20150201 Śrīla Prabhupāda Kathā

mūkaṁ karoti vācālaṁ paṅguṁ laṅghayate girim 

yat-kṛpā tam ahaṁ vande śrī-guruṁ dīna-tāraṇam  

paramānanda-mādhavam śrī caitanya īśvaram 

Hari Om Tat Sat!!

We have a message to deliver from Madhava Dasa, he says Happy Nitya Ananda Trayodashi to all of you. Hari Bol!! Hari Bol!! All over the world they are seeing you as Madhava Dasa. 

[Little Madhav wishes all Happy Nityananda Trayodasi agaiṇ]

So we have Skype Conference at 9oClock. 1:51 to 1:55.

Guru Mahārāja: Mahavaraha, do you have any readings ….

 Mahavaraha prabhuji: “Letter from Srila Prabhupada Bagubhai Jariwala Motorcycle Building, Begumpur, Surat December 28, 1970. 

My dear Jayapatākā Mahārāja please accept my blessings. I hope everything is going on with good prospect in Calcutta. I have decided to come there for the meeting with Mrs. Birla and at the Birla Academy on the 6th January 1971. Our program here in Surat is very successful and we are terminating it for the time being when we depart for Bombay on the 2nd January. From Bombay we are catching the 1 Down Howrah Mail train leaving on the 3rd at 6:45 pm and reaching Calcutta on 5th at 8:25 AM. So I will be glad to see you there and if you can arrange a nice reception. We shall be coming either two man or four. In the meantime the rest of our party is going for Allahabad for establishing our magha-mela camp.

 Hope this will meet you in good health. 

Your ever well-wisher Sri Bhakti Vedanta Swami”.

Guru Mahārāja: Like this Srila Prabhupada,, he was independent and autonomous, he could decide he would do this or that at any time and we had to be ready. But usually he took the train, so that would give us some time. [Guru Mahārāja laughs and all laugh along with him] If he was going to Bombay and then from Bombay to Calcutta, so the No .1 Howrah mail took a day and a half, so we had a number of days to get everything ready. 

And Birla’s as I mentioned before were a very reputed business house after the father I think it’s G.D. Birla. He was very religious person, so his immediate children also had inherited a bit of his religiosity. So they were very respectful to Srila Prabhupada. Generally it was hard to meet these Chairman of companies, but Prabhupāda was so esteemed that he could meet these people very easily and he had established a very nice working principle with these big families. So that he wanted to go personally, so that he was very eager to promote the Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement and to establish Kṛṣṇa consciousness. So he needed their help and engage their help and they would also be blessed.

If he would travel with two or four, then he may travel in an ordinary car of four or first class of four and no one would sleep above him and if he had four people then either one would sleep on the ground or nearby. One time the devotees in Calcutta were late to pick up Srila Prabhupāda and he was looking outside his window and he saw some ladies carrying half burnt wood. In those days the engines were run by coal but to get them lit, it would start with some wood, so these poor people they were getting these half burnt wood from the coal engines and they had bundles on their head. Prabhupāda was watching them while he was waiting for the devotees. May be it was while he was taking off to go to Kumba mela, but he said these people are not  akiñcana, akiñcana means to have nothing, how wonderful to have nothing, when we have something then we have worries. How to protect the things that I have. If you go to take some of their wood they will fight with you, no no it’s my wood I got it even though it has no commercial value, it’s almost useless still they are attached it’s their wood, they use it to cook their meal so they are not akiñcana, they have kiñcana they have something. Akiñcana means to have nothing. So the great souls they have nothing from this material world, they are akiñcana and these people they have something so they are not akiñcana, like this observing the simple things going around him, he would have different spiritual thoughts.

Mahavaraha prabhuji: Letter from Srila Prabhupada, Camp: Dr. R P Rao, 20K Hirapuri, Gorakhpur University, Gorakhpur written on February 23rd, 1971. 

I think that the previous letter that Srila Prabhupada wrote to you that was written.  The previous letter he wrote Srila Prabhupada wrote he was coming from Surat, from Surat he was going to Bombay and then from Bombay he was coming to Calcutta and he is supposed to arrive in Calcutta on the 6th January 1971. According to the information he has given here, no 5th not 6th 5th at 8:25. Then after that he has written another letter that is on the February 23rd so do you remember anything in between this, anything in between after he arrived on the January 5th till February 23rd. He is coming from Surat to Bombay, from Bombay he is arriving in Calcutta on the 6th sorry 5th January 1971, he is coming by train that Howrah mail”.

14:00 to 14:13.Guru Mahārāja: He sent his rest of his party to arrange with the Kumbhamela. So I don’t have a mind that tells all the dates, may be if we had the diaries of the secretaries who were with Prabhupāda then and the letters of Prabhupada and the Lilāmrita we could trace-out where Prabhupada was. So I think he should be at the Kumbhamela because by the 14th of January is the Makarasankranthi. So I think that’s one of the bathing days of Kumbhamela, so around that time he should have gone to the Kumbhamela. I was at the Kumbhamela and with Prabhupada and we asked him why he was coming to Khumbmela he said to get association from the Sadhus. We were thinking that he is going to give his association to the Sadhus. So they had a tent camp in the dried confluence of the Ganga, Yamuna, Sarawasati known as the Triveni. There was also the Triveni at that time during the month of Magha it is somewhat smaller. I remember that we went  to take a bath in Triveni and it was very cold. But we took our dip when there 17:40-17:43 Sanyasis could wear kaupinṣ Infact for some of the Babas, kaupin was very luxurious. Onetime we were chanting and the police came and said move aside the Naga-babas are coming and they were these sadhus they had all those steel chimti’s or something and they smoke ganja and they are said to be followers of Shiva and they would only wear ashes on their body and they come dancing and everybody stood aside because they are known to act crazy. If you stood in their way they could stab you or something, we stood aside but we continued to chant and then the Nagababas hearing the chanting they also chanted and they danced and they smiled so it was a nice exchange. We were chanting Hare Krishna and the Nagababas were reciprocating. We saw one Sadhu he was sitting with his hands in a closed position and we saw his finger nails growing out from the other side of his hand. He has been sitting so long that his fingers nails grew through his hands. Now in Khumbmela camps how much more central, but at that time we were a bit on the outskirts. So there was a large Hanuman on the side of a hill and he was underground, people were lining up and going down to have darshan of Hanumanji.  

Prabhupada went for a morning walk and so he was commenting how some Mayavadi sanyasi came in with a big sceptre and all these Nagababas were dancing around him. And Prabhupāda said that we would put the deity on the elephant and we would walk. But they sit on the elephant and come in as if some avatar was coming. Then Prabhupāda said that there are some yogis on the auspicious bathing days, they dipped down once in the Triveni, come up in Haridwar, dip down again, come up in Ujjain, dip down again come up Nasik, dip down come up back in Triveni. So we could not do that. [Guru Mahārāja laughs] Prabhupāda would give the morning class and there were devotees from around the world and they came and some of the local people also came and sat in the pandal and heard Prabhupada. One of the devotees, he raised his hand during question time and he said that, “How you say that when one comes to devotional service, they have passed all the yagnas, samaskaras, sacred levels,  but I look at my life I didn’t do anything sacred. I was just engaged in simple activities, so how did I get devotional service?” So then Prabhupada said, I made the good fortune for you. So Prabhupāda ki jai. So Srila Prabhupada was going all over the world, making good fortune for everyone. 

He took us to the temple of Bindumadhav, where I think Rupa Goswami, he got instructed by Lord Caitanya and we saw the place where he sat down, which is also known as Dasasvamedha ghat, the ghat in Benares is Dasasvamedha ghat and the ghat here is also Dasasvamedha ghat means the place where ten ashwamedha yagnas were performed. Like that we spend some weeks with Prabhupada. 

I remember that an aristocratic family from Malaysia came, Tatin Saraswati, Tatin means that her husband was a dattu, which is like knighted under the Sultans or Kings of Malaysia. And so she invited Prabhupāda to come, she had a house in Chiras which is part of Kuala Lumpur I think. So from there the Malaysian yatra started. Like that different people would meet Prabhupāda and Prabhupāda would make those contacts and then visit them all over the world. 

Hari Bol!