In 1965, Srila Prabhupada had no Movement to manage.  He was relatively free to work on the Srimad-Bhagavatam, but he had other things that took up his time.  Every morning he had to take a long walk from the yoga studio room on 72^nd Street to Dr. Mishra’s apartment on Riverside Drive where he cooked his lunch.  He also was involved in trying to buy a building as a temple and writing many thoughtful letters to India seeking support.  He also washed his own clothes daily and sometimes spoke to a few young men who would come to his room and had to instruct them in Krishna consciousness.

Today’s meditation describes how throughout his career Prabhupada had to sacrifice time in writing his books to execute other activities in his mission.

As Prabhupada’s disciples and followers, we can try to understand Prabhupada’s example in the context of our own lives.  Nowadays, we lament that Prabhupada didn’t give us more literature so that we could relish it continually.  Padma Purana, Visnu Purana, the later Cantos of Srimad-Bhagavatam, more works by the six Gosvamis, the Ramayana and  Mahabharata …  Prabhupada stated his intention to do all these books with the Bhaktivedanta purports, but it never came to pass.

There is a message for us in the fact that these works were not completed.  One message is that we also have to sacrifice our interest in order to do the needful.  Prabhupada’s unfinished work on Srimad-Bhagavatam does not go down in history as an incomplete task, rather, it speaks volumes in its own way.  Now, for all time, we can see the example of Prabhupada giving up his own interest, in a personal sense, in order to carry out the duties and responsibilities of Founder-Acarya.  He wanted to protect his Movement and make it strong and this required his attention.  Sometimes the thing he paid attention to seemed to be unfruitful.  He worked at stopping the arguments between devotees – he heard their complaints about each other in the mail – but the same problems and falldowns continued regardless of his attention.  Still, he couldn’t give up on ISKCON.  ISKCON was his child, and he was an ever-responsible parent.  He wanted to leave us not only with books, but with a strong ISKCON Movement.

We who want to please Prabhupada have to keep in mind that attention to ISKCON was very important to Prabhupada.  As he was willing to put aside other interests in order to further the interest of his Movement, we should also be prepared to do that sacrifice.