“Make Me Dance” Part 2 

“Make me dance!”  This is not only a desperate cry; there seems to be celebration in his voice.  He wants to dance in ecstasy for Krishna!  He wants to be Krishna’s puppet.  Lord Krishna did make Prabhupada dance in America.  We saw his stately kirtana steps in the storefront at 26 Second Avenue and his dancing in Tompkins Square Park, his “Swami Step” before the students at Stanford University and Golden Gate Park San Francisco, at Ohio State University and at public halls in London.  He danced along with the energetic steps of his disciples in the hand-to-hand rings of bounding hippies at Golden Gate Park.  Actually, all the dancing during ISKCON kirtanas was but a response to Prabhupada’s hand gesture inviting them, “Get up and dance!”

Also, if we think of the word dance in a broader sense as an ecstatic spontaneous celebration, as movement with rhythm and grace, then we can see that Krishna made Prabhupada dance in many ways.  His writing is a dance of the spirit liberated from matter.  His expressions were filled with lightheartedness with the heaviness of guru that only the pure devotee can deliver.  Krishnadasa Kaviraj also used the image of dancing when referring to his writing.  He said his words were like dolls under the puppetmaster and they had danced to their full satisfaction throughout the chapters of the Caitanya-caritamrta.

It is significant that Prabhupada referred to his work as a “Movement.”  This doesn’t refer to political agitation with lobbying or marches on the Capital; it refers to the dancing in kirtana in the streets, and in the movement of gathering numbers of disciples all over the world to create a favorable eddy against the current of Kali-yuga disasters.  Prabhupada’s movement is like the dance of a young cowherd boy upon the many, many hoods of the poisonous serpent. 

Prabhupada is still engaged in his movement, still dancing for you and me, and waiting for us to join the dance.  To hold back during this dance means to miss the whole purpose of human existence.  Prabhupada is gesturing, “Get up and dance.  Just surrender to Krishna.  Do as I am doing.  Do the ‘Swami Step’ back to the spiritual world with me.”  Let us take courage in Prabhupada’s words: “If You have brought me here to dance, then please make me dance as You like.”