The main room at the Waimanalo beach house was very large, encompassing a large living room, dining area, and kitchen. So in order to give Srila Prabhupada more privacy in his part of the great room, I hung a long curtain between the living room area and the dining room area, thus partitioning off his work room. This was so that he might not be distracted by our comings and goings, and our moving about the kitchen and dining area.
One day, he called out to me from the other side of the curtain.
“Govindasi, that rocking chair cushion; it has some needle in it!”
I had just refurbished his rocking chair, and one of our brahmacharinis had made a new cushion cover for it. So this was a surprise!
I called back from the kitchen, “What do you mean? You got stuck with a needle?”
“Yes, there is some needle there.”
So I quickly went into his workroom, and dragged the rocker out, into the curtained off kitchen dining area.
Then I knelt down and began to feel all around the cushion with my hands, squeezing and pressing it here and there, trying to find out a pin or needle that may be hidden in it. But I couldn’t find anything.
So I called out to Srila Prabhupada, “I can’t find anything. Where did you feel it?”
“In the cushion,” he called back from behind the curtain.
By now, I was frustrated, as I had been squeezing every part of the cushion for several minutes. I pressed and pressed, squeezed and pulled, but could not find anything at all.
Finally, I decided I would just have to sit in the chair to find it. I knew that the disciple is never supposed to sit on the Guru’s chair, but for seva, Srila Prabhupada had taught me, it was acceptable. Still, I was very reluctant to do it. But it was a last resort.
So I plopped down in his rocking chair – but still nothing. So then I began to bounce up and down on the cushion, up and down and all around. Then I hit it!
“Ouch!” I yelped. I was laughing, as Srila Prabhupada was also now laughing. He heard my yelp from the other side of the curtain and began to laugh and joke with me.
“Ah, yes! So now you have left a pin in your Guru Maharaj’s cushion and now you have got your resultant karma!” He was chuckling and I was also laughing, as I was not injured at all – but I did find the culprit pin! And I was able to quickly remove the pin as part of my service to my beloved Spiritual Master Srila Prabhupada. (If only all karma was as easy as this!)
This was a light and loving exchange; please don’t anyone take this wrongly. Srila Prabhupada was always loving and kind. Yes, he would sometimes chastise a disciple, but always out of love, not out of any cruelty or malice. And this was simply a loving family exchange, a delightful example of what it was like to live in the same home as Srila Prabhupada.
So often, I feel disturbed by the way Srila Prabhupada is presented, rather misrepresented, in some other memoirs. Perhaps it is safe to say that each person had a different experience, and thus a different perspective. However, it seems that the “thunderbolt” aspect has come to overshadow the “rose of compassion” aspect, and it has even come to be the fashion to imitate this so-called “thunderbolt” aspect.
I find this very troubling, because Srila Prabhupada was practically an incarnation of Lord Nityananda’s mercy; he was divinely compassionate upon all the conditioned souls.
Once, while leaving Los Angeles, and returning to our preaching center in Hawaii, Srila Prabhupada told us as we were leaving, with tears streaming down his cheeks.
“Preach to the people of Hawaii, the poor people of this world, they are suffering so much, although they do not know it; they are suffering for lack of Krishna consciousness. Please go and spread this message of Krishna consciousness to all of them.”
This was Srila Prabhupada’s essence, his most important feature: his compassion and mercy. We are all undeserving recipients of such mercy, and we should never forget this for even a moment. We should not become foolishly proud of our so-called accomplishments, or position; our only good fortune is that we have somehow or other, stumbled into the assembly of great spiritual personalities, and they have taken pity on us, and given us a grace-filled glance. That is really all we have.
Compiled by Mahavishnu Dasa