Sit Properly

When I got my VW Bus, I wanted to see if Prabhupada ever said anything about VW Buses. Well, it turns out that he did. The devotees were buying a lot of them in Germany to use for traveling. They told Srila Prabhupada about it and he said that they should buy more because “The VW Buses are very nice.” Yay! Also, the first vehicle that Srila Prabhupada rode in when he came to the states was a VW Bus.

On November 2nd 1977, just twelve days before his disappearance lila, Srila Prabhupada was asked privately by some Indian guests who would succeed him as acarya. He described his answer moments later to his disciples (emphasis mine):

Prabhupada: “[They asked] …after you, who will take the leadership?” And [I replied] “Everyone will take, all my disciples. If you want, you can take also. (laughter) But if you follow. They are prepared to sacrifice everything, so they’ll take the leadership. I may, one, go away, but there will be hundreds, and they’ll preach. If you want, you can also become a leader. We have no such thing as ‘Here is leader’.” Anyone who follows the previous leadership, he’s a leader. ‘Indian,’ we have no such distinction, ‘Indian,’ ‘European.’ ”


Brahmananda: “They wanted an Indian to be the leader?”


Prabhupada: “Yes. (laughs) ‘Everyone, all my disciples, they are leaders. If you want to follow, you can become a leader. You are Indian. But you don’t want.’ I told them that.”

Incidentally, the questioner was ‘Mr Baja’, the owner of Baja Scooters, India. He wanted to known if Srila Prabhupada was going to appoint a successor.

There is no such thing as Baja Scooters, of course. It was a typo or misunderstanding. It was Mr. Bajaj, head of Bajaj Scooters. The maker of my Bajaj Chetak.

Nifty, huh?

Oh yes.

Today is Srila Prabhupada’s appearance day, his birthday. The vedic calendar, which devotees and hindus use, is a lunar calendar. That’s why our festivals will fall on different western calendar days each year. This year, Srila Prabhupada’s appearance day is today.

For devotees celebrating it, we fast till noon.

But for those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about and are wondering just who Srila Prabhupada is, here’s a little bio…

A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (September 1, 1896–November 14, 1977) was the founder of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (popularly known as the “Hare Krishnas”). Born as Abhay Charan De, in Kolkata, West Bengal, India. He studied at the Scottish Churches College, Calcutta, which was then administered by the British.

In 1950, at the age of fifty-four, Srila Prabhupada retired from married life, and four years later he adopted the vanaprastha (retired) order to devote more time to his studies and writing. Srila Prabhupada traveled to the holy city of Vrndavana, where he lived in very humble circumstances in the historic medieval temple of Radha-Damodara. There he engaged for several years in deep study and writing. He accepted the renounced order of life (sannyasa) in 1959. At Radha-Damodara, Srila Prabhupada began work on his life’s masterpiece: a multivolume translation and commentary on the 18,000-verse Srimad-Bhagavatam (Bhagavata Purana).

He then left India, obtaining free passage on a freight ship called the Jaladuta, with the aim of fulfilling his spiritual master’s instruction to spread the message of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu around the world. In his possession were a suitcase, an umbrella, a supply of dry cereal, about seven dollars worth of Indian currency, and several boxes of books.

By July 1966 he had brought “Hare Krishna” to the West, founding the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) in New York City. Prabhupada spent much of the last decade of his life setting up the institution of ISKCON. Since he was the Society’s leader, his personality and management were responsible for much of ISKCON’s growth and the reach of his mission.

After a group of devotees and temple had been established in New York another center was started in San Francisco. From here Prabhupada travelled throughout America with his disciples, popularising the movement through street chanting, book distribution (Sankirtana) and public speeches.

Over the following years Prabhupada’s continuing leadership role took him around the world some several times setting up temples and communities in all of the major continents. By the time of his death in Vrindavan eleven years later (1977), ISKCON was a widely known expression of Vaishnavism on an international basis.

In the twelve years from his arrival in New York until his final days he:

* circled the globe fourteen times on lecture tours that took him to six continents.
* introduced Vedic gurukul education to a Western audience.
* directed the founding of the Bhaktivedanta Book Trust, which clams to be the world’s largest publisher of ancient and classical Vaishnava religious texts.
* founded the religious colony New Vrindavan in West Virginia
* authored sixty books (many available online here) on Vedantic philosophy, religion, literature and culture (including four in Bengali)
* watched ISKCON grow to a confederation of more than 100 schools, temples, institutes, farm communities, and ashrams.

Through his mission, Prabhupada followed and communicated the teachings of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and introduced bhakti yoga to an international audience. Within Gaudiya Vaishnavism this was viewed as the fulfillment of a long time mission to introduce Chaitanya Mahaprabhu’s teachings to the world.

[culled mostly from wikipedia, which was mostly written by devotees]

And that, in a nutshell, is Srila Prabhupada.

Again, not really near a temple. If I were, there would be devotees talking about their memories of Srila Prabhupada, relating funny stories and enjoying each others company. It would be great to be around them

So today, at work, I’m going to be watching a newish series about Srila Prabhupada.

It’s called Following Srila Prabhupada. I was able to pick up the first five volumes at the Utah temple. I’ve watched the first volume – it’s made up of vintage footage from New York City in the mid to late 60′s. Neat look at life on the lower east side from that time.

There is also a series called Memories of Srila Prabhupada. I highly recommend this. There are 40 or so DVDs in this set. Basically, they are interviews with disciples of Srila Prabhupada. They talk about their time with him. If you’ve never seen these, you should. Even my nondevotee friends really dig them.

I’ll also be reading a bit from the book Our Srila Prabhupada – A Friend to All. Here’s a letter written about it by Bhakti Tirtha Swami. The author/editor, Mulaprakrti dasi, passed away shortly after compiling the book. This is a wonderful tribute to her.

This book is mostly for devotees, I guess. But with a little intelligence and understanding, anyone can read it and get something out of it.

You can buy it at perfectionofyoga.com, but their site is down. I’m not sure why. You can also buy it at Krishna Culture. There are a few other place, but I’ve not ordered from them before, so you’re on your own there.

Anyway, have a lovely day.