Diary of a Traveling Preacher
Charlotte Bhakti Yoga
September 9 - 12, 2006
By Indradyumna Swami
"Bearing the Burden"
During the festival in Odessa, one of my aspiring disciples asked to
see me. Fifteen-year-old Radha Sakhi dasi was born into the Krsna
consciousness movement. When she was a child, I gave her a lot of
attention and care, as I do for many children, and while we talked, I
could tell that such love had borne fruit.
She told me that her mother had recently passed away, a few weeks after
suddenly coming down with a lung infection. Radha Sakhi was alone in
taking care of her and was with her when she died. Though shaken by her
mother's impending death she bravely collected herself, and put a
Tulasi leaf into her mother's mouth, poured Ganges water on her head,
and loudly chanted the Hare Krsna mantra into her ear.
"You did the right thing," I told Radha Sakhi. "Just as your
mother brought you into the world and helped you become Krsna
conscious, so you helped your mother to leave in the most auspicious
circumstances. Mother and daughter have proved themselves to be the
best of family members by serving each other's deepest interest: to
return back to Godhead."
The day before I left, I initiated 10 people, bringing the number of my
disciples close to 2,000. The next morning as I was packing to leave, I
had a small seizure. My body stiffened, my neck and arms were full of
intense pain, and I couldn't speak. It lasted only a minute or two
but left me exhausted. As I went to lie on my bed I tried to understand
why it had happened.
"I am in good health," I thought.
Then I remembered that the same thing had happened two years ago, just
after another initiation. Although Tamala Krsna Maharaja once told me
not to attribute bad health solely to the karma of my disciples, I
couldn't ignore Srila Prabhupada's statement in Perfect Questions,
Perfect Answers, that a spiritual master takes on the burden of the
sinful activities of his disciples.
"Krsna is so powerful that He can immediately take up all the sins of
others and immediately make them right. But when a living entity plays
the part on behalf of Krsna, he also takes the responsibility for the
sinful activities of his devotees. Therefore to become a guru is not an
easy task. You see? He has to take all the poisons and absorb them. So
sometimes - because he is not Krsna - sometimes there is some
trouble"
[Perfect Questions, Perfect Answers, Chapter 6]
I had thought about stopping initiations last year but decided to
continue. Now, as I lay on the bed, it became obvious that something
had to change. I decided that from now on I would accept disciples only
if I knew them well and had long-standing relationships with them. I
would be more selective.
Then I got up to take a shower. While lathering I slipped and fell,
hitting my head hard on the floor. I was knocked out for a few moments.
Then I woke up and stumbled back to the bed.
"That makes my decision even more firm," I thought.
That afternoon a young man approached me with a letter of
recommendation from his temple president asking me to accept the boy as
an aspiring disciple. I politely refused. Word spread quickly.
After the festival, I left with my Russian disciple and translator,
Uttama-sloka das. Dressed in dhotis, we flew from Odessa to Kiev, where
we would catch a plane to Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan,
Uttama-sloka's native country. It is a small Muslim country on the
Caspian Sea bordered by Russia, Iran, Georgia, and Armenia.
At the airport in Kiev I ran into Prabhavisnu Swami, who was on his way
to another region in the CIS. "Are you going into a Muslim country
dressed like that?" he asked.
I had been in a hurry when I left Odessa, and it hadn't occurred to
me that it might be wiser to travel in conventional clothes.
The trip had been organized months in advance, but because of the
outdated communications in Azerbaijan we had not been able to contact
the temple or local devotees for weeks.
"It's like flying into the unknown," I said to Uttama-sloka.
"We don't even know who's picking us up," he said with a
half-hearted laugh, "or where we'll be staying or even if they'll
have prasadam ready."
"I love it," I said. "This is sannyasa: completely dependent upon
the Lord."
But the love wasn't without apprehension. I felt nervous as I mulled
over Prabhavisnu Swami's comment about my clothes. I recalled the
last time I visited Azerbaijan two years ago, when an official had
demanded a hundred-dollar bribe as I departed.
I turned to Uttama-sloka "Do any tourists ever go to Azerbaijan?" I
asked.
He laughed.
I looked around the cabin. I saw only Azerbaijanis, silently staring
back at me.
I turned to Uttama-sloka. "There's a heavy mood in here," I said.
Toward the end of the flight, as I was nervously arranging my documents
for entry, I noticed a large man sitting across the aisle, wearing a
black coat and sporting a big mustache. He suddenly turned to me.
"Hare Krsna!" he said loudly.
I don't know who was more startled, I or the other passengers.
"Are they going to wash your feet when you arrive at the temple?"
he asked in a booming voice. He was speaking Azerbaijani, and
Uttama-sloka translated.
Everyone looked at me, and I wasn't sure how to reply. Either way
would confirm that washing the feet of distinguished guests was part of
the tradition I followed. I doubted any of the passengers had ever
heard of such a thing. Then the same man came to my rescue.
"It's not our Islamic custom," he said, "but nevertheless it is
your tradition's way of honoring guests. And respecting guests is
very much part of Islamic culture."
I took a quick look around and saw a number of people nodding their
heads in agreement.
"How do you know about this?" I said.
He laughed. "I used to live next to your temple in Baku," he said.
"Every time a guru would come I would watch the reception from my
window. You are good people. You love Allah with a passion."
I looked around the cabin again. Everyone was smiling at me. All my
misgivings vanished.
When we landed, the other passengers stepped back to let me take my
baggage out of the overhead compartment. Some motioned that I should go
forward and be the first to leave the plane.
The woman at the immigration desk smiled and asked if I was going to
stay at the Hare Krsna temple. When customs officials asked if I had
any goods to declare, I replied that I didn't. One of them smiled.
"But do you have any Hare Krsna baklava?" he said, referring to a
traditional Middle-Eastern sweet.
"No," I said. "I'm sorry, I don't."
"Make sure you have some on the way out," he said. "We work both
directions, coming and going."
As I walked toward the exit I looked up and saw a sign: "Welcome to
the country where it is a tradition to serve and respect guests."
I chuckled. "Things have certainly improved since my last visit," I
thought.
When Uttama-sloka and I left the terminal we were greeted by about 50
devotees. As I walked along, the devotees gave me flowers and garlands,
which I immediately distributed to the many curious Azerbaijanis
watching. Each time I offered someone a flower I would greet him.
"Salaam aleikum," I would say. "Peace be unto you."
"Wa aleikum salaam," they would reply, wishing me the same.
I marveled at being so openly received in a devout Muslim country.
As we drove to the temple, I spoke to my disciple Sahadeva dasa.
"Things have changed," I said.
"Yes and no," he said. "The government wants to join the European
Union, so it is welcoming foreigners and making it easy to come and go.
It wants foreign investment and US dollars for its large oil
reserves."
Then he lowered his voice, as if out of habit, "But the government is
very corrupt," he said. "The officials keep most of the money and
the people remain poor. I won't say more."
I looked out at the city. It appeared much as it did when I first came,
in
1992.
"What is the population?" I asked.
"Eight million," said Sahadeva, "but 20 million Azerbaijanis live
next door in Iran."
"How is that?" I asked.
"Gasoline costs one US cent a liter in Iran and bread is practically
free," he said.
I was happy to be back. Baku is one of my favorite places for
preaching. I can never get over the fact that I can preach freely
there, in the midst of the Muslim world. All of my 25 disciples in
Azerbaijan were born in Muslim families, but no one opposed them when
they joined the Hare Krsna movement.
The next morning, Sahadeva told me a bit of recent history. "Some
years ago the government cracked down on the 200 non-Muslim religious
movements in the country," he said. "We thought we were finished.
But then it officially registered 20 of them, including us."
"Why did it do that?" I said.
"The government was primarily concerned about the opposing political
parties using religion as a front," he said. "Many of the groups
were merely facades for political opposition. Because we're a purely
spiritual movement with no political intentions, the government had no
complaints. But it did place some stiff restrictions on us. After all,
it is a Muslim country. It forbade us to preach outside Baku, and we
are not allowed to hold public programs. People can only visit our
temple. But we got permission to distribute Srila Prabhupada's books
anywhere we want in Baku."
I smiled. "Lord Caitanya's secret weapon," I said.
"People like us and know who we are," he said.
I got first-hand experience of that as we drove through the city. When
we stopped at a red light, two men walked by in front of our car. One
man turned to the other. "You see in that car?" he said. "It's
a Hare Krsna guru."
The next morning I was thinking of visiting the local hospital to
follow up on the seizure. But just as I was about to bring up the idea,
I overheard two devotees joking about the doctors in Azerbaijan.
"When a patient goes to the hospital," said one, "the doctors
have to decide whether to treat the patient or let him live."
I just kept quiet.
My heart goes out to the devotees in Azerbaijan. They preach in an
isolated part of the world and are rarely visited by senior devotees,
so I decided to go ahead with the initiations they had planned,
although I knew little about some of the candidates. I have always
relied on temple presidents to recommend disciples, just as Srila
Prabhupada did.
Before the ceremony I asked to meet the candidates. One man in
particular caught my attention, as I had stayed at his house when I was
in Azerbaijan two years ago. He was originally from Iran, but he took
up communism and fled to Azerbaijan when it was a republic in the
former Soviet Union. He started a business in Baku and soon became
wealthy.
Later he fell away from communism because he saw it failing. He turned
again to Islam and became a devout Muslim.
Then several years ago he met the devotees and was fascinated by the
philosophy of Bhagavad-gita. He was impressed by the temple programs
but hesitated to fully surrender because of his attachment to wealth.
He then went to India, on a pilgrimage to learn more about Krsna
consciousness. Overwhelmed by the beauty and transcendental atmosphere
of Vrindavan, he decided to become a devotee. I was in Vrindavan at the
same time, and one day he approached me and asked to become an aspiring
disciple.
That night he prayed to Sri Sri Radha-Syamasundara at our temple and
asked Them to take away any impediments to his Krsna consciousness.
After he returned to Azerbaijan, his business failed, and he started a
smaller one that brought in less money but gave him more free time.
"How do you use that free time?" I asked. I wanted to see how
serious he was.
"I use it to chant between 32 and 64 rounds a day," he said.
At the initiation ceremony, I mentioned that his life was simpler than
when I first met him. "Allah always gave me what I wanted," he
said, "but Krsna took everything away and left me only the shelter of
His lotus feet."
Everyone smiled.
"I can easily bear the burden of a few more disciples like this," I
thought. I handed him his beads and gave him the name Nilacala-candra
das.
"Caitanya Mahaprabhu has forbidden, 'Don't make many siksas, many
disciples.' But for preaching work we have to accept many disciples -
for expanding preaching - even if we suffer. That's a fact. The
spiritual master has to take the responsibility for all the sinful
activities of his disciples. Therefore to make many disciples is a
risky job unless one is able to assimilate all the sins."
[Perfect Questions Perfect Answers, Chapter 6]
Indradyu...@pamho.net www.traveling-preacher.com Official website
for Diary of a Traveling Preacher