AUDIOBOOK, VOLUME ONE, “CHASING RHINOS WITH THE SWAMI”
Shyamasundar das: Srila Prabhupada has always been my hero. During the seven years I spent at his side—three years as his personal secretary—I observed the most amazing person who ever graced our planet. His bold, fearless, victorious adventures and heroic acts are the stuff of legends, and his message to us—who is God, who am I, the meaning of life—is the absolute truth. Prabhupada always said, “Just pass this knowledge on to others, then you are Krishna’s best friend.”
I knew I was specially blessed to be an intimate witness to Bhaktivedanta Swami’s magical sojourn among us, so I always knew I had to do this, write, try to somehow describe the acts and words of the Perfect Person. In fact, Prabhupada groomed me for this task. When we’d go over a letter, he would say, “No, say like this: ‘To construct the form is the difficult portion of the adventure, but when it is there, it is not difficult to finish it—simply it requires a little taste.’” Srila Prabhupada was himself the ultimate wordsmith and poet.
How do you present such absolute knowledge in a narrative which might appeal to a broad spectrum of readers across time and space? Well, seeing Prabhupada in motion has made this very easy: He’s an action-hero, full of power and surprise, laughter, leaping tall buildings in a single bound, with words of wisdom to leave you wondering and wanting more. The “Chasing Rhinos” books are adventure novels.
But I had to wait till my hurried years were behind, those years for creating money and the time for contemplation, finally setting pen to paper in 2013. To accurately and profoundly describe Srila Prabhupada demands the final qualification, the most mature work for any author. Slowly, over the past ten years, this project has grown, at the rate of maybe one page per eight-hour day…
This audiobook version of Volume One of “Chasing Rhinos With The Swami” is the ripened fruit of those ten years. I was surprised to hear my own voice speaking, with the volume, emotions, and cadence occasioned by the moment, sometimes crying when Prabhupada’s glance of deep love met my eyes, laughing at his astonishing behavior, my voice child-like for a fresh new session, growing gruff near the end of another long day. And I realized how much more powerful, and meaningful, this audio medium is. Just like when you hear one of Prabhupada’s lectures, the experience sinks in much deeper than the reading of it.
Srila Prabhupada’s words and actions are timeless and will profoundly affect both young and old for millennia to come. But if you examine, his words and actions were primarily aimed at the youth, those young bodies that surrounded him wherever he went. He said, “Go for it! Chase the rhino! Change the world for Krishna!” This urgency has not changed. Fifty years later, we’ve come full circle to an era of youthful outrage, a digital age crying for change, with a magic link to every person on the planet right there in your pocket. I can hear Prabhupada saying, “Push those buttons, change the world for Krishna!”
To order the books (three volumes) of “Chasing Rhinos With The Swami” or the new Audiobook for Volume One, go to:
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Months in the making, my AUDIOBOOK version of VOLUME ONE of CRWTS is finally here!
Reading “Chasing Rhinos With The Swami” is a great experience, but hearing it spoken (in my Tom Waits/Peter Coyote/Sam Elliot voice, a little gruff sometimes after a long session), with personal intonations and heartfelt emotions really brings this book ALIVE!
For nearly 23 hours, I speak Volume One to you, with every emotion, nuance and sound-effect I can muster, laughing with you at the Swami’s latest prank, dialogue flowing like you’re in the room, as I recount my eye-witness tales of Bhaktivedanta Swami’s epic adventures in the dawn of the Hare Krishna movement, the most intimate, detailed, and exciting account yet of the Swami’s halcyon days in San Francisco and London, 1967-1970–like the real story of Lord Jagannath’s advent in the western world, meeting the Beatles and, with them, broadcasting the Mahamantra around the globe. These, and a hundred more never-heard-before stories will transport you into those magic days: chasing “rhinos” with the Swami.
VOL-1 AUDIOBOOK 22 hrs 38 mins
$30*
TO ORDER, GO TO: www.chasingrhinos.com