Blog

One day at the welfare office, my supervisor told me I would have to work until one o'clock instead of taking my usual lunch hour at noon. This meant I would miss taking lunch with Prabhupada and his followers. I could not cope with that idea; yet I had no choice. I called Prabhupada from pay phone in the hall outside my office. This was the first time I had ever telephoned him. I felt I was being presumptuous, considering him my equal and therefore easily accessible.

Prabhupada answered. I asked him if he remembered who I was. He remembered my name. Then I informed him that I would not be able to come for lunch and requested that he please save me some prasadam. He said he would. That done, I felt pacified and able to work the extra hour.

At one o'clock I went straight to the storefront. Prabhupada was alone; all the boys had already eaten. We talked for a little while, and then he asked me to go into the other room. The wooden floor was bare, the rug rolled back to one side (a daily routine for keeping the rug clean during lunch). Prabhupada asked me to sit down. He left the room, while I sat. Soon he returned with a plate of prasadam. He bent over and placed it on the floor in front of me.

I was still not completely used to the Indian custom of eating off a plate on the floor. It seemed the way one would treat a dog. Although it was awkward for me, I was not resentful when he placed the plate before me. I felt grateful that he had specially saved me prasadam and that he was not simply feeding me lunch (I could have filled my belly in any one of the innumerable luncheonettes in the area), but that he was saving me from material life. Before eating, I bowed down in front of him and the plate of prasadam. This was the first time I had ever bowed down, although I had seen a few others do it. When I bowed down, I heard him say, "Yes." It was a perfect moment for me, as he recognized and accepted my surrender. It had occurred just the way I had required -- a special, intimate setting in which I was not just one of a crowd, but an individual soul personally receiving mercy.

Srila Prabhupada expertly encouraged me in my confused state of mind. In a gathering in his room before at least a dozen others, I posed an intricate, personal question to him. He had said pleasing Krsna was the perfection of our lives. Therefore I thought, "What kind of person would Krsna actually like me to be?" In my own experience of love and friendship, a friend or lover could present him-self as any number of personalities just to please or flatter the beloved. Just as I had thought there was no absolute knowledge, I had also thought that a person had no true self, and that, gain the satisfaction of another, he could more or less prostitute himself by being one of many different selves, each assuming different masks out of the cleverness of self-interest. I finally tried to express this subjective rigmarole out loud.

"Swamiji," I said, "I feel I can be many different persons, but how do I know which person I should be to please Krsna? If I have many different selves, which self would He like me to be?" Looking at me and then replying before the room full of people, Srila Prabhupada said, "This boy Steve is very nice. He does typing for me, and sometimes gives me donations. So you should all do like this."

I was startled that Prabhupada did not directly address my psychological question, but he answered it in his own perfect way. I was immediately gratified by his singling me out with praise, and for the entire evening I was ecstatic. Yet I began to think, "Why do I demand special praise?"

I was not alone, however, in being dependent on Srila Prabhupada's expressions of pleasure. Among Prabhupada's followers, we knew that if he was pleased with us, our life was successful. The same thing is stated in the sastras, that if one pleases the spiritual master, Krsna is pleased. Prabhupada also made no secret of the fact that he did not love us for our own attractiveness, but was trying to capture our hearts to engage us in Krsna's service.

Biographies and Glorifications of Srila Prabhupada Gita-nagari Press-Prabhupada-lila-Satsvarupa dasa Goswami-Meeting Srila Prabhupada