Remembering Bhakti Tirtha Swami—Institute for Applied Spiritual Technology (IFAST)

Giriraj Swami: When I first entered the house here, as Maharaja mentioned, I also felt that I have been here before. But I knew I hadn’t been here before because the institute building that I visited earlier was in the city, but the feeling was the same. As soon as I walked in, I was struck by how first-class everything was. Everything; the color, the paint on the walls, the artwork and the frames, the furniture, and in the temple room the deities, the beauty of the worship and the devotion. And more than any of those, the devotees who greeted us were so first class in their mood of service, their intelligence, their confidence, their devotion. And I thought of an example that Srila Prabhupada gave that there may be different leaves on a tree; there may be different branches, and different leaves on different branches. But when you take the juice out and taste it, the taste is the same. So although this is not the same building but the flavor is the same.

Now Srila Prabhupada gave the example in relation to paramparā. Paramparā is the most important concept in receiving transcendental knowledge. Paramparā means literally one after the other. And as stated in the Bhagavad-gītā, Lord Krishna says, evam paramparā-prāptam, that this knowledge was received through paramparā, and in that way it was understood. Each recipient of the knowledge will present the same philosophy in different terms according to the audience, but when you extract the juice, you find that the flavor is the same. I was reading this book, His Holiness Bhakti Tirtha Swami left many wonderful books, series of books, Leadership for the Age of Higher Consciousness and that is a series on leadership. And then there is Spiritual Warrior series which is about being warriors and overcoming the obstacles that may come in the way of Krishna consciousness. And there is The Beggar series in which His Holiness Bhakti Tirtha Swami presents himself in the mood that we all must be in, to receive mercy from our superiors, and that is the mood of a beggar. A genuine beggar is by definition humble.

When we first came to Bombay with Srila Prabhupada, one family came forward, a lady and her two brothers. They were married. She never married. She was quite pure and she said to Srila Prabhupada that, “I have ideas by which your disciples can get money without having to go out and beg.” And Srila Prabhupada replied, “I want them to go out and beg, because that will make them humble. That will dismantle their false egos.” So that is really the mood of a candidate to receive mercy from those who have it. And Bhakti Tirtha Swami wrote that series, The Beggar series. And then, another series called Reflections on Sacred Teachings and these are, as the title suggests, his reflections on teachings of the scriptures in our tradition and the features in our tradition. So this book has his reflections on sixty-four principles of community from Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura, who was our Srila Prabhupada’s guru. Actually, his followers, they all presented the message in a way that was suitable for the particular climate and audience that they were addressing.

Now when I first visited the institute house in the city, I was totally impressed as I mentioned, and afterwards Bhakti Tirtha Swami invited Tamal Krishna Goswami and me, we had come together, upstairs to talk. And he said that he had students in the institute that were chanting sixteen rounds of the Hare Krishna maha-mantra on beads, and following the four regulative principles: no eating meat, fish, or eggs; no taking of intoxicants; no indulging in illicit sex; and no gambling, and rendering service for months and some perhaps for years, without knowing that such a thing as the Hare Krishna Movement existed. So I thought this is quite an achievement. And I think of this especially staying with Devaprastha Prabhu who had a beautiful painting of Srila Prabhupada in Hippie Hill, in San Francisco, preaching to all sorts of wildly dressed and perhaps even more wildly than we could imagine, and to do that is extraordinary. To just go alone to a completely different place without any financial or institutional support is extraordinary. No one, I think, other than Srila Prabhupada could do that. No one did and no one ever will. But in a way, within that larger context of coming to America, and Srila Prabhupada visited every continent except Antarctica as far as I know, but his books are there. But within that broader context there are pockets where no one has gone, and Bhakti Tirtha Swami went into those pockets and touched people that our regular methods of preaching would not have reached. And he was ready to do anything. He had so much care and compassion and also conviction and courage. He was ready to go anywhere and do anything.

I remember Ekavira Prabhu telling me the story of how he came in touch with Bhakti Tirtha Swami. Somehow, he felt it wasn’t the time for him to be in his car, I think he was supposed to be at work. Somehow, he felt drawn to his car and turned on the radio, and there was, I guess, a black preacher who was interviewing Bhakti Tirtha Swami. And Bhakti Tirtha Swami had been a child evangelist. He was very God conscious from the beginning. His mother was very pious. So the interviewer was asking him, “Why did you become a Hare Krishna; with your background, why did you become a Hare Krishna?” And he said, “I am no more a Hare Krishna than you are. I didn’t decide to become a Hare Krishna, but I was looking for genuine knowledge of God, and a genuine way of approaching God and serving God, and to date this is the best I have found. If I found it in the boy scouts, I would have become a boy scout, but I just happened to find it here.” So that was his mood; to experience the essence and share with others the essence. And as far as the external dress or frills, that could be adjusted to make it easier for people to accept and appreciate.

I spent a lot of time in South Africa and after Prabhupada left, we opened a very big temple in Durban, Sri Sri Radha-Radhanath temple, and at that time South Africa was in the apartheid system. And so we wanted to invite leaders from all the different communities, which we did, but we also wanted a speaker from every community. And although we did have African body devotees then, we didn’t really have someone of that caliber, so we provided Bhakti Tirtha Swami and I was deputed to receive him when he arrived in the temple. When he came, he was wearing a Nehru jacket; a sort of Indian style jacket, and an African hat, and I thought, “Wow! This is amazing.” I never saw anyone dressed like that, but it was actually very appropriate because that was like our theme – Africa, India, black, white, red, yellow. But he was effulgent; that was most striking. At that time Nelson Mandela was in prison, but the most prominent African in Southern Africa was Chief Buthelezi. He was the head of the Zulu nation. So he came and Bhakti Tirtha Swami, as others have commented, he really could relate to anyone because he was transcendental. He didn’t identify with the body.

One godsister told me that she had the opportunity to be with Bhakti Tirtha Swami in North Carolina, and she came to a friend’s house where he was staying and she chanted japa with him. And while he was chanting, she just had this feeling that he was in Vrindavan, and that he was in very deep communion with Rupa Gosvami, the principal disciple of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu who is very important for us. And then after chanting for a while, he said he was going to go for his walk. And she, being in a woman’s body, had never gone on a morning walk with Srila Prabhupada or if she had, she was on the outskirts and really couldn’t hear any conversation. So she asked if she could come with him. And he looked at her and said, “Yes, you can.” And the way he said it, she felt that he is completely liberated; he has no bodily identification. So then she told him about her experience chanting japa with him, and he said anyone can have that experience chanting japa, if you immerse yourself fully in the holy name; you give yourself fully to the holy name in the same mood of Vrindavan, the same mood of selfless service and desire to please Krishna, with no other consideration.

So years passed, and she only had one other chance to associate with him really, was when he came to Alachua and he was dealing with depression. He had a large group and I am not so good with statistics like he was, but I am sure there is a lot of people that suffer from depression, and even devotees can. Although they have spiritual knowledge and practices, but they can also be affected by that. In fact, there was one disciple of Srila Prabhupada who came to Juhu, Bombay, and was engaged in service there. And she went, I don’t know if went is the right word, but she went into a psychotic state and I don’t even know what terminology is current now, but something like schizophrenic, very extreme. She felt that people were trying to poison her, so she would rummage through the garbage looking for food that she felt wasn’t poisoned to kill her. Her father was quite a prominent man. She was from an Indian family and he was a lawyer by profession and a diplomat. He had been India’s Ambassador to different European countries. So he wanted to put her in a psychiatric hospital; take her for some psychiatric treatment, and we didn’t know what to do so I asked Srila Prabhupada. I explained the situation, I mentioned her name and Srila Prabhupada said, “Yes, I know her. She is a devotee.” And just as you can be a devotee and have a broken arm, and then you take it to a doctor to be fixed, so similarly you can be a devotee and have a broken mind and go to a doctor to get it fixed.

So Bhakti Tirtha Swami, he was conducting a seminar, a retreat related to depression and he said one of the main factors in depression is loneliness; the feeling that one is alone. And then he led the devotees through guided meditation on the Lord in the heart, because according to Bhagavad-gītā, Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, Patañjali Yoga-sūtras, the Lord is in the heart. He is outside also but also inside. And he gave a very vivid description of the Lord in the heart; His curling black hair, His lotus eyes, His enchanting smile, and His mood of love and care for His devotees, and he was saying that He is your best friend. He is a better friend than anyone else could ever be and He is right inside of you. So where is the question of being alone. And when he brought the devotees out of their meditation and they opened their eyes and looked around, every single devotee saw that every other devotee was weeping, was crying out of whatever; relief, release of emotion, for gratitude and joy, that their best friend was right inside of them, right in their heart and He was available to them whenever they wanted, whenever they chose to access Him. So she said these were the only two times that she really associated with him. And then she got the news that he had left and she was so devastated. She herself didn’t expect it. She didn’t realize how attached to him she was, or how much he meant to her in her spiritual life. She was devastated, and she was crying and crying and crying for days, and nothing could console her. And then he appeared to her, and he said, “Remember that time we were chanting japa together in North Carolina? Remember what I said? I said that anyone can have that same experience if you give yourself fully to the holy name, in the mood of devotion. So you should do that and you will be in Vrindavan.” And she took that as a very profound and relevant instruction for her. And she was also, as she described it, going through that phase that many devotees go through of thinking, What is the use of pulling on in America? Maybe I should just wind things up and move to Vrindavan. So she was also going through that contemplation. And then after that reconfirmation of the first instruction she felt, I can be in Vrindavan right here.

So this is another very important theme in Bhakti Tirtha Swami’s life and in his teachings, which is that we should go deep in our sadhana. And in his last days, I was having some communication with him. I, at the time, was unable to travel myself because of my health so I couldn’t come personally, but I spoke with him on the phone. And then when that was hard, we did email and then eventually that also stopped. But he wrote me one letter in which he emphasized this point of offenseless chanting because he was so much in the mood of caring for devotees. And at the time I was taking up a project of a hospice in Vrindavan and he encouraged it, and I asked what can I do, and he said, “You are doing it.” But he added that, “At the same time, you should go very deep in your spiritual practices.” And he quoted Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakura that, “The natural result of offenseless chanting of the holy name, is that one will feel compassion for all souls.” And that mood of compassion will exhibit itself or manifest itself in the effort to protect devotees. As he said, “To protect their devotional creepers,” and in creating projects that will achieve that. So I was hoping that by coming here, I would get his mercy to go deeper in my chanting and also as Maharaja said when we walked into His Holiness Bhakti Tirtha Swami’s quarters, this is the best place to chant. If I get a chance, later I am going to come up there and be in japa heaven. But so much depends on association. It really helps to chant and hear in association.

When we were in South Africa together at the Radha-Radhanath temple, after tulasi-puja we would both rush to Prabhupada’s vyāsāsana, where the beautiful life size murti of Srila Prabhupada from Lochan dasa was there. And it was not a competition, but a question, who would get there first? And later when Purusasukta Prabhu began his spiritual care initiative for devotees and began the japa retreats, I asked him whether he had ever discussed with Bhakti Tirtha Swami what was his mood while chanting japa. And Bhakti Tirtha Swami said, “I always like to chant near Srila Prabhupada’s vyāsāsana, and my prayer is that he will kick me in the head with his lotus feet.” And I thought, Oh so that is what it was, and I think that is the same mood of Bhakti Tirtha Swami. Whatever it takes my dear spiritual master, Srila Prabhupada, whatever it takes to make me a better instrument of your will, whatever it takes to make me a better servant of the devotees and of the public, do it. Kick me in the head, wake me up, do whatever it takes; that was his mood. So I think I am also going to go up. I am going to pray for two kicks; one from Srila Prabhupada, one from Bhakti Tirtha Swami. But yes, I really just feel like I am floating in a pool of nectar here with all of you sincere devotees and servants of Maharaja and Srila Prabhupada, and I am sure that this association will keep me afloat and it will bring many more souls to Krishna consciousness.

One other thing he told me at the end was that in Kali-yuga, you can never give enough to the devotees, meaning that they just need so much, and so I think of that as well. And that was also Srila Prabhupada’s mood. He said we have to shed gallons of blood to make one devotee, and then after we make a devotee, we have to maintain the devotee. That is even more important than trying to make more new devotees. So that mood of selfless service and care, especially as a natural expression of the compassion one feels within one’s heart when one actually is able to relish association with the holy name, and with the previous acharyas through their writings. That is really a perfect combination and I am sure that that is going on. And that is why anyone who walks in here feels that tangible atmosphere, based on internal spiritual practices, which means association with Krishna and the paramparā, and the expression of that love and care through wonderful arrangements to welcome and encourage people. So I am indebted to all of you who are maintaining this exactly as it was; same mood, same quality. I am sure you will continue and those who come in touch with you will also similarly be touched, and they will also contribute to the same effort and will be able to have the same taste. All the different leaves on the tree, but we will get the same taste from all of them.

Thank you very much. Hare Krishna.

Are you stretching or raising your hand?

Devotee: (Unintelligible 00:35:42)

Giriraj Swami: I will. Yes.

Devotee: I guess a question that I have is, as ISKCON, the movement of Srila Prabhupada and the Hare Krishna movement, as it grows, as it expands, it includes more and more diverse kinds of people with many diverse opinions. My question to you is, how do we harmonize, how do we continue to expand the movement so that it really can be a home for every creature, every entity in this world, and at the same time find that harmony in cooperation with such a diversity.

Giriraj Swami: What I am going to say of course doesn’t affect the question, but just the framing of the question. When I look at that picture of Srila Prabhupada on Hippie Hill with all those diverse people, they are pretty diverse, and I think there are certain basic philosophies that come up again and again, which are really based on the envy of the living entity towards Krishna. They come up with all sorts of philosophies, really based on their envy of Krishna, their rebelliousness against Krishna. And it could be, “I am God, you are God, everyone is God. God is loitering on the street; God is the poor people. You should serve the poor people; by serving the poor people, you are serving God.” And in this one talk, I heard when Srila Prabhupada was speaking in this vein, and he was saying how there are people who don’t like our strictness in our principles, and he mentioned one lady disciple of his. He said, “She was always approaching me; can’t you relax the principles? Why do the principles have to be so strict?” And finally, after so many repeated interactions with her he said, “I am sorry, but these are our principles. If you don’t like them, you can go somewhere else, but these are our principles and you can’t change them.” Those are for initiated disciples, but as as harmonizing all the diversity, Prabhupada said that is our challenge; unity and diversity. He said the GBC should meet every year and discuss how to achieve unity and diversity, and it seems like the holy name is the best way. But this was just an introduction to the answer. Now I will ask His Holiness (Unintelligible 00:40:00) to give the answer.

His Holiness: I will just carbon copy his answer, and just say that we have to have a particular mood to enter. And as Maharaja said that we have our product, Krishna consciousness, and you can choose if you want Prabhupada or something else. It is your choice. We can’t change; we can adjust but we can’t change the principles.

Giriraj Swami: I am thinking of Vraja Lila when she first came to Washington to meet Bhakti Tirtha Swami with her boyfriend. One of the first things Bhakti Tirtha Swami said to her was, “Are you married?” And at that time, as she describes it, she didn’t believe in the institution of marriage. And within her mind she was already putting up her weapons and she was thinking, He is not going to tell me to get married now, is he? And then he said, “You should get married!” But he said it with such genuine care and compassion and love, without any false ego of being on a trip, she accepted it. She knew that he genuinely cared for her and he was thinking of what was best for her.

So although this is again a personal approach, what I am going to say is that in the last weeks I went to a family’s home, Indian family’s home; very nice, very devotional. And at a certain stage the hostess’s mother, a pious elderly Indian lady, who was visiting with her started saying how she was hearing Krishna, and hearing Krishna’s flute and Krishna was appearing to her and giving her darshan, and I didn’t know what to say. So I just prayed to Srila Prabhupada and I got the answer, “Just listen and just encourage her, and I will be the one to chastise her.” So then, I immediately said, “Have you read Srila Prabhupada’s books?” And then we made an agreement that she would read Srila Prabhupada’s books. So that is another point. Sometimes I think it is not appropriate for me to call them fools and rascals, but I will give them Srila Prabhupada’s books and I will let him call them fools and rascals. But I think we have to be ready to give them Srila Prabhupada’s books. If we hold back on giving them Srila Prabhupada’s books because we feel they might be too heavy or politically incorrect or something, there could be exceptions I am not saying that, but I think that is a warning sign. And I have discussed this with many devotees including Devamrita Swami, who has been very successful in attracting new people. Like Bhakti Tirtha Swami, like other preachers, he has modified the presentation, the format, to make it more accessible to people. But he always promotes Srila Prabhupada’s books, and he said it is not just for them but it is for us. We have to have that faith in Prabhupada’s books. If we don’t, then we could be in trouble.

So I think in that way, face to face, we can be congenial, we don’t have to say everything that is in the books, but at some stage we have to give them the book because someone has to call them fools and rascals. That is a joke, but they need to hear the truth, and the truth is one of the main themes of Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura, that it is not enough just to say the positive, you should do this, but you have to say the negative. And people may not like it because it may interfere with their plans to be God, the enjoyer or controller or possessor. But again, I guess each of us can have our own style and that is there too but the books are the basis. Like Maharaja said, utility is the principle and preaching is the essence, the books are the basis and purity is the force. So that is the complete package.

I don’t know if that really answered your question. Yes.

Devotee: You are talking about reading and for me for being (Unintelligible 00:47:14), to me it is more the practice. For example, the food; even though if I was vegetarian the way that before I assume the ritual of being clean before cooking, or having in my mind good thoughts and good things just by watching them, the fact that when in a problem and thinks that my family goes and we can come with a friendship, even if I don’t follow the correct Krishna process, it is always this well-being that it comes with them. So it is that example that it always makes me look towards them; feel like I can count, I can trust them. I am not a Hare Krishna, but I say maybe I am because it is a friendship and I know (Unintelligible 00:48:26). The children go to different areas of the world. It is that holding of something different that they bring something and you see that example that you want to find because you want to feel that.

Giriraj Swami: Yes, that is wonderful. The bhakti in their hearts pervades everything they do, and their whole space, even if you don’t know the philosophy or don’t even agree with all of it. It doesn’t even matter anyway. In fact, it reminds me, the first devotee I ever spoke to is Gauravani Prabhu’s father, Bhardraj Prabhu. And the first time I saw Prabhupada outside of the temple, he was in a room like this with disciples and I was very new. I walked in and I felt that same mood of so much love and care and affection. He was there and later I asked him; I mentioned the feeling I got, and he said he had the same feeling. And the realization he had, was that Krishna consciousness is just love masquerading as a philosophy. So you tapped into that love; that is the essence.

Devotee: Maharaja, Hare Krishna. You mentioned about going deeper, the need to go deeper in our spiritual practice and you also mentioned that we need to try to give and live our lives for Krishna. With material nature pulling me always, and in every single direction and me always being so willing to go, how can I go deeper in my spiritual practice?

Giriraj Swami: Association is really most important, and that is how I feel about myself. If I just stay in good association that will do the rest. So it is hard to directly control the mind and senses, but the one thing we can do is choose our association and just try to stay with association that is favorable to your ultimate well-being. Bhakti Tirtha Swami said that by offenseless chanting, the mood of compassion and care for others awakens. But then that should be expressed first and foremost in helping them spiritually, helping them in the way that will endure. We also help them on other levels: emotionally, medically, but helping them spiritually is the best way of helping them. So we want to try to stay in that association as much as we can.

His Holiness: I was just thinking that, like Maharaja said, we have a choice whom we associate with and we also have a choice of how to set up our space. So if our space is set up with the idea that this is, like we were talking japa heaven, every time I go someplace I make a little area and that is japa heaven, and when you come in that area, there is no talking. Whenever we look at each other and we want to talk, then we say vāco vegaṁ krodha-vegam, which means one can control the urge to speak. So we look at each other and say, vāco vegaṁ and then if we really want to talk, we will say, okay, no vāco vegaṁ, but it has to be something very serious to get to that point. So we have that choice to set up our environment, and if we do it in such a way just like she gave the example, that when she comes to this house then the invitation is there to be elevated spiritually; even willingly or unwillingly, wanting or not wanting. So if we make our space in such a way that when we enter it, it lifts us up.

And I remember there was one lecture where Srila Prabhupada gave the example that in the Christian tradition, they have ten commandments, and in our tradition, we have four regulative principles. So they are the same thing; to elevate one to the mode of goodness. Because from that platform, one has the ability to understand spiritual knowledge, and to grasp spiritual knowledge, and to implement that knowledge which we have been given. So rather than make one space half and half or three quarters and one quarter, make it sacred. Then when you enter that, then you have that shelter along with the association of those who are also pursuing the path of bhakti or devotion to Krishna. So I would say those two things; our environment and that environment also includes who is allowed in.

Devotee: Maharaja, I wanted to ask about, you said how it takes a lot of work to make one devotee and to keep a person and the endeavor that it takes to even keep that person. And I was thinking about sometimes we are so caught up in our own problems, and the point of taking care of people as well as giving people Krishna consciousness, it seems to be such a challenge because now if you have children, if you are working, if you are trying to incorporate this greater message and take care of each other as well as meet new people, bring people to Krishna consciousness, it seems so much to balance there, and I know that when I lived in the ashram it was solely you are completely dedicated to that. And now it seems like the movement is more spread out, it is not like everyone is living in the temple anymore; working, family, children. So I was wondering if you could just speak about that and finding those balances between trying to do that now when we are so spread out as a community. The community is just very spread out.

Giriraj Swami: Doing good for others is good for us. My cousin in Santa Barbara is a family therapist and he began being very hard-nosed with scientific evidence, but by reading he discovered that what helps people practically more than anything else is doing good for others; more than all the other therapies and treatments. And an easy way of doing it is to give people a book. Two days ago Maharaja and I visited a lot of offices and departments, and he has a big box of The Perfection of Yoga in the trunk of his car, and it is very easy to give someone a small book. I am sure he could design a mantra for you. For us the mantra is for when we are together: “My friend and I are swamis, we teach yoga and meditation but we focus more on the meditation side, the devotional side, and here is a book; we would like you to have it.” Everyone appreciates it and if they are looking at it thinking, I would say, this helps you to control the mind, and everyone is always disturbed by the mind, and this helps you to pacify the mind and become more calm, and then you are able to access that inner place within yourself and pray and remember God more easily. So you could probably. . . you are a housewife and a mother?

Devotee: I am a mother and I am also a yoga teacher.

Giriraj Swami: What a set up.

Devotee: I find that I meet so many people who are interested and I try and share Krishna consciousness, I realize it takes blood and sweat and time, and to really take care of people that are coming I need to bring them to the next level, to bring them to that serious place for them to make a commitment. I know what it takes and I don’t have that energy to really give to people that I feel are coming and are very interested in Krishna consciousness, and I find it very challenging to. I see there is such potential and I see there is so much to be done, because that is where I am coming from.

Giriraj Swami: Why not direct them to the Potomac temple or the institute? Yes.

Devotee: I have a comment. Just because I am a new aspiring devotee, but it can happen very simply if someone is already inclined to a devotional practice. Hari Kirtana dasa, I simply went to one of his mantra meditation workshops in spring of 2012. So I went home and I started chanting.

Devotee: I am also a yoga teacher.

Devotee: I started chanting. I still have the mala beads that he gave me. I also have another smaller beads that I chant on, but I have those same ones that I chanted and that the transformation starts to happen, the attachment starts to grow, and then that relationship, you develop that strength within that relationship, and so you are not 100 percent relying on that person that introduced you to the path but that relationship is so important, but other things start to happen. So having trust and faith in the process too.

Giriraj Swami: Excellent, excellent!

Devotee: I also feel that it is important not to just give out Prabhupada’s views, but to also study his books every day and I feel that is lacking in our movement. These days, people don’t tend to listen to Prabhupada’s lectures everyday and read Prabhupada’s books. I think it is so important to do that. So then when you give out Prabhupada’s books, you have faith in it and you have faith in Prabhupada’s messages. I certainly don’t want to give out the Bhagavad-gītā which is written by someone else, I still want to give out Prabhupada’s Bhagavad-gītā, because I felt he went through so much to give us Krishna. I am just reading his books.

Giriraj Swami: I couldn’t agree with you more. In fact, a devotee was just telling me that his spiritual master, in addition to chanting sixteen rounds and following the four regulative principles, adds a commitment to read Srila Prabhupada’s books. That is essential. As Prabhupada said of his books that, “Distributing my books will keep them happy and reading my books will keep them.”

Devotee: Maharaja, when you represent Srila Prabhupada through his teachings or I guess when you read something of Prabhupada’s, do you find it that when Prabhupada talks very harshly about material civilization or about different aspects, when you are asked to explain that, how do you assimilate the instruction, finding something that might be hard to accept when you first hear it?

Giriraj Swami: One thing I do is I re-read it because even with his lectures, I usually listen to each one twice, sometimes three times or more, because you get so much more out of it each time. And one reason you get more out of it, is because the mind that rebelled against certain things is pacified. “Ok, let us hear what he is saying and let us not get upset before even hearing them,” and there is so much. I heard a very interesting talk, a recording of a talk by Tamal Krishna Goswami in Houston, in which he was discussing Bhagavad-gītā 18:151–153, and it is a whole list of things; everything about being clean, about living in a secluded place, reducing one’s eating, things that one could dismiss—"Well this is a different context, this isn’t for me”, or one could try to accept it fanatically in a way that isn’t practical. So he went through the whole list and he basically asked the audience, “Okay, now how do we deal with this? How do we apply this?” Each one is very interesting. Let us say on the point of eating less, how do we deal with this, what does it mean? And then then the point came up about eating only kṛṣṇa-prasāda. So yes, everyone agreed, only kṛṣṇa-prasāda.

He knew the community very well; he brought up about eating pizza. He said, “Okay, now I know you like to eat pizza so what do we do with that? How does that fit?” And then he said, “Does Krishna eat pizza in the spiritual world? Are we offering him pizza because we think Krishna will like it or because we will like it?” But then he said, “But don’t worry, I also eat pizza. I am not going to give it up but I will eat pizza only prepared by devotees. And of course it is easier to call in for it, but I am not going to give up eating pizza, I will eat pizza only prepared by devotees.” He was saying it is not that hard. And then he said if someone asked Srila Prabhupada and he said I am sure somewhere along the line someone must have asked him if there is pizza in the spiritual world, or pasta. And he said, “I haven’t done a thorough search but I doubt that Prabhupada would specifically say no, because Prabhupada’s mood was to encourage people in their mood of devotion.” And he said in Italy they are so attached to eating pasta, if they heard there is no pasta in the spiritual world, they might. . . So that is the main thing, we want to encourage them but at the same time we have our principles, and Krishna will accept if it is prepared with devotion by devotees.

His Holiness: One time in Italy they made a rule, “no more pasta” and the devotees freaked out and they had it hidden all over the temple. It was like contraband and people were selling it under the table.

Devotee: Maharaja, my question is sometimes I have some discussions about, so we are living in Kali-yuga and the yuga-dharma is hari-nāma-saṅkīrtana. So sometimes I have discussions as to other services are just as important as the physical chanting and dancing; like deity worship, cooking, cleaning, are just as important as leading kirtan and playing mridanga. But sometimes it is a little hard to understand for me personally, what is the balance between everything, since the yuga-dharma is hari-nāma-saṅkīrtana.

Giriraj Swami: All service is absolute. It is not that one is higher than another, but the thing about kirtan is that you don’t require any other paraphernalia. With deity worship you require deities, you require paraphernalia, you require other things, but with kirtan you don’t require anything else, so you can do kirtaniya sada hari; you can do kirtan all the time. But all the other services are absolute and The Nectar of Devotion says that you can achieve perfection by performing all nine or any number of them, or even one. If you do even one of the nine perfectly, you can achieve perfection and the nine include other processes. So I think the devotees should really have the mood of selfless service.

On a morning walk in Juhu, Lokanath Swami asked Srila Prabhupada, “Why have you prescribed sixteen rounds?” And Prabhupada said, “I haven’t prescribed sixteen rounds, sixteen rounds minimum.” And then he said, “What about other devotees, they set another minimum for themselves?” Prabhupada said, “That is good, you shouldn’t decrease from sixteen but you can increase from sixteen.” And then maybe another devotee said, “Well how do we know if we are imitating Haridasa Thakura?” And Prabhupada said, “Imitation of a good thing is not bad. If you are imitating Haridasa Thakura by chanting more that is welcome.” And then a devotee said, “But what if we ask someone to do some service that is needed and they say they don’t want to do it because they are chanting extra rounds?” Prabhupada said, “Oh, they say, ‘I am too busy to do service. I am busy imitating Haridasa Thakura,’ that is very bad.” So when we chant, we are really praying for service and if by the grace of the Lord service comes and then we refuse it, it means we are not really chanting in the proper mood of asking for service.

His Holiness: Pretty complete. I would just like to add one thing and that is, hari-nāma and saṅkīrtana book distribution; that our centers are bases in which this can happen. So all the things that we do; cleaning, cooking, building, this that, it is all meant to expand the hari-nāma and book distribution. It is a structure of ours to meet them and distribute the holy name, distribute books. 

Devotee: Can we understand from that; it means those activities are also sort of bṛhad-mṛdaṅga like Bhaktisiddhanta Maharaja said, the printing press? So then this deity worship, and this cooking, these other activities are part of that? Or is it a fabrication?

His Holiness: My understanding is that if somebody says, “What is your service?” I would say I am a saṅkīrtana devotee but I wash the pots. I am a saṅkīrtana devotee but I clean the floor. Because that is our goal; is to give out Krishna consciousness. And there is that story where in Vrindavan, if you clean the floor, it is black and white marble, and if you clean Krishna and Balarama, it is also black and white marble. So they are absolute. Like he said, there is no distinction; in one sense there is and in another sense there isn’t. Even when I go shopping, if I have to go which is sometimes, and when you are in line and then the cashier says, “How are you?” And I would say, “Do you really want to know?” And then I give them a book, because this is their opportunity. They are inviting me so I said, “Do you really want to know? I am a prisoner of birth, death, old age, and disease and we are looking for the escape route. And it is not artificial; it is actually a fire and we are trying to get out of it. So here is something, here is a fire extinguisher.”

Last summer I was with Giriraj Swami and my phone didn’t work (I have told this story before) and so I had to call AT&T to get them, because it was switching between towers and my phone was not proper. So the lady had to readjust it on the computer and make it go to one tower or something, and she says, “You have any other questions?” I said, “Yes, I actually had one.” I said, “I got up this morning I was looking in the mirror, and I said, I remember I had a five-year-old body, now it is gone. I had a ten-year-old body, now that is gone. Now it is thirty. But each and every time I thought that was me. How could it be me if it is not there anymore? So if I am not the body that is changing I must be something different. So my conclusion is that I am the conscious observer in the body. So if I am actually a conscious entity, a person, a conscious entity inside then that where I come from must also be a conscious personal entity. So I am trying to figure that out, could you please answer that question? “And she said, “That is the most amazing thing I have ever heard, but I don’t know the answer.”

So the basic first instruction of a . . . (?) is mind-blowing to most people. To understand the basic thing about the body, it is way beyond what they can imagine. So we have this principle that wherever we go and whoever we meet, we touch them with Krishna. And my experience is if we have this consciousness, and for years we are saṅkīrtana devotees, and in the Bhagavad-gītā Seventh Chapter it says, “Out of many thousands among men, one may be interested in spiritual practice and of thousands of those, one may be serious enough to take something of spiritual knowledge.” So I figured it out one day, that if I approach one person every five minutes, that is so many people and you multiply that times eight or ten, how many hours you work, and it comes up to two hundred and fifty or three hundred and fifty people. So if you sell more than one book every three days, Krishna is sending people to you that want to get a book, because the average is you have to get a thousand people; out of a thousand people to get one person interested. So if you can do more than one a day you are breaking all barriers. And we would go out and we would distribute like a hundred books a day or whatever it is, and we just thought . . .(?)  So if we are in that mood, then Krishna will supply the people.

We experienced it this week everywhere we went. Everywhere we went we experienced it, and the one time we didn’t have a book with us, we met that man at the rescue camp. And he goes, “What are you guys? Buddhists?” “We are Hare Krishna.” He says, “My God, I haven’t seen you guys since I was a teenager.” And then we got in the car, we drove down the road a little bit and we stopped at Bucky’s, which is supposed to have the best bathrooms in Texas, and we met the guy again. He goes, “Hare Krishna!” And for some reason we weren’t in the right consciousness and we forgot the book. And after we drove away, we said, “Why didn’t we give that guy a book? He was sent by Krishna to us.” So we have to do our duty, to somehow or other, give out Krishna. It is exciting; it is nice if you give a little something. I buy it by the case; it is $80 a case for two hundred books, so they are forty cents each. Two hundred lasts me a few weeks to a month, depending on where I am at and where we are going. And yes, if you tell them, you are yoga teacher, or a meditation teacher or whatever you want to say, and they think, “Oh that is cool.” “Here is a book on yoga. We are trying to get out of birth and death, here is a book on escaping birth and death.” So many things. And I told Maharaja, we have to get business cards so that when they have any question or whatever. When I was in Dallas, we were going different places I put a Kalchandji guest card in. There was a book marker on the one vegetarian restaurant in Dallas. I show up. Just tell them the gray-haired Swami lives here.