabhupada said that a certain group of men are fated to sit in the park even amid the apparent opulence of America. They could earn money, but it’s their karma to sit on their possessions in a cold park. He said that about hippies too. People believe the propaganda they read about India’s impoverished, but they don’t believe it about America. How come there are so many homeless here?
There’s a lesson to be learned and it probably escapes this man in the park. We are all estranged sons of our Supreme Father. We are all prodigal sons. But when we return, Krsna won’t kill a fatted calf for us; He’ll offer us His prasadam. Welcome home!
Thus this man represents a truth as he sits in the cold and the better-off men and women rush back and forth from home to work and back again. Those busy walkers are probably even less aware that they are estranged from their Father—after all, their homes are heated—and they choose to stay lost in illusion and to cope with the struggle. They know they’re making it because at least they are not like the guy in the park.
“And if he reads just one page of my books, he can become perfect. One page! One word!”
Who knows, this man may be the next temple president.Again, all credit to the book distributors, who live in Krsna, but who roam the streets and parks looking for lost souls.
pp. 123-27
Good morning, America, David Garroway, your host, holds up his hand in a big peace sign. Bespectacled friend, like an owl, defender. But those were different times.
Hello, America. Renew your passport every ten years. It’s no big deal. Hare Krsna imports. It was in America the author picked up the technique of free-writing. You pick up these things in books and the books you find…Someone may send them to you in the mail.
A road washed out by rains. Mountain streams turn this “road” into another torrent, lift up rocks, gouged out until it’s no longer suitable for cars. That is what has happened to a certain lane in Wicklow, which we are talking about. It has been presented to the new David Garroway Show that maybe they could feature this washed out land and the American ex-patriot who lives at the top of it. “What’s his beef? What’s his trip?” asked Dave.
He’s a raconteur of sorts, said the talent scout. He retells some stories of Liam O’Flaherty. He writes his own life – which is quite unadventurous – into fine gossamer.
Dave, we used to do a show called free-write where we’d just keep going for a certain pre-set time. I was so weak due to fasting in my religion. Maybe you could interview me about that. “What about the free-writing, on what basis should we respect it?” Yes, a student asked me this recently. He was also a member of our religion and wanted to do only things that are orthodox. He’s working for being a pure devotee.
So, I replied it’s God telling me what to do. Actually, I didn’t tell him that but that’s what I think, it’s God-given intelligence. Other replies are to say it’s a method of writing we may use in the spirit of yukta-vairagya, as taught by our previous acarya Rupa Goswami, using material things in devotional service to God. Or say it’s a method that I find does well for digging up the truth, for gaining access to the unconscious.
Ah, it sure is good to stretch out with you on these topics, Dave.
“I’m always willing to improve the format or content of our ‘Hello America’ show with new ideas. What about the baker’s dozen, I mean this free-write? Do you think we could demonstrate it for your viewing audience?”
Poems go quiet when you want to talk intimately to a person you care for
But often it’s gushy stuff. Body to body. We Krsnaites say love is in the spiritual
world
and there Krsna is in very loving pastimes so it’s hard to figure out for most people
I can’t tell when neither you or I are qualified
we therefore recall drinking from a big bottle
of Coke and chomping a hero
sandwich my mother made
me at the beach on
my summer job as a
parky, Great Kills Park.
Do you think that was innocent, you jerk?
Better remember the Swami and you working your tail off and harassed by all kinds of perpetrators of doubt and pain to my hide and what about G., why didn’t he answer my letter? And those old days still contain quirks that were never explained.
Let us go deeper and find the buried treasure of love of God, Srimad-Bhagavatam. Hemanta was massaging the murti of Prabhupada, something he has done for decades now. He wasn’t paying attention to the lecture that was playing of Srila Prabhupada in 1966. But it was playing, and at least Hemanta was not being obnoxious. Srila Prabhupada in the lecture said people nowadays in Kali-yuga don’t even have the basic necessities of life, eating, mating, sleeping and defending. It struck Hemanta to hear that, and he recalled his own plight in 1966. He was without mating and suffering and suffering for it. And without any real residence, just a horrible slum hole, and same without food, and always fearing. How accurate Srila Prabhupada was, and he also saw it himself when he came over to live amidst the Americans on the Lower East Side. So, Hemanta’s mind kept going back, rummaging through the old garbage to see if he could find anything. He was not a heroic figure back then.
We have, in the past, my friends, written about writing. That is nothing to be ashamed of. You can’t escape it if it is one of your favorite topics. Where does the creative flow come from? What should a writer write about? In the journal (daily letters to his editor and friend) that Steinbeck kept when he was writing the novel East of Eden, he wrote this:
“If a man has too pat a style, his reader can, after a little time, keep ahead of him. I mean the reader will know what is coming by how it is done. And I am trying to remove this possibility by constant change.”
Steinbeck wrote to his friend Pat Covici, and then wrote his book and every few days Pat would collect the pencil-handwritten pages and read both the diary and the novel. So, I shall not be ashamed to sometimes talk about writing in the search for new land. Neither shall I be ashamed to remain with the old and constant. Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare.
pp. 29-31, 47-50
The brahmanas were performing yajna
and Krsna’s friends became hungry.
So they asked Sri Krsna,
“Krsna, we are hungry. Give me. . . .
Please arrange for some food.”
Krsna said, “Yes, you immediately go there.
The brahmanas are performing yajnas,
and ask them for some food.”
They went, but the brahmanas refused.
“Oh, the yajna is not yet performed.
How can we give you? No, no. Don’t talk.”
So the boys came back.
Then Krsna said:
“Go to their wives,
the yajnic brahmana-patnis.”
So they went to their wives,
and as soon as their wives heard Krsna’s name,
they were very much beloved to Krsna,
so immediately whatever was there for the yajna
they brought it to Krsna.
This is bhakti.
—Bombay, 6 January 1973,
The Nectar of Devotion
“Why should I serve Krsna?
Why shall I not become Krsna?
Let me become God.”
That is still going on.
Even big, advanced sannyasis are thinking that:
“I am Krsna. Why shall I serve Him?
This is slave mentality.
Now I am in maya,
but as soon as my maya is over
then I become Krsna.”
But the question is,
if you are Krsna,
why did maya cover you?
Is maya greater than Krsna?
Why have you fallen?
These questions they cannot answer.
The real explanation is
that we are little Krsna.
Just as the father and the little child:
if there is a fight,
the father may come out victorious,
and the child may be overwhelmed.
—Bombay, 13 January 1973
Srimad-Bhagavatam 7.5.1
Laulyam means greediness to serve Krsna,
ecstatic eagerness—and that is the only price
to achieve success in devotional service;
not money, nothing else.
Not prestige, not good parentage,
not beauty, nothing—simply this:
ecstatic, intense desire,
“How shall I get Krsna?”
If you have laulyam,
then you’ll get Krsna.
The gopis had this intense desire,
tatra laulyam eka mulam,
“In this life,” we should think,
“I shall get recognized by Krsna,
that I have sacrificed everything
for Krsna.”
—Bombay, 1972
Sri Krsna,
You are all-great,
our protector and maintainer,
our guru teaching us
we are not this body,
teaching us the way
to love You again.
I have no right to talk
so freely before You,
since my life speaks on its own
of my failure to surrender.
I just hope
in the brief time left to me
I can grasp on to the rope
which Your pure devotee has lowered
into my pit of fallen nature,
so that I may be lifted out—
and next life
be with the devotees.
tandera carana sevi
bhakta sane vas,
janame janame haya ei abhilas.
I want to know You,
serve You,
and love You.
Please inflame my desire.
—23 April 1988
My dear Lord, today
I spoke at a Sunday Feast
on guru-krsna-prasade paya
bhakti-lata-bija.
You award us by sending the guru
and he guides us to You
in full devotional service
beginning when he plants the seed
of bhakti in our hearts.
To speak Your teaching,
as Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu did
to Rupa Gosvami
is so sweet and powerful!
I want to always serve You
in this way,
and to protect and cultivate
my bhakti-lata,
as given to me by Prabhupada.
I thank You
for Your teachings
as they live in the hearts
of pure devotees, mahajano yena
gatah sa panthah.
—24 April 1988
My dear Lord Krsna,
You know everything
so I do not have to ask;
You only want to see how sincere
and really desirous I am to serve You.
Have I come to serve You with my pen,
or am I trying to make my own
reputation at Your expense?
I have to prove more purity
and more discipline
before You will let me be a
qualified singer and writer of Your glories.
It’s no easy thing
to be a transcendental author.
The real Vaisnavas
were directly empowered by You
and You revealed Your lila to them.
You personally coached Rupa
and Sanatana Gosvamis, as to what they should write
and You gave them the synopsis
for Bhakti-rasamrta-sindhu and
Hari-bhakti-vilasa.
I fall at Your feet,
requesting Your guidance;
my only qualification
is service to Prabhupada.
—4 May 1988
So many words.
The essence is:
please let me love You,
please let me serve You.
—15 May 1988
pp. 136-37
When Srila Prabhupada’s edition of Caitanya-caritamrta, Madhya-lila, Volume 1 was first published, devotees were surprised and pleased to read about the humorous joking between Lord Nityananda and Advaita Acarya during the taking of prasadam at Advaita Acarya’s house. One morning, during a car ride with Srila Prabhupada, one of the devotees expressed his appreciation for the new volume.
“There is such nice humor in the Caitanya-caritamrta, Srila Prabhupada.”
“Yes,” said Srila Prabhupada, “spiritual life is humor also.” Then he began to tell a story. “Krsna said to one old lady, ‘You are so ugly, you should marry a monkey.’
“‘No,’ said the old lady, ‘I have given up all material desires. I will marry You, Krsna!’
“‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’ All the gopis and boys clapped and laughed.”
While Prabhupada said this, his eyes lit up and he became animated, laughing at the humorous pastimes of Krsna. “So Krsna was defeated,” said Prabhupada, “by that laughing of the gopis.”
In a lecture, Prabhupada remarked that foolish people often criticize devotees as do-nothings and weaklings, but such people do not understand the intelligence of a devotee. Therefore, a devotee does not have to heed such people. To illustrate the point, Srila Prabhupada told a story.
Some laborers were criticizing the minister of the king, claiming that he only sat around and did no work. The king reminded them that it took intelligence to become a minister. He said he would give everyone a test, including the minister. Whoever could pass the test could become the next minister. The king said, “Take this big elephant, weigh him, and let me know the exact weight.”
The ordinary men were baffled. Where was there a scale for weighing an elephant? They could not do anything. They came back to the king with no information. Then the king turned to his minister and asked, “Will you kindly weigh this elephant?” In six minutes he came back and reported, “It is twenty mounds (1,930 lbs).” The other men were standing open-mouthed in surprise. “How is that?” they asked. “Within six minutes he came back and he gave the exact weight!”
The king asked, “How did you weigh him? Did you get some very big scale?”
“No, sir,” replied the minister. “It is not possible to weigh the elephant on a scale. It is very difficult.”
“Then how did you weigh it?”
“I took it on a boat. When I got him on the boat then I saw the watermark and I marked it. Then, after getting the elephant off the boat, I added weight onto the boat, and when it came to the same watermark, then I understood.”
So the king addressed the laborers and questioned them. “Now you see the difference?” They agreed, “Yes.”
After telling this story, Prabhupada quoted from the scripture. “Buddhir yasya balam tasya nirbuddhes tu kuto balam: one who has got intelligence, he has strength, and one who has no intelligence, a rascal, has no strength.” Prabhupada concluded, “Scientists, atheists, and different critics of devotees are like that—rascal, fools. We don’t take advice from them. We take advice from Krsna or His representative.”
Srila Prabhupada, from a lecture.
Readers will find, in the Appendix of this book, scans of a cover letter written by Satsvarūpa Mahārāja to the GN Press typist at the time, along with some of the original handwritten pages of June Bug. Together, these help to illustrate the process used by Mahārāja when writing his books during this period. These were timed books, in the sense that a distinct time period was allotted for the writing, during SDG’s travels as a visiting sannyāsī
Don’t take my pieces away from me. I need them dearly. My pieces are my prayers to Kṛṣṇa. He wants me to have them, this is my way to love Him. Never take my pieces away.
Many planks and sticks, unable to stay together, are carried away by the force of a river’s waves. Similarly, although we are intimately related with friends and family members, we are unable to stay together because of our varied past deeds and the waves of time.
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.