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By Satsvarupa Das Goswami
Bruce Scharf had just graduated from New York University and was applying for a job. One day an exroommate told him about the Swami he had visited down on Second Avenue. “They sing there,” his friend said, “and they have this far-out thing where they have some dancing. And Allen Ginsberg was there.” The Swami was difficult to understand, his friend explained, and besides that, his followers recorded his talks on a tape recorder. “Why should he have a big tape recorder? That’s not very spiritual.” But Bruce became interested.
He was already a devotee of Indian culture. Four years ago, when he was barely twenty, Bruce had worked during the summer as a steward aboard an American freighter and gone to India, where he had visited temples, bought pictures of Śiva and Gaṇeśa and books on Gandhi, and felt as if he were part of the culture. When he returned to N.Y.U., he read more about India and wrote a paper on Gandhi for his history course. He would eat in Indian restaurants and attend Indian films and music recitals, and he was reading the Bhagavad-gītā. He had even given up eating meat. He had plans of returning to India, taking some advanced college courses, and then coming back to America to teach Eastern religions. But in the meantime he was experimenting with LSD.
Bruce and Chuck, unknown to one another, lived only two blocks apart. After the suggestion from his friend, Bruce also made his way to the storefront.
Bruce: I was looking for Hare Kṛṣṇa. I had left my apartment and had walked over to Avenue B when I decided to walk all the way down to Houston Street. When I came to First Street, I turned right and then, walking along First Street, came to Second Avenue. All along First Street I was seeing these Puerto Rican grocery stores, and then there was one of those churches where everyone was standing up, singing loudly, and playing tambourines. Then, as I walked further along First Street, I had the feeling that I was leaving the world, like when you’re going to the airport to catch a plane. I thought, “Now I’m leaving a part of me behind, and I’m going to something new.”
But when I got over to Second Avenue, I couldn’t find Hare Kṛṣṇa. There was a gas station, and then I walked past a little storefront, but the only sign was one that said Matchless Gifts. Then I walked back again past the store, and in the window I saw a black-and-white sign announcing a Bhagavad-gītā lecture. I entered the storefront and saw a pile of shoes there, so I took off my shoes and came in and sat down near the back.
Steve: I had a feeling that this was a group that was already established and had been meeting for a while. I came in and sat down on the floor, and a boy who said his name was Roy was very courteous and friendly to me. He seemed to be one who had already experienced the meetings. He asked me my name, and I felt at ease.
Suddenly the Swami entered, coming through the side door. He was wearing a saffron dhotī but no shirt, just a piece of cloth like a long sash, tied in a knot across his right shoulder and leaving his arms, his left shoulder, and part of his chest bare. When I saw him I thought of the Buddha.
Bruce: There were about fifteen people sitting on the floor. One man with a big beard sat up by the front on the right-hand side, leaning up against the wall. After some time the door on the opposite side opened, and in walked the Swami. When he came in, he turned his head to see who was in his audience. And then he stared right at me. Our eyes met. It was as if he were studying me. In my mind it was like a photograph was being taken of Swamiji looking at me for the first time. There was a pause. Then he very gracefully got up on the dais and sat down and took out a pair of hand cymbals and began a kīrtana. The kīrtana was the thing that most affected me. It was the best music I’d ever heard. And it had meaning. You could actually concentrate on it, and it gave you some joy to repeat the words “Hare Kṛṣṇa.” I immediately accepted it as a spiritual practice.
After their first visit to the storefront, Chuck, Steve, and Bruce each got an opportunity to see the Swami upstairs in his apartment.
One night Bruce walked home with Wally, and he told Wally about his interest in going to India and becoming a professor of Oriental literature. “Why go to India?” Wally asked. “India has come here. Swamiji is teaching us these authentic things. Why go to India?” Bruce thought Wally made sense, so he resolved to give up his long-cherished idea of going to India, at least as long as he could go on visiting the Swami.
Bruce: I decided to go and speak personally to Swamiji, so I went to the storefront. I found out that he lived in an apartment in the rear building. A boy told me the number and said I could just go and speak with the Swami. He said, “Yes, just go.” So I walked through the storefront, and there was a little courtyard where some plants were growing. Usually in New York there is no courtyard, nothing green, but this was very attractive. And in that courtyard there was a boy typing at a picnic table, and he looked very spiritual and dedicated. I hurried upstairs and rang the bell for apartment number 2C. After a little while the door opened, and it was the Swami. “Yes,” he said. And I said, “I would like to speak with you.” He opened the door wider and stepped back and said, “Yes, come.” We went inside together into his sitting room and sat down facing each other. He sat behind his metal trunk-desk on a very thin mat which was covered with a woolen blanketlike cover that had frazzled ends and elephants decorating it. He asked me my name and I told him it was Bruce. And then he remarked, “Ah. In India, during the British period, there was one Lord Bruce.” And he said something about Lord Bruce being a general and engaging in some campaigns.
I felt that I had to talk to the Swami-to tell him my story-and I actually found him interested to listen. It was very intimate, sitting with him in his apartment, and he was actually wanting to hear about me.
While we were talking, he looked up past me, high up on the wall behind me, and he was talking about Lord Caitanya. The way he looked up, he was obviously looking at some picture or something, but with an expression of deep love in his eyes. I turned around to see what made him look like that. Then I saw the picture in the brown frame: Lord Caitanya dancing in kīrtana.
Bruce: After I talked about my desire for religious life, I began telling him about a conflict I had had with one of my professors in English literature. He was a Freudian, so he would explain the characters in all the novels and so on in a Freudian context and with Freudian terminology. Everything was sexual-the mother for the son, this one for that one, and so on. But I would always see it in terms of a religious essence. I would see it in terms of a religious impulse, or some desire to understand God. I would write my papers in that context, and he would always say, “The religious can also be interpreted as Freudian.” So I didn’t do very well in the course. I was mentioning this to the Swami, and he said, “Your professor is correct.” I was surprised-I am going to an Indian swami, and he is saying that the professor was correct, that everything is based on sex and not religion! This kind of pulled the rug out from under me when he said that. Then he qualified what he’d said. He explained that in the material world everyone is operating on the basis of sex; everything that everyone is doing is being driven by the sex impulse. “So,” he said, “Freud is correct. Everything is on the basis of sex.” Then he clarified what material life is and what spiritual life is. In spiritual life, there is a complete absence of sex desire. So this had a profound effect on me.
He wasn’t confirming my old sentimental ideas, but he was giving me new ideas. He was giving me his instructions, and I had to accept them. Talking to the Swami was very nice. I found him completely natural, and I found him to be very artistic. The way he held his head, the way he enunciated his words-very dignified, very gentlemanly.
The boys found Swamiji not only philosophical, but personal also.
Bruce: There wasn’t anything superficial about him, nor was he ever contrived, trying to make some impression. He was just completely himself. In the Swami’s room there was no furniture, so we sat on the floor. And I found this to be very attractive and simple. Everything was so authentic about him. Uptown at another swami’s place we had sat on big, stuffed living room chairs, and the place had been lavishly furnished. But here was the downtown swami, wearing simple cloth robes. He had no business suit on-he wasn’t covering up a business suit with those saffron robes. And he wasn’t affected, as the other swami was. So I found myself asking him if I could be his student, and he said yes. I was very happy, because he was so different from the other swami. With the uptown swami I was wanting to become his student because I wanted to get something from him-I wanted to get knowledge. It was selfishly motivated. But here I was actually emotionally involved. I was feeling that I wanted to become the Swami’s student. I actually wanted to give myself, because I thought he was great and what he was giving was pure and pristine and wonderful. It was a soothing balm for the horrible city life. Uptown I had felt like a stranger.
On one occasion, our conversation turned to my previous trip to India in 1962, and I began talking about how much it meant to me, how much it moved me. I even mentioned that I had made a girl friend there. So we got to talking about that, and I told him that I had her picture-I was carrying the girl’s picture in my wallet. So Swamiji asked to see. I took out the picture, and Swamiji looked at it and made a sour face and said, “Oh, she is not pretty. Girls in India are more beautiful than that.” Hearing that from the Swami just killed any attachment I had for that girl. I felt ashamed that I had an interest in a girl that the Swami did not consider pretty. I don’t think I ever looked at the photograph again, and certainly I never gave her another thought.
* * *
Bruce was a newcomer and had only been to one week of meetings at the storefront, so no one had told him that the members of Ananda Ashram, Dr. Mishra’s yoga retreat, had invited Swamiji and his followers for a day in the upstate countryside. Bruce had just arrived at the storefront one morning when he heard someone announce, “The Swami is leaving!” And Prabhupāda came out of the building and stepped into a car. In a fit of anxiety, Bruce thought that the Swami was leaving them for good-for India! “No,” Howard told him, “we’re going to a yogaāśrama in the country.” But the other car had already left, and there was no room in Swamiji’s car. Just then Steve showed up. He had expected the boys to come by his apartment to pick him up. They both had missed the ride.
Bruce phoned a friend up in the Bronx and convinced him to drive them up to Ananda Ashram. But when they got to Bruce’s friend’s apartment, the friend had decided he didn’t want to go. Finally he lent Bruce his car, and Swamiji’s two new followers set out for Ananda Ashram.
By the time they arrived, Prabhupāda and his group were already taking prasādam, sitting around a picnic table beneath the trees. Ananda Ashram was a beautiful place, with sloping hills and lots of trees and sky and green grass and a lake. The two latecomers came walking up to Swamiji, who was seated like the father of a family, at the head of the picnic table. Keith was serving from a big wok onto the individual plates. When Prabhupāda saw his two stragglers, he asked them to sit next to him, and Keith served them. Prabhupāda took Steve’s capātī and heaped it up with a mound of sugar, and Steve munched on the bread and sugar, while everyone laughed.
Prabhupāda began talking somehow about lion tamers, and he recalled that once at a fair he had seen a man wrestling with a tiger, rolling over and over with it down a hill. The boys, who rarely heard Swamiji speak anything but philosophy, were surprised. They were delighted-city kids, taken to the country by their guru, and having a good time.
Bruce walked with Swamiji up to his apartment, opening the door for him, adjusting the window as he liked it, and preparing things in his room, as if he were the Swami’s personal servant. Prabhupāda settled back into his Second Avenue apartment, feeling pleased with the visit to Ananda Ashram. The kīrtana had been successful, and one of Dr. Mishra’s foremost students had commented that he was impressed by Prabhupāda’s followers: simply by chanting they seemed to be achieving an advanced level of yoga discipline, whereas “we have more difficulty with all our postures and breath control.”
Source: http://www.dandavats.com/?p=86363
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