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Transcriptions of the Sridhar Swami: For about 10 years I was the GBC minister for fund development. Not "fun" but "fund." Fun also, but I know how hard it is to raise laxmi or attract Laxmi for serving Narayana when She is captured by Ravana. So similarly here with this project, as Gopal Krishna Maharaja was explaining, there was no way it was going to be built with funds from India at that time. We just didn't have the reputation or the contacts or the ability. So a number of Srila Prabhupada's disciples - Bali Mardan from New York, and Ramesvara and Karandhar from L.A. - they sent funds, although I must say in all honesty they were not so enthusiastic to do so, but Prabhupada extracted from them. But there was one devotee who was always pleased to give money to his spiritual master and he worked very, very hard, he and his good friend Yasodanandan prabhu and a group of brahmacaris that they worked with. They were very intense devotees, and they would go to Japan and go through so many austerities; and then Guru Kripa prabhu would come back to India and hand everything over to Prabhupada, and Prabhupada would rub his head and thank him. So I'd like to ask Guru Kripa prabhu to come up to the stage and tell us about his wonderful pastimes here at Hare Krishna Land. I'd like all of you here to appreciate his austerities. He contributed well over $100,000 to Hare Krishna Land, I believe. $700,000. Anyway, whatever, millions. So I think we should give him a very, very hearty congratulations. Haribol! Haribol! Guru Kripa prabhu ki jaya! Guru Kripa: Om ajnana-timirandhasya jnananjana-salakaya, caksur umilitam yena tasmai sri-gurave namah. Nama om visnu-padaya krsna-presthaya bhu-tale, srimate bhaktivedanta-svamin iti namine. Namas te sarasvate deve gaura-vani-pracarine, nirvisesa-sunyavadi-pascatya-desa-tarine. Ajanu-lambita-bhujau kanakavadhatau, sankirtanaika-pitarau kamalayataksau, visvambharau dvija-varau yuga-dharma palau, vande jagat-priyakaro karunavatarau. Nityananda namas tubhyam, premananda pradayani, kali kalmasa-nasaya, jahnava-pataye namah. Panca-tattvatmakam krsnam bhakta-rupa-svarupakam, bhaktavataram bhaktakhyam namami bhakta-saktikam. Vancha-kalpatarubhyas ca krpa-sindhubhya eva ca, patitanam pavanebhyo vaisnavebhyo namo namah. Sri-krsna-caitanya prabhu nityananda, sri-advaita gadadhara srivasadi-gaura-bhakta-vrnda. Hare Krsna, Hare Krsna, Krsna Krsna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare. Dandavats. Thank you all for your nice warm welcome. What can I say? I appreciate that, but can we have just one short kirtan. I'm not feeling well, I have a flu, but we can sing and then have some…speak something. Sridhar Swami: Actually apart from strong preaching, memorization of so many verses, so many other things, Guru Kripa is one of the most dynamic kirtan leaders. Guru Kripa: Hare Krsna! [inaudible ] make aparadha all the time. Lord Caitanya is dynamic, we are just… Vancha-kalpatarubhyas ca krpa-sindhubhya eva ca, patitanam pavanebhyo vaisnavebhyo namo namah. I'd like to offer my respectful obeisances to all the senior godbrothers here, those that helped me along in my journey, all my other godbrothers, all the sannyasis, the maharajas who have dedicated their life to trying to preach, to talk the truth amongst the world of untruth, and all the junior men who have left their families and their other pursuits to come here and try to unite. Because that is what Srila Prabhupada came to give us was what is the spiritual world, because he is from that spiritual world. That realization must be had to progress in Krishna consciousness, as no different than Paramatma, no different as Bhagavan. He is absolute, and in our case he is more than Bhagavan, he is more than God, because God is inaccessible for we have offended Him. Jivera 'svarupa' haya-'nitya-krsna-dasa', krsnera 'tatastha-sakti' 'bhedabheda-prakasa'. We are the marginal potency of Krsna and due to contact with the material energy of the Lord, we have become covered by that material energy. Krsna-bahirmukha hana bhoga-vancha kare, nikata-stha maya tare japatiya dhare. Therefore, Krsna has created the maya to punish us. So we are all being punished under the spell of the illusory energy. Tribhir guna-mayair bhavair, ebhih sarvam idam jagat. The whole world, sarvam jagat, is bewildered by the fascinating maya of Krsna. In the prayers to Gajendra, it is stated in there that the potency of maya is so bewildering. Why? Because it is coming from the Lord, it has a contact with Krsna. The absolute pure spiritual energy, the spiritual world, this has a contact, the illusory energy. Therefore, it appears to be something there. It is only that Krsna is in the background of it, that's why there is something there. It is not independent. The Christians try to make it out as heaven and hell, the devil and the God. This is all mental concoction, speculation, it has nothing to do with truth. The truth is there that this maya is the spell of Krsna's potency. Krsna says, daivi hy esa guna-mayi mama maya, "It is My maya, I have created, and I am punishing you." Prabhupada writes in the Third Canto of Srimad-Bhagavatam when he's writing about the Visnus, the Garbhodaka Visnu and the Ksirodaka Visnu. He writes, "You cannot see Them right now, but the only reason you cannot see Them is because you are still envious. Therefore, you cannot see Them." So this contact of maya, the spell of maya, the illusion of maya, the lamentation maya brings because we never become satisfied under the service of maya, we are illusioned all the time. I was speaking with one of my godbrothers who everybody knows, he's sitting in Bhuvanesvara in a special institution there, he's under some judicial situation. I said, "You know, you are in illusion that you're going to come out here and it's going to be any different. Because I am out here and I'm also in illusion about this, trying to adjust everything, and you are lamenting because you can't come out here and I am also lamenting. The lamentation will go on because the only rightful situation is when we attain that pure divine consciousness, that pure love, that love which we are always looking for." I saw a drunk on the street the other day in Bangkok. He's a full-time drunk, not a part-time drunk. He had found a doll, one of these kind of long dolls, and he was holding this doll and rocking the doll and kissing the doll. And I saw, "Just see, he wants love also so he's found one doll on the street to put that love toward." So this all builds up to glorifying that we are also like this. We came, how we came, Srila Prabhupada says how he came to his guru, how we came here. We were lost, we didn't know what to do. Then I contacted, I came in touch with Madhudvisa and the crew of devotees in San Francisco and I said, "Let me try it." And it is kind of like saying, "I will try the ocean," and you just get swept up in it. We all got swept up in the current and it pulled us, and at some point after 10 years or so people said, "Let me see what happened there." Many withdrew a bit to study, "Do I really want to do that, do I really want to surrender? How far do I want to surrender? Do I really want to go all the way, do I want to pay the full price that it takes to have this divine realization?" So it came this way, and that was the potency that Srila Prabhupada brought with him. He took that potency because he was constantly seeing the transcendental pastimes of the Lord. Nothing is hidden to him, he is constantly seeing everything, he is constantly in touch with Supersoul. There is that famous conversation where Ramesvara prabhu was in New York and the reporter is inquiring from Prabhupada, "Does God tell you?" And Ramesvara was saying…tried to intervene and say, "Yes, well, He gives us intelligence," and Prabhupada said, "No, no, He tells us directly." No, He tells you directly when you become free from all envy, free from all…anything is cleared up. Just like between two people. If there is some offense that is there, "Oh, he never said he was sorry, I don't want to talk to him. I don't want to reveal anything to him, I can't trust him." That is there. But if everything is smooth and the love is there, then one opens up, "Yes, this is this, and this is this." So in this case, I want to say because I'm supposed to be here not to talk like this but I can't help myself, that is the way it happens when I get on the stage, but Srila Prabhupada, he was the person that we're here for. If I was going to be here, who would come? It is because he is here. He is here that we all have come. If it wasn't for him, who would come to listen to me? We have come because of his potency. He is so specially dear to the Lord, visnu-presthaya bhu-tale, he is very dear. That is not a…when one has that said to him, he should be that dear, that he is very dear with the Lord. So Prabhupada was like that. We've seen it during his pastimes on earth, and some of us got up close. And sometimes when you get too close to something you can't see it, you have to step back a little bit. So over these 25 years since he left us, we've got to see ourselves, we've got to see everything that he said is true about the nature of this treacherous soil that we live on called Earth, this dangerous place where it is full of untruth and full of deception and everything is temporary, everything is not what it appears to be. We are encaged in a body made of bones and hair and muscle and blood, and we are the slave of these senses. He is not that slave. We are such a slave to these temporary illusory things that will be gone within a hundred years as if [unclear] had blown. All these things our acaryas have given us, Srila Prabhupada has given us, Krishna has given us, is for us to renounce the seva of Maya and take to the divine service and become in this line of parampara. And Srila Prabhupada is the manifestation of Srila Bhaktisiddhanta's divine potency, who is the manifestation of Bhaktivinoda Thakur's potency. In such a great line we have come. So these things that Srila Prabhupada gave us, no one could do such a thing, how he came to Bombay and he came out here in the jungle. Well, this happened in a different way, it started with…he used us because we were his instruments. So we were used, but he confirmed everything. One Saturday I went to make a life member. In those days nobody knew us, they didn't trust us. We were 19, 20, 21, 22, we were a bunch of kids, skinny. Like one story, I went to this office and they began to question me, these men, and I didn't really know what…they started to say Karna was the hero of the Mahabharata, and I didn't know what to say, I became angry. I said, "Whaddaya…no, no, it's Arjuna and Krishna," and they said, "No, it's Karna." In this way, they really agitated me. They said, "Look, you're getting angry. So what has this guru done for you? You're getting angry." So I thought for a minute and I said, "Well, a year ago I'd have punched you in the face, but now I control myself a little bit." So they liked that, actually they liked that and became a member because of that. Another man I went to see, he is the…I was calling the phone and this is the Parle glucose people, the Chowham brothers, they own the Gold Spot and all the Parle thing. So I went there, and it was eight minutes late. Big office and this man, I wasn't used to this, he was sitting in a suit and a fancy office, Western style. He's a big man, this guy. I didn't know he was a big man. He said, "I was going to give you 10 minutes on my schedule, you're 8 minutes late, you have 2 minutes. What do you want?" So I just opened the briefcase and dumped it on the desk and said, "I want you to be a member and we'll give you these books," and he just looked at me and he said, "That's very good. I would hire you if you were in sales." So he became a member. And then I went back to the temple and I lost the check. So I had to call him up again, and he laughed. So this is what Srila Prabhupada was dealing with. He was dealing with a bunch of kids that a few years before had taken this up. And we were living in a state of malnutrition. There wasn't enough food, we didn't eat properly, we didn't have a proper facility. We didn't have anybody that we…any elder godbrother, say 10 or 20 years older. Your older godbrother had been in the movement one or two years more than you. You didn't have somebody that was older in age and older in experience that you could rely on. So we were dealing with ourselves, and we weren't leaving. All glories to Brahmananda prabhu, haribol! I have to say hello. So we were dealing in this type of situation, and in this way we had to stay. Like in Bombay and Calcutta, in Mayapur. When we went to live in Mayapur, there was no electricity. This land, you know, I went to see the man. I was the first one to meet that man that owned this land. I made him a life member. I didn't make anybody anything, he became a life member out of his…I went there, it was a Saturday. I walked in the room and it was Mahatma Gandhi's birthday. So when I went in I said, "Jaya, Mahatma!" and he liked that, and he became the life member. We have our Mahatma Gandhi here. That's another story. We tried to remove him once, but there was a riot. We didn't know that he was a national hero. So this is what Prabhupada taught us. Prabhupada taught us if somebody is not a devotee, they are not genuinely devoted to God. In order to be genuinely devoted to God, one has to see God in everything and he appreciates it. That's the difference between a devotee and a demon. A devotee appreciates life. He can appreciate a coconut, a glass of orange juice, the breeze, the light. The light is coming from the brahmajyoti. This is a material sun, but it is coming as a reflection of the jivas that are billions and trillions living there with their body reflection. A devotee knows, he appreciates, and in this way he remembers Krishna, in this way. So a devotee is one who sees life in this way; and if one doesn't, duskrtino mudhah naradhamah mayayapahrta-jnana, Srila Prabhupada taught us that way. So sometimes we forget, we did not remember that everybody is the servant of Krishna, some are just covered more, some are covered less. So Srila Prabhupada taught us all of these things. They want some story here. When I came here in 1975, I was collecting in Japan at that time. I came, it was Srila Bhaktisiddhanta's Disappearance Day, it was early January, and I came and I gave Srila Prabhupada I think $108,000 for that day. It's very funny because he was sitting on the roof of the building, right over here, and he was getting massage and I came around noontime. And that very morning his watch had broken. He had a Bulova watch, and it had broken. So they had gone to the black market. In those days, you had to go to the black market to buy anything, tape recorder, anything. India didn't allow Coke even, it was a very closed society, and they bought him a cheap Seiko. But I had purchased him a Seiko that day, or a few days before, in Tokyo, the finest Seiko that was made at that time, and it cost about $300. It was a quartz, the quartz watch just came out. So when I went up there and he was…nice day, the wind was blowing, and I gave him that. So he looked at it and he took off the one they just bought him and he put this on. So then he asked me, "How much did you pay for this?" and I said, "No, Srila Prabhupada, you cannot ask that, it's a gift. That's impolite to ask how much something cost." So he just smiled. Then we went in the Jeep. They used to have a Jeep here. There was a Jeep that took us to the little temporary temple, and when I got out I bumped into a Tulasi plant. Srila Prabhupada, it was like…anytime walking with him, we were walking, it's like we were going somewhere, back to Godhead, like we were going back to Godhead, we were on a mission. It wasn't we were taking a walk, we were going somewhere, and that was what was exciting to be with him. He was taking us someplace we didn't know like a little kid, we were going to a new place, and rest assured we believed he could take us. So we stuck with him and did whatever he said. So I bumped into this Tulasi plant. Srila Prabhupada, "Pay your obeisances to Tulasi," so immediately I paid my obeisances for bumping the Tulasi. Brahmananda: He didn't give you [inaudible] the day before you gave him $108,000, he didn't treat you like [inaudible]. Guru Kripa: No, that was pleasure. But that same morning, though, we took a walk on the beach, and then he said to me…I don't want to say this to flatter myself or anything, but it was very nice. He said, "Do you know what your name means?" I said, "Yes, Srila Prabhupada." And he says, "Your name means one who has the mercy of the guru, and it also means one who is very kind to his guru. Thank you very much." He said that. So sometimes he would, but then he would chastise a minute later. But that is the loving relationship between the guru and the disciple. It's like I have said, the one quality I saw in Srila Prabhupada was that he was always your friend. He never let you down, he never backstabbed you, he never did anything which a materialistic person might do or somebody else. So even to this day he is here telling us to come to Krishna, to come. So it will take some time. But if it is not today, it will be tomorrow, the mercy will act because of his potency, that we have contacted him. If we become big in our head or proud of ourself, Krishna will slap us down. We have been slapped down many times, He will keep us. But it will act, it will be effective, because of his mercy. So in spiritual life, we only know the mercy of the spiritual master, there is nothing other than that, and the sastras all say it. Naisam matis tavad urukramanghrim, sprsaty anarthapagamo yad-arthah, mahiyasam pada-rajo-'bhisekam. And the other one, rahuganaitat tapasa na yati, na cejyaya nirvapanad grhad va, na cchandasa naiva jalagni-suryair, vina mahat-pada-rajo-'bhisekam. There is that story of how Krishna…this is Rupa Goswami, he is describing that Krishna, He follows His devotees around and he takes the dust from His devotee. Krishna takes that dust from His devotee and puts it on His head. And Krishna says the devotee, anyabhilasita-sunyam jnana-karmady-anavrtam, this kind of devotee who has no more desire, no more jnanam, no more karma, he wants nothing, this type of devotee, "I take the dust," and He does it from when the devotee doesn't see it. He says, "This is the only way I can repay them because I must give something back, so I have to balance it by taking their dust." So that is the line we are in. Srimate Radharani is serving, and She is thinking that She is the worst of the servants. That is why the spiritual world works, because everybody in the spiritual world thinks "everybody is a better servant than me." And as long as that consciousness is there, everything is beautiful. But it is when I become the best servant and you are a less servant and this material duality comes, then we're back in the material world. So Srila Prabhupada, in his utter humility, he was prideless. He was prideless and humble. I've seen him cry in front of devotees, asking them, "Please don't leave. I did something wrong that now you are leaving the society. Never leave." So many of us have left, and that leaving has hurt him and he is wanting to see his disciples working together and giving up their own selfish motivations to try to help each other. Because what do we have but a few more years left in these bodies? We are over 50 most of us, most of us will be dying within 15 years or 10 years, why not give it a shot one more time? That would please him. So we are here to please him. Sridhar Swami: Build the Mayapur temple! Guru Kripa: That is the first one, yes, everything is here. So Prabhupada did many things to please us, and they have tried to destroy this mission from the inside and from the outside. But because of Prabhupada's potency, it is not possible. Others are working very ardently today, saying they are the representative and trying to destroy, take all the people out and bring them. But they are fireflies, they can do nothing next to the sun of Srila Prabhupada's potency. So the potency is there. We have to just try to catch it up. Prabhupada wrote, when he said, "Just as the sun is there. If you go in the sun, you get the benefit. If you do not go in the sun, you don't get the benefit." So this place and... another time I was in... because you want some story, I try to…we were staying in Akash Ganga building, because I didn't do much time on this Juhu land, mostly it was in that building, in that apartment, and it was on the 7th floor. Because of the 7th floor and we were across the street from the beach, always there was a nice wind blowing through there. So the doors would slam all the time. Srila Prabhupada did not like the slamming doors, right? He would come out, "Why are you trying to kill me?" because the slam. And we all know, especially if you're doing yoga and you are concentrating and then some noise, it snaps you out of your inside, that you've gone inside of yourself and now…it is sudden. And also he couldn't tolerate fans being left on, electricity. He would come in, "Who has left the fan on?" and he would scream. And then he would come, and because we could not have aratik because of the arrangement in the apartment building, he would come out in the apartment and we would put a tape on. And on some mornings, he would stand there and the tears would roll from his eyes and the tears would gather on the floor, there would be a small puddle on the floor, and we would afterwards fight to get some of that water to put on…to take it. So I had a service then. I was a new devotee. It's funny how we looked at the world, but we didn't know so much. So I used to make the candana, that was my job, and go in and put candana on his head. So I would come in the room and think, "How is Srila Prabhupada feeling today?" And that feeling was how was I feeling, but he would always be in the same transcendental state of pleasure and I put this candana on his head. So he looked one morning, he said, "You don't like me." "Yes, I like you." He said, "If you like me, why are you hitting me?" I was putting it on like that. So then I asked him one of those questions. I said, "Srila Prabhupada, do you ever think of your Guru Maharaja?" What kind of question is that? That's a beginner would ask something like that, "Do you ever think of Srila Bhaktisiddhanta?" And he said, instead of chastising me like "You idiot, you don't know anything," he just said with a very gentle…so humble, he said, "I am only feeling the mercy of my Guru Maharaja." So he was very kind to us, and how that has happened? That is only our good fortune that we had such company. So we try to repay him by serving him more and more. And he has given us all sense gratification. Personally, I have had more than anybody probably put together. I've had all money and all health and all enjoyments. So that is enough, I think, for me. I want to do some service. Another time, we went on the walks in Bombay, and he gave one lady…one lady was there by the beach wall, she had one baby, and he told us, "You give her two rupees and tell her to buy milk for the baby." Later on then, 1977, when Srila Prabhupada became ill, he asked me, he said, "I have one last desire - to finish the Bombay before I leave." He said, "But no funds are coming. So can you arrange now $100,000?" Before I had to get $60,000. That was profit too, not gross. We had to pay our rent and plane tickets and only had a…we went through many men. They would last two months or three months or six months, like that. But then he asked me, "You can get that?" I said, "I'll get it," and we got it somehow. Seven months in a row we sent $100,000. So everything is possible. He has done it, we are the instrument. He is carrying the mercy of his guru, his guru is carrying his mercy, it is all coming from Krishna. And we can also carry Prabhupada's mercy and do many more wonderful things by his blessing and potency if we know who we are, that we are just the small servant, we are the jiva who has lost his way, who has become separated from the spiritual world, become lost in the world of senses and illusion, and again attain that divine consciousness and join him, sit with him, eat with him, do with him in the next place. Any questions? Somebody can remind me of some stories, I just forget them all. Someone must know, there are more things that happened here. Another story was here that one devotee came with me, we had a pandal in the Cross Maidan. So this devotee, he had just taken sannyasa but his ex-wife showed up and he was very agitated and disturbed. So he went to Srila Prabhupada and he said, "Srila Prabhupada, my ex-wife has come here, can you kick her out? You have to tell her to go." And Srila Prabhupada said, "Why you are disturbed by this one woman? There are two billion women in the world, why does this one woman bother you?" He said, "The reason is because you had sex with her. That is why it bothers you. Otherwise she wouldn't bother you." And then he said in his humble way, "What can I do? She is also my disciple. If I tell her to leave, she will become discouraged. You just have to tolerate this." So in this way he saw everybody, adjusted for everybody. He did not make any distinction. Just to say the difficulty, because many of you new devotees have come, we did not have especially Indian devotees joining in those days because we lived worse than the population did and it was very rough. Us Westerners have a lot of rough edges and very passionate edges and so sometimes there was great conflict due to the intensity of wanting to serve, dealing with our health, dealing with the food issue, living in a country where we didn't speak the language, we couldn't communicate, being looked down upon. Because we were actually prejudiced, people are prejudiced against us even today, "You are just a white guy. This is our culture, you don't know anything." Api cet su-duracaro bhajate mam ananya-bhak, sadhur…what is it? Ye 'pi syuh papa-yonayah. That's how Krishna says. But anyway, in those days we had it. So we had many things. We had devotees throwing hatchets at each other, chasing each other with knives, jumping out of windows, sabotaging others, trying to throw water balloons at others. It was difficult. We were young, and somehow or other we persevered and this place got put together. What to speak of when devotees went to jail. Which devotee here, old devotee, did not go to jail at least twice? I went to jail in France, in England, I went to jail in San Francisco, I went to jail everywhere. They'd pick us up and lock us up. We were that bad off. I got punched, I got jumped, we had beer thrown at us. Down in Melbourne I had a can of beer hit me in the back of the head. We had rocks thrown at us, we got chased by vehicles. We sold a book in Texas once to some people at a gas station and they liked us; but when they opened the book and saw it was some heathen stuff, they were down the highway chasing us in their truck. We had to go 100 miles an hour to get away from them. In this way, the preaching is not an easy thing. Now many people, you are respected. But especially in Bengal, we got beat up, we got thrown things at, they attacked the temple. Calcutta they attacked the temple. Remember the fight in the temple? Gargamuni was there. I remember the fight in the temple. In this way, we were there. But Prabhupada was there, he was encouraging us, we were his men. So we're still here today due to his blessing, although many of us don't deserve to be here. We deserve to be thrown back into the cycle, but only because he said no that we get to stay here. OK, enough for today. Dandavats. |