Krishnabookspov
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Śrīla Prabhupāda-līlāmṛta tells the story of a remarkable individual and a remarkable achievement. The individual is A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda: philosopher, scholar, religious leader, saint. The achievement is the revolutionary transplantation of a timeless spiritual culture from ancient India to twentieth-century America and the world.
Planting the Seed, the second volume of this multivolume biography, tells the story of Śrīla Prabhupāda’s first year in America, a year of struggle against enormous odds. We encounter Śrīla Prabhupāda as he travels alone from Calcutta to New York City aboard a steamship, carrying with him only the Indian equivalent of eight dollars, having no institutional backing, no moral support, but a bold determination to do the impossible. It is also the story of an explosive era in the modern history of the Western world – an era of sweeping revolt, largely by the younger generation, against a society losing its soul to the ideology of materialism and mass consumerism. Into this turmoil of mid-sixties America suddenly came an elderly, golden-skinned, saffron-robed holy man from India, bringing with him a vision of a new kind of society – a bold vision calling for the radical transformation of human consciousness and human civilization from materialism to the loftiest spiritual and ethical idealism. The seed he planted took immediate root in the fertile countercultural soil of New York's Lower East Side. From there the seed sprouted and blossomed into an international spiritual movement that has had a profound influence on the contemporary world.
The research team assembled by the author traveled throughout the world to gather thousands of hours of interviews with hundreds of people who knew Śrīla Prabhupāda; diaries and memoirs from his students; and more than seven thousand of Śrīla Prabhupāda’s letters. Then the author and his team distilled this voluminous firsthand source material into a rich composite view of Śrīla Prabhupāda, a dazzling and colorful picture of one of the most remarkable lives of our times.
Satsvarūpa dāsa Goswami was born on December 6, 1939. In July 1966, he met His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda, and he became his initiated disciple in September of that year. Satsvarūpa dāsa Goswami began contributing articles to /"Back to Godhead"/, the magazine of the Hare Kṛṣṇa movement, and later became its editor in chief. In August 1967 he went to Boston to establish the first ISKCON center there.
Satsvarūpa dāsa Goswami was one of the original members selected by Śrīla Prabhupāda to form the Governing Body Commission of ISKCON in 1970. He remained as president of Boston ISKCON until 1971, when he moved to Dallas and became headmaster of the /gurukula/, the first ISKCON school for children.
In May 1972, on the appearance day of Lord Nṛsiṁhadeva, he was awarded the /sannyāsa/ (renounced) order by His Divine Grace Śrīla Prabhupāda and began traveling across the United States, lecturing in colleges and universities. In January 1974 he was called by Śrīla Prabhupāda to become his personal secretary and to travel with him through India and Europe. In 1976 he published /"Readings in Vedic Literature"/, a concise account of the Vedic tradition. The volume is now being studied at various universities. In 1977 Śrīla Prabhupāda ordered him to accept the duties of initiating guru, along with ten other senior disciples. In addition to his duties as a Governing Body Commissioner and an initiating guru, he has written many books, including the multivolume /"Śrīla Prabhupāda-līlāmṛta"/.
Ekendra Dāsa has appeared as a musician, comedian, singer-songwriter and producer on several recordings with Badahari Dāsa, Shelter, 108, Planet Cow Orchestra, and Yama Niyama Dasa Brahmachari. He also served as an editor at krishna.com and an associate editor for /“Back to Godhead”/ magazine. /“Śrīla Prabhupāda-līlāmṛta”/ is his first audiobook.