Prabhupada in the Summer

The summer of 1966 moved along, and Prabhupada kept good health.  For him these were happy days.  New Yorkers complained of the summer heat waves, but this caused no inconvenience to one accustomed to the 100-degree-plus temperatures of Vrindavana’s blazing summers.  “It is like India,” he said, as he went without a shirt, seeming relaxed and at home.  He had thought that in America he would have to subsist on boiled potatoes (otherwise there would be nothing but meat), but here he was happily eating the same rice, dal and capatis, and cooking on the same three-stacked cooker as in India.  Work on the Srimad-Bhagavatam had also gone on regularly since he had moved into the Second Avenue apartment.  And now Krishna was bringing these sincere young men who were cooking, typing, hearing him regularly, chanting Hare Krishna, and asking for more.

Prabhupada was still a solitary preacher, free to stay or go, writing his books in his own intimate relationship with Krishna – quite independent of the boys in the storefront.  But now he had taken the International Society for Krishna Consciousness as his spiritual child.  The inquiring young men, some of whom had already been chanting steadily for over a month, were like stumbling spiritual infants, and he felt responsible for guiding them.  They were beginning to consider him their spiritual master, trusting him to lead them into spiritual life.  Although they were unable to immediately follow the multifarious rules that brahmanas and Vaisnavas in India followed, he was hopeful.  According to Rupa Gosvami the most important principle was that one should “somehow or other” become Krishna conscious.  People should chant Hare Krishna and render devotional service.  They should engage whatever they had in the service of Krishna.  And Prabhupada was exercising this basic principle of Krishna consciousness to the furthest limit the history of Vaisnavism had ever seen.