“The Swamiji doesn’t want anyone smoking pot here.” Don denied it: “I have not been smoking. You are not speaking the truth.” The boy then reached into Don’s shirt pocket and pulled out a joint, and Don hit him in the face.
The media’s complete coverage of the Mount St. Helens volcano completely avoided seriously considering the cataclysm’s ultimate cause. Photographers in airplanes hovered over the mountain, taking sensational news photos of the blast, officials tallied the loss of life and money.
He was maestro of the chanting, head of the kitchen, and spiritual father to a band of wild, candid young Americans.
1966: The Lower East Side, New York. The building was humble, the membership small, yet Srila Prabhupada’s vision encompassed the whole world.
In human society those persons who are materially engrossed, being blind to the knowledge of ultimate truth, have many subject matters for hearing.
I remember Lord Krsna standing by the banks of the Yamuna River, so beautiful amidst the kadamba trees, where many birds are chirping in the gardens. And these impressions are always giving me transcendental bliss.
In the early summer of 1966, Srila Prabhupada was sharing a Bowery loft with a young American friend. But when the boy went crazy on drugs and drove him out, suddenly Prabhupada found himself in the street, homeless and alone.
The world’s energy supply is limited and the supply is being depleted by ravenous, irresponsible consumption. These are well-known facts. And everyone is aware that Americans, especially, seem unable to voluntarily reduce their consumption of energy, despite the inevitable future.
His lecture is very basic and yet (for restless youth) heavily philosophical. Some can’t take it, and they rise to leave. Some, upon hearing his first words, have already risen rudely, put on their shoes at the front door, and returned to the street.
Sudama Brahmana is gloriously received by the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Sri Krsna, and His eternal consort Srimati Rukmini.
Thousands of young people were walking the streets, not simply intoxicated or crazy (though they often were), but searching for life’s ultimate answers.
Once we become spiritually fulfilled, we’ll be finished with sexual problems. In the latter part of our lives, if not much earlier, we’ll abstain to concentrate on self-realization and the unlimited pleasure within. Yet during married life, sex for producing children is also chaste.
So the first thing is that one should be searching after a spiritual master, just as when you search after some school, you must have at least some preliminary knowledge of what a school is.
When we go chanting Hare Krishna outdoors, under the blue sky, with drums and cymbals through the streets, who can measure the essence of that?
When we were chanting Hare Krishna My pleasure was so great I was afraid lest I be swept to heaven and given a chariot ride down the length of the rainbow.
Seeing Krishna in the coils of the serpent Kaliya, Krishna’s friends the cowherd boys and the other residents of Vrndavana were stunned with fear. When they saw Him overpowered by the coils of the serpent Kaliya, they fell to the ground.
At Fifty-ninth Street and Fifth Avenue the chariots are waiting. Forty feet high with spires atop. I bow to the statue of Srila Prabhupada which sits on an elegant throne in the second chariot.
The dingy loft, its rafters unpainted, was more like an old warehouse than a temple. The members of his audience, most of them musicians, had come to meditate on the mystical sounds of the Swami’s kirtana, his chanting.
Most people think they have no need for a spiritual master. In a sense, they are right. People interested only in an animal-like existence do not need a spiritual master. A spiritual master is required for a person who is inquisitive about transcendental knowledge.
“His American church”—yes, Srila Prabhupada had hope and determination. There was life in his lectures and kirtanas (chantings), his morning and evening gatherings in the loft. At least he was acquiring a small, regular following. But from India there was no hope.