The Eternal Residents of Vrndavan

In the beginning I wanted to tell him, “I feel I have a loving relationship with you.”  One of the first ways I expressed this was when I told him I felt obliged to attend all his classes.  This came up when I had to miss a weekend to visit my parents in Avalon, New Jersey.

“Swamiji, I won’t be able to attend classes for the next two days because I have to visit with my mother and father.”

“That’s all right.”

I said, “The reason I’m telling you is because I don’t want to do anything without your permission.”

 Swamiji had never assumed control over my activities, but when I spelled out my feeling of obligation to him, he smiled.

He wanted us to surrender.  In his lectures he would say, “Just like these boys who are with me.  They are grown up, but they don’t do anything without my permission.  They will say, ‘Swamiji, may I have a piece of fruit?’  And I will say, ‘Of course, it’s in the refrigerator.’  They could take it, but the etiquette is to first ask the spiritual master.”

But sometimes when you make your gesture of surrender, it turns out to be a mistake.  Then the guru has to correct you, and you have to accept it.  It’s a sign that the relationship is becoming more developed.

One of the first times Swamiji corrected me, he did it without saying a word.  I was in his room when he was unwrapping a parcel he had received from India.  I don’t remember the contents, but it was wrapped in a piece of saffron cloth about the size of a handkerchief.  Swamiji put this cloth aside as if to discard it.  I looked at it and said, “Can I have that?”  He said, “Yes,” and I took it as a prize.  The next morning when I came to Swamiji’s morning class, I had tied the saffron handkerchief around my neck like a pirate’s bandana.  Part of my motive was pure whimsy, to create a new clothing fashion.  But also I wanted to show the Swami that I was his man, and so I wore his cloth.  But saffron kerchiefs around the neck are not part of the brahmacari dress.  While lecturing on the Bhagavatam Swamiji noticed the scarf, and he looked a bit alarmed.  His glance was clear, and so I removed the kerchief and never wore it again.

Srila Prabhupada liked to exchange gestures of love, but he didn’t like concoctions.  Years later, when he heard that some of his disciples were taking the used brahmana thread that had been worn by the temple Deity and putting it on their own wrist, he said it was a concoction.  The sentiment behind these gestures was nice, but we should be willing to do it in a way that actually pleases Prabhupada and Krishna.  This becomes a delicate matter when a newcomer is an artist or a “free spirit” and wants to serve Krishna in his own way.  You want to tell them that their sentiment is nice, but you also have to inform them sooner or later, “This is not the way we do it in Krishna consciousness.”  Swamiji bypassed all that just by giving me a look, and I was glad to get off that easy.  I thought, “Okay, that’s cool. No more pirate scarf.”