Srila Prabhupada’s Mission on the Lower East Side

Prabhupada had not made a study of the youth movement in America before moving to the Lower East Side.  He had never even made specific plans to come here amid so many young people.  But in the ten months since Calcutta he had been moved by force of circumstances, or, as he understood it, “by Krishna’s will,” from one place to another.  On the order of his spiritual master he had come to America, and by Krsna’s will he had come to the Lower East Side.  His mission here was the same as it had been on the Bowery or uptown or even in India.  He was fixed in the order of his spiritual master and the Vedic view, a view that wasn’t going to be influenced by the radical changes of the 1960s.  Now, if it so happened that these young people because of some change in the American cultural climate were to prove more receptive to him, then that would be welcome.  And that would also be by Krishna’s will.

Actually, because of the ominous influence of the Kali millennium, this was historically the worst of times for spiritual cultivation – hippie revolution or not.  And Srila Prabhupada was trying to transplant Vedic culture into a more alien ground than had any previous spiritual master.  So he expected to find his work extremely difficult.  Yet in this generally bad age, just prior to Prabhupada’s arrival on the Lower East Side, tremors of dissatisfaction and revolt against the Kali-yuga culture itself began vibrating through American society, sending waves of young people to wander the streets of New York’s Lower East Side in search of something beyond the ordinary life, looking for alternatives, seeking spiritual fulfillment.  These young people, broken from their stereotyped materialistic backgrounds and drawn together now on New York’s Lower East Side, were the ones who were by chance or choice or destiny to become the congregation for the Swami’s storefront offerings of kirtana and spiritual guidance.