By Satyahit Das
Intro . Shyamasundar prabhu, “The Swami was always saying,(Become yourselves Krishna conscious and spread Krishna Consciousness)”.
Shyamasundar Prabhu, “Miracle on Second Avenue is the best description yet of those fine days of endless horizons, where everything was possible, when Krishna consciousness would become a world wide religion”.
I totally enjoyed reading Miracle on Second Avenue, because the book is all based on the personal experiences feelings, and thoughts of the author, Mukunda Goswami.
It is a most personal description of the beginnings of the Hare Krsna movement in North America, and England. I found the amount of details of people, places, and their words, amazing.
Mukunda Goswami, “The books, (Srila Prabhupada’s books), didn’t suggest that i should abandon or change my present life style. They inspired me to think beyond the cynicism and skepticism that usually colored my spiritual pursuits . The more i read, the more i wanted to read. The books seemed o be answering many complex questions about life, the universe and our place in it. My philosophical and spiritual journeys and spiritual convolutions had, i thought, finally reached a resting place. Maybe the swami was the teacher i had sought for so long”.
Pages 42 through 44 describe how Srila Prabhupada secured a temple space at 26 Second Avenue, practically the first well known Krsna temple in New York city. He offered Mr Gardner, the landlord, the first three volumes of Srimad Bhagavatam, and when Mr Gardner had appreciated the amount of work that went into these books, Srila Prabhupada suggested to him,that Carl and Michael both pay twenty one dollars a month to our society, so you can also and we will pay the seventy nine dollar balance monthly, which Mr Gardner accepted. An interesting point is that Cyvana swami said that Srila Prabhupada did a very similar thing in Africa to secure a temple property for rent there. In front a landlord and two vaisnav Indian business men, Srila Prabhupada asked Cyvana swami how much he paid by month to support the temple, so when Cyvana swami replied with an amount of shillings, Srila Prabhupada suggested that the first business man do similar and that the second, who was much wealthier could do double that, to which both gentlemen agreed. …..
Pages sixty eight through seventy describe for real the story of the drunk who entered during Srila Prabhupada’s class, went right up to Srila Prabhupada and placed a packaged roll of toilet paper on the lecturn in front of Srila Prabhupada, after which Srila Prabhupada said to the audience that it is natural to offer some service and that is dharma.
Page seventy two describes the first North American sankirtan party in which Srila Prabhupada led twelve new disciples in front of the United Nations Secretariat in kirtan from seven am till ten thirty am at which time they were told by suited officials that prayer must be silent. Srila Prabhupada stood handing out the original Peace Formula pamphlets to passerby’s, which tells that the earth is the property of God, however that the living entities are claiming God’s property to be their own, and that you can change your consciousness to Krishna consciousness by chanting the holy name of the Lord.
Srila Prabhupada is also famous for leading kirtans in Thompson square park NY NY , where a tree has a plaque dedicated to Srila Prabhupada . to be continued
satyahit das
Continued:
How Srila Prabhupada introduced Janmashtami for the first time in first temple in New York city, Bowery, 1966, and what he said.
page 80 . At seven o clock in the morning Srila Prabhupada said, “To celebrate Janmashtami , devotees dedicate the whole day to Krishna. We will have kirtan all day. Kirtan sometimes means chanting with instruments, sometimes speaking, sometimes reading Srimad Bhagavatam. Kirtan means glorifying the Lord, so all of this is kirtan. We will sing for half an hour, Haer Krishna, then i shall speak half an hour, and then we will all chant on beads half an hour. In this way we will continue whole day. Also we shall fast whole day, up till midnight, and at midnight we can eat. In this way we will minimize our bodily needs so we have more time for kirtan”. Then Srila Prabhupada talked about the advent of Lord Krishna,then later about his spiritual master and the instruction to come to the west to spread Krishna consciousness.
At seven pm Mukunda swami, then Michael Grant, said, ” The sugar candy,(permitted by Srila Prabhupada,{life savers}), perked us up a bit, and before i knew it, the afternoon had passed and it was seven o’clock. The heat had become bearable, and it was starting to get dark. We had been in the temple with the swami for twelve hours straight”. Later, after eight thirty pm, after two indian couples had arrived, Srila Prabhupada requested his students,(they were not yet initiated), to speak of their realizations of Krishna consciousness, and one of the indian devotee’s sang some Bhagavad Gita slokas.
page 87. On the following day ten men and one woman were initiated for the first initiation ceremony of Srila Prabhupada’s in North America. Srila Prabhupada said, (we used to use this term more than any other),
“Now i will explain the meaning of this initiation ceremony. This initiation means purification. We are all impure in this material world, and therefore birth, death,old age, and disease have overcome us. So in order to overcome these miseries, we must voluntarily accept some tapasya, some sacrifice, some rules and regulations.” Srila Prabhupada then described the fixed up nature of the spiritual master along with his strong desire to spread Krishna consciousness everywhere to everyone, and He explained the four regulative principles. Srila Prabhupada,”The principles are no illicit sex life, no intoxication, no meat eating , and no gambling. These four things are very prominent everywhere in Kali Yuga, the age of quarrel. Anyone indulging in these four things, they can not imagine where they are, who is God and how they will be free from this conditional life.” Then as they all chanted the hare krishna mantra on their beads, Srila Prabhupada chanted one round on each of their bead sets and handing them back to each initiate, one after another, Srila Prabhupada gave them their beads back and their new sanskrit name along with explaining the meaning of das and dasi. Srila Prabhupada said that each initiate should,upon receiving their beads, touch them at the feet of Lord Chaitanya. Srila Prabhupada,” Now you please each touch your beads to the feet of Lord Chaitanya”. There were no statue form dieties back then, there were pictures or paintings . Srila Prabhupada cooked all the wonderful prasadam feasts in the beginning.
(You see on the cover of this book the large red beads Mukunda Goswami was wearing as he garlanded Srila Prabhupada with a huge beautiful garland of flowers, as Srila Prabhupada bows His head before Mukunda das, at that time. We also had a set of these large red wooden beads we first used for japa beads, (purchased un strung at a craft shop, they were practically so big they stretched from head to toe), during the first Miami area temple in 1969, as there were no beads from India yet . Unfortunately one day our sankirtan temple van was broken into in downtown Miami, and along with $800, our red japa beads in bead bag we sewed,were stolen !)
At the first San Francisco temple, a man asked the swami in a challenging mood, “Are you Allen Ginsberg’s guru ?” Srila Prabhupada said,” I am nobody’s guru. I am everybody’s servant “. Srila Prabhupada lowered his head and said quitely, “actually i am not even a servant; a servant of God is no ordinary thing”.