“All Right”

After a 1966 lecture in the storefront, Prabhupada sometimes asked for questions from the audience.  When he felt he had answered enough, he said, “All right.”  Sometimes he said it with resignation, almost sadness.  He seemed to mean, “All right, I’ve tried my best.”  Sometimes after answering many questions, Prabhupada’s utterance of “all right” sounded disgusted.  He had just given a wonderful parampara speech, and yet people were raising their hands and asking challenging, doubtful, or crazy questions.  He looked out at the audience before him, sensing that they were not asking intelligent questions.  “All right,” he would say, “let us have kirtana.”

Swamiji sharing an apple with us as the last act of the evening at 26 Second Avenue; when he said, “All right,” it meant we had to leave.  It was sad.  Although we had just had such a nice meeting, it had to end, just like everything else in the material world.  In that sense, “all right” presented a challenge to those souls who wanted to return to their maya in Manhattan.