Australia’s first “fired up” Book distributors
The first Australian Book Distributor pioneers built the foundations of Australian ISKCON by selling 10s of thousands of Srila Prabhupada’s Books.
I remember the first day Buddhimanta prabhu went out selling big Krsna Books in Sydney in February 1973, he first showed Caru dasa and Yasomatinandana dasa then gradually we all learned how to distribute big books.
I had the good fortune to go out on Book distribution many times with Buddhimanta.
One time we started at 9am and did not stop until 3am early morning of the next day in Kings Cross that was always full of people.
In those early hours of the morning, now 18 hours straight of Book distrubtion except for a couple of short prasadam breaks that was brought to us in a van by Madhudvisa Swami, we never stopped preaching.
And Madhudvisa Swami never stopped preaching to his troops while eating prasad.
Like military procession we jumped in the van had our prasad then back out on the street, those were the best days in ISKCON.
And by the way I personally distributed 12 Boxes of ”Nectar of Devotion” on Pitt St Sydney from 1 pm to 9pm one Friday night, my best Book distribution day, each box had 24 Books in it.
At the other end of Kings Cross I could hear Buddhi yelling out very loud at the top of his voice, ”G’Day mate how how ar ya!!” Even though American, he said this in a heavy Australian accent and then put a book in their hands.
Sometimes he spoke so fast you could not understand him but still, in most cases they took the book.
He was truly an amazing and powerful devotee that had the ability to stop anyone and give them a Book.
Our early pioneering days of the early 1970s were great, I have great memories from all those years ago but only now am I realizing how rare, amazing, powerful and special such a service of Book distribution was and still is.
The late Madhudvisa Swami our great General in the early 1970s gave the most powerful morning Srimad Bhagavatam classes and frankly the devotees became empowered to go directly to the hearts of the conditioned souls with Prabhupada’s Books.
Out on the street from our elevated state of consciousness, everything was so cristal clear and sharp, we were on something very powerful and that was the Krishna Conscious mission of Book distribution!
If you were tuned into the devotional vib, as we would say back then, then the Books sold themselves. Just about every devotee was tuned in and therefore a book distributor.
In this way thousands upon thousands of Books went out.
Nearly everyone took one and gave a donation, one person gave me $50 for a “Nectar of Devotion!” It was almost as if we had mystical powers, we could stop anyone we wanted to and give then a Book.
Seriously, they were very special days known as the great revolution of Book distribution between 1972 and 1977.
We collected enough profit from the Books in just 4 months in 1973 to buy Melbourne Temple, an old Catholic Boys School in Albert Park 3 miles from the center of Melbourne.
– From Gauragopala dasa Acbsp.
In photo with Srila Prabhupada playing mridanga, is the great late Book distributor Buddhimanta prabhu.
He left this world in 1989 in Vrndavan India.
