19800309 Śrīla Prabhupāda’s Vyāsa-pūjā Darśana (Part 2)

(Disclaimer: The following is a machine-generated transcript and may contain errors or inaccuracies. It will be reviewed and verified against the original audio soon.)

The following is a lecture on Śrīla Prabhupāda’s Vyāsa-pūjā Darśana (Part 2) given by His Holiness Jayapatākā Swami Mahārāja on March 9, 1980 – in Chicago, USA.

I remember one time, Siddha Prabhupāda arrived in Māyāpur. We had the greeting. He saw the deities, came up. He sat in his room. He leaned back in his seat. Like everywhere in the world, he would always wear silk. But when he went to Māyāpur after the first day, he’d wear cotton with him. But they basically, Baba told us they were supposed to do so they really didn’t have much to do. And if they came and said something, we’d say, well, Prabhupāda said to do this, you know. So were, like, always unsubmissive in their eyes, I guess. I mean, I never heard any complaints, but I could feel it that they were frustrated that were pretty much rigid in our conceptions. We knew what we had to do. This problem would come two, three times a year and tell us, do this, do that.

And so they basically see that were doing financially all right, really have too much to contribute except financial aid. So at that time, Śrīla Prabhupāda, he just sat, leaned back, and he put his legs on top of his desk. Just leaned back with his legs on the desk. And he said, give me some water. And he took some water and then from real high, took the water, just falling. And he said, māyāpur. Living or dying in Māyāpur, it’s all the same. It’s all one. Living or dying in Māyāpur, you live in Māyāpur, you’re in Vaikuṇṭha. You die, you go back to Gandhi. Very encouraging. Then one time were walking. This was during the festival visit. And the festival visit, he would never come. He would never find the fault. It was always the other visit.

When he would stay for two months, he would be, like, training us and before all the devotees. He generally never, you know, because he knew that. I mean, I don’t know why. I don’t know why. Probably because whenever he did find, you know, point out a little defect in the presence of others, you know, they would pick up on it and they get on the bandwagon, which wasn’t the proper mood that they were supposed to be. I remember that one time, you know, property went by. And he kicked open. He said, I want to pass water. So he went over to the outside outhouse and kicked the door open with his cane. And someone had used it without properly fleshing. Prabhupāda turned around and said, and you call yourself Brahmins. Brahmin means clean. A Brahmin can’t live where there’s dirt.

If he lives there, it must be cleaned. And if there’s dirt, you know, he’s not a Brahmin. What kind of Brahmin? And it was first, initially it was like addressed more or less to the residents, but other people were kind of like smirking like, they’re getting it this time. And Prophet Ameli turned to another, who is one of our cryas now in another part of the world. And he just said, and you call yourself a Brahmin? And I just laid right into him. We were just laid right into him, like, you have come here. He just arrived the day before. He didn’t know immediately you are Brahmin. You’re here already. And look at this is going on. So then after that, everyone kept it real. No one let it out.

If someone was getting it, they were very much to the most part, they’re pretty much understanding about it, at least superficially, and. Probably easily explained that sometimes you have to take a small thing and exaggerate a little bit to get the point across. Otherwise you don’t learn anything. But these are major things. I mean, it was definitely mismanagement. Devotees are so careless to do something like that. And Prabhupāda was like, by Kṛṣṇa, he would always just like by radar, find the one thing that you never thought that existed. But he wouldn’t do that generally during the festival. Because in general, the devotees, the other devotees, they weren’t into that. You know, the few that came the other time, like the secretary, they could understand that the mood was that he was addressing all the disciples. Even he just would pick one person.

Everyone was supposed to, like, feel concerned about the thing that he was concerned about. And it wasn’t like, you know, I remember one devotee, one time, probably he used to sometimes, but in the festival, sometimes he had a few running jokes with me. Like, I made a gober gas plant, and the gober gas plant produced gas. But it was like making a mountain out of a molehill, this whole big contraption. And it produced a little gas, but it really didn’t do as much as it was supposed to. So the point is, it did produce gas. The problem was we used the gas. I mean, it was used. We used it for the deity cooking and that. But it was this huge thing. It was supposed to feed all the devotees. Instead, we used it to heat up the milk and cook the deity sweets.

It was like that. So Prabhupāda was trying to teach me, like, don’t get too much attracted by all these contraptions or something. And that’s the instruction I took out of it. But he would sometimes ask me, how’s your gobergast? And I would say, well, it’s working. And one time the whole room was packed with GBCs. And I said, prabhupāda says, how’s the gober gas working? I said, working. And then one gbc. And Prabhupāda made some little thing. I forget exactly what he said. One GBC cracked up, started laughing, which I didn’t appreciate very much, but I didn’t mind it. I mean, I was used to getting it. But the Prabhupāda, he didn’t like it, though. It wasn’t like it was like a personal thing. He was able to do it, but no one else was. I knew that was taboo.

I didn’t know if someone else was getting some kind of mercy or that you couldn’t really play on, that there was something special. Each one person had their relative relationship with each other and they couldn’t do that. And Prabhupāda, that gave him a penetrating look, you know, and he stopped. But he didn’t really. I don’t think he really understood. And that night he got so sick, he was vomiting. I don’t know whether that was the reason, but. Maharashtra. But I don’t know why things in Māyāpur happened so fast. I mean, I said, why a little mistake. Immediately the reaction. Because it’s the Dom and a little good. Immediately you get the reaction. Immediately you get some benefit. Just the way things are, very quick working there. So Śrīla Prabhupāda, generally during the festival, he wouldn’t. I mean, that was like a rare.

That wasn’t a really. This is. You know, it was like he was very confidential like that. He was very kind of affectionate. I took it as very affectionate. He brought these things up. I was like a very great mercy. If I get a reminder or something, I appreciate it unlimitedly. And I never took it. But he didn’t really get into that pointing out the defects much when other devotees were there for whatever reason. One day were going on a morning walk and he said that my father used to purchase all of his food at one time. And were walking down the pathway and all of a sudden this vegetable peddler came along with a basket of vegetables. And Prabhupāda said, how much? What do you got? The guy put down his thing. How much for the basket?

And he said, you know, 12 rupees, prabhupāda, 12 rupees. I got three rupees. I got three rueps. You know, put this back on his head, you know, Prabhupāda. But he’s walking off. The guy says, you know, turns around, says 10 provinces, four. The guy walks a few more feet. Parabas says, five, he has six. This one. The whole guy says, all right. He said, you tell, you give her the money. So, you know, we had to sell. He said, go back to the thing, you know. So he just bought the vegetables. He said, well, I want to take these vegetables today. And he showed us how to bar vegetables, how to barter. Actually, one of the. In one of those things in the airplane, I saw how to barter. Here he gave us a little example how to barter. He was always teaching us.

He said, if you buy, look at, if you buy by the kilo, you will have to pay 50 rupees. You buy the whole thing. It was nothing. It was a huge bath. I mean, if you would buy that, you know, one pound at a time, it would cost 20, 25, 50 rupees the whole thing got for six rupees. And the guy, he got into a whole thing with the guy. He said, how much is it going to cost you to go over that? You got to carry this all the way. How far is it to the ghat? To the ferry? Ghat? Well, he said it’s like, you know, one mile. You have to carry how far on the other side of the market? Well, it’s another half a mile. So you have to. How much you have to pay to go over the ghat?

Well, you got to pay a rupee and how much time it’s going to take you. And I say, completely psychic person out. You’re going to spend so much energy, so much. I said, right now you sell your vegetables. And he got the whole day off. And this way, completely, you know, the guy, you know, so the guy was completely, you know, like, you know, here I am right now, your whole basket finished. You know, you’re going to spend so much time, so much energy, you might not sell them all. You know, completely created. Like the person was all completely into it. You know, finally celebrate, take the basket. So six rupees. And he would go. And we would. He say at the beginning, he would personally see the lands were going to buy.

And he would look at the lands, he’d walk around them and he’d always say, get them for 1000. Well, Prabhupāda, they’re all 1200 ayes, a thousand. You were all, you’re being treated. And he would personally walk around the plots and he would see the crops, how they’re going. He said that the sign of your expertise in agriculture, 1 inch of land should not be unutilized. Everything should be utilized. And actually today in Māyāpur, I am sure Prabhupāda would find, I mean, there’s maybe few inches that, I mean, he would find some unutilized place. But 95% everything is utilized thanks to Pro Plan. I mean, if he wouldn’t insist like that. I am working on the 5%, but 95%, I won’t tell them that. But the people who are in charge, because I am always saying, you know, why, what about this field?

But actually 95%, almost everything, except for maybe just a few isolated on top of the tank, they don’t use it completely. The lake, apart from that, every other place, it’s being utilized virtually. And you know, just because Prabhupāda stressed on this point, again and again, he said, repetition is important to point out. But I knew, I took it as special mercy because I saw that like when Prabhupāda, once he came into a temple and there were Brahmananda, there was a number of devotees who bowed down to Prabhupāda and faced their feet to the deities because Prabhupāda was coming in the backside. So they bowed down. And then Prabhupāda took his cane and swatted Brahmananda on the butt and said, don’t point your feet to the deities. But there’s so many devotees there.

But he picked Brahmananda because he knew that if he instructed him, he wouldn’t. Oh, why Prabhupāda? I mean, he didn’t like hit him hard. He just tapped him sternly. But I took that if I got any criticism, that was like a special mercy. Prabhupāda would always say that the time that he felt he got the most mercy from his spiritual master, when he was listening in the Bhāgavatam class and someone came up to him and tapped him on the shoulder and said that there’s someone outside to see you, or there’s like a phone call or something. It wasn’t a phone, it was like some message. And as soon as he just turned to hear what this person immediately, Bhakti Siddhānta Prabhupāda said, so now you know so much.

You don’t have to hear anymore, you know, immediately, you know, he felt, at that time, he felt like that actually, my Guru Maharaj has recognized me that now my Guru Maharaj has recognized me. And he took it as a special mercy that he. That affection, that he cares for my spiritual life. But. These were the. I mean, this is so that my. Experience was that Prabhupāda was always personally instructing me a lot. So in that way I don’t really. I miss very much having his instruction and his guidance. Other people, they were more intelligent, I guess, would just be able to do things on their own. Prabhupāda could see I wasn’t very intelligent. So he would always help me. I don’t really know what it was like here in the west when he came.

I heard that it was a little bit more formalized and. Prabhupāda would stay a little protected from the general people. And even the devotees would only see him on his class or have to make some special appointment morning walks. But every devotee, I mean every devotee used to walk in Prabhupāda’s room. Used to drive the secretaries mad. Prabhupāda had opened door policy at certain times anyone could come in and sit down and ask him questions. There’s a foreigner, Indian. He was just very informal india. That’s the mood of India kind of, you know how it was like last night. I mean, you can’t. The people, they just, you know, you can tell them please be quiet or don’t talk. I mean, if he wouldn’t. I mean, I could see the other way as far as that. Seeing visitors.

If he wouldn’t have seen visitors unrestrictedly, they would be very offended. In fact, the secretaries often got. I mean, I remember that one time, Often trauma would say just, you know, if someone comes to see me, you have to tell me who he is. And he would see many people. He was very open like that. At certain periods it was regulated. Any questions? Yeah.

Could you relate to us a particular incident which you feel to be.

Especially.

To have been especially pleasing to Śrīla Papa that you. That Śrīla Pava would have seen to be especially pleasing to him that you performed a particular event or particular action or maybe do you feel there was one particular thing that many.

Whenever you would successfully or even unsuccessfully, but I mean basically successfully when you would complete something which he had requested to be done. Well, everything I was doing was on a long range basis. Like building a building. Like building a. Built. Constructing a building or putting on a big festival when there was many people brought to Kṛṣṇa Khan like in a Pando program and thousands of people came, then he would be very pleased when you’d made a proper arrangement. And many people were coming or like, when we had guests over, he used to say that it’s kind of natural to have a little competition with one’s godbrothers. In one sense. I have always tried to work together with them, but they, you know, I mean, I don’t want to go through that whole history, but I mean, they weren’t really that.

All of them that open to it. So he was commenting that they’re very expert, he said, at receiving guests. This is one of the important things of Vaishnava etiquette. And they know how to please a guest and they know how to sit him down and how to feed him and how to take care of them. And so he personally would. When there was some important guest, he said that, you know, he would tell us that you just watch the way I am doing. And he would sit there and he would tell light stories with the guests. Kṛṣṇa conscious or even topical, you know, and then bring it around to Kṛṣṇa. And the people would laugh. He said, person should feel very relaxed when he’s taking prasadam. And then he would, oh, give one more purī, hot purī.

And he explained that one of his godbrothers, he said that direct. Hare Kṛṣṇa, I don’t think the other person kind of just like, you know, clean the. The counter. But, you know, as soon as you look a little bit, you’d see little dust in the corner. You’d see in the stove that was, you know, the crust. You know, like you cook something, you know, the sugar or something makes a crust. It wasn’t first class. And when Prabhupāda came in and saw it, like, just, you know, say day and night, and he, you know, called that girl and was very satisfied and said, you know, please me very clean my kitchen. I mean, I said, for all God pleased with so many, you know, not that this necessarily a very big thing, but just, you know, just a job.

Something which was obviously done with devotion, done with care. But when a devotee, just like I remember the story that Jamuna was at the Jamuna or Mukunda, someone told me the story that they had any one very devotee, older devotee, cleaned Prabhupāda’s room up in Los Angeles, I believe, and they thought, like, everything was. I mean, they’re feeling what, you know, like, kind of smug that everything is. The spiritual master, we say knows. It’s not that the spiritual master knows everything, you know, like right now, what. What Carter’s discussing with Sadith or whatever regarding The Hebrew, you know, Jerusalem strike. It’s not like he’s Paramātmā, but he knows when he sees his disciple, where the disciple is at. Kṛṣṇa gives him that intelligence that he can know exactly, intuitively that this disciple exactly where he’s at and his spiritual advancement.

And it’s, you know, and Kṛṣṇa takes over and knows just, you know. So the devotee did a wonderful job from the, you know, I mean, anyone would go in there and say it was first class. But because the devotee admittedly was feeling like I really am prepared this time I did a wonderful job. Prabhupāda went in there and just looked through the whole room and found. And one of the shelves, like one of the. What was it? There was something that was misplaced. I mean, I forget the exact detail. It didn’t happen to me personally. The handkerchief got stuck in the drawer or something. It was something and it got dirty because it was rammed into the thing. There was some little thing that was misplaced. And Prabhupda just took that and just said, just be. You’re so careless.

And then the person was completely like, Because it wasn’t devotional for her to be. I think it was Jamuna, I am not sure. But to be proud that I did a job well, we should be fearful that did I do well. You should be always eager. That I want to do, to please. Not that well, that’s not devotional. So Prabhupāda would appreciate a job, a sincere effort, even if it wasn’t successful. It wasn’t that, you know, but if it was, you know, I remember that we tried one time very hard to get a property and we didn’t get it. And were feeling very sad over it. And Prabhupāda would say, well, man disposes, man proposes, God disposes. But it.

(Side B of the Cassette)

But it wasn’t that he was, so to speak, attached to that truth in one sense. I mean if it was something beyond control and you tried, well, but it was something that due to your bundling it, you failed. He would, depending on how advanced or whatever you were to actually be able to accept his instructions. I mean some devotees, he would just, you know, he just wouldn’t, you know, because he knew that if he would get on the, you know, if he would instruct them, they would react, you know, they weren’t that mature in their devotion that they would accept it. They might think, you know, like who is he to get on my case? You know, the natural kind of human emotions that would come, rebellious spirit. And so then he wouldn’t instruct those people like that because it would just.

They would commit some offense in their mind. But. It’s a basic thing. Are there some cookies? There is Prashad for the other devotees.

The devotees and the states for a minute. The way Rla Prabhupāda would go around. Actually you were reminding me when you talked about his spiritual master, how he’s able to just. So Prabhupāda would go around and we would hear in the various temples how Prabhram would go around traveling in this American tour and how he preached one thing in all his classes in LA and they all needed it. You know, it was very different. His class was all emphasizing how powerful the life could be, you know, bad fault and how one would be very strict the regular principles. And then Prabhupāda would go to another part and he would preach something very different. You really got to know what all the temple’s problems were by how Prabhupāda.

Was preaching at the different temples in the lectures.

Yeah, I saw his lectures. It wasn’t as you say, probably hit right eye. And just in his lectures on a kind of collective sense of instruction.

This is a two day old. This is refresh or this is from. There was some leftover from two days ago.

Two day old. We don’t know how to receive personalities like yourself, but we would not be. That much.

Yeah, no, Prabhupāda would. I mean, I don’t know. I know that he would go and lecture. His lectures were like that. But he wouldn’t as far as the management really, he was mainly intellectual anyway. That’s just different. Did you ever hear much about the birth or Chiropam? Yeah, no. Well, his. I mean he was a spontaneous devotee right from his birth. He was worshipping little Badaka deity. He Begged. His father can have deities to worship. He was worshipping at six years of old. Six years of age. Playing with rath yātrā. I mean, really organized the rath yātrā spontaneously, on his own. He didn’t have any. I mean, his father was a spiritual master. He didn’t really have any spiritual master until he met Bhakti Savage. He didn’t like any of the sadhus he met. Didn’t think they were very together.

Just want to ask you a question about your own preaching. You said to me one time that.

You’Re traveling a lot now.

You hardly stay in one place more.

Than a few days. You mentioned that. I think you mentioned that this morning in class.

But so what are you doing then exactly, when you preach or you set up engagements or does someone go ahead.

Of you or how does it work? It depends on the place.

It could be any number of programs.

Yeah, well, if the place isn’t together and I am the GBC there, then I go there and try to get it together. When it’s together, then they make programs for me.

Sure.

Only idk. She was saying that maybe I should go for a day or something. There’s congregations or something in Wisconsin, but I don’t know what.

There was this one family, he was going to get an initiation before he left. He was going to go see their bill they were making. They bought a new home. They were fixing it up for shooting. Good day and come there and they’re really enthusiastic. They were saying how wonderful people. And he said, this woman, she said she should go and see. Come and see. They had like three children and they were family, and they had about 30.

Well, Silver last was supposed to arrange at last. When did I arrive?

Saturday.

He was supposed to arrange it Sunday that I would go there Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, for two days a month or one or two days. But he lost the phone number and he was just getting around to looking for it. He was doing the Vyas pūjā. So I really don’t know whether he’s done. I would say that he might not have done anything. You turn off the tape record.

Sam. Sa. Sad everybody. Saramana hare. Sa. Die. Go in the die. It. Ra. Ram. Nah.