Jadurani dasi: On this particular day, he took us downtown where he went when he first got off the Jaladuta boat. Because the captain was doing some shopping, so he took Prabhupada and Prabhupada was pointing out different places that he remembered. The next day, Prabhupada took all the devotees for a tour of where he first landed.
I was in the back and I ran up so that I could walk right next to him, and he turned to me and he said, “If the jackals glorify you, what’s the benefit?” In other words, don’t try and get material glorification. And then he said, “Because the nature of any big city is that things are being broken down and things are being built up.” He said, “Building and breaking, building and breaking. So we have to stop this building and breaking, and we have to break with Maya and build with Krishna.”
Vaikunthanath das: The Montreal temple was going very well, but we always had a difficult time paying the monthly rent; and there was some danger that they would lose the temple at one point because they just didn’t have the rent money. Prabhupada actually proposed the idea to me and Pradyumna that we should go out and meet people in the Indian community and explain to them that we are trying to establish this Radha-Krishna temple here and maintain this temple and that we would like their support and help. But in any case, Pradyumna and I didn’t actually follow up that instruction. I think that we just didn’t know how to go about doing it. But one thing that I did know how to do, I knew how to go out and raise money at an airport. I was just a young boy, 17, and I remembered being short on my airline fare a couple of times and I didn’t know what to do. So I just started asking people, “Could you spare a buck? I’m five dollars short on my flight,” and miraculously people were kind enough to give me a few dollars.
But about four or five years later, just out of the blue Prabhupada said to me, “I remember when you raised the money to save the Montreal temple,” and I was so touched to realize that Prabhupada had this memory of me, that I had done some service to help save the temple. It just really surprised me because I had no idea that Prabhupada was aware of that or that he would remember that. I’ll never forget, in so many ways Prabhupada always expressed such kindness and love for his disciples.
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