Srila Prabhupada Lives in His Books!

George Harrison sings a song of his separation from Krishna. This same sort of separation is also sometimes felt in regards to the Vaishnavas.

For the majority of my devotional life, Krishna has arranged it so that I’ve never had a devotional community to tap into as a regular daily function. I started off living in Wilmington, DE whereby ISKCON Philly was about an hour drive. This was the closest proximity I’ve ever lived to an active temple. Unfortunately, He made it so that I would be relocating to Maine only after attending the Sunday Feast 3-4 times.

My next situation took me to Portland or rather Cape Elizabeth, Maine. In this set up I was about 2-2.5 hours from the closest temple, ISKCON Boston. Fortunately, He connected me with a lovely devotee family up in Brunswick (Mother Hare Krsna dasi, of cow-protection/varnashrama dharma fame & her lovely children Maha & Asto), as well as, some other nice devotees sprinkled around the state. We would have programs every month or so & eventually I convinced some of the lovely Boston devotees to come up & join in on the fun. Even HH Candramauli Swami came to my home once & blessed us with his association.

Krishna also arranged that at one point I could go to the temple & stay there for 3-4 days out of the week when I did not have work or school which kept me alive spiritually. In addition to this I always had the incredible fortune of having regular e-mail & even phone contact with my beloved spiritual master, His Grace Sriman Sankarshan das Adhikari.

When I was just starting off in Krishna consciousness, I read a lot. Every night I would read for at least a good hour. I was fanatical about not ingesting any non-Krishna conscious media (music, films, books,  etc) except that which was required for my schooling. I would be listening to lectures or kirtans for hours on end while in my studio (as a painting major) & always be engaged in distributing Krishna prasad to my studio mates.

I didn’t have much association so , I made my own.

After finishing up my BFA in Maine, I decided to move down to Austin, TX in order to be in closer physical proximity to my Spiritual Master. Soon after moving down here, my Guru Maharaj’s traveling schedule began to pick up, keeping him in Austin for less & less time each year. While he’s away, we maintain regular Sunday feast programs & try to have some celebration for most major festivals as far as is practical. Yet the facility for daily association is not so great in his absence. That being the case I find myself figuratively back in the same boat I came from, little to no regular daily association.

After struggling to keep my head above water for the past five years, I somewhat spontaneously stumbled back into that habit which kept me afloat; namely the regular reading of Srila Prabhupada’s books & almost constantly hearing bhajans/kirtan or lectures. Recently, I’ve been doing online Bhakti Sastri courses through Bhaktivedanta College, as well as, attempting to read HH Bhakti Vikas Maharaj’s Ramayan & a bit of Srimad-Bhagavatam each day. Though I’m not as strict as I once was about the non-devotional media I ingest, the potency of this wonderful Vaishnava literature seems to outweigh all else & at least keeps my nose above the waves.

That brought me to the simple yet profound conclusion that:

Srila Prabhupada is fully present in his books & various recordings.

So my humble suggestion is that if you find yourself with little to no devotee association or your mind is disturbed by the various politics present within our society, simply go back to the basis of our movement, Srila Prabhupada. Absolutely no harm can come from developing a deeper relationship with Srila Prabhupada & trying our best to understand his mood, mission & what is factually pleasing to Him. After all, our spiritual life depends on this as we can’t even discern right from wrong within ISKCON without having a concrete understanding of Srila Prabhupada’s books.

Jaya Srila Prabhupada!