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A pure devotee sees Krsna like that

By June 1970, six devotees were living in the Sydney temple. Although young and inexperienced, they were feeling a growing connection with Srila Prabhupada. Regular readings from Prabhupada's little blue abridged Gita and his new Nectar of Devotion kept them philosophically informed. The Krsna Consciousness Album played day and night from a little record player in the lounge. Upendra's classes invariably turned into stories of his early days with Prabhupada in San Francisco. Upendra told of how he had offered Srila Prabhupada a used beach towel and his old baby blanket as guru-daksina at his initiation. Srila Prabhupada had been disgusted. "What can I do with them? They are useless," he said. But then later Prabhupada had decided to use them as sitting mats for guests. "Prabhupada was expert at engaging everything in Krsna's service," Upendra would say with his trademark grin.

Sometimes Upendra would dramatically re-enact the story of "seeing Krsna everywhere". He described how he had liked to accompany Srila Prabhupada on his morning walks around Stowe Lake in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco. Upon returning one morning, Upendra had asked:

"Swamiji, what does the pure devotee see when he walks in the park?"

Prabhupada had replied: "He sees Krsna. He sees these are Krsna's trees, this is Krsna's house, he sees everything as belonging to the Supreme Lord."

"But if Krsna is everywhere," Upendra said "does the pure devotee see Krsna on the wall on the right and then the wall on the left or in the corner, or in between every atom? Does he see one form of Krsna merge into another? Where does one form of Krsna begin and take off from the other form?"

Srila Prabhupada answered that it was not like that. By way of example he had pointed to his desk. "Do you see my spectacles?"

Upendra answered "Yes."

"Whose spectacles are they?" Prabhupada asked.

"They are yours," said Upendra.

Prabhupada pointed to his shoes. "And what is that?"

"Those are your shoes," said Upendra.

"So," Prabhupada explained, "similarly a pure devotee sees Krsna like that. Everything is Krsna's. This is how he sees Krsna everywhere."

These intimate and heartwarming accounts by Upendra gave the young devotees a taste of real personal contact with Srila Prabhupada, despite being physically so far away. Occasionally, however, geographical isolation had its minor problems.

Upendra: One time we got a newsletter from Los Angeles. It mentioned how a devotee had commented to Srila Prabhupada recently on how satisfying dal and chapatis were. "We could just live on them," he had said, and Prabhupada had replied: "That would be nice." So it became law! This is what Srila Prabhupada wanted and our staple diet was now to be only dal and chapatis. We were horrified! How could you live on dal and chapatis? So we decided to cheat -- we put every conceivable vegetable in the dal and gave every devotee a big pile of thick, hot, buttered chapatis. We went on that way for over a month, until we heard one day, just by the way, that someone had said: "Oh, we gave that up after a few days. It didn't work." But no one had bothered to tell us.

- From "The Great Transcendental Adventure" by HG Kurma Prabhu

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