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Her painting of Sri Govinda
Auto-bio sketch-
I
have long desired to write a book of my memories of life in Srila Prabhupada's
temples during my first years as a devotee. I will not be able to
resist continuing to glorify the devotees I knew beyond those
early years, but I especially want to share the earlier days, in hopes of
contributing to a greater understanding of Srila Prabhupada's mood, for
those who were not there, as well as for the pleasure of those who were.
If we hold such stories close to our hearts, and fresh in our minds, we
may more easily envision and revive his mood amongst the community of
devotees, wherever it may be lacking.
When I joined the movement, book distribution consisted solely of Back
to Godhead magazines, and we operated by Srila Prabhupada's words that
"Any gentleman can give a quarter" (not much even in those
days). We also gave freely when someone couldn't pay. Having no Deities at
the small temple where I joined, six days a week we took to the streets
with sweets we had offered in the temple, harinam
sankirtan, chanting of the Holy Names of God for the benefit of the
public, and these magazines. We also held programs at colleges. We did not
use disguises, nor did we use any lines or aggression. The sublime message
spoke for itself. We ate simply, the same thing everyday, except on
Sundays when we served breathtaking feasts to students, hippies, young
yogis, and others. The books we had and read
together everyday were Srila Prabhupada's translations, purports and
renderings of Bhagavad-gita As It Is, KRSNA Book, Nectar of Devotion,
Teachings of Lord Caitanya, and the first three volumes of Srimad
Bhagavatam, which had the plain brown covers and Srila Prabhupada's
unedited and charming style of expressing the sublime truths within.
What I wouldn't give to have my first Bhagavatams again.
Before reminiscing about my years in the ashrama, performing bhakti
yoga, devotional service, alongside others, I would like to describe my
frame of mind and the events that led up to my meeting the devotees. I
first visited the temple in Minneapolis, which I joined
some two or three weeks later, in October 1971, along with my
train-hopping acid-dropping hitchhiking buddy Jenifer, an English import
who was like my twin. We had been living outside in the Santa Cruz
mountains in my home state of California, until we woke up October first
sopping wet. Rained out. Having nowhere else to go, we took to
the road again, heading for Minneapolis where Jenifer had made some
friends the previous year. We were compelled, without knowing why.
Like
bees drawn irresistibly to sweet-scented flowers. We would find the
grass much greener on the other side than we had ever imagined....
All
Things Must Pass
We spent the night before our departure for Minneapolis at a friend's
in town, and listened to her new George Harrison LP, All Things Must
Pass. Having cloistered ourselves in the forest, this was the first time
we heard the already popluar hit "My Sweet Lord", with its
chorus of Halleluiah and the Hare Krsna mantra. Contagious? You bet!
We
worked our way across America via her highways and our thumbs, chanting
Hare Krsna all the way. And the closer we got to Minneapolis, the greater
grew our existential angst.
In Santa Cruz, we had fancied ourselves as idealists living life on
our terms. Slowly it dawned on us that we were still part of the system,
relying on the cars of others as we did. Then there was the occasional
airplane overhead; obviously, there was no escaping the spoils of modern
society. There was no perfect place on earth.
More disheartening to me was the popular notion among people I knew
that "we are all one". Talk about merging after death just did
not cut it with me. My best friend besides Jenifer was our charismatic
friend Black Butch (we had White Butch, another wit and philosopher), a
college drop-out who had been raised in Watts, Los Angeles, who was
popular with many partly because of having a seemingly bottomless
pocket of LSD which he handed out freely. But he was also good-natured and
philosophical, and entertained many with his Life According to Butch-isms.
Once, while laughing self-effacingly, he admitted, "False ego is so
fun I almost hate the idea of giving it up." This said it all, for
me. This is the only thing he ever said which I remember to this day. I
sat there on the ground thinking how true it was, and how utterly
depressing was the idea of us all merging together, without separate
identities. My whole being rebelled against this idea. Instinctively, it
just felt wrong, and caused a rapid decline in any happiness I tried so
hard to fool myself into thinking I had. It got worse when, a little while
later,
everyone joined hands and chanted OM. It felt shallow, pretentious,
and I left the group and walked back to the river bank that was Jen's and
my home.
Jenifer and I had moved, from the smattering of cabins up the dirt
road, down to the stream, in order to remove ourselves from the crowd. We
bathed in the cold water every morning and lay out on a log to dry off. We
had plenty of time to think. Our friends would come down to visit, but
most of the time we were alone. And the more we
thought, the more depressed we became. Jenifer believed in God. But I
had experimented with atheism ever since John Lennon said there was no
God, and I was still in that frame of mind. We had lived magically in our
travels, yet still I clung to this notion of there being no God. No wonder
I despaired! Many narrow escapes colored our adventures, which gradually
nudged me toward feeling that Someone was
watching over us. Besides foiling flashers and would-be rapists, one
event stands out strongly.
For a few weeks we slept on a bank of sand, under a tree. One night we
decided to sleep in the hollow of a redwood tree, for the novelty. In the
middle of the night we awoke to a crash that rocked the ground and left us
quivering in shock, so loud and startling was it. We could not imagine
what it was. Somehow we returned to sleep. In the
morning, we crawled out of our sleeping bags and peered out of the
hollow. The tree we had been sleeping under, up until the night before,
had crashed to the ground--landing across the exact spot where we always
lay. At that moment I gave God a serious re-consideration.
I mentioned despair, in connection with the idea of eternal oneness.
If this was true then nothing made sense, not morally or in any other
way. Life was meaningless. I could not accept this. My despair was deep. I
did not know if I would ever find out the meaning of existence. I was
unable to express this in words; it was just too deep and personal to me.
One day I found Jenifer sitting under a tree
sobbing her eyes out. When I asked her what was wrong, she expressed
the same angst!–that it was unacceptable to her that after this lifetime
we would lose our identities in some big mass merging. Separately, we had
each reached the crisis state of having nothing real to hold on to.
Then the rains came, as I said, and then hearing the Hare Krsna mantra
in George's My Sweet Lord, and onward to Minneapolis....
*
This
also reminds me of art (carrying on your theme of discussion).
Usually the painting (for me) starts with big splotches of color
everywhere, using a large brush to roughly cover the entire canvas
with approximations of each area's basic colours. Laying the
groundwork. Like setting the tone of a novel. Then you go in and start
putting in recognizable forms, still using a somewhat large brush. Just
like when you introduce your characters; you don't reveal everything about
them at once, but do this gradually. Just like when you first meet
someone, you can't possibly know much about them,
their personality or way of thinking, and most people are not going to
start giving out intimate details about themselves. You get to know them
gradually. This is the stage in painting when I feel like a kindergartner
with fat crayons, and I ask myself who am I trying to kid, and I realize I
do not really know what I am doing and that I am
not really a painter. Then you push through that and take up a smaller
brush, and so it goes, until the whole picture takes shape. (This
experience may be vastly different from that of, say, an actual trained
experienced painter though.)
As for creativity, I also am not attached to whatever way it takes
shape or gets expressed. I have been writing stories and drawing
pictures since I was really young, and gave up sleep every night for years
and years so I could have more time for it (under the covers, with a
flashlight). I don't believe we are ever actually "blocked"; I
think we are constantly writing novels or poems or making art in some way,
inside us, just in the course of living. Just most of it doesn't get
expressed in actual words or images, but it's going on all the
time. When I couldn't keep my characters under control, due to so many
inner changes, I put down the pen and took up the paintbrush for a couple
of years. Everyone is always expressing, in some way or other. Due to my
current health situation I have been unable to paint for the better part
of a year now, but this has allowed me to return
to writing, and dig out my novel too. It's all fun, and it's all
enlightening (for me), and hopefully some of that enlightenment will come
through to others, through these expressions.
*
My
intention is to write as an ordinary devotee. Not some bigwig,someone
with great position, nor even somene who got much association with
Srila Prabhupada. I think each and every devotee has wonderful
and valuable experiences to share. I think of this as a substitute for
sitting around the campfire in a rocking chair telling stories about the
old days. We gotta pass it on, keep it alive. So much can be lost (at
least from memory) if we don't repeat it now.
*
I
was remembering that while the devotee at the San Jose temple was telling
me those stories, I kept looking beyond his shoulder at a big poster of
Murali Manohar, Krishna playing flute by moonlight by the river, with cows
in the background. This was my first look at Krishna. His face and smile
struck me as marvelously, awesomely, familiar. (I did a painting of it
last year, after carrying a small old tattered print of it for a couple of
decades, and wanting Him on my wall. It can be seen on my art website,
currently in suspended animation, at http://oocities.com/worldfamilyart/worldfamilyart.html
) So there
were other sublime-in-all things going on at that first feast. I
remember on the way home one of my friends claiming the chanting was no
different from chanting coca cola (sound familiar?) and my other friend
and I arguing adamantly against this. We just knew there was something in
the chanting, which they had painted clearly on the arch of the room over
the altar so everyone could chant.
When I visited the temple I was to join, in Minneapolis, as I said, I
read Krsna Book every chance I got, which was after lunch (I went every
day at their invitation, for this intimate five-person prasadam meal). The
following Sunday a guest bought me a Bhagavad-gita, the small purple one,
with forewords by Ginsberg, etc. The clincher, the verse which made me
join the day after reading it, was the one in which Krishna is described
as being One without a second, smaller than the smallest, etc. It totally
grabbed me. Like you, Vaisnava, I was so awed by the substantiality of the
information, too, and my favorite thing to enthuse about on sankirtan was
about the bodies composed of gross and subtle elements, all the way up to
the spiritual substance, sac-cid-ananda, eternity, knowledge and bliss. We
used to dispense this nectar along with simply wonderfuls, which I tried
real hard not to eat when the others weren't looking. It was one of the
biggest sacrifices. But then we moved into a large temple, Detroit, with
Deities, and I quickly learned how to beg, borrow and steal mahaprasadam,
by Krsna's grace. The temple commander once called me a rascal but it was
all pastimes, and his dimple gave him away.
I was a bit shy by nature and sankirtan was hard, but I remember
thinking that I was prepared to do nothing but that the rest of my life,
if that was wanted of me, even at the exclusion of art and writing (not
knowing, in such a small temple, that there were myriads of ways to serve
Krsna). And hard as it was, it truly was the ultimate in ecstacy. And I
thought all the others were pure devotees. And I kind of thought I was
too, in an innocent sense, like I was so enthused and fixed in being every
moment there, not wasting any moment. Taking everything Prabhupada said so
to heart and acting on it. they surprised me at the big temple by laughing
(affectionately) at how unaware I was of gossip, or who was getting
married, etc.; they said I was always talking about Krsna's pastimes. One
devotee, Manohara (bless her heart forever!!!) used to wake me in the
morning sitting crosslegged on the floor by my head reading Krsna Book or
telling me stories. Am I digressing? I guess! Does anyone mind? Anyway the
point is that, well the thing I liked best in your latest post is the part
about how encouraged we were to just be ourselves, our young devotee
enthusiastic selves, and preach from that center.this especially is
beautiful, where you said:
"When you approached others with your BTGs and I have done so
also, it was done out of pure love. That taste / exchange of love -- I
give you knowledge about Krishna, and you can become IMMEDIATELY relieved
of all of the pain and heartache because of your lost position within this
material world. Here take a magazine, take a book, come to the temple,
take this prasada, yes, that's Krishna prasadam, food cooked for the
Lord's satisfaction. You become purified by eating... that's how we used
to relate to others, simply on the spiritual platform. We thought we were
giving spiritual knowledge and we were also seeing others on the spiritual
platform, and they where feeling relief from the ignorance of material
life."
and then the part about how these days this simple way is simply
analyzed to death, and I agree WHOLEHEARTEDLY that picking it apart, and
saying no one but the pure devotee acarya is qualified to preach, is the
most detrimental thing I have seen going on, and it threatens our lives,
the life of Prabhupada's movement (not talking the institutional walls
here, but the heart and soul of the movement). I want to tell the
proponents of this idea to go fly a kite. And watch how it drifts in the
wind, or takes off high with a jolt, and contemplate the movements behind
this phenomenom, and then ponder the Controller of this phenomenom, and
then tell me if he/she/they have nothing worthwhile to say. WE ALL HAVE
SOMETHING TO GIVE. I pray that those who enforce the opposite idea will
come to their senses quickly and be of real and practical inspiration to
all of us!!!
Oh, you mentioned being in awe of book distributors like myself. No I
was not a book distributor. I was just a devotee in a sari with an armful
of BTG's. That was the service I knew. I also was in awe of book
distributors. But when they changed tactics and made us put on regular
street clothing and give lines, I had to quit, and what a loss! then they
could only get me out on harinama with BTG distribution. (Serving the
Deities, though, and cooking and sewing for Them, was also sublime beyond
words, and demonstrated to me the equality of different kinds of
service.)(I did do an occassional day on a marathon, though, and pulled
down my Santa beard to talk to the people). Again I be ramblin'
so I'll amble away for now, but I thank you wholeheartedly for bringing
such wonderful recollections to my attention! your servant, Jayaradhe
Her Nrsimhadeva Deity
More
Tributes-
from
Madhavi dasi-
I
write this with heavy heart, and have had to wait until now to be
able
to do it, because my grief is quite sharp. But I would like to please the
assembled vaisnavas with a little bit of what I personally
know about Jayaradhe.
When Jayaradhe reached young adulthood, she took to the
anti-materialist 'hippie' movement like a swan to water. She wandered far
and wide on foot, picking up rides, even hopping freights, with one or two
good friends, searching for the Absolute Truth and freedom of the soul.
She cast material pursuit so far to the wind that she would get hungry
enough to eat free 'tomato soup', which was a glass
of water(back in the days when restaurants brought everybody
water)with ketchup squirted into it!
Of course, through her wanderings she found Krsna, and again, took to
it like a swan to water. She always said that one of the important quotes
for here was 'no hard and fast rules', as she was a free-and-open-hearted
spirit with no inclination to press onto others her own views. She was
also a free-and-open-minded spirit, and would prefer
to err on the side of pragmatism, to allow all living entities a place
in Srila Prabhupada's 'house for the world to live in'. This is
not to say, however, that she would compromise herself, and throughout her
long years she remained steadfast in her devotion to Srila Prabhupada and
Krsna.
Being an extremely talented artist, prolifically creative, one of her
favorite engagements was to create beautiful things for Krsna and His
devotees. She did many devotional arts which belong in a gallery, some of
which are posted on her website which I will post the url to, if it is
still running. When dealing with children she liked to
create games and books with Krsna at the center. She also liked
herself to join in with games about Krsna, like guessing games based on of
Krsna book for instance.
Love and relationships were very important to Jayaradhe, and indeed,
she exhibited compassion love and kindness to others to a great extent,
bringing me to think of Srila Prabhupada's statement, 'one who loves Krsna
loves all living entities'.
Well, I knew this would be hard, and it is harder than I thought, so
I shall simply end here saying that death can come to any of us at any
moment, and so we really should end the bickering over silly little
philosophical differences and get back to the bigger picture
lest that we don't waste our time and chances to serve Srila
Prabhupada whilst we are still here, for our remaining possible 4yrs as
Mahatma would say.
ys,
Madhavi-devi dasi
ALL GLORIES TO OUR BELOVED GODSISTER, JAYARADHE DEVI DASI, BELOVED
SPRITUAL DAUGHTER OF HIS DIVINE GRACE A. C. BHAKTIVEDANTA SWAMI
PRABHUPADA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Please send
any correspondence you've had with Jayaradhe, or more tributes to email
below.
Jai
Jayaradhe dasi!
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