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.
This second volume begins in 1971. In the West, Śrīla Prabhupāda had firmly established the Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement, which his disciples were expanding in his absence. This volume chronicles Śrīla Prabhupāda’s triumphant return to India and his plans for constructing temples in three crucial locations: Bombay, the center of India’s wealth and business; Vṛndāvana, the sacred village where Lord Kṛṣṇa lived and sported; and Māyāpur, the holy birth site of Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu, who had inaugurated the Hare Kṛṣṇa movement some five hundred years earlier.
These are vigorous years spent building a spiritual society in India and establishing centers around the world where people could contact the ancient, orthodox faith of India in their own cities. In this volume, Śrīla Prabhupāda circles the globe repeatedly, speaking out on timely issues and defending his budding religious society against “brainwashing” charges in America and shady business practices in India.
Śrīla Prabhupāda wanted to unite two worlds, the “lame man” of India and the “blind man” of America. “A blind man can carry a lame man,” he said, “and together they can walk. Similarly, the combination of Indian spirituality and American technology can benefit the whole world.” His principal means of accomplishing this feat was to publish his books – annotated translations of India’s spiritual classics. Under his guidance, the Bhaktivedanta Book Trust was organized, and by 1977 it had produced and distributed more than sixty million volumes of Śrīla Prabhupāda's writings.
A final tour of India in 1977 took Śrīla Prabhupāda, eighty-one and in failing health, to the colossal Kumbha-mela religious festival, to Hrsikesha, and finally back to his beloved Vṛndāvana. The time for his passing had come, he said. As his anguished disciples flooded Vṛndāvana from all corners of the world, Śrīla Prabhupāda presented them with the greatest challenge – and the greatest lesson – of their young spiritual lives.
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"/.