Nostalgia Craze?

I want to go back to Swamiji’s room at 26 Second Avenue as much as I am able.  Prabhupada’s 26 Second Avenue days were very special.  I don’t talk of them so much, but it has always been a source of inner pride for me to know that I was there.  When I remember Prabhupada in this best way it turns into prayer, and it leads to positive action for the present.  Someone might accuse me of thinking too much of the “good old days.”  But I think it’s my prerogative to be more attached to my 1966 Swamiji memories than to any other memories.  Lord Krishna’s devotees in Vrindavana favor the good old days when Krishna was living with them, and they sometimes even criticize the Lord’s devotees in other places.  So I think it’s not just sentimentality on my part that I lament the loss of simplicity, my inability to be with Prabhupada as I used to at 26 Second Avenue.  The potency of those ’66 days is not mere nostalgia.

I sometimes hear devotees deride those memories.  An international sankirtana leader told a story of when Srila Prabhupada was in Los Angeles and Mukunda Maharaja said, “Prabhupada, do you remember the early days together?”  And Prabhupada was supposed to have replied, “Oh, those are old stories.”  When the international sankirtana leader related this incident, he looked at me and said, “Did you know that Prabhupada said that?”  I replied, “No, I hadn’t heard that.”  It hurt to think that Prabhupada had actually said it.  Other times Prabhupada liked to talk of 1966, saying, “Those were happy days.”

Prabhupada was completely accessible in those days.  He didn’t have so many other things to attend to, except take care of the devotees at his one center.  His disciples all had menial but important services, and everyone completely admired him.  We were all babies in spiritual life.  Now we appear to be very grown up with many responsibilities.  But it’s good to keep the truth alive—that we are actually babies, and our spiritual master is protecting us.  If now we have to perform austerities (enduring quarrels with godbrothers, mixing with nondevotees), and if we have to do extraordinary things like accepting disciples; still, the inner, simple abiding truth is that “I’m a spiritual baby and I’m doing this for Prabhupada.”  Our relationship is actually the same, despite the external changes.

Prabhupada’s devotees haven’t become monsters forgetting their guru and taking advantage of his property.  No, we’re just like we were in the beginning.  We eat when he says to eat and we give him our money, and when there’s a doubt, we ask him.  He gave us our beads and told us to chant, offer prasadam and do some preaching.  No one can take it away.  And even though the external scene of 26 Second Avenue has vanished, I can go back for a special memory—what it was like to be a spiritual child in a young man’s body with Prabhupada as strong as a lion, and the gusto of his playing on the drum.  I prefer the 26 Second Avenue pastimes, just as you may prefer some others.  So it is with the eternal associates of Lord Krishna.  The gopis and residents of Vrndavana are so much attached to Vrindavana dhama that even if Krishna goes away, they stay in Vrindavana.  They prefer Vrindavana to Krishna.  They will remember Krishna in Vrindavana, but they won’t leave Vrindavana.  If Krishna is so unfaithful as to desert Vrindavana, that’s His business, but the Vrajavasis will never leave the land of His original pastimes.  Brhad-Bhagavatamrta informs us that the residents of Vrindavana wouldn’t even believe the stories they heard of Krishna’s pastimes outside of Vrindavana.  When Akrura came to take Krishna from Vrindavana, all Krishna’s dear friends were very hurt and outraged.  Akrura explained that Krishna had to leave in order to give solace to His real mother and father, Devaki and Vasudeva.  But when they heard that, the residents cried, “These are all lies!  Krishna has no other mother and father but Nanda and Yasoda!”  In this attached mood, the residents of Vrindavana considered all other pastimes of Krishna to be a big hoax.

And so I prefer to think of Swamiji at 26 Second Avenue in his room at night, shaking with laughter after the Louis Abalofia “Be In.”  “All right boys,” he said, “go home now, drink your milk and say your prayers.  The store will be open at six in the morning.  Jaya-O!”  We said, “Jaya-O, Swamiji, good night,” and we knew that we were going to see him in the morning.  I prefer that.  Yes, I have to do something for Swamiji now, and I am.  But sometimes I think that Swamiji should never have left the Lower East Side.  He could have just stayed there, and I could have stayed there too.  That would have been nice.  Swamiji could still be giving Bhagavad-gita classes three nights a week.  I could have continued at the welfare office; there was no need to quit.  That’s when all the trouble started, when Swamiji went to San Francisco.  They brought him there to take part in a concert with rock-and-roll bands like the Grateful Dead.  I never thought it was a good idea.