Friends of the BBT Newsletter – September 2007

In This Issue…

• Spotlight
• News in Brief
• People Profile
• Distribution Story

Spotlight

Preserving the Vani of Srila Prabhupada

by Madhava Smullen

On February 2, 1966, before he founded ISKCON or initiated any Western disciples, Srila Prabhupada purchased a reel-to-reel tape recorder and brought it back to his apartment on New York’s West 72nd street. At $54.02, it cost almost as much as his rent for a month, but it was an invaluable investment; for as he sat down to record his “Introduction to Geetopanisad,” he was leaving us his legacy — The Bhaktivedanta Archives.

More than ten years later in 1977, his disciple Parama-rupa dasa moved hundreds of reel-to-reel audio tapes from the front room of Los
Angeles, Golden Avatar Studios to a location where they would be watched over for safe keeping. “The ‘safe’ location was a converted kitchen in the local brahmachari ashrama,” recalls Parama-rupa, now preservation director of the Archives, “but it was a beginning.”

When Srila Prabhupada passed away the next year, an official archive was established to collect and preserve all of his recorded instructions, history, images, correspondence, and paraphernalia. Parama-rupa began to travel around the world collecting these items.

“It was quite an adventure,” he says. “In 1979, Amogha Prabhu and I were looking for someone in Australia who had moved away from the devotee community, and was reported to have many original slides and photos of Prabhupada. After a long search, Amogha found the man who agreed to meet him in the middle of the night and hand over three hundred slides and two hundred photographs in exchange for a pile of curd pakoras.”

Other less dramatic, but equally fruitful searches yielded philosophical discussions recorded by Hayagriva Dasa, tape and photo collections from early Prabhupada disciples; Govinda Dasi and Hamsaduta Dasa, and photos from Yamuna Devi—
including some of Prabhupada with George Harrison while recording the album, The Radha Krishna Temple. Many devotees also gave their personal letters received from Prabhupada, and in one case a devotee willed his personal collection of Prabhupada items when he passed away.

In 1987 came new developments, when the advent of affordable and practical personal computers made it possible to scan transcripts of Prabhupada’s recordings as well as pages of his books. By 1995, the Bhaktivedanta Archives had released the first edition (DOS version) of the Bhaktivedanta Veda Base. Their goal is to one day develop this into a virtual archive that will include all of the letters, manuscripts, audio, video, and photo collections in their possession, which will then be viewable on any personal computer.

Modernization continues as well. Now based in Prabhupada Village, North Carolina, The Bhaktivedanta Archives are currently transferring all their audio from DAT format to a digital format, WAV. The same
transfer to digital is true for images, documents, books, etc.
This is a normal preservation archival procedure to transfer to a new medium
or reproduce material for longevity.

Ranjit dasa, says everything is going digital; “We’re also scanning all the slides from 1967 to 1985. The earlier ones featuring Prabhupada are completed. The later ones are important too, because they show that the movement continued to grow from Prabhupada’s efforts, even though he wasn’t physically there.”

Manuscripts of the books are also being scanned, with 60% of Srimad-Bhagavatam and Caitanya-caritamrita completed, as well as Bhagavad-gita, Nectar of Devotion, and others. This scanning and ongoing preservation of the manuscripts is an example of the work carried out by the Bhaktivedanta Archives that can and will facilitate other activities in our society, such as the BBT project, The Editing Audit Trail, which will help make the editorial decisions transparent and leave no debate as to the authenticity of Prabhupada’s work. 

Ekanatha dasa says that doing this incredibly important work isn’t cheap, and the simple day-to-day running of the Bhaktivedanta Archives adds up. Equipment and the ongoing maintenance of such, audio files and images must still be transferred to digital, fluid for deacidification and encapsulation materials must be purchased. Then there’s the added costs of electricity , insurance, and utility bills must be paid to run the computers and all the associated equipment, including the purchase of many large hard drives, costing well over $200 each, to be purchased to back up files. In a word, Prabhupada’s legacy must be preserved and now with current support funding running very low, help is needed.

The archival effort is a worthy cause, possibly a unique one in the history of spirituality. With at least 2,500 hours of audio, 10,000 pages of transcripts from Prabhupada’s translations, 18,000 slides, handwritten items,  and much more, the Bhaktivedanta Archives may hold the most data “As it is” ever recorded of a prominent spiritual leader.

You can learn more online about the project and how you can help at:
www.friendsofthebbt.org/archives

News in Brief

Book Distributors’ Ammunition
on It’s Way

The North American BBT has recently reprinted two classics from Srila
Prabhupada, Sri Isopanisad, and a softcover version of Bhagavad-Gita As It Is. Both are available in mass distribution quantities, and orders may be made
now for immediate delivery.

The North American BBT is also gearing up for this year’s Prabhupada Marathon with a new four-volume set of book distributor’s favorites coming soon, including a Bhagavad-Gita As It Is mass distribution edition, The Nectar of Devotion, Krishna, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, and Teachings of Lord Chaitanya.

Gita Back on the Battlefield

Sending American soldiers to Iraq has shown some positive and spiritual results—thanks to Partha-sarathi dasa, a Sergeant First Class in the active duty of the U.S. Army. He has distributed a total of 500 Bhagavad-gitas so far to fellow soldiers. In addition, fifty people regularly attend his Bhagavad-gita classes and bhajans, while ten US Army bhaktas are now daily chanting four rounds of the maha-mantra.

In his latest report, Partha-sarathi announced that his command has given him permission to renovate an old building into an ISKCON center and to hold two Ratha Yatras on US Army bases in Iraq. The mercy of a surrendered Vaishnava has rained a shower of auspiciousness on what is viewed by most of the world as an unholy war.

Sankirtan in Silicon Valley

Want to increase the enthusiasm and spirit of your congregation and catapult book distribution scores to new highs? Success is guaranteed with the Monthly Sankirtan Festival program pioneered by intrepid book distributor Vaisesika Dasa.

The program has been steadily growing in ISKCON of Silicon Valley for over two years, with devotees meeting one weekend per month. The festival kicks off on Friday evening with a large harinama, while Saturday and Sunday see devotees split up into teams to distribute books throughout the metropolitan area.

All book distributors at ISKCON Silicon Valley are householders living outside the temple, and holding down demanding jobs throughout the week. The monthly festival has propelled their temple dramatically up the Sankirtan Newsletter charts; showing how devotees’ can be motivated to balance book distribution and other responsibilities.

Devotees aim to distribute at least 2,001 books and have at least sixty-four active book distributors at this month’s festival

People Profile

Gopiparanadhana Dasa

On his way to visit ISKCON’s Brooklyn temple for the first time, a thought flashed through Geoffrey Klausner’s head, “I’d like to translate books for this organization.”

He began to work for the BBT two months before moving into the temple in 1973, and has continued to do so ever since. When he stopped proofreading to join the Sanskrit department, Gopiparanadhana Dasa had to learn the ancient language on the job; sneaking out with a book to the temple gardens, or studying on the subway as he went out to distribute Back to Godhead
magazines.

“I certainly wouldn’t recommend it,” he laughs.

Srila Prabhupada authorized his attempt to translate Srimad-Bhagavatam from Sanskrit, and so he took the job on whole- heartedly, translating from the seventh Canto on and helping Hridayananda Dasa Goswami complete the last two cantos of the epic work between 1980 and 1986.

Since then, he’s worked on a number of translations; including three huge volumes of the Brihad-Bhagavatamrita with commentary, and Sri Krishna-lila-stava. He has also translated several major works soon to be published including Laghu-Bhagavatamrita, and Jiva Goswami’s Tattva and Bhagavat-sandarbhas.

He considers the Sandharbhas to be especially important, since they deal with all the basic topics of the Srimad-Bhagavatam systematically. He is working on further volumes in a possible ten-volume collection which the BBT will release one volume at a time as each one is produced.

Gopiparanadhana has done a vast amount of work toward delivering Vedic literature to the modern world, but he is only one man. Thus in 2004, with support from Friends of the BBT chair Gopal Bhatta Dasa, he launched the Srimad-Bhagavata Vidyapitham, the BBT’s first Sanskrit school, in order to train new translators and editors.

Located near the sacred Govardhana Hill in Vrindavana Dhama, the school has become the Friends of the BBT flagship project and currently has four teachers and sixteen students. With help from Friends of the BBT members  the plan is to eventually create a complete campus  facil-itating up to sixty students.

Students study Sanskrit from Jiva Goswami’s Harinamamrita Vyakarana, in an environment conducive for becoming serious devotees, while developing brahminical character and behavior to serve Srila Prabhupada’s mission.

In the meantime, Gopiparanadhana continues his life’s work of translation. He hopes that one day the BBT will flood the world with first-class translations and commentaries of the works of the Goswamis and of Vedic literatures like Puranas and Upanishads, cementing its reputation and building confidence in its validity among devotees.

Until then, something Prabhupada once told his Sanskrit editor keeps Gopiparanadhana focused, “All the boys and girls engaged in editing and proofreading my books will surely become great devotees. To have to scrutinize the books so closely is very intimate association with Krishna.”

Watch for a complete feature article on the Srimad-Bhagavata Vidyapitham in our November issue. To learn more about the project and how you can help at:

http://www.friendsofthebbt.org/vidyapitham

My Husband Will Probably Kill Me

by Vijaya Dasa

While I was distributing books in Dublin recently, I overheard a woman joke to my sankirtan partner, Mayesvara Dasa, “If I bought this book, my husband would probably kill me!”
I couldn’t help commenting on their conversation, “He can’t kill you,” I told her, “because you are eternal.”
I went on distributing books. A few minutes later, Mayesvara came up to me and said, “It was a good thing you made that comment because it made the woman I was talking to  think about her daughter who died recently.”

“She said to me, ‘You mean my daughter is actually not dead? She’s still living somewhere else? That’s a nice thing to know.’ Then she decided to buy the book after all, no longer concerned about how her husband might react.”

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