Remembering Srila Prabhupada - Little Drops of Nectar

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Little Drops of Nectar

 

In Los Angeles Srila Prabhupada liked to have

impromptu recording sessions in his room. When the

recording technician, Krsnakanti dasa, tried to

schedule a special session, Prabhupada often postponed

it. But on an impromptu basis, either in the morning,

afternoon, or evening, whenever Prabhupada would say,

"Let's record," the devotees would try to immediately

respond. If they said that they didn't have the right

microphones or equipment ready, Prabhupada would

reply, "Then record with whatever you have." He did

not seem overly concerned about the exact technical

arrangements, and he did not want to spend much time

with it either.

 

 

 

When he was in the mood, Prabhupada would call for

different devotees to play the karatalas and mrdanga

and begin the recording. He liked to set up everything

quickly and start at once, and he did not want to be

stopped in the middle. One time, the devotees delayed

in setting up the tape recorder and microphone, and

when Prabhupada finally began to sing, they asked him

twice to please stop because of a technical difficulty

in the recording process. At the end of that

particular session, the devotees discovered that the

machine was defective and had not recorded at all.

 

 

 

"This machine is worthless," said Prabhupada. He then

looked over to the devotee-technician and added, "You

are worthless also."

 

 

 

 

In the days when there was no Ratha-yatra held in Los

Angeles, the devotees used to travel en masse to San

Francisco to attend the Ratha-yatra there. One

morning, when Prabhupada came down to the temple at

his usual time, there were only a handful of devotees

remaining, since most of them had already gone to San

Francisco. (Srila Prabhupada was to leave later that

day by plane.) Earlier that morning someone had thrown

a pipe bomb into the temple room through the back

door. The bomb had exploded, shaken the building, and

a few devotees had been cut with small pieces of

shrapnel.

 

 

 

 

Prabhupada sat on the vyasasana and said he was now

going to teach them a new mantra. He then taught the

devotees the Nrsimhadeva mantras, beginning with the

words namas te narasimhaya. He went over the words

with them several times and then they sang it

together.

 

 

 

 

Prabhupada remarked on this occasion that as his

movement was now growing, the demons were becoming

more envious. He said that as the Krsna consciousness

movement grew, there would be attacks, but the

devotees should not be afraid and should not stop from

pushing on. They should chant these mantras to Lord

Nrsimhadeva. "Lord Nrsimhadeva will always protect

us," said Prabhupada. Prabhupada also approved that

these mantras be sent out to all his ISKCON centers

for the devotees to chant.

 

 

 

Karandhara dasa, interview.

 

 

 

- From the Prabhupada Nectar by HH Satsvarupa dasa

Goswami Maharaj

 

 

 

 

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