Śrīla Prabhupāda’s Love
My dear Devotees,
Please accept my humble obeisances. All glories to Śrīla Prabhupāda, our eternal lord and master, and our dearmost friend.
Before I begin my offering to Śrīla Prabhupāda, I would like to say to you something about his love for us: Out of his love for us, he engaged us in devotional service, and he encouraged us to continue under all circumstances, because he wanted us to realize the ultimate happiness, Kṛṣṇa consciousness. Out of love for his eternal lords and masters, Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī and Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu, he wanted to expand the number of devotees, to increase his masters’ pleasure with the expansion of the Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement. To that Śrīla Prabhupāda and his divine love this offering is humbly dedicated.
Thank you. Hare Kṛṣṇa.
Your servant,
Girirāj Swami
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My dear Śrīla Prabhupāda,
Please accept my prostrated obeisances at your divine lotus feet. All glories to Your Divine Grace!
On your auspicious Vyāsa-pūjā day, we meditate on your transcendental qualities and accomplishments, as we should every day. And today, as I do on other days, I focus on what to me is your most special quality, if not your very essence: your sublime love.
I think of the first time Bharadrāja Prabhu met you in Boston, in 1969. Although he had joined the temple in Montreal, he never actually met you there. And so he came to Boston, around the same time I too first met you.
He entered the room where you were meeting with some devotees, and he experienced…“love—just love,” as he later told me. And he remarked that he had the realization then that Kṛṣṇa consciousness was simply “love masquerading as a philosophy.” And I had the same realization: “Yes, Kṛṣṇa consciousness is just love, just love.”
Specifically, the Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement is your love, Śrīla Prabhupāda, or a manifestation of your love—for Kṛṣṇa, for your devotees, for all living beings. Because you “loved Vāsudeva,” so you said, you came to America at the age of seventy to introduce Kṛṣṇa consciousness. And the philosophy, the harināma–saṅkīrtana, the prasādam—all the items that you introduced and that ISKCON even now offers—are just sort of hooks to catch people and bring them to Kṛṣṇa consciousness. Of course, in the absolute sense the practices of Kṛṣṇa consciousness are also Kṛṣṇa, who is pure love Himself. But they are also lures to attract people. And after they are attracted and actually enter into Kṛṣṇa consciousness, it is just love. It is nothing but love.
And you are the personification of that love.
Your very presence exuded pure love. Your voice resonated with love. Your glance was laden with love. Just sitting in your presence, we could feel your love. The first time I went to Vṛndāvana, to meet Gurudās Prabhu, I actually felt something different, as if Kṛṣṇa and His cowherd friends and cows were still there. Later, in Bombay, after you asked me about my visit, you yourself articulated for me what I had felt there: “When we are in Vṛndāvana we don’t see Kṛṣṇa now, but we can feel His presence.” In the same way, Śrīla Prabhupāda, we could feel your love; we would sense your love in every molecule of your being, and all around you.
And that love was manifest in the way you dealt with individuals, and in the way you endeavored to offer Kṛṣṇa consciousness to all souls.
Śrīla Prabhupāda, how you traveled by steamer to the United States, suffering two heart attacks on the way; how you survived in New York City, on the Bowery and on the Lower East Side; how you preached to the hippies and engaged them in Kṛṣṇa’s service; how you circled the globe fourteen times and established more than 108 temples, making and maintaining thousands of devotees; how you introduced great festivals like Ratha-yātrā; how you established Kṛṣṇa conscious farms, schools, and restaurants; and how you labored through the night to translate and present the most confidential knowledge of the Vedas in more than sixty volumes, in language that ordinary people could understand and scholars would praise, inspiring your disciples to rapidly publish and distribute unprecedented millions of them, not only in English but translated into dozens of languages—in short, how you spread the Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement worldwide in pursuance of the order of your Guru Mahārāja, fulfilling the desires and predictions of Śrīla Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura and Śrī Kṛṣṇa Caitanya Himself—all this was been well documented and is widely known.
But how you engaged and encouraged your disciples so personally, with compassion and care, at times with tears—how you loved them and inspired them to love you—such affairs of the heart, and such acts of individual kindness and grace, are less well known and published. And it is the duty of those who knew you, and experienced such exchanges, to document and share their knowledge, both for their own purification and for the benefit of others. Therefore, Śrīla Prabhupāda, how you so loved your disciples individually, and engaged them ultimately for the spread of the Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement, will be our focus here—though what we offer are but a few droplets from the vast ocean of your love, now gratefully offered back into it.
When I first came to the Boston temple, after a lecture a gentleman challenged you: “Are you happy?” In the course of your answer, you said, “Before, when I was married, I had five children, and there were always so many problems. But now, in Kṛṣṇa consciousness, I have five hundred children, and I love them, and they love me, and there are no problems.” The beauty of your answer struck me, and I felt the truth of your words right there, in your relationships with your students, your spiritual children.
Still, as the movement expanded, there were problems—not personal problems, of course, but difficulties in the line of Kṛṣṇa’s service—if we can call them “problems.”
Here I remember how one of your disciples came from Hyderabad to meet you at Juhu. He was disturbed by the conflicts he was having with the other leaders there, and he sat before you in your room in Juhu, expressing his grief and presenting the various points of contention. You listened, with full sympathy and empathy, until late into the night. And you explained, ever so carefully and patiently, the philosophical principles that governed the various issues of contention.
Śrīla Prabhupāda, although you were in full sympathy with the disciple before you, I knew you would have listened with equal sympathy to any of the leaders from Hyderabad, had any one of them come to explain and complain, even about the disciple presently before you. From the material point of view, one could view your complete sympathy for apparently opposing parties as contradictory or even duplicitous. But actually, your support of them was a manifestation of your love for them—and of your intelligence—in loving service to your spiritual master and Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu, and to their mission.
Here I think of one humorous example from the Ardha-Kumbha Mela in Allahabad, 1971. An argument erupted between Madhudvīṣa Prabhu and Yamunā Prabhu about Kṛṣṇa and Balarāma. Madhudvīṣa was maintaining, “Kṛṣṇa and Balarāma are the same, only Kṛṣṇa is blackish and Balarāma is whitish.”
Yamunā, however, was insisting, “No, They are different, because Kṛṣṇa is the only enjoyer of Śrīmatī Rādhārāṇī.”
So the two were arguing, and Tamāl Krishna Goswami, then your zonal secretary for India, brought the matter before you. First he presented Madhudvīṣa’s argument: “Kṛṣṇa and Balarāma are the same, except Kṛṣṇa is blackish and Balarāma is white.”
You replied, “Yes, he is right.”
Then Tamāl continued, “But Yamunā says They are different, because Kṛṣṇa is the only enjoyer of Śrīmatī Rādhārāṇī.”
You replied, “Yes, she is right.”
Then Tamāl said, “But, Śrīla Prabhupāda, they are both saying different things. They both can’t be right.”
You answered, “Yes, you are right.”
Hearing this, Tamāl asked, “Then, which is right?”
And you replied, “You decide.”
Thus, Kṛṣṇa consciousness is inconceivable; it can be seen differently from different points of view. And one of Kṛṣṇa’s qualities is that all opposites, all contradictions, are reconciled in Him. And you have the same quality: the ability to reconcile all opposites—in love. Like Kṛṣṇa, you could give yourself to each and every devotee, and fully satisfy each one. As each gopī in the rāsa dance felt, “Kṛṣṇa is mine,” so each of your disciples could also feel, “Śrīla Prabhupāda is mine.” And you were. You were hers or his—but you were also the other devotee’s—and you were Kṛṣṇa’s. Such was your love. You gave yourself in love.
Your grand-disciples and other followers now also feel your love. Mahāprabhu dāsa in Bombay spoke to me of the intensity of your love—and also of the contradiction. He said, “I have never met anyone who loved as intensely as Śrīla Prabhupāda. But at the same time, he was completely detached. In the material world, if someone loves somebody, he is not detached. And again, if someone is detached, he cannot love. But Śrīla Prabhupāda loves, and he is detached. The two seem contradictory.”
Whatever the case, you always tried to encourage us.
Haṁsadūta Prabhu tells a story about how, as your secretary, he had written a letter to encourage a devotee, even though his personal feelings about the devotee were different. But when he was writing on your behalf, on your instruction, he felt he had to represent your spirit. And what was your spirit, your mood? To appreciate and encourage the devotees, even when you had to correct them. In fact, you even stated that it is the duty of the spiritual master to encourage the disciples.
And you never gave up on anyone.
Here I think of one example from Bombay. One of the first devotees to join you in New York City in 1966 had gone to Calcutta and somehow gotten involved in smoking gañjā. So the temple president from Calcutta phoned you in Bombay to inform you. After hearing his report, you instructed the temple president, “Tell him that if he doesn’t stop smoking gañjā I will reject him.”
Afterward, Tamāl Krishna Goswami asked you, “Is that true, that you will reject him?”
You replied, “No. I cannot reject anyone.”
Tamāl Krishna Goswami also asked you, “But isn’t there some limit? Don’t you have to draw the line somewhere?”
And you replied, “Lord Nityānanda’s mercy has no limit.”
You, Śrīla Prabhupāda, are the embodiment of Lord Nityānanda’s mercy and love. In fact, mercy (dayā) is a function of love (bhakti). Namo mahā-vadānyāya kṛṣṇa-prema-pradāya te. You are the embodiment of Lord Caitanya’s love and mercy, and you told all of us who represent you, who represent Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu, that we too must show mercy. And although we can never equal you (we can’t even equal a fraction of a speck of dust on your lotus feet), still, whatever we are—tiny, insignificant living entities who had the good fortune to meet you, in person or through your instructions—we have the immense responsibility now to try to reflect your qualities. And I believe the one quality that embodies all your other qualities is your love for all of us, out of your mercy.
Your love for us inspired in us such love for you that we would go to any extent to serve you and please you, to practice and preach Kṛṣṇa consciousness. But you also taught us that to love you meant to love and serve your other servants as well, for our love for you would be shown in our relations with each other—in service to you and your mission. And finally, Śrīla Prabhupāda, you made it clear that, if we truly loved you, we would follow in your footsteps by loving and serving all Kṛṣṇa’s creatures, doing our utmost to engage them, too, in Kṛṣṇa consciousness.
I think of myself now, Śrīla Prabhupāda, and I appeal to all your followers: “Please give me your mercy! Please grant me your association! Although I can never properly reciprocate with you, at least I will do what I can to please Śrīla Prabhupāda—and to please all of you, in his service.”
Śrīla Prabhupāda, as we serve your instructions and receive your mercy, we also develop pure love like yours—for Śrī Śrī Guru and Gaurāṅga, and ultimately for Śrī Śrī Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa—and Their dear devotees.
Thank you, Śrīla Prabhupāda, thank you for your causeless, limitless mercy—your pure, sublime love! May we realize your true essence and mercy by hearing and chanting always, Hare Kṛṣṇa, Hare Kṛṣṇa, Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa, Hare Hare / Hare Rāma, Hare Rāma, Rāma Rāma, Hare Hare, and preaching and glorifying Śrī Guru and Śrī Gaurāṅga! Jaya Śrīla Prabhupāda!
Your eternal servant,
Girirāj Swami
