20161101 Śrīla Prabhupāda Kathā

20161101 Srila Prabhupada Katha - Udupi, India

The following is a talk given by His Holiness Jayapataka Swami Maharaja on November 1^st, 2016, in Udipi, India. The talk is about Srila Prabhupada pastimes.

Gurumaharaj :

mükaà karoti väcälaà

paìguà laìghayate girim

yat-kåpä tam ahaà vande

çré-guruà déna-täraëam

paramananda madhavam

sri Caitanya Isvaram

Hari Om Tatsat

Since 2008, I had a stroke. So left side of my face, and left vocal chords are all frozen. So because what I say may not be understandable, Shyam Madhusudhana Das is going to repeat what I say.

We would like to welcome everybody here on this glorious month of Kartik. The Damodar month is especially auspicious and dear to Krsna. Especially offering a lamp to the Lord in this month, brings great blessings. The pitras, they hope that, their sons, their daughters, their descendants,  will offer a lamp, because it helps the pitris immensely. It’s a very simple thing, but it has a great benefit. So in our temples all over the world, this month we offer lamp. In fact, in some places they …03.34… to offer lamps. In Kuala Lampur and other places, they have Diwali festivals. People go and buy …4.07… we set up a stone where they can offer a lamp, to mother Yasoda and Damodar, and in some years, 150,000 people offer lamps.

In different places around the world, they target a certain number of lamps. In Dubai, they tried to reach 5000 homes. In Chaupati, Bombay also they reached 10,000 homes, and in each community they have this practice to offer lamps. So some devotees go out and they offer a lamp at the altar of the home. Sometimes they have a portable Damodar picture, and they offer that a lamp.

Here we have a Yasoda-Damodar murti. So everyone would be invited to offer a lamp. I was present in a city of South America called Cuenca. Most of the people are roman catholic, but everyone went to offer a candle, and most of the people offered a candle to mother Yasoda holding Krsna. So there are so many glories of offering lamps to Krsna in this month. I hesitate to tell all the glories. They are so far out that some may thing, “Oh, I don’t believe in that.”, and then I will be guilty of lecturing the faithless, but you are all very faithful people. You come here naturally.

So I think that I can take the risk. It’s said that the lamp offered to Krsna in the month of Kartik, that it burns away all the bad karmas, and it says that there is no bad karma that can withstand the lamp offered to Krsna in the month of Kartik. So like this there are so many glories of offering a lamp to Krsna in this month. I hope that you take an advantage and offer a lamp everyday, of this month. The month of Vaisakh is also an auspicious month, but offering lamps was one of the many sevas, and chanting japa, doing some seva, feeding Vaisnavas, all those are considered more in the month of Visakh, but in the month it is offering lamps.

If there is something in the month of magh, that I think is bathing in the cold Ganges river. I heard that in the university hospitals they are also offering lamps, is that true ?.......... Very good.

We don’t tell the glories, we just say, Oh its good luck. I gave some of the celebrities in Bollywood. Actually they are not very spiritual, and one of them asked, “Is this spiritual? Wow something spiritual…” So these are the people, the common men, few worship.

Prabhupada would spend Kartik month in Vrindavana. He would go to Mayapur either before or after Kartik, and while he would be in Mayapur, he would be translating. One day, he was looking at a lamp. There were so many flying insects going around the lamp, and he was looking, and the devotees wondered, what was Prabhuapuda looking at? They were watching him watching the lamp, and Prabhupada turned to them and said, “Just see, they don’t have any radar, no traffic controllers, but I don’t see any collisions, but we have radars, traffic controllers but sometimes we have crashes.”

Prabhupada would be walking on the verandah of the lotus building in Mayapur. Sometimes we will wake up at 12 or 1 A.M, usually, and he would start to translate. That evening, the pujari would bring Frankincense, and fill up the room with Frankincense smoke, and open the window so that all the mosquitoes would fly outside, and then he closed the window. So he had a special mosquito net designed to fill just over his bed, and Prabhupada would be translating, giving commentary of Srimad Bhagavatam. So he would be translating for two, three hours in the night. Sometimes he called me, and the secretary would knock at my door. I would look, 1:30 in the morning, and he would say, “Prabhupada wanted to speak to you.”, “Alright.”, I will wash my face, wash my feet, my hands and I will go downstairs. So I bowed down to Prabhupada in his room, and then he finished his translation, and then talked to me. Whatever that was in his mind. Rather than have the thing wait, he would just call me any time. I felt very blessed to be called by him. It wasn’t that everyday he would call me. It was sometimes.

I stayed on the roof on the Western side, and I had a big picture of Prabhupada walking with a cane and smiling. One day Srila Prabhupada was walking on the roof, and he opened the door of the room in which I was staying. I bowed down, and he looked at himself in the picture. He looked around, then walked off. There was a building called the chakra building which was the long building. That was like 700 feet long. So every 150 feet there was an expansion join.

I learned civil engineering by reading some books and doing it. So that time we were filling up the ground floor. Prabhupada said that it would take a lot of soil. So he suggested that we should build a hatch on the first floor with a wooden ladder leading down. So every room had access to the floor down, but I suggested to Prabhupada that it was not so practical. Rather if we break the doorway into the ground floor, we can use the room for a dharmashala, storage, other things.

So he said,“So you break my walls, break your head.” (laughter)

I told Prabhupada that if it is cheaper, should we do it?

He said, “Prove it.”

In those days I only had a slide rule. We didn’t have computers, and we didn’t even have calculators. So I had to calculate how many bricks would lost breaking in so many doorways. How much the door frame would cost, how much the door would cost, and how much a ladder would cost, how much a hatch would cost? So we subtracted the hatch and the ladder from the door and the frame. Like that it worked out the whole thing, and we saved 5000 rupees, and showed that to Prabhupada. He said, “Ok. You do that.”, by that time already five rooms had been made. For the remaining we put doors. So working with Prabhupada was very intense. But in a non-challenging way if you presented the things humbly and reasonably, he would accept.

So even today we have some rooms at the end of Chakra building, which are dharmashala and other rooms are storage. I had a dream that we had a boat, and that the boat was doing programs from village to village. So I went opposite to the Rup Narayana river, and I was looking for a boat. So a boat that suited what we wanted to do. It was called a Jolly boat. So in Bengali, Jolly means Fisherman boat, but in English Jolly means happy. So Prabhupada called it the Jolly boat, a happy boat, and it was just about sunset, and I was asking around if anyone had a boat for a sell? So there was one Brahman who owned the boat. So he could see very well. He was old. By that time I spoke very good Bengali. So he agreed that he would sell the boat for 6000 rupees.

So many said, “He is a foreigner, he is foreigner, you can get a lot of money from him.”, but he said, “I am a Brahmin, I have already given my word.” So for 6000 rupees we got a Jolly boat.

Then we asked Prabhupada, “what deity we should have?”, he said, “You should have wood Gaura Nitai or Jagannath, because they know how to swim.” (laughter) So the we had Nitai Pada Kamala. There is a whole other story how we got Nitai Gaura.

But this jolly boat was a kind of sloop. A sloop means a boat with a single sail. We had a big sail with the Hare Krsna mahamantra on it. Prabhupada came down and offered arati to Nitai Gaura deity. He offered arati and sat on the Jolly boat.

The Jolly boat would go to rivers from village to village. Some places we bring the village leaders to take prasadam of the deities.

Prabhupada always asked about his Jolly Boat. We still have the boat, but it’s now under the care of Gurukul.

So I think that’s all I will speak tonight.

Is there any questions?

I heard that there are some devotees who want to take shelter. Shelter is for those who chant 16 rounds and follow the four regulative principles for at least 6 months. There is a stage before that called the aspiring stage, where one chants one round or more. They may not follow all the principles, but hope to follow all the principles and take shelter at some time in the future.

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Transcribed by : Sadananda Krishnaprem Das (JPS)

Date: 03/01/2017, Mayapur.