Prabhupada life-story 01 – A devotionally vibrant childhood

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna. Welcome to this series which will be a biographical narrative on the life and contributions of His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swamishla Prabhupada. In this series we will look chronologically from his childhood till especially his last 10 years when he dramatically shared the legacy of Krishna Bhakti all over the world circumnavigating the globe 14 times, writing over 70 books, opening 108 temples, inspiring millions of people all over the world to embrace the path of spiritual love and inaugurating a spiritual transformation of consciousness that is going on even now.
Srila Prabhupada was born as Abhaidey in a devout family in Kolkata in 1896 on the day after Janmashtami on August 1. So when he was born at that time India was under colonial rule. When we want to look at the life of anyone in a biographical sense we can look at the context when that person acted and we can look at the content. What was the action of the person and then we can appreciate what that person did much better.
So Abhaidey was born to a devout family Gaur Mohan Dey and Rajini Dey, father and mother and they were followers of the Bhakti tradition in the Gauriya Vaishnav lineage which was quite common among the Bhakti tradition in West Bengal at that time and he was born on the day immediately after Janmashtami. This itself was significant. It indicated his mission.
Many times events that are having great significance, cosmic significance, those events are also accompanied by or preceded by certain omens, certain signs which indicate that something significant is happening. Srila Prabhupada is appearing on the day immediately after the day of the appearance of his Lord, Lord Krishna who appeared on the earth around 5000 years ago and established dharma and taught the path of dharma in his timeless message of the Bhagavad Gita. So the mission that the Lord had come to accomplish now his great devotee would accomplish it in due course, would carry it on in today’s world, in the modern world in due course as he grew up.
So as is traditional in India at that time and even now when a child is born, a horoscope is made of that child and when the horoscope of little Abhay was made, at that time the family members became jubilant on knowing that he would become a great saint. At the age of 70, he would cross over the seven oceans, go to distant lands to share the message of Bhakti and establish 108 temples all over the world. It was such an extraordinary prophecy that it thrilled the hearts of everyone.
Now Abhay was born in an India that was still under British colonial rule and prior to the British colonial rule, there had been the Islamic rule by various invaders from different parts of the world, different parts of the Islamic world. Now when they came, they had a substantial influence on Indian culture, Indian traditions and also on Indian political situation. So Prabhupada’s Abhay’s family was actually a Suvarnavanic family.
The family of merchants and his father was a cloth merchant and they were related with the family of the Muliks who were very influential. In fact, the Tollygunj area in Calcutta where Abhay was born, the whole locality was owned by the Muliks and they had also been in the history when the Islamic rulers were there. At that time, they had bestowed the title Mulik on them.
Now thereafter, one daughter from the De family had married into the Mulik family and thus the families had stayed very close thereafter. So Abhay’s father Gaur Mohande himself was a cloth merchant by profession but by disposition, he was a devotee, a very simple-hearted and intensely devoted worshipper of the Lord. Abhay’s earliest memories of his childhood are that he would wake up to the ringing of bells and he would find that his father was doing aarti, doing puja, was worshipping the deities and normally when a child is born, parents have aspirations, dreams for their children.
My child should become say engineer, my child should become a doctor, my child should become a sports player, whatever different dreams they may have. Now naturally, Abhay’s mother Rajni, she had also been born in a devout Gaudiya Vaishnava family. She desired that Abhay follow the career chart that was standard at that time for young educated Indians and that was that one goes to America and becomes a barrister.
That is a lawyer or advocate. The word at that time was a barrister and if we consider contemporary India at that time, many of the leaders or people who became leaders had chosen the vocation of becoming barristers. That’s Nehru, Gandhi and many others they had tried to pursue this path.
It was a very respectable career trajectory and several of the uncles approved this. But Abhay’s father, Gaur Mohan, they said no. He said that if my son goes away from India to the west, there is such a licentious culture over there.
Now there are people who become intoxicated, people who eat meat, people who womanize and associating with them, he may also develop these vices and I don’t want him to do that. Yes, he may earn more money by that vocation but we don’t need that money. Now normally, parents push their children to have great dreams and push their children to work hard to fulfill their dreams.
That is the normal standard for most parents in India. Now for Gaur Mohan, they to put his foot down on what would be a promising career for his son indicates his firm conviction about his devotion and this firm conviction had a great effect on Abhay during his formative years. Whereas his mother aspired for practical, this worldly success for her son.
His father focused more on his inner, his spiritual growth and as was the culture at that time among pious Indians, many times those who were householders would host renunciate sadhus and would feed them, serve them and then seek their blessings. So most people for their blessings would seek a good marriage, a good bounty if they were farmers, good business if they were into trade and business, good health and other such worldly benefits. But whenever Gaur Mohan, they would host any sadhu which would be practically every day as frequently as he could, he would serve those sadhus sincerely and then he would ask for blessings.
He says, please bless my son so that he will become a great devotee. Please bless my son so that he will become a great devotee of Srimati Radharani. So again we see what is a divine aspiration for a father to have and it was not just a aspiration that was negative or sentimental that don’t pursue this career or just seek blessings.
Along with that Gaur Mohan, they provided practical facilities. He had little Abhay trained to play Mridanga. Mridanga is a drum which is used for kirtans, for singing the praises of the lord through song and often through dance.
Now when Abhay was so small, Mridanga is like a long drum relatively speaking and when Abhay was so small that his hands could barely reach the two ends of the drum. At that time itself, Gaur Mohan, they hired a teacher. I told him, please train him in Mridanga and Abhay could somehow reach the two ends of the Mridanga, play the Mridanga and he started playing the beats and soon with diligent practice and with competent training, he became expert at playing the Mridanga.
So he himself would start singing sweet kirtans and he would accompanied with the playing of Mridanga and would be lost in kirtans. His father would worship deities, images of the lord on their altar and seeing this, Abhay would sometimes assist his father but sometimes he would also feel that I want to worship myself. So he asked his father, please give me deities, let me worship for myself and his father gave him.
He told him, will you be able to take care of the deities? Will you be able to worship them? His father wanted to facilitate the divine desires of his son but also wanted his son to be aware of the responsibility that it entailed. Abhay said that yes, he will and then he as a small child would start worshipping his deity. As a child, he started worshipping his deities.
One of the most outstanding events from Abhay’s life as a child was an event that forecast what he would do in the future. The Ratha Yatra festival is an ancient and magnificent festival that goes on in Jagannath Puri in Odisha in India on the eastern coast. So there in that festival, Lord Jagannath who is an alternate form of Krishna, who is Krishna who has been transformed in appearance by the intense ecstasy coming from remembrance of his greatest devotees, the Brijavasi, the residents of Vrindavan, that form of Krishna who resides, who presides in a majestic palace like temple in Jagannath Puri, from there he comes out once a year and he’s placed on majestic chariots and in the temple he is there along with Baladeva and Subhadra.
Baladeva is Krishna’s brother Balaram and Subhadra is the younger sister. So all three of them are placed on three huge chariots and they’re pulled from the temple of Jagannath to a distance several miles away to the temple of Gundicha and there they stay for nearly two weeks and this procession where the chariot of Jagannath is pulled along the roads of Jagannath Puri is a festival that attracts millions upon millions of people from near and far, from Orissa and indeed from all of India. Now of course people from all over the world also come to that festival.
So Chaitanya Mahaprabhu who was the initiator and propagator of Gaudiya Vaishnavism. Vaishnavism refers to the branch within the Bhakti tradition which focuses on the worship of Lord Vishnu and Gaudiya Vaishnavism refers to the branch within Vaishnavism that has a special sweetness. Gauda is a variant of the word Guda.
Guda means jaggery. So Gaudiya Vaishnavism is the form of Vaishnavism that is especially sweet. That sweetness is the sweetness of Krishna Bhakti and of course Gauda is also related to the geographical area of Gaudadesh, Bengal and Chaitanya Mahaprabhu propagated that Vaishnavism in that area.
So Chaitanya Mahaprabhu was born in Bengal in Mayapur and from there he went to Puri after sannyas and based himself there and there he participated in the Ratha Yatra and his dancing in the Ratha Yatra was the most spectacular highlight of that grand festival. Thousands and thousands of people would be mesmerized to see his intensely devoted, his spiritually energized and his profoundly devout dance before the Lord and devotees from Bengal would every year go there for the four months of Chaturmas, the four sacred months of the rainy season when religious activities are performed more intensely and they would participate in Chaitanya Mahaprabhu’s Ratha Yatra festival and because Chaitanya Mahaprabhu had so much delighted in the Ratha Yatra festival so that festival was replicated not just in Puri but in Bengal also. So on the Ratha Yatra day in various parts of Bengal also those people who could not go to Puri they would perform Ratha Yatra themselves.
Now for children they play in their own ways but what was Abhay as a child doing he would also play like other children but he when he saw the Ratha Yatra he had a divine desire he said oh you know let me enact this Ratha Yatra let me have my own Ratha Yatra over it but as he would grow up by the time he came to the age of higher secondary school or college one of his dreams of traveling was that when would he be old enough to catch a train and go to Jagannath Puri to behold the beautiful forms of Jagannath, Baladeva and Subhadra. So as a child itself he had the normal childlike desires of playing and enjoying but along with that he had extraordinary divine devotional desires and he told his father that I want to organize my own Ratha Yatra. Now for a small child to have such a desire itself is very unusual but not only that he said we have to get a cart and he went around shopping with his father to various places striving his best to find a cart and when they were not able to get a cart anywhere as they desired finally they were disappointed Abhay was crying so a lady was passing by and she asked why is this boy crying and they when they told normally children cry because they don’t have this toy or that toy there’s a childish sorrows childish disappointments because of which they don’t cry but when she heard that this boy wanted a cart for doing Ratha Yatra and they’re not able to find appropriate cart in the shops she said I have a cart and Abhay became delighted and then they got the cart and Abhay called all the neighboring children and he told them let us all perform the Ratha Yatra and he organized and coordinated everything they had the deities of the lordships and he himself played Mridanga and led the kirtans and by the time they started doing this it became like an event a significant event and initially people had thought this is a child’s play but as they saw it going on the streets the neighbors came and as the Ratha Yatra was going on the neighbors came and offered obeisances offered signed food for offering to the lord and Gaur Mohande’s friends they said that oh you are having Ratha Yatra festival you didn’t tell us about it we would have come we want to come you are having this I said oh no it is his child’s play he says no it’s not child’s play so big so Abhay he performed this Ratha Yatra and that he as a child not only did he get the desire to perform Ratha Yatra like this but also that he performed organized it coordinated it and actually executed it that indicates his extraordinarily devotional heart and it also pointed to what he would be doing in future one of the most significant contributions of Abhay when he grew up and became AC Bhaktivedanta Swami Srila Prabhupada one of his most significant contributions was to globalize the Jagannath Ratha Yatra festival today hundreds and hundreds of cities all over the world perform this festival and that is testimony to the appeal of this festival for all people now as Abhay was growing up he was not just performing Ratha Yatra he initially like all children was reluctant to study but once he got into going to school and started studying he was an earnest student and he did well in his studies and after completing his school his father admitted him in the Scottish Church College which was among the most respected colleges at that time in that part of the world in Kolkata so now it was here that the childhood devotion which had been fostered by his family and by his culture around him that would be challenged and that would be refined by various other forces and factors the college at which the Prabhupada studied was run of course by Christian machineries and they had compulsory bible classes and although they had no explicit they were not allowed to they didn’t have explicit agenda of conversion but that subtle agenda of undermining Indian wisdom and Indian tradition was there so Abhay’s beliefs and practices which he had learned from childhood were challenged and not only that this was the same school in which a few years before same college in which a few years before the noted Indian revolutionary Subhash Chandra Bose had studied and he had infused a revolutionary spirit within the college culture and because he was from Bengal there’s a lot of Bengali sentiment and pride associated with him and this was also the 1920s when Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi later to be known as Mahatma Gandhi launched his had started becoming active for the pursuit of Indian independence and how all these forces influenced Abhay and reshaped and ultimately reinforced his childhood devotion that we will discuss