Holy Name Retreat—Introduction—Srila Prabhupada and the Holy Name

Giriraj Swami: Hare Krishna.

Devotees: Hare Krishna.

Giriraj Swami: So, it is a great pleasure for me to be here with all of you and especially His Holiness Giridhari Swami Maharaja, who is back in full form, maybe better than ever. I don’t know what it was like before, but I can’t imagine that it was better than it is now. And my dear friend, His Holiness Ṛtadhvaja Swami.

Devotees: Haribol!

Giriraj Swami: Yesterday was Maharaja’s appearance day, and we were all intoxicated, divine bliss in Maharaja’s association, and the association of other devotees. And Krishna Kshetra Prabhu, who is an ocean of knowledge, friendliness, and good humor. And so many others who I knew before and so many more that I’m getting to meet for the first time. And this is all Srila Prabhupada’s mercy, he has brought us all together in a way that is so favorable for not only our spiritual development, but well-being in all respects.

When devotees get together, they relate on a different platform from ordinary people, they actually think of each other’s welfare as spiritual beings, as servants of Krishna, and they help each other to serve Krishna and remember Krishna, which makes our relationships and our experiences together very  and sweet.

And as His Holiness Giridhari Swami said so beautifully and in his keenness to address, Srila Prabhupada came to give us all the holy name. Actually, he came to give us Krishna, and Krishna is manifest in many ways; as the Deity, as the scripture; the Bhagavad-gītā, Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam. He is also manifest in holy places like Mayapur and Vrindavan. This morning, I felt like I was in Mayapur.

And Krishna is also manifest in the hearts of devotees, but He is most accessible as the holy name. One devotee prayed, “My dear Lord Krishna, You are so kind, that as Your holy name, You are my constant companion.” And therefore, we give utmost importance to chanting of the holy name. Nāma cintāmaṇiḥ kṛṣṇaś caitanya-rasa-vigrahaḥ. The holy name is Krishna Himself.

Sadhus may or may not be available, going to a holy place or even a temple, may or may not be possible at a particular time of worshiping the Deity, maybe they have the Vigraha, and the paraphernalia for worship. And even the scriptures, we need to have the book. But the holy name is always available. And Chaitanya Mahaprabhu said that of all the processes of devotional service, the chanting of the holy name is the best. And if one chants without committing offenses, one very quickly obtains the treasure of love of Godhead.

The holy name is the essence of what Srila Prabhupada came to give us, the association of Krishna, and the means of attaining Krishna. And with that purpose, he set sail from India at the advanced age of sixty-nine, and that was really amazing.

When I just said those words, I paused for a minute, I thought, Am I getting it wrong? Is it possible? I’m sixty-four, that means Prabhupada would have been five years older than I am now. And he went all alone on a ship to America, not knowing anyone, being a complete stranger in a strange land, and doing all that he did starting at the age of sixty-nine or seventy, it’s hard to comprehend it, it’s inconceivable. So, he took all that trouble out of love for Krishna, out of obedience to the order of the spiritual master, and out of compassion for all of us.

So, we have a great debt of gratitude to him, and paradoxically, the best way that we can liquidate our debt to him is to take full advantage of the gifts that he came to give us, and then to share those gifts with others. It was Srila Prabhupada’s desire that we should taste the holy name and distribute it, which everyone here, to some extent or another, is doing.

So, I was asked to speak about Srila Prabhupada and the holy name, and I would begin this account from before Srila Prabhupada left India. And the theme of the account will be Srila Prabhupada’s faith in the holy name, ādau śraddhā, first comes faith, and bhakti is actually the development of faith. The goal of bhakti is pure love of Godhead, or prema. It’s just a further development of sraddha, or faith and attraction.

So, as some of you may know, before coming to America, Srila Prabhupada had been in the grihastha ashram, and he had been a pharmacist or, I guess they would say, a chemist. So, one day, he met one of his godbrothers, O.B.L.Kapoor, who was a professor. So, he asked Srila Prabhupada, who was then a grihastha, “You are a chemist, you know so many formulas, do you know the formula for the love of God?” And Srila Prabhupada said, “Yes.” And professor Kapoor asked, “Well, can you tell me what it is?” And Srila Prabhupada replied, “Tṛṇād api sunīcena taror api sahiṣṇunā amāninā mānadena kīrtanīyaḥ sadā hariḥ.” Srila Prabhupada had that faith.

Years later, after Srila Prabhupada had been to America and preached and inspired devotees and devotees had come back to India and come to Vrindavan, they met one of Prabhupada’s godbrothers named Akinchana Krishna dasa Babaji, who, Srila Prabhupada said, was a very advanced devotee, he relished chanting the holy names, culpably, candidly [Unintelligible 00:13:50]. When you were with him, you could really feel how he was tasting the holy name.

So, he told the story about Srila Prabhupada’s sannyasa initiation, which was conducted at the Kesavaji Matha in Mathura. During the ceremony, there was an interval, and during the interval, Akinchana Krishna dasa Babaji Maharaja led kirtan, and then after the interval, it was time to begin the recitation of mantras and other rituals.

So, Babaji Maharaja was chanting, so the priest motioned like this, “Stop chanting.” And Prabhupada was just a vanaprastha, he was getting sannyasa. So, he looked around the room very carefully to make sure no one was looking, and then he went like this, “Keep chanting.” And Babaji Maharaja commented to a few devotees, Prabhupada’s disciples, “At that moment, I knew that he would be the world leader of the Hare Krishna movement.”

So, yes, Srila Prabhupada had that faith, and he traveled by steamship, came to New York City, and chanted Hare Krishna. Some young men and women came forward and joined him, and they in turn went to different places to distribute the holy name. And thus, Srila Prabhupada came to fulfill the great prediction of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and Bhaktivinoda Thakura, that the holy name of Krishna and Chaitanya Mahaprabhu would be preached and sung in every town and every village of the world.

So, one summer, I spent the summer in San Francisco, it was during the hippie era. We were hearing all sorts of news about Haight-Ashbury, the neighborhood in San Francisco called Haight-Ashbury, which was where the hippies congregated. And while I was there, I saw devotees for the first time. I was walking down Haight street, and there was a very tall person with a shaved head and robes and I noticed him.

That was it, I just noticed him, and then maybe a week or two later, I saw a pretty large group of devotees chanting in a park, and there was a big crowd gathered around them, and I stopped and I was looking at them. But I was on my way, I thought I had something important to do, I was just walking through the park to get to where I was going and I paused for a few minutes and I kept going. But I heard the holy name. Srila Prabhupada said that when we take the holy name into the streets, it knocks on the doors of the people’s hearts.

And then eventually, I met Srila Prabhupada and accepted him as my spiritual master. And then Srila Prabhupada wanted to return to India and begin the activities there, and he wanted one devotee from each temple to go to India. And so, I got to go. So eventually, I went to Madras to begin the activities there, and in Madras, I heard a song being broadcast from the radio. I don’t know how it is in other places, but in India, at least then, they would play the radio very loud. Srila Prabhupada said they wanted to advertise, “I have a radio.” So, we were hearing this song, and part of the song was, “Hare Krishna Hare Rama Hare Krishna Hare Rama Hare Krishna Hare Rama.”

So, at that time, I had been invited to a gentleman’s home for lunch, and I kept hearing this song, I thought, Let me ask what the words mean. He said, “They mean, ‘With every breath that I take, Hare Krishna, Hare Rama.’” I thought, God, that sounds nice. And I was thinking, I wish I could be like that, with every breath that I take, Hare Krishna, Hare Rama.

But as time went on, I learned that that was not the exact translation. I don’t know if our host didn’t quite get it right or was just being polite, but the actual translation was, “With every puff that I take, every smoke that I take, Hare Krishna, Hare Rama.” Now, that song was actually the theme song of a movie, which is called, Hare Rama, Hare Krishna. And you might notice that in some of Prabhupada’s purports, he talks about cinema songs, that they are the most popular kind of music in India.

So, the movie came to Calcutta, it was playing in a very sort of a high-class theater in a very good neighborhood in central Calcutta, so I had the idea we should do hari-nāma-saṅkīrtana outside the theater and distribute Back to Godhead magazines and books, it would be a good opportunity. So, we went, and people were interested, they took books, and then it was time for the last show to begin. All the old people had come out and all the young people had gone in. So, I thought, Let me go inside and see what this is.

So, I sort of snuck into the theater in the back row, and it was very impressive, a big, huge movie theater screen. And as I recall, the first image was the waves of the ocean coming in on to the shore, and the narrator, with a very deep, resonant voice, said, “For years, the spiritual culture of India remained within the shores of India, but then, one man. . .” And it flashed a big picture of Srila Prabhupada, “Took India’s spiritual culture beyond the shores of India.” And then it showed a man with an arrow showing the roots, how Srila Prabhupada left India and came to the west.

And then there was the scene of the Ratha-yatra, this huge screen, it was just wonderful, and devotees chanting and dancing. And then it switched to people who were sort of dressed like devotees, smoking hashish, marijuana, and boys and girls dancing and making eyes at each other, and then the real theme of the movie came out, which was that Srila Prabhupada had taken the holy name, and hippies were smoking hashish and marijuana, and dancing, and enjoying with each other. And with every puff, Hare Krishna, Hare Rama.

So, it was a deliberate attack on the movement, the movie was conveying the message of weird hippies who would take intoxicants and have illicit sex and do all nonsense and chant Hare Krishna, Hare Rama. So, it was a big blow, it was an extremely popular movie, and it meant to put doubts in people’s minds about us. Prabhupada said that actually, the government was behind it because they were afraid of our movement and they didn’t want it to grow.

And the producer, director, and star of the film, was Dev Anand, a person named Dev Anand. So, someone came to Prabhupada and suggested we file a court case against him, but Prabhupada didn’t want to. But Prabhupada said something very interesting, “In the long run, this song will help us, because people will forget the dama maro dam the hindi for, ‘Every smoke that I take, Hare Krishna Hare Rama.’” And actually, it happened.

Yes, after that, I ended up in Bombay, and whenever I would go out, all the street urchins, the children on the street, the beggars, would gather around us and make a sign like this, like they are smoking and chillum, and say, “dam maro dam.” It was like a play. Wherever we went, all of them would gather together and “dam maro dam.” If there were friends around in the neighborhood, because a lot of them would be on the street begging or selling magazines and newspapers, so as soon as one of them would see us, he would alert the others, they’d all come around, gather around us, “dam maro dam.” It was really hellish.

But time passed, and after six months, or a year, or year and a half, it wasn’t just “dam maro dam,” it was about half and a half. Half “dam maro dam,” and half, “Hare Krishna, Hare Rama.” And then, after another year or so, the “dam maro dam” completely disappeared, there was just, “Hare Krishna, Hare Rama.” So, Srila Prabhupada had that faith, he knew the science, that “dam maro dam” was just a mundane song vibration, people would get tired of it, but, “Hare Krishna, Hare Rama” was spiritual and always fresh, people would not get tired of it, and that was the truth.

So, now I’m going to go back in time to when I first joined in Boston to tell another instructive story. At that time, Satsvarupa dasa was the temple president in Boston, and he had a job as a welfare worker, and his paycheck was the only income in the Boston temple. On occasion, he would ask Srila Prabhupada if he could give up his job, and Srila Prabhupada said no. But more and more devotees were joining, and that paycheck was not enough to pay for all the expenses, and we had no other income. So, Satsvarupa held a meeting, iṣṭagoṣṭhī, to discuss what to do, and the devotees were very surrendered, they were ready to do anything.

And they quoted that Prabhupada said if we had to, we could get jobs. So, one devotee said, “I used to work in the post office before I joined, I could probably get a job at the post office again.” And another devotee said, “Oh, I know the grocer down the street, I could probably get a job in his shop.” So, like this, devotees were offering to work in different ways.

But then, one devotee raised his hand, a very humble devotee named Nanda Kishore, and he said that he had read in one of Prabhupada’s recent letters that if we just chant Hare Krishna, if we just go out on hari-nāma-saṅkīrtana, all of our problems will be solved spiritually and materially. And Prabhupada said that we could even close the temple if there aren’t enough devotees and go out on hari-nāma.

So, we thought, Alright, well, let’s try it. Prabhupada said it, so let’s try it. So, the first day, we went out chanting and a few devotees were doing a chanting party, and one or two or three would approach people and ask for donations. So, at the end of the day, we came back to the temple and counted up the Lakshmi, and there were seven dollars, which was pretty good back then for us as devotees. So, he thought, That’s alright, let’s do it again.

So, we went out the next day, chanting, asked for donations, came back, and counted up, there were twelve dollars. We thought, Wow, that’s really, really good. So, then we went out again. Our enthusiasm was increasing so we went out again, chanted with full enthusiasm, asked people for donations, came back, and counted up, nineteen dollars. So, then we thought, Okay, what Prabhupada said is true, if we just chant Hare Krishna, all of our problems will be solved spiritually and materially. So, that was Srila Prabhupada’s faith.

So now, coming back to India, it’s a long story, but Srila Prabhupada entered into an agreement to buy a beautiful plot of land just near the Juhu Beach in Bombay, and after signing the agreement and making the down payment, Srila Prabhupada left Bombay to travel onwards. And so, we accompanied Srila Prabhupada to the airport, there was sort of a VIP room where he was allowed to wait. And so, in the VIP lounge, we had a big kirtan. Madhudvisa Prabhu was leading and devotees were jumping up and down, and it was ecstatic. And after the kirtan, Srila Prabhupada said, “If you go on having kirtans like this, your project will be a success.”

So, it struck me at the time, I made note of it, and then forgot about it. So, it turns out that there were a lot of complications in getting the land because the owner of the land was actually a cheater. He had entered into another agreement to sell the same land to someone else, and by some trick, he had an excuse to cancel that agreement and keep that man’s money, keep the money and keep the land. And then he did the same thing with Srila Prabhupada. He took a pretty good initial amount and then he had some excuse and he canceled the agreement and kept the money and the land.

Anyway, the owner of the land was a very powerful and influential person, he had been the sheriff of Bombay, and he owned one of three English daily newspapers in Bombay, and he had properties and investments and all sorts of things, a lot of influential friends in high places. But in the end, Srila Prabhupada was successful.

So, one evening, Srila Prabhupada was sitting on the roof of one of the buildings that was there on the land. In the nice video we saw in the morning, there were some scenes of Prabhupada sitting on that roof. And one devotee named Haridas was standing there.

So, at a certain stage, Prabhupada looked at his watch and he said to Haridas, “Do you hear the sounds coming from the temple?” Haridas strained to listen, he said, “No, Srila Prabhupada, I don’t hear anything.” And Prabhupada then said, “You don’t hear the sound of the devotees chanting Hare Krishna in the temple?” Haridas strained to listen, he couldn’t hear anything, he said, “No, Srila Prabhupada, I don’t hear anything.” And Prabhupada said, “That is exactly the point. Where are all the devotees? Where is the kirtan?”

So then, Srila Prabhupada asked Haridas, “Do you know why we were successful and Mr. Nair,” he had been the owner, “was not?” Haridas didn’t really answer, Prabhupada said, “Mr. Nair was so influential, he had been the sheriff of Bombay, and knew so many people, and we didn’t know anyone, and he was so resourceful, so wealthy, he had so much money, and we had no one and no regular income. But we were successful and he was not, why?” And then Srila Prabhupada said, “Because we were working to please Krishna, and he was acting for himself, for his own sense gratification.”

Then Prabhupada asked Haridas, “Where are all the devotees?” And Haridas speculated, he said, “They must have gone to the city to collect and they haven’t come back yet.” And that’s when Prabhupada raised the question, “Why were we successful?” And then he said, “That was not my idea that devotees should go out early in the morning and stay out until late at night trying to collect money. They can go at nine in the morning, but then they should come back at five in the evening, and they should chant and dance in front of the Deities. Because we are successful not because of our own strength, but we are successful because we chant to please Krishna, and by Krishna’s pleasure and Krishna’s mercy, we are successful.”

And once, we were on the morning walk with Srila Prabhupada, we went to Juhu Beach on the way back to the temple, a short walk, about one or two blocks. Some little children saw us and they chanted, “Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna.” Prabhupada said, “Our mission is a success, they are chanting Hare Krishna.” That’s really all he wanted of us, or anyone.

Once, he was at the back of the property in his room, and he heard the sounds of kirtan, and he said, “This is Hare Krishna Land.” And he gave the name to the property, Hare Krishna Land. He said, “Yes, this is Hare Krishna Land, the sound of Hare Krishna should always be heard.” And some devotees in America had made stamps to put on envelopes, they didn’t really have any postage value, but just a little picture, stamp size, a little picture of Radha and Krishna, and on the bottom, it said, “Hare Krishna.” So, we weren’t sure if it was proper and I asked Srila Prabhupada, and he said, “These two words, Hare Krishna, should be seen everywhere.”

So now, I’ll tell one last story. This comes in 1977, Srila Prabhupada’s last year with us. He was not well at all, he was pretty much confined to bed, or at most, he would sit up for a while on his asana, reclining back, and then return to bed.

So, Srila Prabhupada had a very staunch follower in Bombay named Mr. Sethi. He was a householder, the head of a big family, and by profession, he was a building contractor. And from before he met Prabhupada, he was associated with a group who had a guru in Vrindavan, and every Sunday, they would meet and chant akhaṇḍa [continuous] hari-nāma-saṅkīrtana, Hare Krishna maha-mantra, for twelve hours continuously, from six in the morning to six in the evening, and then they would have two hours of singing songs about Krishna in Vrindavan.

They were all householders; they would have the program in different devotee householders’ homes every Sunday. So, Mr. Sethi asked if one Sunday, they could have it at the temple instead of at someone’s home, and we arranged it.

Although Maharaja said we should not have a break and go straight to it, I think a little stretching would be good. Do we have any yoga instructors here to lead us throughout the stretches? Prabhava!.

Hare Krishna. That yoga reminded me of something else. Do you know that by yoga, the soul can actually leave the body and travel to other planets? Yeah, that’s really true. So, Srila Prabhupada wrote a book, before he even came to America, called Easy Journey to Other Planets, how a yogi can leave his body and travel to any planet in the universe, but only by bhakti-yoga can you leave the universe and go to Krishnaloka.

So, when Srila Prabhupada established the printing press in the Boston temple when he got the building, he had us reprint Early Journey to Other Planets. And Prabhupada guided every detail of the production, and he told us what to put on the cover, and he said, “In one portion of the cover should be the spiritual sky with Krishna in Goloka Vrindavan, and in the other portion of the cover, there should be the material universe, which is dark, with few planets and stars.” And then he said, “There should be a devotee flying through space, with his śikhā and dhoti chanting on beads. This is the way to travel from the material world to the spiritual world.” And later, when someone showed Prabhupada the book when it just came out, he said, “Yes, by the beads.”

So, Mr. Sethi and his group, the Rādhā-Mādhava Prema-saṅkīrtana Maṇḍalī, came and did a continuous kirtan in our small temple at Juhu, and Prabhupada was upstairs in his new quarters in the new building, but the construction wasn’t really finished and the elevator, the lift, was not working. And these devotees really wanted to have some reciprocation from Srila Prabhupada but they couldn’t go up and Prabhupada couldn’t come down, so eventually, on their own, spontaneously, they just left the temple room and started chanting underneath Prabhupada’s window in a very enthusiastic, heartfelt way.

And then finally, Tamal Krishna Goswami, who was upstairs with Srila Prabhupada, helped him to walk to the balcony. And when Prabhupada came out on the balcony, all the devotees just went wild. And at the end of the evening, the climax, one lady, would sing a Vraja song—

jaya rādhe, jaya rādhe rādhe, jaya rādhe, jaya śrī-rādhe / jaya kṛṣṇa, jaya kṛṣṇa kṛṣṇa, jaya kṛṣṇa, jaya śrī-kṛṣṇa—with a really beautiful voice. And later, Mr. Sethi told us that when she was singing, tears were trickling down Srila Prabhupada’s cheeks.

So, the next day, Srila Prabhupada sent for me to come and meet him. And he said, “That kirtan was wonderful. We should invite the whole group to stay on Hare Krishna Land, and we will maintain them, will give them a place to stay, and food to eat, they don’t have to do any work, just continue with the Hare Krishna kirtan.”

So, within my mind, I was thinking about it, I thought, They have businesses, they have jobs, they have families, their children are going to school. I just didn’t know how it would work. I didn’t say anything, but I was just thinking. Then, Srila Prabhupada said, “Well, if we can’t get them to stay here, then our own men should do it. Twelve hours every day, continuous kirtan, from morning to night.”

So, we were working very hard to build the Juhu temple. We knew how much Prabhupada wanted to build the temple, guest house, the restaurant, the whole complex. So, I said, “Srila Prabhupada, we have so much service to do, I don’t know how all of our men could just chant all day, from morning to night.” Then finally, Prabhupada said, “Alright, then just one day a week, on Sunday.” By then, I was so relieved, I immediately agreed, I said, “Yes, we can do that.”

Later, I explained what had happened to Tamal Krishna Goswami, and Tamal Krishna Goswami said that Srila Prabhupada had engaged in transcendental bargaining with me. First, we had to build houses for these fifty householders to come and live on Hare Krishna Land, and do kirtan from morning to night, then we had to stop everything and do kirtan from morning to night every day. So, when he finally said, “Just one day a week, on Sunday,” “Yeah, yeah, we’ll do that.” And that was one of the best things we ever did, and it was very mystical, all the problems got solved.

I was the temple president, it was a big project, and there were always a lot of problems; problems with the government, problems with the construction, problems between the devotees, individual devotees’ problems. So, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, I was trying to deal with the problems, but I knew that when the twelve-hour kirtan came around, all the problems would be solved.

So, the devotees would still come Thursday, Friday, and I wouldn’t tell them that I wasn’t going to deal with it, I was just going to let the kirtan do it, but I told them, “Alright, give me some time, let me think about it.” And then Sunday, six in the morning to six at night, just kirtan, and I would look forward to it, not just because all the problems would be solved but I was relishing and enjoying it.

But it’s true that by Sunday night or Monday morning, all the problems were solved, either the problem went away on its own, or the devotee realized it wasn’t a problem after all, or in the kirtan, I got some insight how to deal with the problem, or Krishna made some arrangement to deal with it. But every Sunday, without fail, it worked. And it was just what Srila Prabhupada had said, that if you just chant Hare Krishna, all your problems will be solved spiritually and materially.

And Tamal Krishna Goswami, in his last visit to Mayapur, would have kirtan every evening for three hours, and all the big kirtan leaders would come, His Holiness Sivarama Swami, His Holiness Niranjana Swami, His Holiness Bhakti Bringa Govinda Swami, everyone wanted to join those kirtans, and it was the highlight of the festival.

And now, those kirtans have become a sort of tradition, and we’ve been here in Mayapur, Philippine, Mayapur. We can also immerse ourselves in that spirit of kirtan. So, if we just have that faith in the holy name, in the instructions about the holy name that Srila Prabhupada and the acharyas have given us, then everything will be sublime. When we went out on hari-nāma in Boston, when we got a little organized, we printed mantra cards, and the card said, “Chant Hare Krishna,” or, “Chant this mantra,” then the mantra, “And your life will be sublime.”

So, at this retreat, we are aiming to give you the association, the knowledge, the techniques that will help you to really immerse yourself in the chanting of the holy names. And to experience the wonderful effects that Srila Prabhupada has promised and the acharyas have spoken about and written about, and that we ourselves have experienced on occasion, but not so consistently. Okay, we want our relationship with the holy name to become very deep and personal and profound and blissful. So, please repeat after me.

Hare Krishna.

Devotees: Hare Krishna.

Giriraj Swami: You didn’t translate. If you translate the mantra, then we get in two mantras instead of one.

Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare / Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare

I think we just made a new mantra, I think I better do it again straight. Okay, one last time. You have to be careful about making up new mantras.

Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare / Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare

Srila Prabhupada ki jaya! Hare Krishna maha-mantra ki jaya! Gaura-bhakta-vṛnda ki jaya!