Tejiyas Prabhu on Srila Prabhupada and relationships

[Guest guest]

"One of the things, if not the main thing, that deeply impressed me about

Srila Prabhupad was his unconditional acceptance of each person he

encountered and his immediate and spontaneous treatment of that person as

being vitally significant to him.

 

Put simply, if you want someone to be the way you want them to be, if you do

not see them as being significant and special as a person seperate from

their qualities, if you do not see special and admirable qualities, and do

not like the person, what chance will there be of real affection and real

friendship and service and love? How could someone love someone they did not

even like? Being a devotee, or a servant of a devotee, one will learn to

offer respect, to accept wholeheartedly every living being, and to see their

intrinsic worth as part of Krishna and their covered potentiality as a

devotee. One will then admire their specific qualities, become attracted to

them and desire to interact with them by service. This should be the natural

form of relationship that is predouced, not out of the mind, but out of the

heart of one who is in Krishna Consciousness. Although you cannot take

Krishna consciousness out of a second of Srila Prabhupads life, he did not

realate to us from the head, nor the mind nor the buddhi, but he related to

us from the heart. Heart to heart, because he was pure, he really enjoyed

meeting each person, and dealing with them on a person to person basis."

 

(Tejiyas Prabhu is a disciple of Srila Prabhupada who personally served him

in Delhi for several years.)