Naughty Krishna holding a piece of candy
Summer 1965. I had just turned twenty-eight. My friend John and I wandered from shelf to shelf in the mystical section of Weiser’s Book Store in lower Manhattan.
Maybe this time we would find it: the magic Zen book, the one we hadn’t read yet, the one that would tell us the secret.
Just take the time to read the magic Zen book, then take some LSD, and maybe discover the Truth that would lead us into never-ending ecstasy. But I had already read all the Zen books on Weiser’s shelves.
I wiped my hand over my forehead. It felt wet. I sighed.”It was a genius idea to put the mystical section in the basement,” I thought. The underground coolness offered a relief from the summer heat of Manhattan.
The sound of people talking upstairs drifted into the basement. But besides John and me only one other person browsed in the basement: a man maybe approaching forty. John walked up to the man. I followed.
“Excuse me, sir,” said John. “Do you know where there are some books on Zen?”
“Zen is not for Westerners,” said the man. He had a strong New York accent.
“Zen is a violent yoga,” the man continued. “Westerners should practice the yoga of the heart—Christianity.”
I knew what he meant. I could never practice the austerities of Zen—meditating for hours in the lotus position, my feet crossed with both soles facing upward. My legs aching from the strain. Not to mention the sparse diet and the constant fight against sleepiness during meditation.
LSD made all that unnecessary… Or did it?
Yes, good old LSD: the ultimate flight simulator. It gives you the illusion of sailing through the skies, but it never really lifts you an inch off the ground.
The man continued. “The Truth is blinding,” he said.
Of course, I knew that by “blinding” he spoke of a brightness so intense that one could barely look at it.
“Has he really seen the Truth?” I wondered.
“I’m pure,” the man said almost as if to answer the question. (He pronounced it like PYOO-uh.)
I suddenly felt a sickness and a pain in the pit of my stomach. “My contamination has reacted against the purity that he emanates,” I thought.
John and I left the store without any Zen books and strolled back out into the sunshine and the summer heat.
A year went by before I met my spiritual master, Srila Prabhupada. I knew I had met someone truly pure this time, and I didn’t feel any sickness or pain in my stomach. I didn’t need any more Zen books either. The Bhagavad-Gita and Prabhupada’s explanations showed me how to find the elusive Truth never defined in Zen.
How can you find something when you don’t know what you’re looking for? Zen books never reveal the Truth.
And LSD? Visions of Greek temples and of sunsets over heavenly beaches.
But Prabhupada told me the secret the first time I heard him speak:
The Supreme Absolute Truth is a person.
I studied the Bhagavad-Gita under Prabhupada’s guidance, especially his published edition, Bhagavad-Gita As It Is. And I learned that this person is Krishna, who lived in India five thousand years ago.
But why Krishna? Why accept as God someone who lived on earth? The answer begins with the Sanskrit word avatar, “one who descends.”
The Vedic scriptures speak of many avataras, or divine incarnations, who came into this world and lived among the people—Sri Rama, for example, who lived about a million years ago and killed the demon Ravana.
Or Sri Narasimha, who ripped the demon Hiranya Kasipu’s body to shreds and installed the demon’s son, the great devotee Prahlada Maharaja, on the throne as king of the universe.
Or Sri Chaitanya, who spread the chanting of Hare Krishna far and wide.
And countless more. Except…
Except what? Want to know? Come closer. and I’ll whisper the secret in your ear: Did I say “avataras as countless as the waves of the ocean”? What if I now say, “just one person who has come countless times”?
Srila Prabhupada writes:
The expansions of different forms of the Lord, as from Krishna to Baladeva … and innumerable other forms, which are compared to the constant flowing of the uncountable waves of a river, are all one and the same. (Srimad Bhagavatam 2.4.10)
And again:
There are innumerable incarnations of the Lord, like the waves of the river flowing constantly in and out. (same 2.6.46)
But who is the one person? You cannot guess. You have to go to the Srimad Bhagavatam:
All of the above-mentioned incarnations are either plenary portions or portions of the plenary portions of the Lord, but Lord Sri Krsna is the original Personality of Godhead. (1.3.28)
In the Bhagavad-Gita Krishna speaks of his own position to Arjuna:
O conqueror of wealth, there is no truth superior to Me. Everything rests upon Me, as pearls are strung on a thread.( 7.7)
Arjuna agrees:
You are the Supreme Personality of Godhead, the ultimate abode, the purest, the Absolute Truth. You are the eternal, transcendental, original person, the unborn, the greatest. All the great sages such as Narada, Asita, Devala and Vyasa confirm this truth about You, and now You Yourself are declaring it to me. (10.12-13)
Though not everyone else agrees.
“But Krishna was just a man!” insisted a fellow traveler, a Muslim at the airport in Bangladesh, till his friend told him to stop arguing.
“Krishna is the devil,” said a large sign held up by Christians at our outdoor festival in Los Angeles.
You have to expect this says Krishna in the Bhagavad-Gita:
Out of many thousands among men, one may endeavor for perfection, and of those who have achieved perfection, hardly one knows Me in truth.
So far so good, but what about the avataras?
Elsewhere in the Bhagavad-Gita (4.6-9), Krishna explains the secret to Arjuna:
To deliver the pious and to annihilate the miscreants, as well as to reestablish the principles of religion, I Myself appear, millennium after millennium.
One who knows the transcendental nature of My appearance and activities does not, upon leaving the body, take his birth again in this material world, but attains My eternal abode, O Arjuna.
So instead of reading about a path I can’t follow and popping a pill, maybe I should try to see Krishna. But how?
In Sri Brahma Samhita, composed at the beginning of the universe, we read this:
I worship Govinda, the primeval Lord, who is Syamasundara, Krsna Himself, with inconceivable innumerable attributes, whom the pure devotees see in their heart of hearts with the eye of devotion tinged with the salve of love. (5.38)
It sounds easy enough, but where does an impure soul like me find the the salve of love?
Krishna offers an easy solution in the Bhagavad-Gita: We can do it by redirecting our activites. Are you an artist? Paint pictures of Krishna. A singer? Sing about Krishna. But do it all the time.
My dear Arjuna, only by undivided devotional service can I be understood as I am, standing before you, and can thus be seen directly. Only in this way can you enter into the mysteries of My understanding. (11.54)
And if your work brings in money, use the money to preach about Krishna:
The work of a man who is unattached to the modes of material nature and who is fully situated in transcendental knowledge merges entirely into transcendence. (4.23)
What else do I need?
Now I haven’t browsed at Weiser’s or even set foot in Manhattan for many years, and my old friend John has vanished into thin air with the Zen books and the LSD. But Prabhupada has never walked away from me, and I still turn the pages of Bhagavad Gita As It Is to get a better look at Krishna.
—Umapati Swami, June 19, 2023
Eternally touching my head to the floor at the lotus feet of my spiritual master, Srila Prabhupada, for showing me all this.
(Note: The opinions expressed in this article are my own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of any organization or any other person.)
Photo top: Naughty Krishna holding a piece of candy (Jishnu Das)
Write to me: hoswami@yahoo.com
© Umapati Swami 2023
Scriptural passages © Bhaktivedanta Book Trust
Srila Prabhupada
His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada is the teacher who brought Krishna Consciousness from India to the West and then to the rest of the world. He is the founder of the worldwide Hare Krishna Movement as well as the author and compiler of many works of Vedic knowledge. He left this world in 1977.
Umapati Swami
One of the first American devotees of the Hare Krishna Movement, he became Srila Prabhupada’s disciple in 1966. Since then, he has preached Krishna Consciousness in many countries and is the author of “My Days with Prabhupada,” available from Amazon. Now 86 years old, he has started this blog to share what he has learned.
Umapati Swami's Blog 