Books Make Bhaktas

Posted on Dec 17, 2016 in Books Make Bhaktas

Most devotees in our Society come to Kṛṣṇa consciousness because of receiving a book. As I travel around the world, I inevitably ask devotees I meet how they came to Kṛṣṇa consciousness. Ninety-five percent of the time it’s because they received a book. More often than not it was the Bhagavad-gītā that convinced them. This is one of the reasons I mainly distribute Bhagavad-gītās—it’s what makes devotees. It’s also what brought me onto the bhakti path.

Sometimes we hear this criticism about book distribution: “What is the use of book distribution? Who’s becoming a devotee? It’s something of the past. Let’s do something new.”

Here is a morning walk conversation with Śrīla Prabhupāda, from May of 1975, that may clear up such misconceptions:

It is missionary activity, that they do not understand, but you have to make them understand. They are not calling you, “I am suffering; please come,” but it is your business to go and let them know that “You are suffering. You take this method.” That is the way of becoming very quickly recognized by Kṛṣṇa. Otherwise, if you think, “They are not understanding; what is the use of going there? Let me sleep,” that is not good. They are not understanding; still, you have to go. Then Kṛṣṇa will take that “He is laboring so hard for My sake.” Never mind he is successful. It doesn’t matter. But you are working hard for Kṛṣṇa. That is noted down.

So our business is to be recognized by Kṛṣṇa. Whether one man is converted or not converted, that is not our business. We shall try our best. But Kṛṣṇa must see that I am giving service to Kṛṣṇa. That’s all. That is wanted. Not that you have to judge that you have approached so many men; nobody became Kṛṣṇa conscious. That doesn’t matter. But you have gone there.

You have endeavored your sincere effort. That is recognized by Kṛṣṇa. That is the order of Caitanya Mahāprabhu: yāre dekha, tāre kaha ‘kṛṣṇa’-upadeśa: “Whomever you meet, you give him, you inform him the instruction of Kṛṣṇa.” Caitanya Mahāprabhu never said that “You see that he has actually become Kṛṣṇa conscious.” Never says. You simply say and go and say. That is your business. It is not that you have to see that he has become Kṛṣṇa conscious. It is not so easy. It will take, bahūnāṁ janmanām ante, after many, many births. But you have to do your duty. Go and preach. Then your duty is finished. Of course, you will try to convert. If he is not converted, that is not deviation of your duty. You have simply to go and spread. Just like when I came to your country, I never expected any success because I knew as soon as I say “No illicit sex, no meat-eating,” they will reject me immediately.

Whether people join or not has a lot to do with the sincerity of the preachers. In Chowpatti devotees are lined up to move into the āśrama, and there are 130 brahmacārīs living in the temple. Śrīla Prabhupāda said that a temple is as good as the leader. In Chowpatti the main activity is preaching, and the leader, Rādhānātha Mahārāja, is expert in ācāra (acting properly) and pracāra (preaching)—rare to find. When devotees were preaching in Bombay in the early 70’s, practically no one was joining. One of the leading sannyāsīs said to Prabhupāda, “Practically we’re seeing that only in West Bengal are people becoming devotees.” But now in the same city, Mumbai, under the guidance of Rādhānātha Swami and Gopāla Krishna Mahārāja, so many people are joining.

It is Kali-yuga, and most of us are born mlecchas. If someone does join, it is the mercy of Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu, Śrīla Prabhupāda, and devotees who are going out of their way to give mercy. In the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam (8.7.44) we find this statement:

tapyante loka-tāpena sādhavaḥ prāyaśo janāḥ
paramārādhanaṁ tad dhi puruṣasyākhilātmanaḥ

“Great personalities almost always accept voluntary suffering because of the suffering of people in general. This is considered the highest method of worshiping the Supreme Personality of Godhead, who is present in everyone’s heart.”

Even if there is no result—people aren’t joining—still we should know that Kṛṣṇa is pleased and that people are benefiting. They may not join, but people are definitely reading the books and getting purified.

* * *

His Holiness Bhakti-vijñāna Swami

Here is Mahārāja’s account of how the first large shipment of books entered the USSR. “In 1989 Brahma Muhūrta Dāsa heard that the Russians were allowing religious books into the USSR for the first time. The BBT decided to print 200,000 books and send them in. They were put in three semi trucks, but when the trucks reached the border the customs officials wouldn’t allow them in because they hadn’t heard of the new law. After three days the books were allowed in, but they would have to be held in a warehouse. The devotees went to the warehouse and asked the persons in charge why the books would not be given to them. The officials told the devotees to come back in ten days. After ten days the devotees returned, only to find that nothing had changed. One mātājī then told the officials: ‘You’re all dinosaurs, living a hundred years in the past. Don’t you know there’s a new trend in this country? Don’t you watch television!’ Then the devotees demonstrated outside the warehouse until the books were released.”

Bhakti-vijñāna Mahārāja, who was there at the time, said that from these 200,000 books hundreds and hundreds if not thousands of devotees came to Kṛṣṇa consciousness.

* * *

His Holiness Bhakti Vikāsa Swami

As a devotee advances in Kṛṣṇa consciousness, he begins to feel blissful when rising early in the morning. How wonderful — another day in the service of Kṛṣṇa! So much work in the service of Kṛṣṇa, so many things to do. There are so many people all over the world who have to know about Kṛṣṇa. They don’t know about Him yet. They are just going to work or school, and they don’t know that they are devotees of Kṛṣṇa. Some are just waiting for someone to come and say, “Hey, here’s a book about Kṛṣṇa.” Then they read it and come to the temple and ask, “What is this?” They start to associate, to chant.

There are so many people like us before we knew about Kṛṣṇa. We thought that life means to go to school, eat some bread, watch some TV, sleep, etc. This is life. We didn’t know about Kṛṣṇa. Now we know about Kṛṣṇa and our life has changed. So many people all over the world — they don’t know about Kṛṣṇa yet. Or they may have heard something, but they haven’t come to the point of understanding that there is no meaning to life except to serve Kṛṣṇa.

So devotees have an exciting mission — to go out and find all those devotees who don’t realize yet that they are devotees. Great mission. Just like some kind of hunting —transcendental hunting. Where are the devotees? Many karmīs like to go hunting. They go out with guns and shoot rabbits and deer — very demoniac. But devotees go out hunting for more devotees: “Where are those spirit souls who are eager to understand Kṛṣṇa? Where are they?” There are so many. You can never tell who will become a devotee. They may be old or young. They may be pleasantly behaved or very nasty. Sometimes very nasty people also change and become devotees. Who are these people? They are all spirit souls, servants of Kṛṣṇa. So it is a great mission for the devotees in The International Society for Krishna Consciousness to find people who want to know the truth. That is the greatest pleasure: to find someone who forgot Kṛṣṇa and is now willing to take up the process to remember Him.

Kṛṣṇa Himself likes to do this. He finds such pleasure in waking others up to Kṛṣṇa consciousness. He Himself comes as Lord Caitanya and preaches by spreading the holy names, requesting people to preach, discussing philosophy, appointing His disciples the Six Gosvāmīs to renovate Vṛndāvana and write books. The Six Gosvāmīs carried the message of Caitanya Mahaprabhu, sending their disciples to preach the message in their books, and this process is going on at the present time, the same movement of Caitanya Mahāprabhu.

Caitanya Mahāprabhu, who is Kṛṣṇa Himself, came to chant Hare Kṛṣṇa. This is the victory sound. Wherever there is the chanting of the holy name, that is a sign of victory. Wherever devotees are enthusiastically chanting, then Māyā’s influence will definitely be cast away and the transcendental potency of the holy name will awaken the sleeping souls. So devotees have to go out among the people who are sleeping in the lap of the witch called Māyā and chant the name of Kṛṣṇa, which will enter the hearts of the sleeping souls and awaken them and enliven them. This is the joyful life of Kṛṣṇa consciousness.

Arjuna forgot it; he became despondent. A devotee wants to conquer māyā, just as Arjuna conquered the forces of the Kauravas. Conquer māyā by preaching Kṛṣṇa consciousness. And there will be some casualties, no doubt. In preaching, in fighting māyā, there may be some casualties. Even big generals may fall, but their service is not forgotten. And those who are alive and strong in Kṛṣṇa consciousness should remain alive and strong by always adhering to sādhana and chanting nicely, studying Prabhupāda’s books. Do not entertain foolish, nonsense ideas. Real knowledge is that which comes in paramparā. Prabhupāda is the great empowered associate of Caitanya Mahāprabhu who has given us this knowledge. What we have heard in disciplic succession, what Prabhupāda has given us — that we should follow. Just follow what the ācāryas have given us — simple system. Chant Hare Kṛṣṇa and be happy, and spread that chanting to others. In that way we will remain strong, blissful, and happy, and Kṛṣṇa will always be there to help us.

I was about sixteen when my best friend at school wanted to show me some of Śrīla Prabhupāda’s books. But I refused, saying, “I know all about these Indian swamis; they’re all cheaters.” About two years later I came across a Kṛṣṇa book in someone else’s house. The owner hadn’t read it. I did. Afterward I went to the temple and joined.

* * *

His Holiness Jayapatāka Swami

One of my disciples told me an unusual story of how he came to Kṛṣṇa consciousness. Drunk one night in Toronto, he bought a Bhagavad-gītā As It Is from a devotee and stuck it in his briefcase. When he got home and opened his briefcase and saw the Bhagavad-gītā, he couldn’t remember how he’d gotten it. So he opened the book and started reading. He become so purified by reading the Bhagavadgītā that he wanted to visit a temple right away. And when he looked in the back of the book and saw the address list he said, “Wow, there is a temple right here in Toronto!” So he went to the temple, and that day happened to be Nityānanda Trayodaśī. When he arrived a huge kīrtana going on, and that was it for him. He moved in and became a devotee.

So we give the books out to people, and they are like seeds that later come to fruition.

* * *

His Holiness Śivarāma Swami This was back in the early 70s, soon after I joined. It was very cold in Montreal, windy and snowy, and although I was in bliss, the people walking around me were not. I decided to try to sell books in the department store I was standing in front of. I filled my book bag, went inside, and began approaching the shoppers. I constantly kept moving so the security guards wouldn’t catch me. It was easy selling books in the store, and I did not correct people’s spontaneous misconception that the books I was selling were part of a special sale by the store management. After about a half hour I saw that a security man was following me. I tried to lose him by going up the escalator to the 5th floor and then down again. He followed me and finally stopped me and said, “I want to talk to you.” I was used to being thrown out of shopping centers and stores, so I followed him to a little office and braced myself for a dressing-down. He asked, “What are you selling?”

From my bag I pulled out one volume of the Kṛṣṇa-book trilogy, showed it to him, and replied, “Books about God, who appeared on earth five thousand years ago.”

“Can I buy one?” he asked. At first I thought he was teasing me, but it turned out he was serious. He had already read one of Prabhupada’s books, which he’d retrieved from the trash, a book someone had bought and thrown away. Now from me he bought a Kṛṣṇa-book trilogy for $10, and I invited him to the temple.

A few weeks later, during the Sunday Feast I noticed that the security guard had come. And he continued to come regularly for some months, taking up chanting and our devotional practices. Then one day I suggested to him that he quit his job and move in. He did. Of course, I sent him out on saṅkīrtana, and sometimes he would stand in front of the store he had worked in. Eventually he moved to Chicago and received initiation, receiving the name Sītā-Rāma Dāsa.

Sītā-Rāma’s is one of countless stories in which someone ends his or her timeless wandering in the material world by receiving and reading one of Śrīla Prabhupāda’s books. Bring the sufferings of others to a close and give them a book. Don’t get in the way.

It was December 1975, during the first marathon in Winnipeg, where I was distributing Kṛṣṇa books on the street in –50-degree weather. One day, although freezing, I was in so much ecstasy that I was crying. People didn’t know why. One boy was watching me, and when I went into a store to warm up he followed me. He was so impressed that devotees could stand in the cold and distribute books for no pay. He bought several books, giving all the money he had, and asked why I was crying. I told him. A week later he joined the temple and became a book distributor.

A mātājī distributing books in the early days of ISKCON approached a young man and offered him many books. He held the stack in his arms. Then she asked for a donation. He couldn’t get to his wallet, so she said, “I can get it.” He turned around so she could get to it. She took all the money and was about to give the wallet back to him when a policeman came up and asked, “What’s going on here?” She said, “I’m distributing some books to this man.” He saw that she had taken all the money out of his wallet. So the policeman asked the young man, “Is this OK with you?”

He said, “Yes, but I do need some money for the train.”

The policeman asked the mātājī, “Can you give him some money for the train?” She did. He then went home and read the books — and eventually became Candramauli Swami.

* * *

Miśra Bhagavān Dāsa (ACBSP)

I used to be on the Rādhā-Dāmodara traveling party with Viṣṇujana Swami and Tamāl Kṛṣṇa Mahārāja. Those were the good old days, the best days of my life. But eventually, because of the unusual types of fund-raising the devotees were asked to do in the early 80’s (specifically selling paintings), which I didn’t at all appreciate, I left to join the Air Force. I was in for six years. Then I become a follower of the Grateful Dead. After a while I met a girl and we stayed together for some time, apparently happy. But gradually I saw my lifestyle as the same old “chewing the chewed” materialism and became disgusted. In 1992, as I wandered around in a Grateful Dead open-air concert, I saw someone glowing. This person looked like a light in darkness, although it was broad daylight. I went over to him and asked his name. He said his name was Tāra Dāsa and handed me a Beyond Birth and Death. After reading the book I bought from Tāra at the concert, my former Kṛṣṇa consciousness was rekindled. My girlfriend saw the book lying around and would sometimes pick it up and read it. It started making a lot of sense to her also.

Although my girlfriend and I went our different ways, I again took up Kṛṣṇa consciousness and am now back in the fire of book distribution. My girlfriend also took Prabhupāda’s teachings very seriously and is now Lalitā-gopī Dāsī. She lives at the New Vrindavan community and helps take care of the cows.

Comment by Vijaya Dāsa

In this case we can see that when we distribute books we are not only helping people who have never had any contact with Kṛṣṇa consciousness, but we may also be helping those who have gotten off the path of pure Kṛṣṇa consciousness get back on it. In this case both kinds of people were helped when Tāra Dasa distributed a Beyond Birth and Death. (Another lesson of this incident is that we shouldn’t underestimate the power of small books.) Tāra had no idea who Miśra Bhagavān was—he looked just like any other Grateful Dead fan—but underneath the external dress was a disciple of Śrīla Prabhupāda who was ready to rekindle his Kṛṣṇa consciousness. In a larger sense, all book distributors should see everyone as a dormant devotee of Kṛṣṇa.

Miśra Bhagavān Dāsa (cont.)

In 1999 I went to El Paso, Texas, to do saṅkīrtana. It was during the marathon, and a few hundred people bought copies of Śrīla Prabhupāda’s first small book, Easy Journey to Other Planets. One El Paso student received a copy of Easy Journey to Other Planets from a friend. He liked the book so much that he got a Bhagavad-gītā As It Is and began to teach its message to his other friends. Then he brought his girlfriend and another young couple to the Dallas temple for a visit. Now all four of them have moved into the temple and become new bhaktas and bhaktins.
* * *

Sureśvara Dāsa (ACBSP)

I remember selling Kṛṣṇa books door to door. On one day, practically everyone who opened a door bought a book. The secret to being a successful book distributor, I found, was to be an avid reader of Śrīla Prabhupāda’s books.

In the beginning all the other devotees were selling books quite easily, but I couldn’t sell any. I tried everything, but nothing worked. Then I remembered reading in The Nectar of Devotion that if we truly wish to earn Kṛṣṇa’s service, we must cry for it. As an experiment, I went to a place in the temple where no one would see or hear me (so I wouldn’t be branded a fake), and cried again and again for permission to sell Śrīla Prabhupāda’s books. After that, I was permitted to sell some books.

One day, much later, when I was selling books door to door in the Hollywood Hills in full devotional garb, I came to a house way out in the woods. Before ringing the doorbell I said a prayer, in which I admitted to being completely unqualified for serving Śrīla Prabhupāda. I frankly admitted that I didn’t have any ability to speak effectively or to represent the Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement. I begged to be empowered to speak something worthy and to continue being allowed to sell Śrīla Prabhupāda’s books. I rang the doorbell, and an elderly woman answered. When she saw me she burst into tears. She said that she was old and practically invalid and so couldn’t visit the temple, but that she’d been begging Kṛṣṇa to send a devotee to her home, although she felt it was impossible since she was all the way out in the woods. She bought all my books.

On another day I met a hippy in the hills near Santa Cruz. I tried to sell him The Nectar of Devotion, but he was broke. So I continued selling books door to door for the next several hours, until I had collected enough extra money to pay for his book. Then I hitchhiked several miles back to his house and gave him his book. It touched him so much that I would care about him and give him that book that he read it. Later he moved into the temple, became an initiated devotee, and eventually took brāhmaṇa initiation.

Udayānanda Dāsa (ACBSP)

In the mid 1990’s a woman in her early seventies came into my art shop at the local shopping mall. She bought several paintings for her home, and while I framed them we talked. She told me her name was Harriet Barret. She was the mother of three children and the grandmother of seven, and she had been married for thirty-six years before her husband passed away a few years earlier. Somehow we got to the subject of reincarnation. When Harriet mentioned that she believed in reincarnation, I replied, “It’s not a question of belief but a matter of fact. I’ve been a student of Vedic literature, specifically the Bhagavad-gītā, for more than twenty years.” I then explained some of the Gītā’s teachings, and she was very receptive to the philosophy. At the end of our conversation I asked her to come again. “There’s a book I want to give you,” I said.

When she came back two weeks later, I gave her a copy of Bhagavad-gītā As It Is. She took the book and thanked me enthusiastically. She then began coming to my shop every week, asking questions about vegetarianism, material attachments, the three modes of nature, and so on. One day she asked if I knew anything about meditation. “Oh, yes,” I replied, “I’ve been doing mantra meditation for many years. Someday, when I’m not so busy, I’ll show you how to meditate with beads.” A few weeks went by, and Harriet kept coming to my shop. “When are you going to show me how to meditate?” she would ask. But because of my busy work schedule I just couldn’t find time to show her how to chant Hare Kṛṣṇa on beads. Then one day she called me on the phone. By then she had read more than four hundred pages of the Bhagavad-gītā. “How do you pronounce K-R-S-N-A?” she asked. “Oh, that’s Kṛṣṇa!” I said, pronouncing it for her.

Then she asked, “How do you pronounce H-A-R-E?”

“That’s Hare!” I said.

“And R-A-M-A?” she asked.

“That’s Rāma!”

“So,” she asked, “you say Hare Kṛṣṇa, Hare Kṛṣṇa, Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa, Hare Hare/ Hare Rāma, Hare Rāma, Rāma Rāma, Hare Hare? Is this the mantra you were going to teach me?”

“You got it!” I said. I explained that this is the mahā-mantra — the greatest mantra — and that chanting it is the highest form of meditation one can possibly perform. If she chanted this mantra, I told her, all her material attachments would be broken and her past karma removed, and eventually she would become completely purified. She would transcend the bondage of repeated birth and death and return home, back to Godhead.

Harriet started chanting the Hare Kṛṣṇa mahā-mantra daily. At first she chanted fifteen minutes a day. Gradually she increased. One day she called me in a very excited mood. She had just chanted for two hours without stopping. I was very happy at Harriet’s progress. Her enthusiasm to learn more and more also humbled me and made me appreciate the incredible gifts Śrīla Prabhupāda has given the world. How easy it is to take for granted the perfect wisdom of the Bhagavad-gītā and ŚrīmadBhāgavatam and the potency of the holy name!

The realization I’ve had is that billions of people never get the chance to have the most important questions of life answered — even by the age of seventy-one. Harriet Barrett had led a thoroughly prosperous life, but something was missing. Then she began chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa every day, and the gap in her life was filled. She told me that the Hare Kṛṣṇa mantra was the most valuable acquisition of her life. “Never in my seventy-one years have I ever experienced such overwhelming joy and tranquillity,” she said. “I am humbled that at my age the Supreme Lord would be so kind to give me this great gift of purification and the ability to understand it.”

* * *
Vaiśeṣika Dāsa (ACBSP)

Book distribution is based on faith. The more we read, the more our faith increases. Every one of Śrīla Prabhupāda’s books can purify our hearts and the hearts of those whom we give them to. To show you how this happens, I’ll give you an example. A lady received one of Śrīla Prabhupāda’s books thirty years ago; she never read it. However, when her son embarked on a spiritual path she thought he might appreciate the book she had received years earlier. She gave it to him. He read it and was immediately convinced. Now he’s a devotee.

* * *
Nidrā Devī Dāsī (ACBSP)

When seeds are sown, they take time to grow into plants. There need to be watering, cultivating, weeding. In time the plants flourish. When we look at the big picture, we see that many bhakti plants have sprouted though they may not be in our own backyard. Actually, most who have joined are not living in temple āśramas. They are living all over the world in all kinds of situations. Many more are joining now than ever before. We have to be more broadminded about what “joining” really is.

In my own case, I was practicing some Kṛṣṇa consciousness since the early 1970’s (I was somewhat of a closet devotee, since many of my friends and family members did not really know what I was doing). Then in 1976 I moved into a temple. Many felt that I had not joined until I moved in, but in my heart and in my practices I had already started my Kṛṣṇa consciousness and had accepted Śrīla Prabhupāda as my spiritual master several years before moving into an āśrama. So there are many people who have joined us but we may not recognize them. But Śrīla Prabhupāda and Kṛṣṇa surely recognize them, and hopefully in the future we will be more able as a movement to connect with so many who are joining.

In 1972 a devotee approached a man passing through the St. Louis airport and distributed Śrīla Prabhupāda’s Bhagavad-gītā to him. He took it home and put it on his bookshelf. There it sat for ten years. In 1982 his wife was pregnant and wanted to do something interesting to pass the time. She saw the Bhagavad-gītā on the shelf and thought it would be interesting to read the whole book. She did, and it made her whole life interesting. She told her husband how interesting it was, and he also started reading it. Then he decided they should visit the local ISKCON temple, which they began visiting regularly.

Eventually, the man’s job sent him to Boise, Idaho. There the couple became more involved in Kṛṣṇa consciousness, but there was no temple. So they decided to start their own. They became initiated and received the names Ananta Rūpa Dāsa and Ārūḍhā Devī Dāsī. She home-schooled her two children by mainly teaching them from Śrīla Prabhupāda’s books. One of them graduated with a PhD in religion from Oxford University at the age of twenty-two and is now teaching at a university. The other is also at Oxford University, also studying religion. Both of them are initiated and are engaged in the service of Kṛṣṇa. By Ananta Rūpa’s and his wife’s preaching, many people in Boise have become devotees and are now living on the same street as the temple.

All of this because of one book that was patiently waiting on a bookshelf for ten years, before the “time bomb” went off and transformed so many lives.

I approached a young lady named Nancy in the Denver airport. She took a book but then later threw it in the trash. Paradoxically, she was curious but inimical. Some time later she visited Govinda’s buffet at the ISKCON temple in Denver. When I recognized her and approached her, she said she was only coming for the food and did not want anything to do with the devotees.

Then the prasādam took effect. Gradually she started to talk with the devotees. Then she began doing service, and soon she began preaching via the ISKCON Prison Ministry. Eventually she took initiation, receiving the name Bhāgavatī Devī Dāsī. By then she was writing to about a hundred inmates a month, some of whom received initiation. She distributed many books to the inmates and preached enthusiastically for several years. Then, in her early 40s she left her body. About a year or so before she left, I gave her a set of Śrīla Prabhupāda’s books. She and her husband would read them regularly. He also took initiation. So in many ways Śrīla Prabhupāda’s books became her life and soul, and she distributed hundreds of books through the mail. And to think that it all started with a book that she threw in the trash!

In 1988 I was distributing in the Denver airport when a businessman approached me. This gentleman, Chuck, wanted to see what books I had, and I showed him what I was distributing — Ninth Canto, part one. He said that he already had it. I thought, “Most people don’t have this volume,” so I said, “Perhaps you have another volume of the series?” But he insisted that he did have it, and to prove it he took out a small sheet of paper from his wallet, on which he had listed all the books by Śrīla Prabhupāda he already had and those he still needed to acquire. I was amazed, since most people we met at the airport didn’t know anything about Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam yet here was a person who was methodically collecting the whole set!

He asked, “Do you have any of the volumes I need?” I began to shake my head when I realized that I had my own personal Eighth Canto, part one, which I would read during prasādam breaks. So I gave him that volume and he gave a generous donation. Then we arranged that I would mail him the remaining volumes.

After I had corresponded with him and mailed him the remaining books over a few years, Chuck was well on his way to becoming Kṛṣṇa conscious — chanting rounds, following the principles, etc. He would even buy books buy the box and distribute them to his friends and fellow employees. Perhaps the most amazing part of this tale is that Chuck and I wound up getting married, although neither of us were initially interested in getting involved in a marriage. But both of us had a special inspiration from Śrīla Prabhupāda that he wanted us to get married, and we took his desire seriously. Then Chuck got initiated and is now Caitanya Kṛṣṇa Dāsa.

* * *
Acala Dāsa

I used to be a major in the Russian military. At that time I started practicing various types of yoga and studying Eastern philosophy. I heard that some of the privates in my company were devotees of Kṛṣṇa, so I called them in to speak to them.

When they heard that the major wanted to speak to them, they became afraid, thinking, “He’s in such a big position. Why would he want to speak to us unless we’ve done something wrong. Now we’re going to be punished!”

They came to my office, and to their amazement I started asking them about bhakti–yoga. “What would be a good way to start learning?” I asked.

“You should read the Bhagavad-gītā,” they replied.

“Do you have one?” I asked, and they said they did. They gave me Śrīla Prabhupāda’s Bhagavadgītā As It Is and were so bold that they asked for a donation. I was surprised that these little privates could ask me for a donation—but also impressed, so I gave them some money.

Later, whenever they would see me they’d ask if I’d read the book yet, and I would always say, “No, I haven’t had the time.” I began to feel a little guilty that I hadn’t read it, so I read the translations. After that, when they asked if I’d read the book yet, I could honestly reply, “I have.”

Then one night Śrīla Prabhupāda came to me in a dream and said, in perfect Russian, “It will be all right if you read the purports also.” I woke up and was astonished that Prabhupāda had come to me to instruct me. So I immediately started reading the Bhagavad-gītā again, but this time without skipping the purports.

Comment by Vijaya Dāsa

One of the book distributors in the Moscow temple used to be a doctor. He told me how he came to Kṛṣṇa consciousness.

One day he left his office to have lunch, and as he was walking he saw a table with some books on it and a person standing behind it. He stopped and looked and then asked what the books were about. The devotee answered, “They’re about you. They tell you who you are and who you aren’t—that you’re an eternal soul, not your temporary body.”

Impressed with the devotee’s conviction and purity, the doctor asked, “How old are you?” The devotee replied, “Do you want to know how old I am, or how old my body is? If you want to know how old I am, I’m eternal. If you want to know how old my body is, it’s twentytwo years old.”

Again the doctor was impressed, so he thought it would be a good idea to get a book. The devotee suggested the Bhagavad-gītā. The doctor read the book, became a devotee, and has been distributing books for the past ten years.

There is a blind devotee in the Moscow temple who goes out every day to distribute Śrīla Prabhupāda’s books. Another book distributor in Moscow has artificial arms that often malfunction. During the book distribution seminar he asked, “How can I distribute Prabhupāda’s books for my whole life?”

“Don’t stop,” I replied.

Acala Dāsa (continued)

While distributing on the street mall in Moscow, I approached a lady and offered her a book. I explained some of the contents, and she enthusiastically took it. Seeing her enthusiasm, I invited her to the temple, and a few weeks later she came. By coincidence, that day the devotees were holding a book distribution seminar. Seeing her come as a result of getting a book, I glorified her for her sincerity: “Kṛṣṇa says in the Bhagavad-gītā, ‘Out of many thousands of people, one may inquire into the Absolute Truth.’ So here we have this nice lady coming to inquire about the Absolute Truth. She is not ordinary.” She was touched by my kind words and stayed for the whole seminar.

She left that evening, and we didn’t see her again. A year later I was in a plane to go to the Māyāpur festival in India. Next to me sat a lady who, after a few minutes, asked me, “Do you remember me?” I looked at her and said, “No, I’m sorry, I don’t.”

“You gave me a book in Moscow,” she replied. “I then visited your temple, and you spoke some kind words about me. From getting that book and associating with the devotees, I have become a devotee. I am on my way to the Māyāpur festival.”

I then remembered her and felt very pleased that she had become a devotee.

After the Māyāpur festival she was on a train to Vṛndāvana. While on this train she met another Russian devotee. His service is book distribution in India. When he met this lady on the train, he asked her if she would like to learn how to distribute books. She knew of the importance of book distribution from hearing about it during her first visit to the temple. So she took some lessons from him. She had a nice experience on the train distributing books, and when she returned to Russia she continued distributing. She is now a full-time book distributor in Russia.

* * *

Aiśvarya Dāsa

I’m sitting in the temple room chanting my last rounds on an island in Ireland, in the middle of nowhere, where deer and rabbits roam wild eating all our trees and flowers. Then in comes Arjuna Dāsa with a stranger, a young man in his twenties. Stunned momentarily upon seeing another human being from the outside world in this remote mandira, I stammered out a quiet “Haribol.” This young man wanted to join our temple and dedicate his life to ISKCON by moving into the āśrama and doing whatever was required to become fully Kṛṣṇa conscious. In shock at this unexpected news, I asked, “How , why?” He was working in Dublin two years earlier and got a Chant and Be Happy from a saṅkīrtana devotee. (At this point I should mention that the Irish yātrā has only two full-time book distributors.) He read the book and figured everything inside was safe and sound and then started chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa, sixteen rounds a day, and following the four regulative principles. Finally he quit his job, and after some time he took a bus to the town nearest to our temple, determined to meet another devotee. After walking for three hours in the dark asking locals how to get here, one farmer took pity on him and kindly took him in his tractor to the lake surrounding our mandira. By chance a devotee spotted him and put him up for the night in his home, and now as I write this he is chanting japa in the temple room downstairs, fully fired up and confident that he has changed his life for the better. So there you have it. Book distribution still works. It is still one of the most important preaching tools we have to offer. This young bhakta had a job and was a respectable member of society. Just a normal guy who got a small book, read it, and was convinced that chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa is the best thing he could possibly do with his life. So he packed his bags and found the temple.

* * *

Ajita Dāsa

Parigraha Prabhu, a brahmacārī from Northern Europe, visited Brisbane, Australia, to distribute books. While standing in front of Govinda’s downtown, he gave a soft-cover Gītā to a Mr. Wong. Mr. Wong gave Parigraha $20 and was on his way.

A few weeks later we received a letter from Mr. Wong describing his appreciation for the Gītā, and accompanying the letter was a check for $4,000, “a donation,” in Mr. Wong’s words, “to further KC.” Needless to say, I at once wrote back to Mr. Wong, thanking him profusely for his generous donation, and Dhruva Prabhu visited him at home to give him a couple of more books. He appreciated the gesture, but his mother didn’t. “Better to communicate by phone or mail,” he told us out of his mother’s earshot.

In a few days we received another letter from Mr. Wong, in which he thanked us for the books, and with the letter was another “donation to further KC.” This time it was a check for $8,000! In my thank-you letter to Mr. Wong I informed him I had a gift for him and invited him to the temple. He came by the temple a few days later, and we gave him a full set of Śrīmad-Bhāgavatams. He was very happy to receive the books, and after an hour or so of conversation he pulled out an envelope that said “donation to further KC.” Enclosed: yet another check for $8,000. I soon left Brisbane and the munificent Mr. Wong, but since then I have heard that he sent yet another “donation to further KC,” this time a gift of $6,000. Total: $26,000, stemming from the distribution of one soft-cover Bhagavad-gītā. Who says book distribution is not cost-effective?

Mr. Wong’s father, upon hearing that his son had given so much money to the Hare Kṛṣṇas, became upset and demanded the money back. Soon thereafter he went on a business trip and his plane crashed and he perished. Mr. Wong later became an initiated devotee.

While distributing books in Kathmandu, a devotee approached a teenage boy named Suvarna and tried to convince him to take a book. Suvarna wasn’t interested. But the book distributor was new and became forceful, demanding that Suvarna take a book, saying, “This book helped me so much, and it can help you, too! Now please take it and give a donation.”

Suvarna relented, took the book and three others, and gave a donation, thinking, “These people are poor; let me help them.” Then he went to visit a relative in another city. When he became bored, he remembered the books and thought, “I bought them; I might as well read them.” He found the books to be exactly what he was looking for.

That very day he returned to Kathmandu to look for the devotees, but he couldn’t find them. Every day for three months he went back to the place where he had met the devotees, hoping he would see them again. Then one day he saw two devotees and rushed over to them, expressing how happy he was to see devotees again. They had a book table, so he took some books and started distributing them to the passersby, knowing the importance of the knowledge they contained. The devotees were trying to talk to him, but he would just distribute books and give the devotees the laxmi. He did this for three days. They were very surprised to see his enthusiasm and invited him to their center. He came and soon moved in. Suvarna’s parents were upset at first, but when they met Pātrī Prabhu, who oversees the preaching in Kathmandu, they were satisfied that their son was in good hands.

It turns out that Bhakta Suvarna, though quite young, had already led an incredible life. When he was fifteen he entered a national poetry competition with 4,000 participants. Among the contestants were highly educated professors and graduate students, and many others with refined poetic ability. Suvarna was among them. Gradually, as the competition progressed, 300 were left, then 150, 100, 50, 30, 20, 10, 5, and 3. Suvarna was among the last 3. Whoever wrote the best poem would be the national poetry champion. He won! The government awarded him $10,000 and a scholarship to any university he choose, which would be good until he was thirty.

Suvarna was a sharp boy, so instead of spending the money, he bought shares in a printing company. The company prospered, and over the next three years it became one of the most prominent printing companies in Nepal. Now, at seventeen, Suvarna owns 70% of the company. There are two other shareholders: one is a previous governor of Nepal, and the other is a representative of Google and the BBC. Each has a 15% share of the company. The name of the printing company is Gauranga Printing. Suvarna plans to soon begin printing BBT books at his company.

Also, at the age of 14 and 15 Suvarna would regularly write articles for newspapers and magazines. But now that he’s a devotee he’s interested only in Kṛṣṇa, so he stopped writing those articles. I encouraged him to write for BTG.

Recently Suvarna took up some managerial responsibility at one of the Kathmandu centers. He regularly distributes books and is quite good at it.

I visited the San Diego temple and was glad to see a couple of new saṅkīrtana devotees distributing books. One of them was Bhakta Bronson. I asked him how he became a devotee, and he said he had received The Perfection of Yoga from Rādhānātha Prabhu in a parking lot. [Please see “An Interview with Rādhānātha Prabhu” in the Introduction.] Not only did Bhakta Bronson become a devotee, but after reading The Perfection of Yoga he explained it to his mother and she became a devotee. In India it is not uncommon for a devotee to preach to his mother and bring her under the shelter of Lord Kṛṣṇa, but in the West it is very rare.

* * *
Ambarīṣa Dāsa (the younger) I was distributing books near a bookstore. One Vietnamese poet was going to this bookstore, I stopped him. He said he was looking for the Vedas. He bought the First Canto of the Bhāgavatam from me. I then invited him to the temple. When he came to the temple he became so inspired that he bought other books and started to chant. Then he began helping the BBT to translate Śrīla Prabhupāda’s books into Vietnamese. Now he is helping devotees to preach in Vietnam.

* * *
Ānakadundubhi Dāsa

Going door to door, I met a couple in their thirties. They had never seen devotees but had bought a few of Śrīla Prabhupāda’s books in a used bookstore. They said they were in love with Śrīla Prabhupāda but did not understand a lot of the things they read. I gave them more books and began writing and visiting them regularly, helping them along in understanding Prabhupāda’s books. Now they are regularly chanting six rounds a day and reading the Bhagavad-gītā and Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam. When I first met them they were not even vegetarian.

On my last visit they asked me how they could do more devotional service. This couple is one of the innumerable miracles done by Śrīla Prabhupāda books! Śrīla Prabhupāda’s books are making devotees; we are here just to give a hand!

* * *
Anonymous: How a Follower of Islam Became a Devotee

We’ll call him Bhakta Ahmed. He was a member of the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) and an associate of Yasser Arafat. But he gave up his involvement in the PLO because of some things he disagreed with, and he went to Germany to study at a university. One night he got drunk at a bar. Just to his right, on the table in front of him, was a magazine that someone had left behind: Back to Godhead. He picked it up to read, but he was so drunk that he couldn’t read it and eventually passed out. The bar owner found his address on him and had someone take him home. When he got home he still had the magazine in his hand and was trying to figure out where he got it. Then he started reading it and was amazed. This magazine answered questions he’d vainly looked for answers to in the Koran and elsewhere.

He was frustrated with material life, so he looked up the address of the nearest temple and paid a visit. Devotees preached to him and impressed him, and he asked if he could join. When they heard he was a former member of the PLO, they decided that having him at the temple might mean trouble, so they politely replied that he could not join and explained why.

Disappointed but determined, for the next three days he pleaded with the devotees to let him join. But they wouldn’t relent, though they were impressed with his sincerity.

He had heard about the Sunday Feast, so he attended it, and when he arrived he went to the brahmacārī āśrama, locked himself in the bathroom, and shaved up.

A devotee eventually knocked on the door. From inside the bathroom came the voice of someone determined to surrender: “I’m not coming out until you agree to let me stay.” They complied, and he happily became a member. After some time he received initiation and became Rāvaṇāri Dāsa. He became a good preacher and translated many of Śrīla Prabhupāda’s books into Arabic.

* * *

Antardvīpa Dāsa
I was in medical school when I found a Rāja-vidyā that my brother had received from a devotee. From reading Rāja-vidyā I decided I needed to read the Bhagavad-gītā, which I found in the university library. I read it and found it interesting, but not interesting enough to give up my medical career and join the Kṛṣṇas.

Then a few months later I found a set of Śrīmad-Bhāgavatams in the library, so I started reading, and reading, and reading. I loved Śrīla Prabhupāda’s books so much that I decided that during my school break I would just go to the local Hare Kṛṣṇa temple in Brisbane and read Prabhupāda’s books with the devotees for seven days.

But when I got to the temple, the first person I saw asked me to help him with the garden, which I did all day. I continued visiting the temple, and after a short time I moved into the āśrama. While I was living in the temple I continued with my studies and graduated. Then, while still living in the temple, I worked as a surgeon, making lots of money and giving it to the temple. But after a while I became disgusted with the work, which was little more than a fancy carpenter’s job, so I gave it up and became a full-time devotee.

* * *
Braja Bihāri Dāsa (Chowpatti, India)

This is the story of a man who bought Śrīla Prabhupāda’s Bhagavad-gītā in the year 1980 and placed it on his bookshelf. His name is Khemraj Shah. Time passed quietly, but surely the “bomb” was ticking and waiting to explode. Every year during his annual Diwali mahā-cleaning, Khemraj dumped many books, newspapers, and magazines into the trash bin, but somehow he never discarded the Bhagavadgītā. Once a year this gentleman religiously removed the book off the shelf, cleaned the thick dust that had accumulated on it, and placed it back in the same spot on his bookshelf. After more than a decade of this ritual had passed, Khemraj’s fortunes changed.

In the early 90s Khemraj was under tremendous stress at his job. His colleagues were plotting against him, his promotions were in jeopardy, and even his very job was in danger. He had an important task to do: identify his enemies and checkmate them. Vaguely Khemraj remembered how the epic Mahābhārata is a tale of intrigue and politics. Surely, he thought, this story had something to tell him that might help him solve his problem. That instant he recollected he had the Bhagavad-gītā at home, which for some reason he had refused to discard. Knowing it was part of the Mahābhārata, Khemraj figured now was the time to explore its pages.

After reading the first chapter, Khemraj felt he could relate to Arjuna’s plight and his reluctance to fight. But Khemraj’s concern was to destroy his enemies, so he kept reading. As he read the second chapter, his interest grew—never mind if its teachings weren’t fitting into his office setup. After reading chapters three and four, Khemraj felt he needed to take a week off from work and exclusively study the Gītā. As he read each chapter, Śrīla Prabhupāda’s words touched the core of his heart, and slowly his vision changed. A week later he had begun chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa and looking for devotees.

Today, twenty-three years after purchasing the Bhagavad-gītā, Khemraj Shah is Khagendra Dāsa, a very active preacher and an initiated disciple of His Holiness Lokanāth Swami. A friend of the Rādhā- Gopīnātha congregation, he stays at Alibagh and, along with his wonderful family, preaches full-time. He left his job long ago and has a steady business, which he says is left totally in Kṛṣṇa’s hands so that he can devote all his time and energy to distributing Kṛṣṇa consciousness to others.

* * *
Dāru-brahma Dāsa

Although my mother recalls seeing devotees chanting in the street somewhere, I was just a young boy with her at the time, and I don’t recall it at all.

However, I do remember meeting a devotee when I traveled on a bus from Princeton, New Jersey, where I lived at the time. I was seventeen, and it was the first time I’d ridden alone on the bus to New York City. I felt somewhat intimidated by being in The Big Apple by myself.

Soon after getting off the bus at the huge Port Authority terminal at 42nd St., I was approached by a devotee with a book. The thing that struck me at the time, and which has had quite an effect on me ever since concerning how I try to deal with people when I first meet them, was how personal and friendly he was. He asked me my name, where I was from, and what I do, but most importantly, I had the sense that he truly cared about my answers and wasn’t just asking them as throwaway questions before getting down to the business of selling me something.

Of course, within a short time he did get to the point of asking for a donation for the book, and all I recall was kind of feeling unready to give a donation. Thus I clumsily put the book back in his hands and rushed off mumbling some excuse.

I had no idea what group that person was with, and I quickly forgot the incident. Three years later, on December 24th, 1977, just before my 21st birthday and one month after Śrīla Prabhupāda had left the planet, I moved into the temple in Gainesville, Florida. It was the first temple I’d visited, just once a few weeks earlier, and I’d joined without ever having read one of Śrīla Prabhupāda’s books. I remember thanking God for giving me the greatest Christmas present ever: the understanding of who He was and what the real purpose of life was.

The morning after I moved in I was still thanking the Lord for my great fortune and kicking myself for having wasted so much of my life, when a little doubt popped into my mind: “But why, O Lord, did You let me suffer and not let me know about this knowledge before?”

Book distribution was going on quite powerfully at the Gainesville temple, and that morning I saw many saṅkīrtana devotees getting ready to go out to distribute books. As I looked on in amazement at the flurry of activity, I got a clear answer from inside: “Do you remember that person who approached you in New York a few years ago? He was doing what these devotees are doing. You see, I was trying to enlighten you, even then.”

After just a few days in the temple, I also started going out on book distribution, and I quickly learned that many people who are approached do not take books. But I also thought that it was Kṛṣṇa’s perfect arrangement that I had not taken a book my first time, because now I had no right to get discouraged if someone didn’t take a book.

I knew from experience that just because a person doesn’t take a book doesn’t mean anything. Perhaps, like me, that same person would within a few years join a temple and distribute books himself. You never know with Kṛṣṇa!

In this regard, I had an experience eighteen years later. I was at the Los Angeles temple gift shop when a mātājī working in the store came up to me and asked, “Did you ever distribute books in the Miami airport?”

I said, “Yes, at different times.”

She exclaimed, “It was you! Do you remember giving me a big book in the airport a few years ago and asking for a donation? I gave you a dollar and you said, ‘Well, we really try to get around $5 to cover the cost of these big books. Do you mind if I give you a smaller book instead?’ Then you started to gently replace the big book with a smaller one. But I got upset and said, ‘No, you gave me the big book and I want that one!’ And I forcibly grabbed the big book back. You then pleaded with me for a bigger donation, but I got so angry that I grabbed even the dollar I’d already given you and stormed off with both the book and my money.”

By now my memory had been jogged sufficiently to remember the incident. I remembered distinctly thinking at the time, “That !%@#&%#!! I bet someone who takes a book like that will go to hell for quite awhile.”

She continued her story, saying, “Well, Prabhu, I read that book and within a short time became a devotee. And for many years I myself went out and distributed Śrīla Prabhupāda’s books in the Los Angeles airport.” It turns out that she was very good at it, too.

So the lesson is that not only may someone who doesn’t take a book from a book distributor become one, but even someone who steals a book from a distributor may become one, too. You never know with Kṛṣṇa.

All glories to Śrīla Prabhupāda’s transcendental book distribution!

* * *

Divya-jñāna Dāsa

We were distributing in downtown Melbourne with Prahlādānanda Swami during the last few days of the December marathon. I stopped a man who told me his name was Adrian. He was twenty-seven years old and worked in a seafood restaurant. As soon as I met him I could tell he was special. I showed him the Bhagavad-gītā, and he said he was interested. But he was unsure whether to take it or not. I introduced him to Prahlādānanda Swami. Mahārāja asked him if he knew what yoga was. Adrian said he did not. So Mahārāja explained that yoga means to control the mind and senses, because by controlling the mind and senses one can become free from stress and anxiety. We spoke for a little longer, after which he took the Bhagavad-gītā for $20. I invited him to our Loft, our inner-city preaching program.

One day at the temple, three months later, I saw Adrian in Bhāgavatam class. After class I went up to him, and he asked me if I remembered him. I told him I did. I asked him what happened. He said that he’d been going to the Loft for three months, and that he had bought some beads from the restaurant store and started chanting. When I had stopped him the previous December he happened to be looking for something spiritual to do, but he didn’t know what.

Now eight months have passed and Bhakta Adrian is chanting sixteen rounds. Instead of working at a seafood restaurant, he works as a chef at our Govinda’s restaurant. He is also taking our Bhakti Śāstrī course, so he is doing well. It took a whole team of devotees to get one conditioned soul out of māyā. I think that reading the Bhagavad-gītā was the final potent act that convinced him to become Kṛṣṇa conscious.

Here is a story that shows how Lord Caitanya’s mercy is spreading in so many mysterious ways. By distributing these books we are spreading so many seeds, and we never know where they might end up and sprout.

In Melbourne we have recycle bins where people take old clothes and other things and donate them to charities to be sold as second-hand goods. Some young people play a game called dumpster busting, in which someone climbs into one of these bins and sees what treasures he might find. Gary was dumpster busting one fateful night and found The Quest for Enlightenment. He took it home, read it, thought the book was great, and came to the temple. Now Bhakta Gary chants sixteen rounds, follows the morning program, and helps out at our restaurant.

Here’s another story: A Rastafarian co-worker asked Andrew, “Have you ever heard about Kṛṣṇa.?” Andrew hadn’t, but his curiosity was aroused. So he went to the library to find out about Kṛṣṇa. There he found many books on the subject, so he picked out one, which happened to be Bhāgavatam 1.1, and opened it. He read, “In this iron age of Kali men have but short lives. They are quarrelsome, lazy, misguided, unlucky, and, above all, always disturbed.” As soon as Andrew read that, he exclaimed, “That’s it! That’s why the world is so messed up — it’s the Age of Kali.” He read some more and eventually became a devotee.

* * *

Divya-siṁha Dāsa

In the summer of 2011 I meet a young man at a Rainbow Gathering in Switzerland. He was on a journey to find the goal of life. We had a nice discussion, and I invited him to our temple in Zurich. The next day he showed up, and after three days in the temple he decided to stay for the bhakta program, which had started just a week before.

One day a friend of his came for the Sunday feast, and when he saw me he shouted, “Hey, I know you! Last summer you gave me a couple of books by your spiritual master.”

I also recognized him, and it turned out that he had given those books to his friend, the same fellow who had just joined the bhakta program. I felt great satisfaction to see how Śrīla Prabhupāda’s books prepared this young man to directly accept Kṛṣṇa consciousness and commit himself to becoming a fulltime devotee.

But that’s not the end of the story! Now, one year later, a new-bhakta course has started with five of his closest friends enrolled. They are very serious candidates, with strong ambitions to join the brahmacārī āśrama. Three more friends in this group started a community close to the temple, and they are also on their way to becoming serious practitioners of Kṛṣṇa consciousness.

Two books distributed created such a tremendous effect in the lives of these young people. By Śrīla Prabhupāda’s mercy, such miracles truly happen.

All glories to Śrī Śrī Guru and Gaurāṅga! All glories to Śrīla Prabhupāda! Saṅkīrtana yajña kī jaya!

* * *

Govinda Dāsa

It has to be the most fortunate thing that could happen to anyone—my whole life changed.

It happened one afternoon while I was going to a shop in Durban, South Africa. I saw a book lying on the side of the road. I walked past it, spoke to some friends, bought whatever I needed, and was on my way back home when I again noticed the book. I stopped and picked it up, although I normally wouldn’t pick up something from the road that looked as bad as this. It was dirty, torn, and old.

I was a sinful person at that time, and a great meat-eater. One evening I went out with some friends. When I returned home I sat and read a few magazines and then picked up the book I’d found. I dusted it off and read the title: Coming Back. I began to read—and I read and read and read. I had never read anything as clear, pure, and truthful as this book. I was amazed and shocked. I began to think how sinful I was. I completed the book the next day and decided to change my life by becoming spiritually conscious. The next month I gave up eating meat, went to the temple, and started learning more about Śrīla Prabhupāda and the all-glorious Lord Kṛṣṇa. I have now been a devotee for three years, and I enjoy every minute of it. All this happened because I decided to take a walk to the shop one day. That is the power of the Lord, Śrī Kṛṣṇa.

* * *

Kṛṣṇa Dāsa (Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates)

In one of the Far East countries the police were on the lookout for a very notorious criminal. He decided to hide out in the local Hare Kṛṣṇa temple. After he’d stayed in the temple for a few months, his heart became purified and he became a genuine devotee. He had heard of the importance of book distribution and thought he would be good at it since he had a bold nature. He figured the police wouldn’t notice him because of his shaven head.

Once while distributing books he was recognized by the police, and they arrested him and took him to jail. Because of the severity of his crimes, the judge sentenced him to serve his sentence in a torturous island prison. Many hard-core criminals had been sent there. To make it even harder for them to escape, the authorities would inject them with tranquilizers. After a while they would forget even who they were and become almost like vegetables. The devotees from the temple pleaded with the judge to release the devotee, since he’d completely changed his way of life. But the judge said that was impossible because of the seriousness and extent of his crimes. He had to undergo the punishment, and there was no escape from that.

The prisoners in the camp were very badly treated. At meal time the police would throw loaves of bread on the ground so the criminals would have to fight among themselves like dogs to get a morsel. At the temple devotees’ request, however, the authorities agreed not to inject the devotee with tranquilizers, since he had obviously undergone a change of heart.

After a few months the prison commissioner went to the island prison to see the status of the criminals there. To his astonishment, there was no more throwing of bread to the prisoners. Each prisoner would get his loaf of bread and would then offer it to the Rādhā-Krishna Deity the devotee prisoner had made out of sand. Only then would the prisoners take prasādam. All the prisoners were chanting the mahā-mantra and had been completely transformed into devotees by associating with the criminal-turned-devotee.

After visiting the island prison, the prison commissioner informed the temple devotees of what he had seen. He was quite happy about how such notorious criminals had undergone such an extraordinary transformation of character. He was completely stunned by the whole episode and decided to reduce the sentence of the devotee criminal on the island.

* * *

Murāri Gupta Dāsa

Bhakta Rick from Holland is serving in the Śrī Śrī Rādhā-Gopīnātha Mandir, in Chowpatty, Mumbai. Every day he goes on book distribution and is very enthusiastic, even on “bad days” when he distributes very few books. The following account by Bhakta Rick explains his unbreakable enthusiasm: Once a devotee from Amsterdam came to my hometown to distribute books. He had a bad day, managing to distribute only two books the whole day. He was very frustrated. “I have never done so bad. I think I’m in māyā. This is the worst score I’ve ever had.” He was so morose. But when he went back to the temple in Amsterdam, he got the shock of his life. One of the two men he’d distributed a book to that day was sitting in the temple room!

The book distributor said, “This has never happened to me before. I’ve distributed books to so many people, but I’ve never seen any of them again. This is the first time I am seeing a person who took a book from me come to the temple. It is the amazing mercy of the Lord.” Not only this, the next time the book distributor went to the temple, he found that the man had joined the temple!

This shows that no score is a small score. We may do just one or two books in a day, but if one of those books reaches the right person, it has the power to bring about a complete transformation of the heart. This story keeps me going. I know that even if I have a bad day, with a small score, some person’s life might change due to a book I’ve sold.

* * *

Narajīvana Dāsa

I was studying yoga, and a friend of mine knew this. So when he got one of Śrīla Prabhupāda’s books he gave it to me, thinking I would appreciate it more than he would. It was the ŚrīmadBhāgavatam 1.1. From page one I knew it wasn’t an ordinary book. I read it six hours a day. When I finished reading the book, I would start reading it again. First I would read all the transliterations; then I would go back and read all the translations and purports. I wanted more, so Kṛṣṇa arranged for some devotees to visit my town and hold a program. At the program I found what I wanted — more books! I was in bliss. I didn’t even stay for the whole program, because I wanted to go back to my apartment and read the books. Then, of course, I started chanting, and soon thereafter I found out where the nearest temple was and joined.

Comment by Vijaya Dāsa Narajīvana Prabhu’s story shows, as we’ve seen time and time again, that the person we give the book too may not be the one who ultimately benefits from it. Incidents like this happen quite a bit. The moral of stories like this: “Let’s keep the mercy flowing, because there are people out there looking for — more books!”

* * *

Nityānanda Dāsa

While visiting Vṛndāvana with some friends, I met a group of devotees from Tamil Nadu in front of Śrīla Prabhupāda’s samādhi-mandira. A pukka devotee from the group, dressed in dhotī and with clear tilaka, approached us and, pointing at me, said to his friends, “He came to my home for the first time a few years ago and sold us The Science of Self-Realization. That was my first contact with Śrīla Prabhupāda and ISKCON. Now my family and I are all devotees.” We exchanged pleasant words, and then he introduced me to his wife and two children—all wearing tilaka and holding japa-mālā in their hands.

This experience was for sure a drop of nectar from Kṛṣṇa. From this I understood that all the austerities I had undergone, preaching almost alone for many months, were successful: a whole family had taken up kṛṣṇa-bhakti! And how many more are in the queue to get this matchless gift in the near future? The book they bought was the beginning of the end of their material existence. By Śrīla Prabhupāda’s mercy I was made an instrument in this līlā of Caitanya Mahāprabhu—the līlā of His delivering four more conditioned souls. I felt very happy. It was Kṛṣṇa’s small revelation to me how no endeavor undertaken in preaching goes in vain.

We may not perceive how Kṛṣṇa transcendentally enters the hearts of people when they buy a book, say “Kṛṣṇa,” or taste a prasādam cookie we made and offered on a simple altar at home. But Kṛṣṇa does enter their hearts, and we have to be fully convinced of that. So what if we don’t see? Even the Yamadūtas, the expert servants of Yamarāja, the main upholder of dharma in the universe, couldn’t perceive the purity Ajāmila achieved by merely chanting the name Nārāyaṇa in nāmābhāsa! Likewise, sometimes we also forget the potency of the holy name and other manifestations of Kṛṣṇa, like the Deity, prasādam, Vaiṣṇavas, and Śrīla Prabhupāda’s books. Nevertheless they have the power to transform any conditioned soul, and just to prove that, sometimes Kṛṣṇa performs these little “miracles,” which I sometimes call “drops of nectar.”

* * *

Padma Locana Dāsa (Bali, Indonesia)

I had been distributing all day and was about to go home. But something inside me (the Supersoul?) pulled me to a nearby beach. I saw a man sitting on the sand staring out into the ocean. I went up to him and, standing behind him, said, “I have something I think you’ll find interesting. You look thoughtful.” At that, the man reached back, and I handed him the Bhagavad-gītā.

I started telling him about the teachings as the man looked at the book. He didn’t look at me at all; he just listened and looked through the Gītā. Then he said, “How much?” I told him the price and he paid. I then told him about the temple, which was close by.

That night the man went to the temple and asked the devotees, “What can I do to advance in spiritual life?” They told him to chant the Hare Kṛṣṇa mantra, and he took up japa. Now, one year later, he is chanting sixteen rounds and aspiring for initiation.

Recently the man told me what he had been through up till the time he had received the Gītā: “I was an avid gambler and had lost two houses because of it. I was an alcoholic, addicted to drugs, and often coughed up blood. My doctor said I might have only six months to live if I didn’t change my ways. I’m only forty years old. When you saw me on the beach, I was so confused and depressed I didn’t know what to do. Then you brought Kṛṣṇa into my life. Now I’m so happy. Thank you.”

* * *

Rādhā-piyārī Dāsī

A devotee in Mumbai went out to distribute Śrīmad Bhagavad-gītā. At one place he knocked on the door but no one replied. Again he knocked, but still no answer. With firm determination to distribute the Bhagavad-gītā, he again knocked on the door with great force. A lady angrily opened the door and shouted, “What do you want? I’m very busy,” and tried to shut the door. But the devotee blocked the door with his foot and put the Bhagavad-gītā in her hand. As soon as she touched the Bhagavad-gītā, she relaxed and calmed down.

The lady then asked the devotee about the Gītā, and he explained to her the difference between the body and the soul according to chapter two — how the body is just a dress for the soul, which never dies. She then told the devotee that what she was “busy” with was committing suicide. She showed him the table she had been standing on and the fan on the ceiling with a rope hanging from it, complete with a noose at the end. It was only by the mercy of Śrī Kṛṣṇa and His devotee that she had been saved from suicide. Now she is a devotee chanting sixteen rounds and is associated with an ISKCON temple in Mumbai.

* * *

Rūpa-Raghunātha Dāsa

I was going store to store in a town in India when I entered a shop where about ten men were having a business meeting. In such circumstances it’s usually very difficult to interest anyone in taking a book. This time, however, as soon as the leader of the meeting saw me with the Bhagavad-gītās he invited me in and glorified the Gītā very nicely, suggesting that all the men in the meeting purchase a Gītā, which many of them did. He said, “This book is filled with so much great knowledge that it can change your life and fill you with so much peace.”

It happened to be the end of the meeting, so after everyone had left I asked the man why he had so much faith in the Gītā. So he told me his story.

“For some time I had been going through some difficulty with my family, so much so that it had affected my work at the office. So I started drinking, which didn’t help the situation. Finally I decided that my only alternative was to commit suicide. I just couldn’t continue as I was. I was sitting in my room with a little container of poison in front of me, thinking, ‘This is it, the end of the road.’ Just then I looked up and saw the Bhagavad-gītā As It Is in my bookcase. Then I looked at the container of poison. Then I thought, ‘Maybe this isn’t the end.’ I pulled the Bhagavad-gītā off the shelf, brushed off all the dust, and started reading. After reading just a few sentences I felt relief, so I kept reading. For the next four days all I did was read the Bhagavad-gītā, which I finished. My life completely changed. I stopped drinking, all my family problems were solved, and I became so happy, like I’d never been before.”

* * *

Sarvasukha Dāsa

I was a university student in my fourth year, studying agriculture. I was also a fanatical Christian. At one point I decided, “I have to fully give my life to Christ.” So I put the name of Christ everywhere in my room and did other things I thought constituted surrender. I had a roommate who was into yoga. He was also a scientist — very intelligent. We used to have debates. I wanted to know what his beliefs were. Then he got one of Śrīla Prabhupāda’s books. He told me what he was reading, and even though what he was saying made sense, I wouldn’t accept. But when he was out of the apartment I would secretly read Prabhupāda’s books. After a few weeks of doing this, I understood that the Kṛṣṇa consciousness philosophy was superior. I then started chanting. My friend found out that there was going to be a Hare Kṛṣṇa program in town, so he asked if I would like to join him. I did, and it was fantastic — the prasādam, the lecture by Bhakti Vaibhava Swami, and the devotees. It was all great, and I was amazed. After that experience, it didn’t take long before I joined.

* * *

Prāṇa-nātha Dāsa

Once a doctor bought the Bhagavad-gītā As It Is from me. I got his contact information, and the next time I saw him he said, “I’m astonished. This book is amazing.” So he bought a full Bhāgavatam set and many other books. I started to visit him every month. He bought bhajan CDs and Kṛṣṇa posters. He began playing the CDs in his clinic (he’s a homeopathic psychiatrist) and put the posters on the wall. Being very wise, he started to chant the mahā-mantra and became a vegetarian. I went to his house several times. I even went to his farm with his family to do some programs. He has been reading Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam all this time, and now he is reading it for the third time! He buys many Bhagavadgītās, which he gives to his patients.

* * *

Śarabha Dāsa

Until age 18 or 19 I was like everyone else in Serbia — occupied with attempts to turn my materialistic dreams into reality: a good job, a big car, a house or an apartment with a beautiful wife and lots of ruddy-cheeked children. All my thoughts were focused on realizing this dream, until one day — and to this day I don’t know why or how — I suddenly got a completely different vision of that dream, the realistic one. Family fights, misunderstandings, deep-rooted selfishness and intolerance. Now each day seemed senseless, until the idea of committing suicide as a solution to my despair became more and more prominent in my mind. Happiness, joy, satisfaction — for me these were only a dim memory. Aware of the blind alley I was in, I became desperate to find some solution, some shelter. Totally hopeless and lonely, wandering in darkness, somehow or other I struggled on. I tried to forget all my miseries and problems by absorbing myself in drinking, smoking, sleeping, sports, sex, etc. In other words, I didn’t know how to get out of the deep mud I was in, so I plunged even deeper into it, deep enough to hide from both the mud and myself. I thought, “Let me embrace nothingness, darkness, unconsciousness.”

After finishing high school I had to go into the army, where even deeper realizations of the emptiness of materialistic life were revealed to me.

After the army I went to college, but for a whole year I just experienced more emptiness and pointlessness. Then the first sign of hope appeared. A student I met at college started telling me about yoga, particularly Transcendental Meditation. I took up the practice, meditating fifteen minutes twice a day, and found some relief. I thought I had finally found the real thing. In this way two more years passed.

Then, although somewhat satisfied, I began feeling the need for real purification and more concrete answers to life’s questions. I knew about the Hare Kṛṣṇa movement and had even been attracted by the mahā-mantra and Bhagavad-gītā As It Is. But my roommate had advised me, “Don’t get too close to that sect,” and so I didn’t look into the Hare Kṛṣṇas.

On one occasion I was at a friend’s house in a nearby city searching through his books, looking for something interesting. I remember seeing on these books such words as jing-jang, tantra, Freud, Yogananda, and yoga, until I found the Bhagavad-gītā As It Is. An unfamiliar voice within me suddenly said, “This is what you are looking for. This is the real truth. Here you will find all the answers. Take this book and read it, study it. Surrender to it completely, to each and every word in it. Worship each page of it.”

But when I opened the book and read the words “Hare Kṛṣṇa,” my roommate’s advice came to mind and I put it aside, as if it were dangerous.

Later the voice inside me returned when I saw Kṛṣṇa’s picture for the first time. “Decorate the picture with flowers,” the voice said. “Worship it. Meditate on that person.” Unfortunately, when I found out that the person was Kṛṣṇa, I again recalled my roommate’s advice and took the voice to be an hallucination.

Still, my resistance was weakening. Apparently by chance I went to a concert featuring a band called Nityananda, a Serbian devotee rock band. The special guest that night was one of the initiating spiritual masters in the Hare Kṛṣṇa movement, His Holiness Śacīnandana Swami. That concert was the turning point for me. After that night I could no longer practice Transcendental Meditation. Instead of the Transcendental Meditation mantra, the Hare Kṛṣṇa mahā-mantra kept playing in my mind involuntarily. Very soon the mahā-mantra became everything in my life, giving me a feeling of satisfaction and inner fullness. I chanted almost constantly while performing my daily duties. All anxiety, heaviness, and misery disappeared from my heart, and I thought that no one in the whole world was more fortunate than I was.

In due course all my family members started reading Śrīla Prabhupāda’s books and chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa, so that my home slowly transformed into the spiritual world. From reading Śrīla Prabhupāda’s books I understood the importance of accepting a bona fide spiritual master and receiving initiation. To accomplish that goal I would have to live in the association of devotees. But I didn’t know how to meet devotees because at that time I lived in the Bosnian town of Travnik, where there were no Hare Kṛṣṇa temples. A war was going on, and military forces and barricades surrounded the city. Battles between Serbs, Croatians, and Muslims were blasting in all possible combinations: Serbs against Croatians, Muslims against Serbs, Croatians against Muslims, etc., and to get out of Travnik I had to cross all those fronts.

Feeling a little discouraged, I started gathering information on how to get from Travnik to Croatia, specifically to Zagreb or Rijeka, cities that I knew had temples. I did not find any good news. It seemed that in Gornji Vakuf, a town just outside of Travnik, soldiers were shooting at everyone without discrimination, even at United Nations Peace Forces (UNPROFOR) and Red Cross volunteers. I waited about twenty more days, hoping the situation would get better, but it only got worse.

After one more month of studying Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam and Bhagavad-gītā As It Is, I prayed to Kṛṣṇa, “My dear Lord Kṛṣṇa, I beg You to help me get to a temple.” I found great inspiration in verses like māre kṛṣṇa rākhe ke, rākhe kṛṣṇa māre ke: “If Kṛṣṇa wants to kill you, no one can protect you, and if Kṛṣṇa wants to protect you, no one can kill you.” I decided to put my life in Kṛṣṇa’s hands and go to Croatia by foot. Before I started on my journey, a few soldiers told me not to go because in Gornji Vakuf they were killing people — cutting their throats, severing their ears, and plucking out their eyes. But they couldn’t stop me. Feeling Kṛṣṇa’s protection, on February 11, 1993, at 1:00 PM, with just a few personal belongings, I started on the journey to Croatia through Gornji Vakuf. The whole time I chanted the Hare Kṛṣṇa mahā-mantra on my japa beads.

After about ten hours of walking and chanting, I came to the border of Gornji Vakuf. I was surprised at how easily I had reached that far. It was night, and very dark. From my position about a mile outside the center of the city I heard shooting, explosions, and bullets and shells flying from one side of the city to the other. I decided to take the road that wound around the city. After about ten minutes of walking, I entered a small village where literally all the houses had been burned down. The remaining walls revealed that the houses had been new, built in a modern style. A little further down the road a haystack was burning, giving off the only light in that part of the village. An eerie silence pervaded everything. I thought, “I don’t know what hell looks like, but it must be something like this.” In the courtyard of one house a cow and her calf were standing, staring at the burning haystack, their eyes filled with tears.

I decided to stop there to see if I could do something for the cow and calf. I stood by the wall of a house illuminated by the burning haystack and loudly shouted, “Is anyone there?” The reply was click, click, and then through the window of another house someone started shooting at me. Bullets whizzed around my legs and head, bouncing off the ground and broken walls. I ran as fast as I could while fiery bullets continued to fly all around me. I kept running for about fifteen minutes without stopping. “Oh my God,” I thought, “am I alive?” I was in a state of shock. I couldn’t tell whether I was alive or dead. I clenched my hand and felt my japa beads. I nervously repeated the mahā-mantra. “I’m alive,” I concluded. “Everything’s OK. Let’s keep going.” Little by little, as I realized what had happened, my faith in Kṛṣṇa increased more and more, while my old conception of God as some light, some impersonal force, vanished.

Because I chanted the mahā-mantra the whole time, my distress quickly diminished and my desire to get to the temple rapidly grew. For the next twenty minutes I walked and chanted Hare Kṛṣṇa, Hare Kṛṣṇa, Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa, Hare Hare/ Hare Rāma, Hare Rāma, Rāma Rāma, Hare Hare. Everything was peaceful as I neared the exit from Gornji Vakuf.

Then suddenly on my left I heard someone shout “Stop!” along with the ominous click, click. I stopped but continued to chant. “Who are you?” the voice demanded. “A spirit soul,” I thought, but after a short pause I said, “A pilgrim, a well-wisher.” The stranger came out of the shadows, pointing his huge gun at me. He came right up to me and stared in my face, apparently a bit confused by my answer. After finding no weapons on me, not even a pocketknife, the man was even more confused, but he considered me harmless, and therefore he relaxed.

But then from the darkness another soldier appeared, shouting and swearing. “On the ground!” he yelled. As I lay on the ground he searched me. Not finding anything, he got mad. I was still chanting. The two soldiers started arguing about what to do with me. The first soldier wanted to take me to their commander, but the second wanted to kill me on the spot. And when the second soldier heard me mumbling something, he really became furious. He aimed his gun at me, preparing to shoot. For a moment I stopped chanting, but then I remembered reading that it is very auspicious to chant Hare Kṛṣṇa while dying, so I started chanting again. The second soldier called me ill names and then pulled the trigger. I felt something hit my back, and then I saw the bullet bounce off a stone and fly by the other soldier’s head. The bullet had been deflected by something in my backpack! “What are you doing?” the first soldier shouted. “Are you trying to kill me?!” The other one yelled something back. And again I had to verify whether I was alive or dead. I was still chanting and didn’t feel any pain. “Good sign,” I thought. The soldier who had shot his rifle was now scared and distressed. He was touching me, unable to believe he had missed me from the distance of one foot.

Then a third soldier came, clearly senior to the other two. He took my old identification card from my pocket and said, “Let’s take him to the commander.” In the commander’s office I was interrogated for a long time. They decided to kill me by hanging me from a tree or shooting me because the photo on my identification card didn’t really resemble me. Still, for some reason I remained very calm. My calmness really puzzled them. They asked, “Do you have any money on you?”

“Yes,” I replied, “three hundred Swiss francs.” They looked at each other. It seemed strange to them that I was not disturbed at the prospect of their taking all my money. In truth, at that moment money didn’t mean anything to me. I just wanted to get to the temple. They said, “We can kill you, we can torture you, we can do whatever we want with you!”

Again I replied very calmly, “There would be nothing auspicious in that, either for you or for me, so it’s better not to do that.” That completely shocked them, and at that point they threw away their facade of rough soldiers.

When they learned of the places I had passed through on my journey, they looked at each other in great amazement. One of them murmured, “He passed through Bistrica, but no one can even get close to that place. Even UNPROFOR and the Red Cross can’t go there, yet he passed through there with his hand in this funny bag while murmuring some Hare Kṛṣṇa Hare Hare!?” Then the whole situation changed. They became very friendly and wanted to help me. They gave me a place to stay overnight, and the following day they gave me a ride to the next town, Tomislav-grad.

But that wasn’t the end of my adventure. To get to Croatia I still had to go through three checkpoints with very rigid controls. Even people with all the required documents had a hard time passing through. Then what to speak of me, who had only an expired ID card with a photo that didn’t really resemble me? Still, early the next morning we started. Soon the car was on a road with thick forests on both sides. The road was muddy and winding. I chanted the whole time. One of the two soldiers sitting in front said, “You know, we really don’t know how you’re going to get through this time, but if you do, you’re really lucky.”

“Kṛṣṇa!” I thought. The recent incidents had increased My faith in Him enormously, and I was sure He was listening. “All I can do is chant Your names,” I said to myself, “and if You want, please help me.”

We approached the first checkpoint. Both soldiers pulled out their identification cards and some other documents. When asked about their mission, one of the soldiers said he was the commander of a squad that detected and destroyed mines and that he was on a mission. I chanted in the back seat, trying hard to hear the mantra. The soldier at the checkpoint looked at me without saying anything. “All right, go on!” he finally said.

“Is it possible?” I asked myself while my two fellow travelers stared at each other with mouths wide open in wonder. When we came to the second checkpoint we weren’t even stopped: the soldier just waved us through. My companions mouths were wide open again. “The third one is the hardest,” they told me. But what happened was similar to what had occurred at the first checkpoint. The soldiers checked the documents of my fellow travelers and asked them where they were going, where they were coming from, and when they would return. I continued to chant. The soldiers looked at me but didn’t ask me anything.

Then we entered Tomislav-grad, a city near Croatia. We were all pleased that everything had gone so smoothly. They let me out and drove off. I continued happily chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa on my japa beads. In Tomislav-grad I bought some fruit and offered it to Kṛṣṇa’s picture on a park bench. I had one hour before my bus to Croatia was to leave. I was just finishing with my simple offering ceremony when two police officers approached me. With my palm I signaled them to hold off asking me any questions until I had finished my ceremony. They stopped and waited. After a few minutes I finished the ceremony and they checked my ID. Finding no proper documentation, they returned me to the third checkpoint. They rebuked the soldiers at the checkpoint for having let me pass. The soldiers claimed that they’d never seen me before, although after hearing my description of the car I’d been in, they remembered it and all the details about it. But they still couldn’t remember me. Then they received the order to send me back to Travnik, the city where my journey had begun.

Again I very intensely thought of Lord Kṛṣṇa: “Kṛṣṇa,” I asked, “are You really going to return me to Travnik after all that’s happened?” But I surrendered to Kṛṣṇa’s desire, though not happily, knowing that in any case I couldn’t go against His wishes.

However, this last reversal turned out to be just another test. Meditating on the power of prasādam, I offered some fruit to the soldiers at the third checkpoint. They accepted it and ate with satisfaction. After a short conversation, they decided to let me go, although they had just received an order to send me back to Travnik. They even stopped a truck and convinced the driver to drive me to Posusje (a city on the border of Bosnia and Croatia), where I had some relatives.

That night my relatives arranged for the documents I needed to enter Croatia. The next day I arrived at the temple in Rijeka. Finally I met the Deities and devotees, and there was no end to my happiness. By the mercy of Kṛṣṇa, guru, and the devotees I am still living in an ISKCON temple, and whenever I recall all these incidents I remember Śrīla Prabhupāda’s immortal statement: “Impossible is a word in a fool’s dictionary.”

Tāra Dāsa Book distribution is an adventure. We never know what’s going to happen to us, or to the people we distribute books to. Once in the Miami airport I distributed some books to a boy from Colombia. He went home and put the books on his bookshelf. The books remained there for five years, sitting and waiting. Then one day a friend of his saw the books and asked him if he could borrow them during his upcoming trip to California. The friend read the books and was so inspired that he wanted to become a devotee. He looked in the back of one of the books and found the address of the LA temple. He visited and joined. Then he began doing harināma every day. At one point his friend who had lent him the books decided to go on a vacation to Los Angeles. As he rested on the beach after surfing he heard some chanting, some karatālas and mṛdaṅga, and he found the sound attractive. He approached the harināma party, and as he looked at the devotees’ faces he saw his best friend among them, the one who had borrowed his books. He ran up to him and asked, “Hey, what happened?” His friend preached to him and invited him to the temple. Then that boy also started reading the books and became a devotee. We were distributing at a rock concert and decided to stretch ourselves and stay for the late-night “break out” after the end of the concert. As the crowd surged by, I met one guy who looked at me intently as I went through my mantra. He then gravely asked, “But does it work?” I mustered up some sincerity and said, “Yes, it really works.” Six months later I met the same fellow, now a new bhakta and a saṅkīrtana devotee. He recognized me and reminded me of our meeting and thanked me. He had traveled six hours to attend that concert with the hope of finding something meaningful.

In regard to the complaint that “so many books have been distributed but who’s joining?”, we should see things from a broader perspective. Our vision is defective. Better to trust the version of Śrīla Prabhupāda. He stated that every soul who comes in contact with these books is benefited. The fruit might come after one, five, or ten years, or even a hundred lifetimes. Certainly the fruit will mature. In The Nectar of Instruction Prabhupāda states, “Devotional service is so pure and perfect that once having begun, one is forcibly dragged to ultimate success.” Only time is separating these souls from perfection. Contact with Kṛṣṇa purifies the soul, period. “Every saint has a past, every sinner has a future.” We need to focus on doing our job with faith in Prabhupāda’s words. Kṛṣṇa knows how to do His job.

* * *

Tṛṇakartā Dāsa

I was walking my dog in a forest when he smelled something. I went over to see what it was, and after I’d moved some leaves I found a book — a Kṛṣṇa book. I picked it up and said to myself, “What’s this?” I started reading it and became fascinated by the contents. Soon I joined the temple. This was in the early 70s. This may be the first time a dog became a vartma-pradarśaka-guru.

Vijaya Dāsa

Quite often I’m asked how I came to the movement. I was born in 1956 and grew up in Los Angeles. Once, while visiting a friend I saw someone on TV speaking about Transcendental Meditation, an organization founded by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Interested, I visited their center and took a three-day course. They informed me that if after the course I wanted a mantra they would give me one, but that it would cost $120. I did want a mantra and they gave me one — “ain ga.” Twice a day I would chant this mantra for fifteen minutes. This was how I began meditating.

But after two months of such meditating, I thought, “There must be a better mantra than this.” I decided to travel. My intention was to find something like a paradise where I could live with spirituallyminded people and do my meditation. Before I left I bought Be Here Now, a book by Baba Ram Dass, a famous American guru of the sixties and seventies known for his association with Timothy Leary, the LSD “guru.” In his book Baba Ram Dass wrote, “When one progresses on the spiritual path, he gradually becomes detached from material things.” I felt like I was on this path, that God was taking me to a place where I would forget the materialistic life I had been living. In one place where I stopped in my travels, almost all my things were stolen — but I felt relieved, because I knew having fewer possessions would help me in my quest. All I had now was some money, my book, and my passport.

I decided to go to the Bahamas, off the coast of Florida. I thought this might be a good place to practice my spiritual life. It wasn’t. I decided to leave the day after I arrived. But before I left, someone stole my money. It wasn’t much, just a few hundred dollars, but it was all the money I had. Now I had no money. All I had were the book by Baba Ram Dass, my passport, and my ticket back to the States. But I was happier than I had ever been before because I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that God was making an arrangement for my life.

The next day I went to Miami to see what would unfold on this journey. I went hitchhiking, not knowing where I was going. Someone picked me up and suggested I go to Key West (Florida) to get a job. Taking this as God’s will, I went there and got a job.

I was still reading Be Here Now. In the back of the book was a list of recommended books. One was the Bhagavad-gītā. I went to the public library and found that there were four different translations. The one by Prabhupāda was the most attractive, so I checked it out.

From the first page I understood that this is what I had been searching for. As I read, I became totally amazed. I had never read anything that was so clear and made so much sense. From reading the Bhagavad-gītā I started chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa all day. I had a job where there weren’t many people around, so I just did my work and chanted. I was getting a spiritual high from it. After three days of chanting, I stepped out of the building where I worked and saw devotees doing harināma about a hundred yards away. I went over to them and said, “That’s the same mantra I chant.” They were, of course, very happy to hear this. They then explained the philosophy to me for about two hours. That night I moved in with them. There were about three devotees living and working out of an apartment. After a week or so they told me about a temple in Miami and suggested I go there to get more training. The Miami temple was beautiful. It stood on eight lush acres. On six of these acres we grew flowers we would send to temples all around the USA for Deity worship. My first service was picking flowers; my second service was washing Kṛṣṇa’s pots. There were also eighty mango trees, many banana trees, and about sixty other tropical plants. There was a nice pond with swans and ducks. I remember that the ducks always had orange beaks during the mango season because they had a special liking for the mangoes that had fallen on the ground. The devotees were very nice. I had found my home. When I had left Los Angeles a couple of months earlier, I had been looking for a paradise where I could practice my spiritual life. I had found it.

After I’d spent two months washing pots and picking flowers, the temple president, Narahari Prabhu, asked me if I was bold. I said I could be. He then asked me to try saṅkīrtana. At first we were just distributing BTGs. I would stand at the street lights distributing to the people who would stop their cars at the lights. Very difficult. Lots of purification. It was quite hot, and the people had already been approached by so many other groups. After two months of that, they asked me to try the airport. After about seven years I became the saṅkīrtana leader. In 2002 the GBC asked me to be the Minister of Book Distribution.

What first attracted me to book distribution was the emphasis on it. This was 1978, shortly after Śrīla Prabhupāda had left the planet, so the momentum was still there. It was and is a very blissful activity. So this is what has kept me doing it for as long as I have. It’s bliss.

Earlier we read how Ananta-rūpa Dāsa and his wife Ārūḍhā Devī Dāsī became devotees in Boise, Idaho, a state in the northwestern USA. Here are some more details about their devotional lives.

Ananta Rūpa and Ārūḍhā have been running the temple for many years. Ārūḍhā regularly goes out to distribute books at the university and at some malls in the area. She home-schooled her two boys, Rādhikā Ramaṇa Dāsa and Gopāla Hari Dāsa. As we learned from Nidrā Dāsī, Rādhikā Ramaṇa received his PhD in theology at Oxford University at the age of twenty-two. When he was studying at Boise State University, the professors referred to him as “the boy wonder,” and everyone knew he was a Hare Kṛṣṇa devotee. At his graduation he was the valedictorian and gave the speech at the graduation ceremony, wearing tilaka for the occasion.

His younger brother Gopāla Hari is of the same nature. He graduated from Boise State University with a masters at the age of eighteen. But he told me that he just wants to distribute books.

On top of all this, the next-door neighbors are the same way. Aja Govinda Dāsa is fifteen and a junior at the university. In LA, while he and I were at the Ratha-yātrā site after the parade, he came up to me and asked how to distribute Bhagavad-gītās. I explained to him that I basically show and explain the pictures, so he did that and people started taking the books. He goes door to door in Boise with Gopāla Hari, and they have great success in their book distribution. Everyone in these two families distributes books. Preaching really is the essence in Boise.

Many years ago, while distributing books at the university in Boise, I met a student from Cambodia whose father had just died. He was sad about that. I explained to him about the eternality of soul and how no one ever dies. He was happy to hear that, took a book, and started to read it. Four years later I received a letter from him inviting me to his initiation ceremony. It was the best e-mail I ever received. His name is now Nimāi Murāri Dāsa. This is a “dream come true” for a book distributor. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it makes it all worth it—all the austerity, the rejection, etc. While I was distributing books at the Montreal Ratha-yatra, a devotee I had never seen before came up to me and said, “Thank you, Vijaya Prabhu.”

“You’re welcome,” I replied, “but what are you thanking me for?”

He replied, “In the early 1980s a friend of mine was traveling through the Miami airport and bought a book from you. He knew I had some interest in spirituality, so he later gave it to me. I read it and have now been a devotee for the past twenty years. Your name is in the book. I was always hoping I’d see you so I could thank you for performing this important service.”

I said, “Thank you for this encouraging news. It’s always nice to learn that people are reading the books and becoming devotees.”

Śrīla Prabhupāda encourages me so much to distribute books, but when events like this happen I’m so much more encouraged to continue doing our “family business.”

While in Atlanta I asked Śikhi Māhiti Prabhu, a longtime book distributor, how he came to Kṛṣṇa consciousness. Here is his story:

When I was sixteen my brother and I would sit on our patio looking up at the vast expanse of stars in the sky, wondering where they all came from, where we came from, and why we’re here. We were always thinking about things like this.

Then one day my brother brought home a BTG someone had sold him and said to me, “Read this. It’s amazing.” I read the BTG and thought, “This is the highest truth.” Then I somehow received Prabhupāda’s Bhagavad-gītā. After reading it I decided to join the temple.

When I told my mother of my plans she said, “Oh no you’re not. You’re staying in college.” I was studying at Purdue University, and my mother was very happy with that. Finally my urge to surrender to Kṛṣṇa became so strong that I just left home and went to join the temple in Chicago.

My mother later became favorable, so much so that she gave a $20 donation to a devotee in an airport. While she was on the plane, however, she lamented that she had given that $20, since it was all she had and thought she might need it. Then, when she reached her destination and was walking down the corridor in the airport, she found a $20 bill on the floor. Later she happily told me, “I think Kṛṣṇa had something to do with that.”

Revatī-ramaṇa Prabhu, the temple president of the Tirupati temple, told me the following interesting incident.

An engineer named Mr. Basowarej was hired to help with the construction of the Tirupati temple. He had devoted his whole life to Lord Śiva. He had a room to stay in on the temple grounds, and after doing his work each day he would visit the nearby Śiva temple. A devotee gave him a couple of small books, and he would sometimes read them just to see what the devotees believed.

There was a problem in his life: His family wanted him to get married, but he didn’t want to. He developed a friendship with Revatī Ramaṇa Prabhu and would express his anxiety to him. Revatī Ramaṇa would lightly preach to him to move into the brahmacārī āśrama and live a simple life of no anxiety.

After reading the small books and associating with the devotees for a couple of years, he decided to make the move to become a brahmacārī in the āśrama.

Now for many years he has been a brahmacārī, and he is still a full-time engineer for the temple. But he accepts no salary — he does his work as devotional service. His name is now Balabhadra Mādhava Dāsa.

While in Māyāpur, at a seminar by Jayādvaita Swami, I sat next to a young devotee named Bhakta Jean, who had recently joined. During a break I asked him how he joined. “In high school my sister was known as an avid reader. One day a librarian asked her if she would like to have some books that had been gathering dust. She took a box of them. As she was looking through them, she found the Second Canto of Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, and knowing I was interested in religious philosophy, she gave it to me. I read it and was convinced that Kṛṣṇa consciousness is the highest religious philosophy. Thank Kṛṣṇa that there was a sincere devotee who went to that high school and left that book in the library.”

For the next year Bhakta Jean will be at the Rādhā-Gopīnātha temple in Chowpatti, aspiring for initiating from Rādhānātha Swami.

Who knows how long that book had been sitting in the library? Probably many years. But eventually the transcendental time bomb went off. There are millions of such bombs all over the world, and the more we distribute them, the more they go off.

A boy about fifteen years old had a religious nature. In fact, he was so serious about God that the other boys his age used to tease him. One day as they were playing, one of the boys found a BTG on a seat and gave it to their religious friend, teasing him all the while. He swallowed the teasing and took the magazine. He took it home and read it cover to cover, finding it very interesting.

A few days later a quarrel broke out between his mother and father. Seeing his father approach his mother with a knife to kill her, the boy was shocked and spontaneously jumped in front of his mother and was stabbed. Both parents were horrified, and they called an ambulance to rush him to the hospital. He was in coma for three weeks.

When he came out of the coma he told his mother, “I saw Kṛṣṇa! I saw Kṛṣṇa!” But she had no idea what he was talking about. She was just happy to see him alive.

After recovering from the stab wound, he searched out the nearest temple and moved in. While I was in Russia the devotees told me of a program unique to that country. A devotee named Adhokṣaja Prabhu, one of the main book distribution leaders in the Russian yātrā, oversees a distribution team of eight boys aged ten to nineteen. Of course, they mostly distribute during the summer when school is out, but also during vacation time. I spoke to them while I was in Moscow. They said they really enjoy distributing books. They all chant sixteen rounds a day except the ten-year-old. During the saṅkīrtana festival in Russia, Gopāl Kṛṣṇa Mahārāja told us a nice story:

An officer with the Canadian army was playing hockey with some other officers when he was seriously injured by one of the other officers. He went to the hospital for six months. While he was in the hospital recovering he asked to be taken to the library to read and pass the time. While there he saw Prabhupāda’s Bhagavad-gītā on the shelf. He had heard of it and always wanted to read it, but there had been no time. Now he had time. He actually stole the book from the library and read it every day until he was released. Then he was told that he would not be able to continue in the service because of his injury. This gave him more opportunity to read, and from the reading he started chanting. He found out where the nearest temple was and started attending the programs. He decided to return the book to the library and give a donation, since it was because of that library book that he had become a devotee.

* * *

Viśvambhara Dāsa

In 1982, during my brahmacārī period, one day I was distributing books door-to-door in Italy, in the region where I grew up. A man came out of his house, and I tried very hard to give him a Bhagavadgītā, but he refused to take it. I was just about to go when his seven-year-old girl came out and said, “Papa, I want it. Please take it,” and with great reluctance the man purchased it. The book (I learned later) was then abandoned on their bookshelf. In those days I would always write my name and the temple phone number at the end of every book I would distribute. If the purchaser would want some more literature or have any questions, they could contact me personally at the temple.

After twelve years or so the girl took the book off the shelf and asked her father what it was about and where it came from. The father told her that about twelve years earlier a young monk had come to their door and she had persuaded the father to get it, but the girl could not remember the incident. She embarked upon reading the Gītā, and at the end of the book she came across my name, Bhakta Raffaele, and the phone number of the temple where I had resided twelve years earlier. She then visited the temple for the Sunday feast. She enjoyed the lecture and kīrtana and had a good first impression of the devotees. In fact, she later related, it was the most wonderful experience of her life. The smell of the incense and the soft sound of the karatālas seemed very familiar to her. Before she left she asked about Bhakta Raffaele, and the devotees told her that in 1985 I had moved to the UK and that my name was now Viśvambhara Dāsa.

She then came all the way to the UK to search me out at Bhaktivedanta Manor! One day, after I had given a class, she approached me and asked, “Is your name Viśvambhara Dāsa, and did you grow up in Italy?”

“Yes,” I replied to both questions.

She said, “My name is Cinzia, and I am also from Italy.” Then she said, “Thank you,” with tears in her eyes. She told me about the incident twelve years earlier, and I also started to shed tears. I remembered what Śrīla Prabhupāda had once said, namely, that if we can make one devotee with this Bhagavad-gītā, then our life will be successful. I was so happy that this girl had reached the lotus feet of Śrī Śrī Rādhā-Gokulānanda.

Cinzia stayed at Bhaktivedanta Manor and became an initiated disciple of Indradyumna Swami. Her name is now Kaumādakī Devī Dāsī, and she is currently serving in the festival programs with Indradyumna Mahārāja. This incident has given me so much faith in the activity of book distribution.

* * *

Bhakta Prabhajan

We were attracting attention by our dress, bulls, and cart on Padayātrā India, and suddenly our Padayātrā party became a sensation in a small town near Allahabad, thanks to a man who had taken a vow of silence six years earlier.

Padayātrā takes six years to complete one round trip of the country, and so we couldn’t recall having met this man years earlier. Others in the town, however, informed us that he’d bought a Bhagavad-gītā from us during our last visit and that after he’d begun reading it he’d declared he would observe a vow of silence till we returned. Now the townspeople were anticipating his breaking a six-year silence. We were also told that during this period he followed all the regulative principles and kept his association with his new wife to a minimum.

A pandal was erected and attracted the whole town. We made the best use of being center-stage by distributing Śrīla Prabhupāda’s books by the hundreds. The man entered, with the whole crowd cheering him and showering flowers on him. He then delivered a fiery four-hour speech—and nothing but Kṛṣṇa consciousness, as presented by Śrīla Prabhupāda, came from his mouth! The audience was spellbound by his conviction, confidence, and knowledge, and so were we. Suddenly his mother made a dramatic entry and declared her guru to be God. The vow-of-silence man, outraged by her audacity, roared back that her so-called guru was a bogus Māyāvādī. Then he smashed that philosophy to pieces, repeatedly quoting from Bhagavad-gītā As It Is.

By one book distributed, a new devotee was made, Māyāvāda philosophy was defeated, and a whole town was infused with Kṛṣṇa consciousness and saturated with Śrīla Prabhupāda’s books. Saṅkīrtanayajña-kī jaya!

Bhaktin Vanessa and Bhakta Marlon

My husband Marlon started reading the Bhagavad-gītā over two years ago. He had been searching for God in the Christian religion but said he couldn’t find the whole truth there. I was on the search with him, but no matter where we looked we just couldn’t really find God. We even joined a church in hopes that somehow that was “a doorway in.”

After that hope died out, we faded from the religious path and almost came to the conclusion that if there is a God, it is whatever it is and one day after we died we would find out what it is, if it is. My husband then remembered that when he was seventeen he had come across a Bhagavad-gītā. He said he tried to read it but was unable grasp it at that time. He said he knew he could recognize the name of the author (His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda) when he saw it. So he found the Gītā at the Bhaktivedanta Book Trust website and bought it. He also bought a CD with a recording of the Gītā text on it so he could listen to it while reading it. He then began praying and chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa, and soon I noticed he was beginning to change in a wonderful way. I decided to join him in his study, prayer, and chanting and see what he was learning.

Lo and behold, we found GOD!! The absolute truth was in the words of Lord Śrī Kṛṣṇa. Now we get up at five in the morning each day for prayer and chanting. We couldn’t live without surrendering our day to Lord Śrī Kṛṣṇa. Kṛṣṇa is doing wonderful things in our lives. We have become vegetarians, we are developing a love for all of God’s creations, and we love Kṛṣṇa with all our heart, mind, and soul. We read or listen to the Gītā each day, but most importantly we serving the Lord. We give donations when and where He leads us to give. Another thing we do is that we buy the pamphlet Kṛṣṇa, the Reservoir of Pleasure in bundles of fifty and leave a pamphlet wherever we go. We hand them out freely and mail them to churches. One Christian pastor wrote back and said we were going to burn in the lake of fire for eternity. My heart was saddened for him because he just does not know the truth. Anyway, we love Kṛṣṇa and we love serving Him.

* * *

An East European Lady Becomes a Devotee

A lady devotee enrolled in a university in an East European country tells how she became a devotee: It was summertime and very hot. I was looking out the window and saw a book that was propping up the window in the apartment next to mine. I was amazed at how beautiful it was (the Kṛṣṇa book). Since I was spiritually inclined, I could tell that it was a spiritual book. I couldn’t understand why they were using such a beautiful book to prop up a window. So I went to the apartment and knocked on the door. When the neighbor opened the door, I said, “I have something you could use to keep your window open, if you let me read the book you’re now using to prop it open. When I’m done reading, I’ll return it.”

The neighbor replied, “Sure, no problem, and you can keep the book.”

That’s how I came to Kṛṣṇa consciousness.

Comment by Vijaya Dāsa

We never know how someone will receive Śrīla Prabhupāda’s books, but our duty is to just get them out there. Śrīla Prabhupāda said, “There are people waiting on every street for this knowledge.”

* * *

An Eastern Europoean Man Becomes a Devotee

I engaged in many sinful activities in my youth. At the age of nineteen I decided to leave home and start a new life, so I went on a spiritual quest. As I traveled around, many people suggested I go to India: “That’s where spiritual seekers go,” they said. So I went to India and began traveling around the country. Once I met a devotee who gave me one of Śrīla Prabhupāda’s books, and when I read it I was convinced that Kṛṣṇa consciousness was my path. After spending some time associating with the devotees at the Chowpatti Temple, I was allowed to stay. Now I’m aspiring for initiation from Rādhānātha Swami.

But now my story gets really amazing. After being away from my mother for three years, I decided it was time to call her and let her know what I was doing. After we’d talked for a while, I said, “Oh, I didn’t tell you. I’m a monk.”

She said, “You’re a monk? I’m shocked! What kind of monk?”

“A Hare Kṛṣṇa monk.”

“Well, Haribol!”

I couldn’t believe my ears. I said, “How do you know Haribol?”

She said, “I’m a devotee too.”

I was astounded and delighted. Then we had a really nice talk about how amazing Kṛṣṇa is. She had received a book from a devotee distributing door to door and was also impressed with the knowledge and took up Kṛṣṇa consciousness.