{"id":95771,"date":"2021-06-01T07:10:33","date_gmt":"2021-06-01T05:10:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/?p=95771"},"modified":"2021-06-01T07:12:02","modified_gmt":"2021-06-01T05:12:02","slug":"adventures-in-service-video","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/?p=95771","title":{"rendered":"Adventures in Service (video)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.imgur.com\/A7anEkv.jpg\"  width=\"100%\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<br \/>\n<center><\/p>\n<h3>Click below to start the player<\/h3>\n<p><\/center><br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"100%\" height=\"400\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube-nocookie.com\/embed\/T5apYsyUrVA\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Mondakini: I remember coming to the temple with two of my friends, and a beautiful kirtan\u2014a very sacred kirtan\u2014was in progress, probably led by Yamuna. We sat down and all of a sudden the devotees fell flat on the floor. Being polite young girls, we did the same for the first time in our lives. I was very curious and I wanted to see what was happening. I was thinking, \u201cWhy are they doing that?\u201d I put my head up a little and I saw two beautiful golden feet passing by my head. I wanted to see to whom these feet belonged, and for the first time, at least in this life, I saw Srila Prabhupada. It was a very extraordinary scene. He was looking very aristocratic. To me he looked like the emperor of the world. But at the same time, he looked like the most humble sage in the creation. I was so surprised to see these two very different antinomic qualities in one person.<\/p>\n<p>One time at the Bury Place temple in London, Prabhupada sat on the vyasasan and he started looking at everyone\u2019s eyes. When I caught his glance, I SP Memories &#8211; DVD 76 Page 5 of 20 became so surprised. I could see in his glance that this personality knows me much better than I do. His eyes had so much compassion. It was like he knew I was suffering. He knew I was questioning, but he had the solution. It was extremely powerful. I didn\u2019t know why, but I felt some tears coming. Then I was wondering, \u201cWhy these tears?\u201d That was so powerful, and I understood it was because of his compassion. He sat on the vyasasan, he gave a lecture, and amazingly in his lecture he answered all the questions we had without us asking anything.<\/p>\n<p>From the very beginning of my association with the devotees, I would always question whether Srila Prabhupada was our spiritual master. Is this a bona fide process? Is this a bonafide tradition? So I would always be eager to hear something directly from Prabhupada that would be mystical to convince me this was the spiritual path I had been looking for. On one walk in Russell Square during the winter, all of a sudden Prabhupada stopped and he became very intense. He looked at me very deeply and I thought, \u201cHe\u2019s going to say it\u2014that mystical sentence\u2014he\u2019s going to say it!\u201d I too was looking at him for a few long seconds. Then he opened his mouth and said, \u201cAre you cold?\u201d I looked at him very disappointed. He was playing; he was playing with us. I told him, \u201cNo, Srila Prabhupada, I\u2019m not cold.\u201d [laughs]\n<p>We were told to go to Srila Prabhupada\u2019s room. Srila Prabhupada was very charming as he asked me, \u201cWhat is your name?\u201d I was thinking, \u201cI couldn\u2019t take part in the initiation,\u201d so I told him, \u201cSrila Prabhupada, I have no name.\u201d Prabhupada looked puzzled and he started to laugh. Then he said, \u201cYou don\u2019t like the name your parents gave you?\u201d He had a big, big smile, meaning, \u201cI will give you a name you are going to like.\u201d And actually he did! At that time there was one devotee I particularly loved\u2014Yamuna Devi. And there was a devotee also who was like a big brother to us\u2014Trivikrama Swami. We were doing Harinam all day practically, and at night when a lot of people were drunk, he would protect us like a big brother. When I received my initiation letter, Srila Prabhupada said, \u201cMy Dear Daughter Mondakini Devi, I am very happy to accept you as my initiated disciple. I am also very happy that you are appreciating the bliss of Krishna consciousness.\u201d Then he said, \u201cYour name is Mondakini. It\u2019s the name of a river\u2014the river Ganges.\u201d And I thought, \u201cOh, like Yamuna, I got the name of a river.\u201d Then he went on explaining, \u201cLord Vamanadeva made a little hole in the universe. When He became gigantic, His name was Trivikrama; then the Mondakini fell on the Earth planet.\u201d So he connected me with the two devotees I really appreciated so much at that time. I understood later that Prabhupada knew my wish for that name. Somebody asked Srila Prabhupada, \u201cSrila Prabhupada, do you know everything?\u201d Srila Prabhupada said, \u201cNo. I just know what Krishna wants me to know.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I got the service of helping Yamuna in the pujari room although I had absolutely no qualification. That service actually helped me to get rid of most of my impersonalism. During that service I also learned how to cook for Krishna. I heard that Srila Prabhupada said, \u201cI would like to go to the spiritual world to eat luglu and kachoris.\u201d So I became very enthusiastic to learn these two preparations. We had a lot of Bengali ladies coming to the London temple and they taught me how to prepare kachoris with peas, and they also taught me how to make luglus. Prabhupada at one point came to London, but he was not feeling so well. Somehow or other, Himavati was supposed to cook for him, but she declined and I was asked to replace her. So every day I used to do the basics. Prabhupada wanted dhal, rice, two subjis\u2014one dry, one wet\u2014and anything else we could do such as bitter melon. We could add extra preparations. I was preparing everything I learned from the Indian ladies and finally I made him kachoris. I brought the plate to Srila Prabhupada in his room, and when I came in, his eyes became very, very big. In his eyes I could see the eyes of the little kid when he was in Calcutta, putting kachoris in his pockets. He asked, \u201cMondakini, you made kachoris?\u201d I said, \u201cI tried Srila Prabhupada.\u201d Obviously he was pleased, but I didn\u2019t receive any feedback. He stayed for about one month and I was wondering, \u201cDoes Srila Prabhupada like it or not?\u201d On the last day of his visit, Srutakirti brought a big list and said, \u201cSrila Prabhupada wants you to cook all this for the plane.\u201d On the list I saw all the special preparations I had been making. So in this way I was thinking, \u201cThe spiritual master is actually playing with the disciple to increase the love the disciple has for the spiritual master. SP Memories &#8211; DVD 76 Page 10 of 20 And he doesn\u2019t keep this love. He is giving this love to his spiritual master and up through the disciplic succession, up to Krishna.<\/p>\n<p>In the temple in London, Prabhupada had shown Yamuna very simple worship as in Vrindavan. We saw Krishna as a person and He was the best friend. Our worship was more spontaneous rather than in the mood of awe and reverence. When a sannyasi from Los Angeles came to London at one point, he said, \u201cOh, you have to change your Deity worship. It\u2019s really sentimental. You have to be more in awe and reverence.\u201d I really didn\u2019t want to change. I told him, \u201cThat\u2019s the way Yamuna showed me. That\u2019s the way Prabhupada showed her. We shouldn\u2019t change.\u201d But there was such a pressure from all the temple presidents and everybody. I resisted a long time, but after some time, I thought, \u201cMaybe it\u2019s better to change.\u201d Also, he was saying, \u201cThe way I show you, there will be more devotion to your spiritual master. You have to start with the spiritual master and then you offer all the paraphernalia to Krishna.\u201d So in the end I had to be obedient. Then I wrote to Srila Prabhupada. Srila Prabhupada was displeased. In the letter he wrote that once you have established a standard of Deity worship, you shouldn\u2019t change. He was chastising, not in an angry mood, but chastising. But it was softened by very kind words afterwards. He said, \u201cBut I understand that you wanted to increase your service to your spiritual master. So this is all right.\u201d It showed me that even if Srila Prabhupada chastises, he shows great, great kindness. It showed me that I should have resisted the sannyasi more.<\/p>\n<p>One day in London I was doing arati alone. In the middle of the arati, one guest, who came regularly and who had heavy mental difficulties, came into the temple room. He had flowers he had gathered from the cemetery and he threw them on the altar. I thought, \u201cWhat to do?\u201d Anyway, I went down to clean the dishes. All of a sudden I heard a big noise. I rushed upstairs. This deranged fellow had actually jumped on the Deities and threw Them on the floor. Srimati Radharani\u2019s finger or hand was not in a good state. It was a catastrophe! I called and everybody came and they took care of the boy. We brought the Deities to Srila Prabhupada\u2019s room. It was a tragedy and Prabhupada was so shocked and displeased. On retrospect I realized I shouldn\u2019t have left the altar. But Prabhupada didn\u2019t chastise me directly. He SP Memories &#8211; DVD 76 Page 14 of 20 chastised the temple president at that time. By Krishna\u2019s grace a sculptor came and he fixed everything very nicely. And by this service that sculptor became Mahavishnu Swami. When Prabhupada came to London shortly after that, the Deities were resting when he gravely asked to see the Deities. At that time we had taken the vases out to make them fresh for when They would wake up. But Prabhupada said, \u201cWhy no vases for the Deities?\u201d It showed me how concerned he was. Definitely for Srila Prabhupada, Krishna was not only a murti, Krishna was really present in His form. If something terrible happened, he was extremely concerned, and he wanted to know if the consciousness of the devotee was alright.<\/p>\n<p>In 1976 Prabhupada was sick and he decided to cancel his trip from London to New Mayapur, France. Then our leader Bhagavan das said, \u201cWe\u2019ll go to London and we\u2019ll get Srila Prabhupada.\u201d But I felt very disobedient. I thought, \u201cYou will never get Prabhupada. I don\u2019t want to take the risk.\u201d So I just decided to go, no matter what, to London to see Srila Prabhupada. I convinced another brahmacarini to come with me although the temple president and everybody was against it. We took the boat from Paris to London, but when we arrived, we were told that Prabhupada had changed his mind and had already left for France. It was a one night trip, so we decided we would go back on the boat. Then when we reached Paris, Prabhupada had gone on to New Mayapur, which is a three hour drive. So we didn\u2019t sleep. Tired, exhausted, and not in good consciousness, we finally reached New Mayapur. Then Harikesa prabhu said to me, \u201cPrabhupada wants you to make kachoris.\u201d I hardly knew my name anymore because I was so exhausted and not in good consciousness having disobeyed everyone. So I went and cooked the kachoris. Then Prabhupada\u2019s servant came and said, \u201cPrabhupada didn\u2019t like your kachoris.\u201d I could understand that was because of my consciousness. The spiritual master is not only tasting the food, but he\u2019s tasting the consciousness. The next day the devotees asked Prabhupada, \u201cDo you want Mondakini to cook for you?\u201d Prabhupada said, \u201cOh, she didn\u2019t do very well.\u201d I understood that was my consciousness. He was right, so I learned from that.<\/p>\n<p>We had a very sweet and funny relationship and exchanges with Srila Prabhupada when he came to London. It shows actually how he would relate to the young lady devotees. Prabhupada often asked me if I wanted to get married. I didn\u2019t want to get married at that time at all. So anytime there was a proposal, I would put on the worst sari in the world and make a very sad face, very grave, and people would leave me alone. When Prabhupada came to the temple, he used to say, \u201cMondakini, you are not married yet?\u201d and he used to laugh. Then he would say, \u201cYou didn\u2019t find anybody good enough for you?\u201d I would become all red and he would laugh. One day we heard the most amazing thing. Srila Prabhupada was in Moscow. I remember I was very proud of Srila Prabhupada. I thought, \u201cHe is so brave,\u201d because we had read so many books about what happened behind the Iron Curtain, how dangerous it was. Even if you slightly said a word against Stalin, you would go to jail. I thought, \u201cPrabhupada is amazing. He is really Abhay Charan\u2014fearless at the lotus feet of Krishna.\u201d And I remember thinking, \u201cThat\u2019s a country I will probably never go to.\u201d Meanwhile, Prabhupada left Moscow and he came to Paris first and then he came to London. I was doing some menial service for him. One devotee said, \u201cMondakini, Prabhupada wants to see you.\u201d I thought I made a mistake in my service. I knocked and Prabhupada said, \u201cCome in.\u201d I went in and he had a big, big smile. Shyamasundar was standing near him. I offered my obeisances and he said, \u201cCome closer.\u201d Then he looked at me with a beautiful smile, and I remember how he talked to me in the same way that he would ask me to go and get some potatoes from across the street. He said, \u201cMondakini, would you like to go to Moscow and marry this boy Anatoly? And by the grace of Lord Caitanya, you can assist the mission there.\u201d Before that, when the desire to take part in the preaching mission came in my heart, I had read in one of Srila Prabhupada\u2019s purports that if the spiritual master is asking you to do a difficult task, and if you say, \u201cYes,\u201d immediately you will make a lot of spiritual progress. I was very young. I was twenty-one at that time. I ran to Sri Sri Radha-Londonisvara and because I knew They were real, I knew They could help. So I prayed, \u201cPlease, please, my dear Lord, can you make an arrangement so that Srila Prabhupada would ask me to do something a little difficult? But, please, please remind me to say, \u2018Yes!\u2019\u201d Then when Srila Prabhupada asked, \u201cWould you go to Moscow and marry this boy Anatoly?\u201d I was just shocked for half a second, but I remembered my prayer and I looked at him and I said, \u201cYes, Srila Prabhupada!\u201d And his smile became, like we say, oceanic. He told Shyamasundar, \u201cNow you arrange everything.\u201d So it was the beginning of that beautiful saga when I went to Moscow, and when Srila Prabhupada and I would meet, he would ask me, \u201cWhat\u2019s happening there?\u201d He would be very enlivened when I was telling him about Anatoly. He wanted me to actually marry Anatoly, who became Ananta Shanti prabhu, and to get a residential SP Memories &#8211; DVD 76 Page 17 of 20 permit. But somehow or other the KGB knew about our mission and would never give the residential permit. The longest I went was two weeks and the shortest visa I received was for two days. At one point Srila Prabhupada said not to go anymore because he said, \u201cEurope is sure and Moscow can be risky; it\u2019s not sure.\u201d One realization I had is that Prabhupada knew they wouldn\u2019t give the residential permit. But I was so touched by that mission and I loved the people there, the spiritual seekers. They were ready to give up their lives, their health and their freedom just for spiritual life. So I told Srila Prabhupada, \u201cSrila Prabupada, can I try another time? Maybe I will get the residential permit.\u201d Srila Prabhupada was so kind as usual. He knew I wouldn\u2019t get it, and when I went the last time, it became clear. It was not time to go back. But Prabhupada said, \u201cOf course you can go back. Yes! Try, try!\u201d Always kind, dedicated, encouraging, never discouraging the devotees, Srila Prabhupada was always encouraging the devotees. At the time we were quite fanatical. When I met Ananta Shanti prabhu, I told him, \u201cYou know, prabhu, actually sex life is only to have children.\u201d He said, \u201cOh, Haribol!\u201d I had heard that, so I also told him, \u201cAnd in order to have children, we have to be pure devotees.\u201d I was not mature. I was just twenty-one and having been a brahmacarini for almost two years, that\u2019s what I thought. So \u201cHaribol! Haribol!\u201d But we had a very nice, sweet relationship\u2014that was the mission of Srila Prabhupada. We were not like husband and wife as in an intimate relationship. But we felt very happy. I was very happy. It was really Prabhupada. Prabhupada was always present. Ananta Shanti was a wonderful young boy. He was very educated. He had studied philosophy and he knew also the philosophy from India before meeting Srila Prabhupada. He was speaking in English. He took this mission very seriously. He met Srila Prabhupada only for two days. But Shyamasundar said he never saw Prabhupada giving so much to one person. They talked about varnashram dharma. Anatoly then asked Prabhupada, \u201cSrila Prabhupada, in order to preach Krishna consciousness, should I become a Pope?\u201d Srila Prabhupada laughed and said, \u201cIt\u2019s not necessary.\u201d Then he asked Srila Prabhupada before leaving, \u201cIt would be good for me to have a Western wife.\u201d This is how it came to be. On sankirtan Ananta Shanti would approach friends. In the Soviet Union no one could preach directly to people in the street. For example, he had the Srimad-Bhagavatam that I brought to Moscow with the help of Srila Prabhupada and Krishna. It was such an adventure. He would sit at a table in a caf\u00e9 in the summer and open Srimad-Bhagavatam\u2014the pages with the pictures, the beautiful paintings\u2014and people would be very attracted. They had never seen such pictures. They would say, \u201cWhat is that? Can you tell us?\u201d And he would say, \u201cSit down. I am going to explain to you.\u201d They would sit so the police couldn\u2019t see. That was one way. When there were no books, Ananta Shanti would distribute prasadam. Devotees in Russia at that time had absolute faith in prasadam. So he would dress very nicely; he would buy a bouquet of red roses; he would offer them to Krishna; and then he would go out in the street and approach the people and tell them, \u201cSmell this rose. At least you will get a human form of life.\u201d If the police would come, they would ask him, \u201cWhat are you doing? What are you doing?\u201d He would say, \u201cToday, I am in love SP Memories &#8211; DVD 76 Page 18 of 20 and I want to share this love with everybody.\u201d The police would laugh and he would carry on distributing the roses. Ananta Shanti established a scientific institute. He registered the scientific institute because at that time until the present time in the Soviet Union, Science was God. There was even a University of Atheism. Because it was a scientific institute, it got registered without any problem. What was the goal of this institute? It was to test the power of Vedic mantras on plants, animals and human beings. When you would go into this institute, you would have a lot of green plants, you would have a few cats and dogs, and you would have a lot of devotees chanting Hare Krishna. That was the way he was actually doing his preaching mission. Another way Ananta Shanti would preach\u2014I would always say, not to be imitated by a brahmacari\u2014was that he would dress very nicely and go to a place where young boys and girls were dancing. Soon enough some girls would be interested. After some time, he would tell them, \u201cWould you come home with me? We can discuss more.\u201d And they would say, \u201cYes, yes. I want to come.\u201d So they would go to the little flat he was sharing with his mother and then he would preach from Srimad-Bhagavatam. Also a big international book fair was arranged in Moscow with the help of Gopal Krishna Goswami and Kirtiraj prabhu. For the first time, all of Srila Prabhupada\u2019s books were at this international fair in Moscow. That\u2019s the way Ananta Shanti would preach. He would travel all over Russia, as much as he could. Ananta Shanti was a very unusual personality. For example, he would say, \u201cI\u2019ll come on Monday at such and such time.\u201d But he would come two or three days later and say, \u201cTime is eternal.\u201d Then he would start preaching, talking about Bhagavad-gita very, very powerfully for maybe seven hours. When people got used to that, they brought their sleeping bags and their prasadam while listening to the lecture. He was very powerful, but then persecution started a few years later.<\/p>\n<p>What impressed me the most about Prabhupada was his complete selflessness, his infinite compassion, his complete dedication to helping the suffering souls, to helping humanity, and also the fact he had perfect knowledge. He had an answer for any problem. He had a remedy, not only for the personal problems of his disciple, but he had the perfect peace formula for the whole world. He had infinite kindness, complete knowledge, extreme kindness, mysticism. We could feel that wonderful mysticism. Actually being near Srila Prabhupada, we could see that he was opening for us a little window into the spiritual world. The spiritual world, God, became so real in Srila Prabhupada\u2019s presence. It was very possible to reach perfection. In the beginning just a month after I joined, I remember Tamal Krishna Goswami told me, \u201cMondakini, in three years we are all going to become pure devotees.\u201d We were convinced just by following Srila Prabhupada, perfection would be very quickly attained.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\" https:\/\/i.imgur.com\/Uikz0sw.jpg\"\/><strong>By Urban Devi<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>   May 23 2021 Special Guest Mondakini Devi Dasi: I remember coming to the temple with two of my friends, and a beautiful kirtan\u2014a very sacred kirtan\u2014was in progress, probably led by Yamuna. We sat down and all of a sudden the devotees fell flat on the floor. Being polite young girls, we did the same for the first time in our lives. I was very curious and I wanted to see what was happening. I was thinking, \u201cWhy are they doing that?\u201d I put my head up a little and I saw two beautiful golden feet passing by my head. I wanted to see to whom these feet belonged, and for the first time, at least in this life, I saw Srila Prabhupada. It was a very extraordinary scene. He was looking very aristocratic. To me he looked like the emperor of the world. But at the same time, he looked like the most humble sage in the creation. I was so surprised to see these two very different antinomic qualities in one person. <!--more--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-95771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=95771"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95771\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":95773,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95771\/revisions\/95773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=95771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=95771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=95771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}