Appreciating Prabhupada’s sacrifice, wisdom and legacy

[Prabhupada Vyasa-puja Offering at Detroit, USA]

Video:

Hare Krishna. So, on the auspicious occasion of the appearance day of Shri Prabhupada, it is our great fortune to meditate on the immense mercy that His Divine Grace has bestowed on all of us. So, I’ll speak about His mercy in three broad parts.
In His personal example of sacrifice and dedication. In His lasting legacy of the wisdom that He has provided. And in the tradition, the living tradition that He brought to the West and He rejuvenated in the world at large, including India.
So, if we look at Shri Prabhupada’s life, what strikes any observer as the most amazing thing is His incredible courage, His incredible, unbelievable, tireless zeal to work for a cause. At the age of 69, to go abroad when a person has not even gone out of the country even once before. To go across the oceans to a distant land with no money, no institutional support, no followers, this is an act of incredible courage.
Shri Prabhupada’s sacrifice was not just the physical risk that He was taking. There’s the body, there’s the mind, there’s the intelligence, there’s the soul. Shri Prabhupada’s soul was purely devoted to Krishna.
And in that sense, for many people, when they go to places that are more materialistic, sannyasis have given up material life. And that’s why going to materialistic places is preferred that they don’t do that. But when Shri Prabhupada went to America, at the level of the soul, there was no danger for him.
Wherever he went, he was absorbed in Krishna. At the level of the body, definitely there was danger. And that became clear right in the first few days of his voyage itself when he first got seasickness and then he got two severe heart attacks.
But Prabhupada persevered. The physical risk was also that when he went to America, he had no guarantee that he would have vegetarian food. The physical risk was also that he lived among hippies in a locality where crime was rampant.
The people who were trigger happy would just shoot people for no provocation at all. Now, in the western world, some of our temples are in a little high, in not such good localities. And most of the people visiting the temples are Indians.
So they sometimes hesitate to visit the temples if they are in downtown or in their areas where the crime is a little more. Now, visiting such areas itself is dangerous. What to speak of visiting? Prabhupada was living in such an area.
And he was all alone, an old man. And when Prabhupada would sometimes walk in the hippie area, he would just see people lying on the ground. Some of them would be unconscious.
Sometimes in the unconscious, they would die. And Prabhupada was attacked. And the attack came not by some unknown thugs, but by a person who had the potential, who seemed to have the potential to become his first disciple.
When strangers or thieves attack us, that is still alarming. But when somebody whom we have a relationship with, they go mad and attack us, it’s far more disheartening. Prabhupada, when a thief, when the janitor turned to be thief and robbed his tape recorder, Prabhupada was discouraged.
But when his own prospective disciple, they would attack him, the amount of discouragement that must have come at that time, it’s unbelievable. Suppose somebody is working, putting their life to benefit someone, and that person’s self injures us, attacks us, so Prabhupada’s greatest, where Prabhupada had great strength was the strength of purpose, the strength of determination by which he could resist incredible quantities of discouragement. If a doctor is working tirelessly to heal a patient, and that patient just turns mad and attacks the doctor, the doctor may say, why am I treating such a patient? On top of that, doctors may treat it because it’s their profession, it’s their livelihood, they’re being paid for it.
Prabhupada was not being paid anything for this. He had nothing to gain. So, the sheer amount of dedication, the strength of purpose that Prabhupada had is incredible.
Normally, if we are going on a bicycle, and it’s a heavy object, if a big bull comes in the way, and we would have to stop. Even if we are going on a bike also, we may have to stop. But if somebody is going on a big truck, a huge powerful truck, and then even if a boulder comes in the way, the truck might be able to knock off the boulder and move on.
So, actually, Prabhupada was like the giant, unstoppable vehicle. Prabhupada started the Jagannath Rathyatra in America. And the word Jagannath has led to the English word Jagannath.
Jagannath is an unstoppable force. So, Prabhupada started the Jagannath Rathyatra, and the Jagannath Rathyatra was an unstoppable force which soon spread across the world. But Prabhupada himself was a Jagannath.
Nothing could stop him. No amount of discouragement, no amount of reversals, no amount of people who were with him letting him down. None of this could stop Prabhupada because he was so dedicated.
So, the thing that strikes us the most when we consider Prabhupada’s life is his strength of purpose. The sheer determination with which he took great risks. Now, the strength of purpose was not just in terms of overcoming the physical dangers.
It was not just in terms of overcoming the emotional discouragements. It was also in terms of the cultural conditions. What he needed to reach people at that time was very very difficult to visualise.
That was the time when Time magazine had put an article, Is God Dead? And the way the title was put and the way the article was themed was that it’s true that God is dead. People were very very unreceptive to religions in general. And yet Prabhupada went to an audience which was extremely sceptical.
An article at that time in local newspaper said that this was the toughest audience with which to reach people. To reach and yet Prabhupada reached them. Even the misconceptions, the distractions, the contaminations that were there in the hearts of people.
Prabhupada’s strength of purpose was so great that he was able to overcome all of them and he was able to reach people’s hearts. Prabhupada in the Markina Bhagavad Dharma says that Krishna please make my words understandable to them. And this is a great great request because here is a person who is conscious.
Why would he ask please make my words understandable to them? Because otherwise to conceive how an elderly man with a heavy Bengali accent with no experience of western culture how could and he giving a very strange message of total devotion to a God who is utterly unknown and is considered strange. There was a Christian pastor who wrote a book and he said that he gave examples of how we may all face strange and unbelievable things in life. And he asked people what are the most outrageous things that you have heard in your life? Most ridiculous outrageous unbelievable things.
And one of the things that people said and he quotes in his book is that the Hare Krishna is coming on the street and telling us that a blueish black boy is youth is God. So the cultural milieu was such that the idea that a blueish black boy would be God was considered one of the most outrageous things that you would hear. And to be able to inspire people to devote their life to something like this is extraordinary.
That is the power of the purpose of Srila Prabhupada by which he is able to overcome any and every obstacle. And therein we can move forward from Prabhupada’s personal example to the wisdom that he provided. Now we are coming to the postmodern age and in this postmodern age more and more people are recognising that what they need is a sense of purpose.
When people have means to live with but no meaning to live for that is a state of great poverty. Especially Indians who are still in the third world we, most of us, many people in India are still struggling especially the lower classes to get the means to live for. And the meaning to live for there is already a social structure which gives a sense of meaning.
Oh, we have a family, you have a broader community, extended family, society and in this you have to make a mark, have an identity. But in the western world where the family structure is collapsing, the social order is considered to be nothing worth cheesing after by a good number of people then what brings meaning to life? So in the western world, especially people have means to live with but no meaning to live for. And more and more people are urgently looking what will bring purpose and meaning in my life? The wisdom that Shri Prabhupada gave brought purpose and meaning into the lives of people who had rejected all the conventional senses of meaning in life.
So here we may have a sense of meaninglessness in our life which comes from the rejection of whatever structures of meaning society may have created for us. Oh, get a job, have a family, get a big house, get a big respectable position in society and then your life is successful. There are some people who have rejected that because they see it as meaningless, as ultimately pointless.
There are some people who strive for it very diligently. But either way, from the ultimate perspective, neither has lasting meaning. Even if we are successful materially, the meaning which we create for ourselves, Oh, I’ve got a job, I’ve got a career, I’ve got a family, I’ve got a position, I’m successful.
But that can be knocked off in one moment. So some people see that this meaning is not really meaningful and some people don’t see it. But in both cases, people need a sense of meaning.
And that is what Shri Prabhupada provided. He explained that to get a sense of meaning, we have to go deep within ourselves to understand that we are not our physical shells. We are our spiritual core.
And as the spiritual core, we are meant to love the supreme whole. And that supreme whole, Prabhupada explained, is the all-attractive supreme person, Krishna. So Prabhupada provided a society that was desperate for relationships, that was longing for love.
He said that we can have a personal relationship with an attractive supreme person. In some ways, this message that he provided was similar to what Christianity taught. And it was radically different from what the broad conception of Eastern spirituality was at that time in the Western world.
Because people thought of Eastern spirituality to be primarily monistic. Oh, become peaceful, merge into the one. Merge into the light.
This idea may seem very peaceful. But actually, our heart doesn’t long for peace. It longs for love.
Yes, we do need peace, just as we need health. But what do we do with health? Health is the end which is required. Similarly, peace is the end which is required.
But protecting the health is not the purpose of life. The purpose of life is to use our health for something better. Just like if we have sports players.
India is a cricket mad country. So sports players want to have fitness. And they will go to great extent to be fit, to be healthy.
But they want fitness so that they can play. And while playing, if they are to field a ball, they will jump and leap and they may risk injury. But they will field the ball.
If they are batting and there is fast ball, the ball is a bouncer. If protecting themselves, their health is their only goal. Why should I play such a match where a dangerous ball will come and hit me and knock me? So, health is important, but health is meant for a purpose.
Fitness is important, but fitness is for a purpose. That is, for sports players, it is playing the game well. Similarly, peace is important, but peace is for a purpose.
So monistic spirituality centred on oneness tells us that actually peace is the ultimate goal of life. Merging is the ultimate goal of life. But Prabhupada said there is something higher.
That higher than peace is love. The heart longs for love. And that longing for love can be fulfilled when we learn to love the Lord of love.
That is Krishna. So Prabhupada revealed the hidden treasure of Indian spirituality to the world and ultimately to India also. Now, this was radically different from the conception of Indian Eastern spirituality that people had at that time.
And it was, it was sweetly appealing to people who were from the Christian tradition, the Abrahamic tradition at large. They were disillusioned from their own tradition because they found that the essential spirituality was being lost within layers of religiosity. You could say not just layers, but truckloads of religiosity.
At that time, the term spiritual but not religious had not yet gained currency. But that’s what people felt. And when Sri Prabhupada came to the West and he gave coherent spiritual knowledge with a potent spiritual process that fulfilled such a deep need that people had.
It was not just meaning that he provided at an intellectual level, but at the level of experience he provided fulfilment, he provided joy by the process of bhakti yoga, by chanting the holy names, by worshipping the deities, by re-envisioning our life as meant for the service of Krishna. And by this, he attracted so many people. Hundreds, thousands, millions he attracted.
Because every heart longs for love. Every heart wants the stability of eternal undying love. And Prabhupada provided that by the teaching across the world, the process of bhakti yoga.
So he took the vast encyclopaedic wisdom of the Vedic literature and presented in a very condensed and accessible way to address the needs of people across the world. His expertise was that he was able to connect with people wherever they were. Our movement presently, especially in the Western world, is largely becoming Indian based.
There are a few Western people who are taking up to Krishna bhakti, but not many. And although there are a large number of Indians, very educated, dedicated, talented Indians, Indians of a calibre far higher than the thousands of Indians who may go to temples in India, general temples, people go because they have a pious instinct. But say Indians who are able to come to America and build a career in America, they are very intelligent, they’re very talented, very dedicated.
And yet even these, you could say the best of Indians, they find it very difficult to connect with Western people in a way that Krishna bhakti can be shared with them. Just the culture, the way of thinking is different, the culture is different, the values are different. And Indians are able to connect with other Indians and many Indians are taking up the process of bhakti.
But for Indians to cross over and connect with Western people, it’s very difficult. And although we have a vast, a significantly large institutional structure to support, still not many Indians are able to connect with Western audiences. But Srila Prabhupada was a lone Indian without any institutional support and yet he was able to connect.
Prabhupada’s connection came primarily from his compassion. He cared for people because people felt that he cared for them. The wisdom was not just abstract, the wisdom was something which they could see made Prabhupada so loving.
If we hear the narratives of Srila Prabhupada’s disciples, those who had close contact with him, of how they were immensely inspired by this personality, then it is observed that actually Prabhupada touched their hearts. So Prabhupada gave the wisdom but the wisdom was not just intellectual, it was personal. It is a bond between the Guru and the disciple.
The wisdom was meant to warm the heart. There are two kinds of truths. There is the truth that lights the way and there is the truth that warms the heart.
Sometimes when we are sharing the philosophy, we focus only on lighting the way. This is wrong, this is right. If somebody does this, they are condemned.
If somebody does this, only then they are faithful, only then they are doing the right thing. Yes, certainly there is a proper way and we need the light to see the proper way. And we need to be given the light to see how other ways lead to ditches, how other ways lead to disaster.
And if we are given that light, then we will be able to see and we will be able to make the right choice. That’s how we might think. But for making choices in our life, it’s not as simple as driving a road.
Say, oh this road goes towards a ditch, this road goes towards a cliff, it falls off, I don’t want to go here. This road is clear, I want to go here. Actually, we human beings, we make choices in not such a straightforward way.
We are not just rational creatures, we are also emotional creatures. And our emotionality is an integral part of who we are. Especially when somebody is to take a spiritual journey, at that time they absolutely need to be able to feel a connection.
They need to feel a sense of belonging. They need to feel a sense of warmth. So Prabhupada offered the truth that lit the way, but Prabhupada offered the truth that also warmed the heart.
In fact, Prabhupada offered, showed how the same one truth could do both. He actually warmed people’s heart with affection, with connection, with belonging. Prabhupada, it is said that he built a house in which the whole world can live.
And it was the warmth, the love, the message that he provided that attracted people to come and live. Today in our movement, there is a great concern that we should be following Prabhupada faithfully. And it’s vital that to maintain and expand the glorious mission that our founder Acharya has started, it is important for us to follow him.
But what does following him mean? A selective following can be deceptive following. And we may say, no, I am quoting Prabhupada’s words as he has spoken them. Yeah, we may be quoting Prabhupada’s words, but are we living Prabhupada’s example? Not just the example of strictness and philosophical insight, philosophical cutting insights, but also of the personal connects, personal connections that Prabhupada made.
We may light the way, but we fail to warm the heart. Then we will have a well-lit way, but we will have no one walking along the way. That is the tragedy that happens when we think that following Prabhupada simply means lighting the way.
We stay in our self-congratulatory, self-righteous ivory tower, where we think I am a faithful follower of Srila Prabhupada, but we don’t inspire anyone to follow Srila Prabhupada because we are not connecting with people’s hearts. To connect with people’s hearts, we need the truth that doesn’t just light the way, it also warms the heart. If it had been just philosophy that had inspired people, then why would so many of Srila Prabhupada’s followers be writing books describing their personal interactions with Srila Prabhupada? It was this that inspired them.
It was not just Prabhupada’s philosophical exposition, that’s important, no doubt. But at the same time, that the importance of it is realised and the momentum for living the life according to the philosophical teachings is generated when there is the warmth in the heart that is felt, when there is a personal connection that is felt. Srila Prabhupada in Nectar of Instruction says that when Rupa Goswami is saying, when he talks about the six-fold loving exchanges between devotees, Prabhupada said that he has established the Krishna Consciousness movement to give us an opportunity to have these six-fold loving exchanges.
And he says that the Krishna Consciousness movement will become strengthened to the extent we have these six-fold loving exchanges amongst devotees. So it’s a very profound statement. He’s not saying the Krishna Consciousness movement will be strengthened by our building many temples.
He’s not saying our Krishna Consciousness movement will be strengthened by our distributing many books. He’s not saying our Krishna Consciousness movement will be strengthened by our having many many people joining the movement and becoming initiated devotees. All these are important, no doubt.
These are valuable and valid parameters of the reach and the success of the Krishna Consciousness movement. But ultimately, these are not what is going to take people back to Godhead. Just getting a book alone, just visiting a temple alone, even just attending the ceremony of initiation is not going to take people to Krishna.
It is the bonding of the heart with Krishna and the bonding of the heart with those who love Krishna that is going to provide the sustained momentum for people to keep moving towards Krishna. So this, when we are to follow Srila Prabhupada, it is important that we don’t just focus on the Acharya’s prachara. We also look at the Acharya’s achara and we see how the Acharya has taught by example how to connect with people.
This is a legacy that can be very easily forgotten if we think that an Acharya’s legacy is restricted only to the philosophy that he spoke. Yes, Prabhupada’s books are precious. Prabhupada’s example of how he connected with people that was what ensured that people connected with the books and people felt to connect with the Lord who is described in those books.
So that brings us to the last part. That is Prabhupada’s movement. Prabhupada started, Prabhupada provided a legacy by which people could keep connecting with Krishna.
And what was that legacy? Was that the institutional structure of ISKCON? What do we mean by that? Is it the temples? Is it the treasury of the temples? Is it the official positions in the institution? When Prabhupada at one time was criticised by some people because he was not doing certain things which some people thought that Gaudiya Vaishnavas should be doing. So Prabhupada said that I have inherited the legacy of my spiritual master. Now, the Gaudiya Math was a big institution at one time and Prabhupada did not get anything from the Gaudiya Math.
What did Prabhupada get as the legacy from his spiritual master? That legacy was the desire to glorify Krishna. Prabhupada had a burning desire to share Krishna’s glory with others and to inspire them to start loving Krishna. And it was this legacy from which everything else manifested.
From which the temples manifested, the books manifested, the devotees manifested. So Prabhupada’s legacy to each one of us is not a particular temple or even a particular movement with hundreds of temples. Prabhupada’s most precious legacy which he is offering to each one of us is that desire to love and serve Krishna and to glorify Krishna and to inspire others to relish the glories of Krishna.
Actually, Prabhupada in his last day, during nearing of his last days was asked, who will be your successor? Prabhupada replied, whoever wants to be. Of course, he appointed a GBC. In the early days of the movement, barely 4-5 years the movement was over, that time Prabhupada appointed the GBC and he did appoint successor gurus when he would depart.
But Prabhupada was clear, it was not this institutional structure that would continue his legacy. He said, those who want to, they will continue my legacy. That legacy actually Prabhupada gave was the desire to glorify Krishna and those of us who can infuse our hearts with this desire to glorify Krishna, we can march towards him.
We can inherit Prabhupada’s legacy, just as Prabhupada inherited the legacy from Bhaktisiddhanta Sri Thakur and by that legacy we all can enrich our hearts with Krishna and enrich the hearts of many many other people with Krishna. Prabhupada’s great legacy is available for each one of us and you’ll see how Prabhupada was vibrant, was expert, was diligent in making sure that he could reach Krishna into people’s hearts as was necessary, as was suitable, as was best for the person in that situation. In the western world, most of Prabhupada’s followers were hippies who had more or less rejected the mainstream culture and who were interested in exploring some alternative way of living and for them Prabhupada presented the monastic vision of bhakti wherein you come to the temple, live in the temple, have an intense morning programme and in that way, in a focused way, march towards Krishna.
When Prabhupada came back to India in 1970s with his western disciples, they were his trump card at that time. Of course the word trump today has got some negative connotation so maybe I shouldn’t use the word trump card but Prabhupada had this western disciples and his followers were so attracted to him. Indians were so attracted to his followers, western disciples and before Prabhupada went to America in the 1960s, at that time India, Indians were not really interested in serious spirituality and it was not that in 1970s about 5-7 years later when Prabhupada came back suddenly there was a change in the way the Indian mind thought and people became hugely interested in spirituality.
No, people became interested because they felt that Prabhupada had vindicated their sense of cultural pride that the nationalistic zeal that was there in India, we have been ruled by foreigners for so long and now these western people they are following our culture. So Prabhupada tapped into that feeling which people had and inspired them to connect with Krishna, to contribute to Krishna’s movement and when he saw that people in India are not ready to join as monastics in the movement, he created a facility for them by which where they were they could glorify Krishna. That facility was a life membership programme by which people could contribute to the building of a temple, people would get books which would reveal to them Krishna’s glories, people would come and stay in the temples and relish the sweetness of an atmosphere that was dedicated to the glorification of Krishna and thus they could advance.
So we see that very few Indians became initiated disciples of Srila Prabhupada when Srila Prabhupada was present. But does that mean Prabhupada was not successful in India? No, it means that Prabhupada was daksha, expert enough to adopt a different definition of success according to that situation. When he saw that Indians are not ready to be committed, Prabhupada created the life membership programme and hundreds, thousands, thousands upon thousands of people connected with Prabhupada’s movement through that connection.
So the expertise of an acharya is where people are, how can from there they move towards Krishna. So our movement presently is in between. We have a few monastics but not many, a very small minority and life members somehow have not become a major force in the propagation of the movement.
So what we have as the dominant demographics of our movement is the congregation members who have their families, who have their careers, who have their jobs but who also have Krishna as an integral part of their life and it is such a movement that is carrying on Srila Prabhupada’s legacy now and if we understand that Prabhupada’s legacy is not just a particular institutional structure, Prabhupada’s legacy is the zeal to glorify Krishna and whichever situation we are in, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu told the Kurma Brahmana who wanted to renounce the world, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu said, don’t even talk about this, where you are glorify Krishna, chant Krishna’s names, inspire others to do that and you will become a guru. So sometimes even now in our movement a lot of energy goes between the renounced order and the householder order. If only I was in that order, my bhakti would have gone on so well but I am entangled in this world.
It’s at one level good to feel that we want to do more and more bhakti but we have to have a spiritual vision of devotion, not a material vision of devotion. A material vision of devotion means that we think that material circumstances will stop us from practising bhakti. A spiritual vision is that whatever material circumstances I am in, through that I can find a way to practise bhakti.
Bhakti is ahaitukhi and apratihata, it is uninterrupted and unmotivated. That means if we have the desire to serve Krishna, we have the desire to glorify Krishna, then whatever position we may be in, Krishna will guide us so that we can glorify Him. Krishna will guide us by which we can find a way to connect our hearts with Him and to inspire others to connect their hearts with Him.
So Sri Prabhupada’s legacy is something which every one of us can keep alive in our hearts and we can light in other people’s hearts. Sometimes now when the Krishna consciousness movement has become so big, we may feel I am just a small person, what can I do? Every one of us can make a big difference. We may not be able to change the world but we can change one person’s world.
Even if we help one person, if we can light their way in life with wisdom and with devotion, if we can share with them the truth that lights their way and warms their heart, then that can make a world of difference to them. Ultimately difference in the world is made by making a world of difference in one person’s life at a time. It’s a grassroot level change and that is something which every one of us can do.
In our situation, rather than thinking I have to do this, I have to go into this ashram, I have to learn this course, I have to do this and then I will become a devotee, then I will inspire others to become devotees. No, Prabhupada was eminently pragmatic. From where we are, even if we are interacting with people, today I feel all these people are not spiritually inclined at all.
Prabhupada is amongst hippies, they were in the darkest, many of them were in the darkest mode of ignorance. But Prabhupada found the few among them also who were spiritually inclined, fanned their spiritual spark and attracted them towards Krishna. We don’t have an audience that is that ignorant or that hostile, that Tamasic and we may say I don’t have the potency of Sri Prabhupada.
Yes, we are not as pure as Sri Prabhupada, but if we have the desire to share his message and to spread his mission, that he can empower us in ways far beyond our capacities. If we just desire to share Krishna’s message, if we consider this desire to share Krishna’s message as Prabhupada’s legacy to us, then we will find that Krishna will empower us. Our life will become an adventure and we will find that we will be able to bring meaning into other people’s lives.
And when we are able to bring meaning and joy into other people’s lives, that will fill our life with meaning and joy. All of us have problems in life and the nature of this world is that problems will always be there. If we focus too much on problems, then our problems will become bigger and bigger and bigger in our minds and they will overwhelm us.
The best way to deal with problems is to have something bigger than the problems to deal with. The best way to deal with problems is to have something bigger than the problems to deal with. That means if we have a bigger purpose for our life, if we understand, yes, I have this problem, I have this problem and I will do whatever it takes to deal with it.
But my life has a bigger purpose. That by Sri Prabhupada’s mercy, I have been saved from a life of materialism and ignorance and I have the opportunity to similarly help other people be saved from a wasted life of materialistic ignorance. And if we take up the mantle of trying to share Krishna’s mission with others, when we say I have so many problems, I can’t take up this other bigger problem of sharing Krishna’s message.
But if we take it up, we’ll find that a power greater than us will act through us. All our other problems will fall in perspective and we will be able to march towards Krishna. With great intensity, with great devotion, with great fervency.
Ultimately, we will be able to enrich our own lives and enrich the lives of many, many others. This is the legacy that we can pray to Sri Prabhupada that he who is ready to bestow that legacy to us, that the desire to glorify Krishna, may that legacy find a central place in our heart. May that desire to glorify Krishna become the defining and driving desire of our life.
And if by Sri Prabhupada’s mercy, we can make the desire to glorify Krishna as a defining and driving desire, then Prabhupada and Krishna can empower us in extraordinary ways to do invaluable things for raising people’s consciousness towards Krishna and for most importantly raising our own consciousness towards Krishna so that we can at the end of our lives be reunited with our Lord. Such is the glorious blessing that Sri Prabhupada has provided us. To summarise, Prabhupada has provided us, I talked about Prabhupada’s legacy or Prabhupada’s appreciation in terms of his dedication and sacrifice.
Then I talked about his wisdom and then I talked about his legacy in terms of the movement that he started. So dedication and sacrifice was, he took physical risks, he got a heart attack, he was lonely, not knowing whether he would have food, he took emotional risks because there was so much discouragement. The person who was supposed to guard his home was a guard of the house, tried to steal from him.
The person who was going to be his prospective disciple turned to attack him and through it all, Prabhupada persevered. Prabhupada is an example of extraordinary courage, such was his strength of purpose that he was like a powerful, unstoppable Jagannath. No obstacle could stop him.
Even the huge cultural gaps, the many misconceptions, distractions and contaminations within his prospective audience’s heart also could not stop Prabhupada. He penetrated through it all. Prabhupada gave us the wisdom which told us that just getting the means to live is not enough.
We need the meaning to live for. And in traditional societies, which are still pious but materialistic, there is a structure of meaning that is created which helps in the short run, but which is rendered futile in the long run. Living to have a family, to have a career, to have material success and prosperity, it may drive us, but it is going to be futile.
And in the western world, there is no such, at that time in Prabhupada, when there was no such structure, people didn’t know what their lives were meant to be for. So Prabhupada told that we have to go to our deepest core, our souls, and connect with the whole Krishna. And Krishna was such a strange conception for many people at that time, that the idea that Krishna is God was considered to be one of the strangest, one of the most outrageous things that people heard.
People at that time were thinking that God is dead. People were very unreceptive to God, but Prabhupada penetrated their hearts. And how did he do that? He offered not just the truth that lights the way, but also the truth that warms the heart.
And what inspired people was not just Prabhupada’s philosophical presentations, but it was his emotional connection that he made with people that inspired them to take to spirituality. So to follow Sri Prabhupada fully means to share the truth in a way that lights people’s way and that also warms their heart. If you fail to share the truth in a way that warms people’s hearts, then we will end up in a self-righteous, self-congratulatory ivory tower where we claim to be following Prabhupada, but we won’t be able to inspire hardly any people to follow Prabhupada.
And then I talked about Prabhupada’s legacy. He said that he inherited the legacy from his spiritual master. His spiritual master’s legacy.
And that was the desire to glorify Krishna. And that desire to glorify Krishna is something each one of us can have. Prabhupada channelled that desire in the West to propagate a monastic way of living.
He channelled that desire in India to get people to at least become life members. Today, most of us are in between, either monastics or life members, but congregation devotees. Sometimes we feel that our situation materially is not so suited for practising bhakti and we may hanker for some other material situation.
But we need to know that bhakti is transcendental and it cannot be limited by any material situation. So if you just pray to Krishna, please energise my heart with the desire to glorify you. And in our situation, Krishna will show us the way by which we can move towards Him.
We all have problems. The best way to deal with problems is to have something bigger than the problems to deal with. And that bigger cause, bigger purpose is the purpose of sharing Krishna’s message with others.
When we take up that responsibility following Shri Prabhupada’s footsteps to bring Krishna to others’ lives, when we thus bring meaning and joy into others’ lives, our own life will become filled with sublime, supreme meaning and joy. And ultimately, by sharing Krishna with others, Krishna will enter into our hearts and will take us to His abode. So we can pray to Shri Prabhupada to make the desire to glorify Krishna as the defining and driving desire of our life.
Shri Prabhupada ki jai. Thank you very much. Shri Prabhupada avirbhau mahamotsav ki jai.
Shri Krishna.