BY THE BEGINNING of the twenty-first century, Prabhupada’s mission had had a dramatic impact on Vrindavan. Pilgrims were visiting from every country. Developers had built guesthouses and apartment buildings on farmland where previously cows and peacocks wandered. Cellphone towers rose up over Govardhan Hill. Traditional robes and sandals had yielded to blue jeans and designer sneakers. Vendors were doing a brisk commerce in digital recordings of temple songs. The Brijbasis watched with surprise as their little village transformed into an international city for Krishna worship. Shopkeepers in Loi Bazaar received customers from every continent, and the streets buzzed with languages they had never heard before.
Yet some things about Krishna’s village will never change. If you visit today, you will still hear peacocks trumpet, and Brijabasis will still greet you with shouts of “Jaya Radhe!” and “Radhe Shyam!” And if you wake early enough and climbed to the roof of your Wi-Fi–equipped hotel and look out across the landscape before the sun rises, or if you wander down to the shores of the Yamuna before the crowds arrive, you just might hear echos of Krishna’s flute or catch a glimpse of his yellow cloth. You just might have a fleeting vision of the divine cowherd boy with a peacock feather in his hair and a garland of forest flowers around his neck, beckoning, smiling, as Prabhupada had always promised, inviting you back home, waiting to welcome you at your journey’s end.
CHANGES HAD OCCURRED ELSEWHERE in the world as well. Embarking on a spiritual path used to mean leaving others behind and going to a remote place to achieve enlightenment. But by the time Prabhupada passed away, the world had become a global village, and a spiritually productive life meant not removing oneself from others but working with them, as a collective exercise, to help humanity progress. When I think about the many gifts Prabhupada brought to the West, that one stands out: awareness that my spiritual progress is dependent on the contribution I make to others.
Krishna consciousness—God realization—is an active proposition. We see examples in devotee-organized projects such as Midday Meals, a food relief effort that serves fresh prasadam lunches to a million or more indigent children in the Mumbai area every day. Devotee doctors operate mobile hospitals and offer cost-free cataract surgeries in remote villages. We see Prabhupada’s style of engaged devotional service in the programs of hospice caregivers, whose work demystifies the death experience for those approaching the end of this life and the beginning of another. In researching this biography, I spoke with a lawyer whose service on behalf of Native Americans was inspired by reading Prabhupada’s edition of the Bhagavad Gita. I interviewed a government officer who serves as a “Track II” diplomat:173 a negotiator operating behind the scenes in areas of armed conflict. She credits her effectiveness in mediation to bhakti guidelines for niskama-karma or unselfish action. Another follower of the bhakti path runs one of the world’s most renowned wildlife shelters. His inspiration comes from a verse in the Gita that speaks of seeing all life, human and other than human, as equal.174 One of the most memorable examples of Prabhupada’s mission in action came in the form of an email back in 2008.
“One of my buddies died in my arms,” a soldier wrote from Baghdad. “We had been practicing yoga together for some time, and he was chanting when he expired. That gave him and me both some solace. I make the best of the situation by teaching yoga to the men and women on my team.”
War had been as difficult for him as it had been for everyone else in his unit. “We’ve been hit with a lot of IEDs [improvised explosive devices],” he wrote. “I took a round and lost some hearing, and I’m only five months in. There was a massive casualty event recently—this was after several suicide attacks in the North—and I credit the Gita with giving me enough strength to lead my team through that.
“In this town,” he continued, “we had to treat more than sixty men, women, and children. Really gruesome material-world stuff. There’s nothing more sobering then having to put some little child’s brain back in her head while speaking soothing words before she dies. I carried sacred objects with me from India, and I showed them to her and told her stories. She smiled before she left her body. It’s such a powerful thing, this process of bhakti yoga. How special this life is, however hard it gets. And there’s always something you can do, even here.”
That realization—“there is always something you can do, even here”—lies at the heart of Prabhupada’s teachings. We may not control destiny, but we can always do something to improve the situation if we remember two things. First, that our material eyes only see the surface of reality—the story is deeper than it seems. Second, as immortal sparks of the Supreme Being, we can do more than we imagine. No battlefield is too big.
In Krishna’s words, “Get up and fight.”
TADGH MACTIGHEARNAIN—Timothy Kiernan on his birth certificate—was born in 1961 into a family of proud Irish Republicans. His cousin, Kitty Kiernan, portrayed by Julia Roberts in the 1996 movie Michael Collins, was engaged to the founder of the Irish Republican Army. At age thirteen, Timothy checked out a book from the local library titled The Republic, expecting to read about politics, and discovered it was about philosophy. On the shelf were other philosophic writings such as the Buddhist Sutras, the Holy Qur’an, and the Tao Te Ching. He read them all.
Over the next few years, Timothy visited monasteries, attended meditation sessions, and tried macrobiotic food. One day he met “a chap in strange clothes” who invited him to visit the Dublin Krishna temple. “The senior disciple served me a multicolored sweet called carrot halvah,” he recalled. “My mind couldn’t grasp the idea of a dessert made of carrots, but when he spoke, it was obvious he had mastered a lot of philosophy.” Timothy decided to study Krishna consciousness “not to leave Christianity,” he explained, “but to better serve God.”
The next day Timothy noticed a photo of Prabhupada and asked his host who this person was. The senior devotee fell silent for several moments and then said quietly, “I’m so sorry. The fact that you have to ask means I haven’t explained Krishna consciousness sufficiently. Everything I know spiritually comes from him. He was a pure servant of God, and my whole life is about trying to help him.” The senior devotee’s humility revealed something Timothy had not considered before: God was served by serving God’s servants.
Timothy eventually received initiation and the name Shaunaka Rishi.
That was the 1990s, when the Irish Republican Army was fighting a fierce battle for independence from Britain, and tensions between Northern Ireland’s Protestant and Catholic communities were strained. On a visit to Belfast, Shaunaka asked a pedestrian for directions to the city center. The man was from Protestant East Belfast and took Shaunaka’s Southern Irish accent to mean he must be Catholic.
“Go home, sonny,” he told Shaunaka with a look of pity. “This is no place for the likes of you. Just go home.”
Shaunaka had a shaved head and wore the bright orange robes of a Vaishnava, “but the man didn’t even see that,” he recalled with surprise. “His mind was so preoccupied with me being Irish-Catholic that all he could say was ‘go home.’ ”
Shaunaka described the encounter to the senior disciple. In reply, the senior disciple described a conversation he had with Prabhupada in India.
“I would like to open a temple in Belfast,” he told Prabhupada.
“Why do you want to do that?” Prabhupada asked.
“There’s conflict there between Catholics and Protestants,” the disciple explained, “and devotees can help.”
“I see,” Prabhupada replied. “So now there will be Catholics, Protestants—and Hare Krishnas? Is that your idea? Three religions?”
“What an utterly brilliant analysis of the situation,” Shaunaka commented. “He knew his disciples believed everyone should come over to their way of seeing the world, which wasn’t going to work. Particularly in conflict zones, no one wants to hear that. To be effective in defusing conflict, the desire to help must be selfless. Then maybe we can contribute something. Bhakti—devotion—only works as a tool of reconciliation if it is free of fundamentalist thinking.”
After thirteen years, Shaunaka moved out of ashram life to practice his faith in the larger world. One of his contacts at that time was Reverend Kenneth Cracknell, interfaith secretary for the British Council of Churches. Shaunaka brought Reverend Cracknell to a Krishna farm where a cow was giving birth. The devotee-farmer who delivered the calf placed the newborn on the altar, signifying that this animal would be honored as a child of God. Cracknell was moved.
“I find so much devotion, so much love of God practiced here,” he told Shaunaka. “It challenges me to look deeper into my own tradition.” Experiences such as this inspired Shaunaka to found the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, dedicated to preserving India’s cultural heritage.
“No one has a monopoly on truth,” he said. “My happiness was discovering that our Krishna tradition has the intelligence and spiritual breadth to acknowledge that. Prabhupada’s character was my reference point. He gave evidence that Krishna is the Supreme Personality of Godhead, but everything else was wide open. He was very broadminded. Our strength as devotees lies in our ability to do like he did: Go into any situation with something to offer, without any conversional agenda. That understanding for me was liberating.”175
THERE IS AN OLD SAW: God turns to the Devil and says, “I’ve got this really great idea. I think I’ll call it religion.” The Devil thinks for a minute and then says, “That is a good idea. Let me organize it for you.” As soon as something becomes institutionalized—be it a faith community or a physics laboratory—it becomes problematic: in need of financing, administration, differentiation from other institutions, and so on. The institutional dimension of Prabhupada’s mission led some people to misunderstand Krishna consciousness as a new religious movement, transplanted from India. There is certainly a historical dimension to Prabhupada’s movement, but its origins are not Indian. “This knowledge is the king of education, the most secret of all secrets . . . everlasting, and joyfully performed.”176
Most recently, this secret of all secrets was delivered by an elderly gentleman who came by cargo ship, carrying only an umbrella, a sack of cereal, and a box of books.