Storefront of the Mind

I relish quietly listening to recordings of Prabhupada singing his kirtana in 1966.  Hearing those tapes is the way I can feel my own love for Krishna and Prabhupada, which may be contrary to the impressions I get when I chant and cannot pay attention to the sound.  I do love chanting when I hear Prabhupada singing and playing that drum, inducing us to go to the spiritual world.  If I can sing with Prabhupada, something will be evoked in my heart.  We always think we don’t have time to chant, although we seem to have time to talk and pile up sentences one after another.  Do we think singing with Prabhupada when he was introducing Krishna consciousness in New York City is unproductive?

Yes, Prabhupada started his movement at that same 26 Second Avenue that today is a lively preaching center in New York, where you can walk off the streets and be with devotees in an atmosphere filled with the hopes of a new generation.  It’s right there in New York City, that transcendental oasis.  At the same time, I’m really talking about the 26 Second Avenue that exists only in my mind, only in my memory.  It does exist.

When I hear him singing like that and I start to flash back a little on it, I wonder, “Prabhupada, are you going to come back and do it again?  Are you going to bring us to you again?  You brought us out of such total forgetfulness that we can’t even call it forgetfulness.”  Theoretically, we may say we had forgotten Krishna, and that’s true, but Prabhupada woke us up.