SPL

Giriraj Swami:

ŚRĪLA PRABHUPĀDA-LĪLĀMṚTA

New Jagannatha Puri, San Francisco, 1967

One day in March, 18-year-old Wayne Gunderson was walking down the street when a piece of paper going along the sidewalk caught on his foot. He tried to kick it off without breaking his stride, but it hung on. It was advertising lectures by Swami Bhaktivedanta at 518 Frederick Street. Like so many others, Wayne, a mild-mannered young man who worked for the post office, had come to Haight-Ashbury to take part in the revolution. He attended rock concerts and be-ins, browsed through the books and posters in the psychedelic shop, and took drugs. But he was quiet, polite, and solitary. He didn’t dress like a hippie but wore clean, conservative, casual clothes and a whimsical, odd-looking sports cap.

The flyer about the swami seemed a timely coincidence because Wayne had been planning to go to India to find a guru. He decided to go see Swami Bhaktivedanta on Frederick Street. Wayne was surprised to find only a storefront. He was startled by the picture of the swami in the window—not a smiling, bearded yogi, but a shaven-headed swami with a stern look. Wayne went in. It was a typical Ashbury scene with hippies sitting around, but there were also a few people with big red beads strung like garlands around their necks. Up front, he saw the swami.

Swami Bhaktivedanta stressed, “We are not these bodies,” and when he spoke of Krishna, he described Krishna so personally that it was like being introduced to Krishna. After a few meetings, Wayne got up the nerve to ask a question. “Can one practice yoga at the same time as Krishna consciousness?”

“Why do you want to spend so much time with that body?” Prabhupada replied. “You are not that body.” He said it so strongly that Wayne, who was easily hurt, felt like shrinking into the floor. “This body is not as important as the soul,” Prabhupada explained, “so we shouldn’t spend so much time with the body exaggerating its needs.” Then he smiled at Wayne. “Besides, all yogas culminate in Krishna consciousness.” Wayne felt that smile lift him completely out of his diminished and crushed condition.

Several weeks later, Wayne asked about initiation. When the devotees told him he should go up and see the swami, Wayne went home and rehearsed his lines, first anticipating what Prabhupada would say. Wayne prepared his own responses and contrived the whole conversation. Then, nervously, he approached Prabhupada’s door. But before he could even knock, the door opened, and there was Prabhupada looking at him—not sternly as in his picture, but kindly, as if expecting him.

“Yes?” Prabhupada said. “Come in.” The incident completely shattered Wayne’s planned approach. He concluded that Swamiji could read minds. So, trying to clear his mind of bad thoughts, he entered Prabhupada’s apartment.

Prabhupada sat in his rocking chair, and Wayne, who usually sat on the floor, sat in the only other chair in the room. Wayne immediately felt uncomfortable as he realized that it would be more proper to sit at Prabhupada’s feet. But feeling too weak-hearted to alter the situation, he kept his seat, nervously fingering his sports cap.

“Swamiji,” he began, “I would like to be your disciple.” Prabhupada immediately agreed. He asked whether Wayne could follow the four principles, and Wayne, although not even sure what the four principles were, said he could. Prabhupada then asked him what principle was the most difficult for him to follow. Wayne said, “I have difficulty with meat eating,” a lie. He was a vegetarian, but he was too shy to say that his real problem was uncontrolled sexual desire.

Prabhupada laughed. “Oh, that’s no problem. We will give you prasādam. You can be initiated next week.” Wayne then asked if he would be able to go to India. He felt the swami would be pleased to hear that his new follower wanted to go to his country. But Prabhupada seemed displeased.

“India? Why India?” Wayne thought the real reason he had wanted to go to India was to find a woman. “Well,” he said, “to learn Sanskrit.”

“I will teach you Sanskrit,” Prabhupada replied. So there was no need to go to India, and he would be initiated by a genuine guru next week right here in San Francisco.

Some devotees helped Wayne prepare for his initiation ceremony. Jayananda lent Wayne his dhoti, a piece of yellow cloth much too large for Wayne. The devotees set up a sacrificial arena in the storefront with a fire altar, firewood, colored rice, and flowers. During the ceremony, Wayne was nervous. When Prabhupada chanted the mantras, Wayne couldn’t hear them exactly, so he just mimicked as best he could. And when Prabhupada began the fire sacrifice, Wayne felt a little frightened because the initiation seemed such a serious commitment. He watched when Prabhupada initiated Wayne with his new name, Upendra. Wayne didn’t hear it clearly and began to worry.

When the ceremony ended and Prabhupada stood up and abruptly left the storefront, Upendra was reminded that he should go upstairs and give Swamiji an offering. So he decided to give him a baby blanket and a beach towel. It wasn’t that he lacked money, but these things had some sentimental value to him, so he wanted to give them to Swamiji. He went upstairs to Prabhupada’s room, and Prabhupada was sitting at the foot of his mattress. Wayne came in, bowed down, and presented him with the baby blanket and beach towel. Prabhupada held them in his fingers and looked at them, one in each of his hands.

“These things are useless,” he said, and he tossed them down on the floor. Wayne was hurt and had nothing to say. He just sat there. After a while, he excused himself and went back to his apartment.

The next day, Wayne went to see Swamiji during his evening visiting time, and he had the beach towel and baby blanket out on the floor like rugs so that his guests who came to visit could have something to sit on. Wayne felt satisfaction that Prabhupada had found some use for his offering.

Since he was still living with his girlfriend, Wayne felt guilty about breaking the principles of avoiding illicit sex and intoxication, but he just couldn’t follow them. He wanted to tell Swamiji but couldn’t bring himself to do it. Besides, he thought, even if he confessed, how could he stop? Upendra’s girlfriend didn’t like Krishna consciousness, didn’t want to meet Swamiji, and didn’t want to come to the temple. So Prabhupada decided that instead of marrying Upendra to her, he would save Upendra from her. He decided to make Upendra a brahmacārī.

Although Prabhupada had about twenty-five San Francisco disciples, hardly any were brahmacārīs. Practically, the only solid one was Jayananda, who was a little older than the rest. Jayananda worked and sat with Prabhupada in his apartment with the other devotees. He was known for his serious japa, sitting cross-legged, eyes squeezed tightly shut, chanting intensely, oblivious to the outside world. He was serious, and that was the only way one could remain a brahmacārī.

In New York, Prabhupada had about a dozen brahmacārīs. A more permissive attitude among his followers in San Francisco made brahmacārī life more difficult. In the original Vedic society of ancient India, brahmacārī life began at the age of five. Parents would send their son to live with the guru at the gurukula, where the boy would receive basic education, spiritual instruction, and strict moral discipline under the guru. Even Lord Krishna, in His transcendental pastimes on earth, had attended and very humbly served His spiritual master.

The basic principle of brahmacārī life was celibacy. By practicing celibacy, the brahmacārī could develop great powers of memory and sensory control. And if such a trained brahmacārī later decided to take a wife, his sex life would be regulated, not licentious. But although brahmacārī life was necessary for a healthy society, Prabhupada had seen within his own lifetime the rapid deterioration of brahmacārī life almost to non-existence. And in America, the situation was, of course, much worse.

A half-naked prostitute in America was not uncommon to see in public. As soon as they walked out on the street, even in America, if they regularly chanted Krishna and sincerely tried to follow the rules and regulations, Krishna would protect them. Prabhupada had decided to ask Upendra to come and live with him as his personal servant. His former servant, Rancho, had recently left his position. Although supposedly following Krishna consciousness, Rancho had never been a serious devotee. He had even seduced one of the young women devotees in New York. Prabhupada had found out and asked the girl why she had indulged in sex with Rancho if she wasn’t planning to marry him. She had been unable to answer. Prabhupada had admonished her, “You girls should not make yourselves so cheap,” and had given Rancho another chance. But Rancho never became serious. After playing the drums during the big kirtan at the Avalon Ballroom, Rancho had become fascinated with the dancehall. He would sneak out from the service, lie to Prabhupada about his absence, and go looking for girls at the Avalon. One day, he never returned. As one of the devotees reported to Prabhupada, “He just disappeared into the strobe lights.” Rancho did not come back once.

Despite his weaknesses, Upendra was spontaneously attracted to Prabhupada and liked to be with him whenever he could. Sometimes Upendra would go up to the apartment with one or two other devotees and just sit in front of Prabhupada as he sat on the thin pillow behind his little desk. Sometimes Prabhupada would continue reading or writing, and Upendra would sit and bask in his presence, simply watching him work. After ten minutes or so, Prabhupada would look up and say, “All right, that is enough,” and the boys would bow and leave. Upendra would also go to see Prabhupada taking his lunch, and Prabhupada would take some rice and vegetables, put them on a chapati, and offer them. Although the prasādam was similar to what the devotees ate downstairs, Upendra thought that it tasted much better.

For the second time, Upendra was convinced that Swamiji could read his mind and knew his entire life. “Yes,” Upendra admitted, “but I’m not having. . . this is not good, Swamiji. I’m not having any sexual connections.” Prabhupada replied, “Sex you must come and live with me.” Upendra was delighted. “Yes, I’ll come immediately.” He took a few minutes from his apartment, left everything else with his girlfriend, and moved into the front room of Prabhupada’s apartment. He was now Swamiji’s personal servant. Prabhupada requested him to keep his job at the post office. Around midnight, as soon as Upendra got off work, he would return to the apartment. Prabhupada always left the door unlocked for him. Usually, soon after Upendra locked the door, he would crawl into his sleeping bag and fall asleep. He would be awakened by Prabhupada speaking into his dictating machine, composing teachings on Lord Chaitanya. Upendra would nod off again and sleep until six. Upendra relished this close association with his spiritual master and became always cheerful. “I just want to be Swamiji’s dog,” he would often tell the other devotees.

One time, Upendra was reading to himself: “The whole subject matter is so presented through the lips that any sincere audience who will lend his ear submissively to this message of the transcendental world will at once relish the transcendental mellows distinguished from the perverted mellows of the material world.” The ripened fruit is not dropped all of a sudden from the highest planet of Krishna, but it has come down carefully, being handled by the chain of disciplic succession without any change or disturbance in the formation of the soft and ripened fruit. “You don’t have any questions?” Prabhupada asked. Upendra looked up from the book. “No, Swamiji, I accept everything you say.” Prabhupada began rocking strongly in his rocking chair and smiled at Upendra. This advice gave Upendra greater enthusiasm to please his spiritual master by reading his books.

Upendra was still bothered by sexual desires. He thought that maybe he should get married, but he was confused about what a Krishna conscious marriage was supposed to be. How could you be married if you don’t love the girl you want to marry, and how could you love her without having sex with her? He wanted to ask Swamiji about this but kept it to himself, waiting for an opportunity and for the courage. Then one day, he entered Prabhupada’s room. Prabhupada paced back and forth from one end of the room with its three large bay windows overlooking Frederick Street to the other where his rocking chair sat. Now Upendra decided he could ask his question.

“Swamiji,” he began, “may I ask a question?” “Yes,” Prabhupada replied, stopping his pacing. “If a boy is separate from a girl, how can he learn to love her?” Prabhupada began to walk back and forth again, chanting on his beads. After a moment, he turned and said softly, “Love, love is for Krishna,” and he walked toward the window and looked down at the street below. “You want a girl? Pick one.” He pointed towards some women passing on the street. “There is no love in this material world,” he said. “Love is for Krishna.”

Gradually, under Prabhupada’s pure influence, Upendra began to feel less agitated by sexual demands. He came to understand that he was not a material body but a spiritual soul, and the soul’s eternal nature was to love Krishna. For a pure devotee, he thought of what foods to buy for him and how to make things comfortable for him. He was in this mood of wanting to serve Swamiji when Upendra visited the psychedelic shop one day. He had heard they had recently received some prints from India, so he went in and browsed through the prints, picked out some pictures of Lord Krishna, and took them to Swamiji.

In Prabhupada’s room, along with other devotees, Upendra unrolled the prints one by one on Prabhupada’s desk, waiting to see Prabhupada’s response. As Upendra watched, it seemed to him that Swamiji was looking at photos of his personal friend. He was pleased with the pictures. Prabhupada agreed that the religious art of Indian prints was a bit garish, but he explained that the technique didn’t matter. The important thing was that the pictures were of Krishna and were executed according to Vedic descriptions. For the devotee, they were beautiful; they were non-different from Krishna.

Prabhupada selected his favorite. In this picture, Krishna was known as Govinda and quoted a verse. He then took a sheet of paper and began writing while the devotees watched him intently, listening to the scratching of the pen on the page. Then he read aloud: “My dear friend, if you still have an inclination to enjoy material life, society, friendship, and love, then please do not see the boy named Govinda who is standing in a three-curved way, smiling and skillfully playing on his flute, his lips brightened by the full moonshine. You can write this nicely.” Prabhupada knew he asked her to print the verse and display it along with the picture by his sitting place in the temple. He wanted to be able to look at it.

“If I can just fix myself steadily in service to Swamiji, who has such love for Krishna, then I too will become transcendental,” Upendra thought. Since it was not possible for him to see Govinda the way Swamiji saw him, he should serve Swamiji. “I just want to become Swamiji’s dog,” Upendra said as he left the apartment.

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