771107R1.VRN

771107R1.VRN
Room Conversation
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November 7, 1977, Vrndavana
771107R1-Vrindavan [35:56 Minutes]
I want to develop Gauda-mandala
 
Audio
Prabhupada: [Transl. [Hmm.] [Coughs]
Kaviraja: [Transl. Have no appetite for food? Svamiji, don't feel like taking?]
Prabhupada: [Transl. See the urine?]
Kaviraja: [Transl. I haven't seen the urine yet. There is no swelling in the hands. But one thing is must that is he must get strength little by little every day. That is very important Maharaja, please open your eyes little. One minute, just a little. Any problem? Be straight.]
Prabhupada: [Transl. You see these bones, I cannot keep them in one side for a long time.]
Kaviraja: [Transl. Yes, You feel inconvenience. There is no flesh in the body no? Did you ever get any injury here? You don't remember, right?]
Prabhupada: [Transl. I don't remember now.]
Kaviraja: [Transl. The swelling of eyes is also less by half. But we have to especially concentrate on the weakness factor that he is feeling. There is no weakness as such, just a little fatigue. His health is better than yesterday.]
Kaviraja: [Hindi, asking Prabhupada questions as he examines.]
Bhakti-caru: He says that the swelling is much less than before, and there is no weakness in the heart also. He says that...
Kaviraja: [Transl. The weakness that he is feeling, that has to be stopped. The appetite for food should come. Maharaja, will you take butter milk? Or give him some Horlicks. Can't you take Horlicks?]
Prabhupada: [Transl. I have no appetite at all. And the fruit juice…]
Kaviraja: [Transl. Horlicks?]
Bhakti-caru: [Transl. No, fruit juice]
Kaviraja: [Transl. Yes, Don't you feel like taking it?]
Prabhupada: [Transl. I don't feel like taking it also.]
Kaviraja: [Transl. Don't want fruit juice also. There is no appetite from within for anything.]
Prabhupada: [Transl. Not at all. Without food how can one survive?]
Kaviraja: [Transl. Yes, without food how can one live? You have to eat. You have to develop appetite. Is he getting proper sleep? Proper sleep?]
Bhakti-caru: [Transl. Yes, He sleeps well.]
Kaviraja: [Transl. Sleeps well.]
Tamala Krsna: Everything is going nicely except that the strength is going away.
Bhakti-caru: [Transl. Over all everything is fine except he has less strength.]
Kaviraja: [Transl. Not strength, but appetite. The appetite...]
Bhakti-caru: [Transl. Like that, he has no appetite from six, seven months.]
Kaviraja: [Transl. I see. Since how long he has not taken any grain?]
Bhakti-caru: Grain, when did Srila Prabhupada take foodstuff last?
Tamala Krsna: Foodstuff? Chapati? Rice?
Bhakti-caru: [Transl. I think in between I gave him.]
Kaviraja: [Transl. Not once a while. The rice he takes...]
Tamala Krsna: About four months ago.
Bhakti-caru: [Transl. About four months ago.]
Kaviraja: [Transl. Four months. Not like that. Sometimes he takes after a gap of two days and sometimes...]
Bhakti-caru: [Transl. Like that I gave him about a week or ten days ago. But that was very little...]
Tamala Krsna: He took a little bit about a month ago, but it was very little.
Kaviraja: [Transl. The other day I was here and I think you were giving him khichri. From when did he stop eating regular grains like a normal person?]
Bhakti-caru: [Transl. That is atleast from four, five months.]
Kaviraja: [Transl. Four, five months. Well, how much milk was he taking before?]
Bhakti-caru: [Transl. Milk, about four, five months ago I used to give him milk four times a day.]
Kaviraja: [Transl. Cows milk?]
Bhakti-caru: [Transl. About 700/600 grams.]
Kaviraja: [Transl. 600 grams. Now the diet he is taking, is it like before or more, or less than before?]
Bhakti-caru: [Transl. It was less before you came.]
Kaviraja: [Transl. I see.]
Bhakti-caru: [Transl. His diet has increased now.]
Prabhupada: [Transl. No…]
Jayapataka: Four or five months ago Prabhupada ate more?
[whispered background discussion among devotees]
Prabhupada: [Transl. Diet has not increased]
Kaviraja: [Transl. There is no appetite, but we have to give him. For example, juice can be given, 2/3 bottles of barley can be given. Were you taking barley before? Were you taking barley? You were taking no?]
Prabhupada: [Transl. No.]
Kaviraja: [Transl. Let me see the tongue. The tongue, okay.]
Bhakti-caru: [Transl. You 2nd...]
Kaviraja: [Transl. I went on 2nd.]
Bhakti-caru: [Transl. You came here 28th, 29th?]
Kaviraja: [Transl. I came on 28th. No, 29th]
Bhakti-caru: [Transl. 28th was 735]
Kaviraja: [Transl. Okay.]
Bhakti-caru: [Transl. It was little more 915.]
Kaviraja: [Transl. When? 27th?]
Bhakti-caru: [Transl. Yes. 26th was 1185]
Kaviraja: [Transl. Okay. On 29th?]
Bhakti-caru: [Transl. 29th was 585. On 30th 635. After that it started increasing. 31st was 805, 1st was 875, on 2nd 1010, on 3rd 1185, 1125, 840 & 805]
Kaviraja: [Transl. How much was yesterday?]
Bhakti-caru: [Transl. 805]
Kaviraja: [Transl. Does he take medicine properly?]
Bhakti-caru: [Transl. Yes, he takes, but with difficulty. Yesterday's medicine was given everything except one dose. The no.2 medicine because it was late at night.]
Kaviraja: [Transl. Alright.]
Bhakti-caru: [Transl. You gave the medicine no. 1, that I gave two times.]
Kaviraja: [Transl. The medicine I gave to take half before parikrama, did he take it?]
Bhakti-caru: [Transl. No, we don't give him.]
Tamala Krsna: Since he left, we haven't done parikrama.
Bhakti-caru: [Transl. Once I gave him that medicine as he was getting ready to go on parikrama. After that I didn't give him because he didn't go on parikrama.]
Kaviraja: [Transl. Keep giving the medicine.]
Bhakti-caru: [Transl. The medicine you gave which was to be taken along with pomegranate juice at noon time I gave it to him. And the medicine you gave for hiccups, there is no need to give him.
Kaviraja: [Transl. No need at all.]
Bhakti-caru: [Transl. And the cough medicine, there was no need for it.]
Kaviraja: [Transl. Which medicine?]
Bhakti-caru: [Transl. This one.]
Prabhupada: What is the news of Mayapur?
Jayapataka: Actually, everything is going very nicely now. Everyone was... When the news came that you were coming, it spread just like electricity. All of a sudden, all gurukula boys, all devotees, they started to cry out, "Haribol! Haribol!" jumping up and down. Just within a few moments everyone was immediately jumping. Now the book distributors, they've been very eager to fulfill your order to do hundred thousand books. So already last month they did almost forty thousand. Last week they did twelve thousand books. One party in Assam, they were selling Bengali, mostly Bengali books. They did seven thousand books in one week.
Prabhupada: Which one?
Svarupa Damodara: Which book?
Jayapataka: Gitar Gan and Bhagavaner Katha and...
Tamala Krsna: Seven thousand. That's pretty good, Srila Prabhupada, in one week, just for one party. And they have four parties.
Jayapataka: Well, now there's two. But... So we are organizing now so that we'll be able to even distribute thirty, forty thousand big books in a month.
Prabhupada: English?
Jayapataka: Well, this Vairagya Vidya, that will be printed in two weeks, so then we will distribute that. In English there's good scope also, because in my zone, Arunachal Pradesh and Meghalaya, they are English-predominated state because the Christian missionary have converted everyone. But they found great reception there, although the Christians are... Even the Christians are buying. There seems to be a lot of land for sale right now. About 60 to 80 bighas of land is for sale, and the people are asking the market rate. So it's... Even if the government... We don't have to depend on acquisition. We can just go and buy.
Prabhupada: Can you... If you are able to... [indistinct-mic moving], subscribe within our jurisdiction so much land. Otherwise they will sub-note it: why you have purchased agricultural land?
Jayapataka: We will purchase in the... We'll get a permit from the government to hold more land. And until that time, then we'll purchase in the name of Gopala Krsna, Svarupa Damodara.
Tamala Krsna: Srila Prabhupada? We can also purchase in the name of Bhaktivedanta Swami Charity Trust.
Jayapataka: A trust can hold fifty bighas of irrigated land, seventy bighas unirrigated. And once we turn that... If we turn that to nonagricultural land, then there's no limit. By paying twice the land tax we can convert to nonagricultural for the purpose of building our temple or building anything, and then it's no longer subject to any ceiling. We will see with lawyer very carefully that...
Tamala Krsna: So you can purchase in Svarupa Damodara's name.
Jayapataka: Yes.
Bhavananda: This land is for sale from whom? The Muhammadans?
Jayapataka: Yes, both Muhammadan and Hindu.
Tamala Krsna: Should we buy this land, Srila Prabhupada?
Prabhupada: Why not? You have got money?
Tamala Krsna: Yes. There is enough money.
Jayapataka: We do not want to rest until every home in Bengal has a copy of Gitar Gan and Bhagavatam.
Prabhupada: Yes.
Svarupa Damodara: Gitar Gan is nice. It's attractive.
Jayapataka: About ten new devotees are there now. Every week two or three new devotees are coming. Four of them are college graduate. They're helping answering letters and transcribing. Subhaga has five books that he had written in England. So we got those, and now they're being copied for printing.
Tamala Krsna: What kind of books?
Jayapataka: Small books. Beyond Birth and Death, Easy Journey.
Tamala Krsna: Subhaga is doing nicely?
Jayapataka: Yes. Same as usual.
Svarupa Damodara: Is there Bengali boys, Maharaja?
Jayapataka: Yes.
Tamala Krsna: So how many devotees..., members are there now, devotees in Mayapur.
Jayapataka: I don't know. I didn't take the exact count. Two hundred.
Tamala Krsna: Two hundred. Big asrama, Srila Prabhupada.
Svarupa Damodara: I'm thinking of bringing some Manipuri boys to Mayapur next time I go.
Prabhupada: Do it.
Svarupa Damodara: Bring some boys from Manipur.
Tamala Krsna: Manipur boys are very good workers. We saw them in Bombay. Remember, Srila Prabhupada? I brought three of them to meet you. They all looked like Svarupa Damodara juniors. Very humble, intelligent, hard-working.
Jayapataka: That Manipur Mandir in Navadvipa, when I was gone they had sent an invitation for attending one function. They're very favorable. When the party went to Assam, then they got invitation to go to Tripura, which is next to Manipur. It's eighty percent Bengali-speaking, and also many Vaisnavas. So we expect to distribute many books there. Next month party will be going to Tripura.
Tamala Krsna: Book distribution has hit India, Srila Prabhupada.
Jayapataka: And, Srila Prabhupada, I was thinking that it's very important we want to complete this temple during your stay here on this planet. Then your life's mission will be... There won't be anything that's left uncomplete if we could just complete the temple. The present... Just meditating that what are the obstacle... Actually, we have already enough land for the temple itself, but the temple design... When you first came to Mayapur, then the temple was going to be 225 feet. Then we asked Saurabh to make a design, and then he made 300 feet. At that time the estimate was fifteen million. Then again he was designing, designing, and it went to 350 feet. Then it went to thirty million. Then it went to 400 feet, fifty-five million. Now it's up to seventy million.
Tamala Krsna: Dollars?
Jayapataka: Dollars. Every time he thinks about it, he adds fifty feet, and it goes up twenty million. So now all the distributors in the world, they were very eager to see the temple built, but at the present time it requires so much money at seventy million dollars and 450 feet that no one can think of even starting it for five years. But if the temple was 300 or 350 feet and twenty-five or thirty million dollars, which I don't think anyone-it would be the biggest building even in India and the biggest temple in the world-then it could be started immediately, feasibly. Four temples in America said that if they just get five women each-that means twenty women from the Society-then they could each pledge 25,000 rupees a month for..., in collection. That means $100,000, $125,000. Plus BBT's $100,000 a month and Gurukrpa, that would be enough to immediately, even in the coming year, to start the construction of the temple, simply if Saurabh was asked to just make the temple on a thirty million dollar budget, which would be 350 feet or 300 feet. And this is really inspiring the book distributors to have this temple begun, and to complete it within your lifetime, Srila Prabhupada.
Prabhupada: My lifetime... [laughs] It is now very brief. At any moment I can...
Jayapataka: We're all praying that Krsna will give your strength back. [break] ...neophyte devotees. Without your inspiration, association, it'll be very difficult.
Prabhupada: That Muhammadan, what is his name?
Jayapataka: Which one?
Prabhupada: Back side our...
Jayapataka: Badusheik.
Prabhupada: He is selling the land also?
Tamala Krsna: Is he selling?
Jayapataka: Right now he's still asking four thousand rupees, but he seems to be weakening. But he hasn't come down yet in his price. He's not coming around so much. They're all a bit... Because now they have to go regularly to the jail.
Bhavananda: How often?
Jayapataka: They were going once a day. Now it's once a week. So it's a big trouble for them.
Tamala Krsna: Including him?
Jayapataka: Yes, he's one of them. He has to go.
Tamala Krsna: He's one of the men who was...
Jayapataka: Oh, yes.
Bhavananda: He's one of the main instigators.
Satadhanya: They lose a day's work, right?
Tamala Krsna: You should tell him that if he sells at two thousand rupees a bigha that we will not be so severe with him.
Jayapataka: To say stuff like that is very dangerous. They use that, how to say that, in court.
Tamala Krsna: Krsna worked with this man. He was harassing us, and now he is harassed.
Prabhupada: Up to three thousand you can take. Four bighas.
Jayapataka: Yes.
Prabhupada: And make a dighi.
Jayapataka: Yes. That Praphulla Brahmacari or Prabhupada Das or whatever he's called, next door, he has built a small temple now. The dome has come up. It's about 45 feet high.
Prabhupada: On top?
Svarupa Damodara: Temple with a dome.
Jayapataka: Very narrow one.
Tamala Krsna: Is he friendly or something?
Jayapataka: He's very friendly. He came by and he said that... He recommended about two months ago that for a while we shouldn't say anything to the Muhammadan and try to get... Then he will bring the price down. Then mutually we can decide that who will take the land.
Tamala Krsna: He wants the land?
Jayapataka: He doesn't know if he has the money to buy the land, but he has got some interest to get the land.
Tamala Krsna: Why?
Jayapataka: Because he only has one bigha right now, and that land is just next to his.
Bhavananda: Planting?
Jayapataka: Now planting is going on. Already many flowers and vegetables have been planted, and now the wheat fields are being plowed for planting. [break] ...if the big temple was thirty or thirty-five stories high, there would be any harm?
Prabhupada: No harm. It is too much.
Jayadvaita: "It is too much."
Jayapataka: The present design is too much. Yes, that present design means that every month, six hundred thousand dollars would have to be given, and that's just too much.
Prabhupada: Too much strain is not good.
Svarupa Damodara: Also, the tendency is that when you make an estimate, you're always higher. If you say thirty million dollars, it's very likely that it will go more.
Jayapataka: Yeah, so then consider. [break] ...his birthday was a couple days ago, and then he invited us. So I sent two brahmacaris to his asrama for his birthday celebration.
Prabhupada: His temple is completed?
Tamala Krsna: His natha-mandira?
Jayapataka: I didn't ask, actually. I think he's a year older than Srila Prabhupada? Or two years older.
Prabhupada: At least one year. I want to develop Gauda-mandala. So in yoga-pitha they could not build even a darsana-mandapa in fifty, sixty years. So we can construct a, what is called, hall.
Jayapataka: Without mandira.
Prabhupada: Hmm. Yes.
Jayapataka: Kirtana hall.
Bhavananda: No. Bhaktivedanta... Yoga Pitha Bhaktivedanta Hall. Bhaktivedanta Swami Hall.
Prabhupada: What do you think?
Bhavananda: With book stall. Prabhupada has formed a trust, the Bhaktivedanta Swami Charity Trust, and its purpose is to develop Gauda-mandala-bhumi. Prabhupada's one idea is to build this darsana-mandapa at the yoga-pitha. And another is to finish Sridhara Maharaja's darsana-mandapa at his..., like that, to develop the different..., to encourage cooperation between the different Godbrothers in the temples. The members of the Trust are myself and Tamala Krsna Maharaja and Giriraja, Svarupa Damodara, myself, Madhava Maharaja and Madhusudana Maharaja. Prabhupada named those members.
Prabhupada: How do you think the idea?
Jayapataka: All of your ideas, Srila Prabhupada, are perfect. I am not someone to offer opinion. But if you ask, I think that actually, especially the yoga-pitha, nata-mandira, that's a very dynamic idea, and in general it must do good.
Prabhupada: We want cooperation.
Tamala Krsna: No more noncooperation.
Jayapataka: Generally the... Even Devananda Gaudiya Matha, they had invited us for the disappearance day of Kesava Maharaja, but I wasn't present at the time. So generally now they're inviting us, and everyone seems to have the desire for more and more cooperation. Madhava Maharaja had talked with one, this leader of the Jana Sangha, now the Janata party constituent, who's Professor Bharati, Haripada Bharati. He's a big orator in the Bidhan Sabha. So he's very pro-ISKCON and pro-Hindu. So he's coming out to Mayapur the 20th and putting on a public meeting. It's being organized by the local Hindus. And in that time he'll be also visiting our temple. So he was told by Madhava Maharaja, who happened to meet him somewhere, that he should give us full support also. He mentioned that. And he's going to give a lecture, and in the lecture he's going to tell the Muslims that they should never do anything like this to another Hindu or Krsna temple again, otherwise their situation will be very... He said they'll be driven out.
[break] Damodara Maharaja, he comes around once in a while. I haven't seem him the last couple of weeks, but he's also helping in his way. Yesterday, from the Central Government, one I.B. officer, Inspection Bank officer, came. He said that he received telegraphic information that regarding my citizenship, the government was having second thoughts, that maybe they would give it after all, and they requested him to find out my background information and give a recommendation.
Bhavananda: In regard to the three-year visas, Gopala Krsna has secured that.
Tamala Krsna: Actually, he did not secure it, because it's been given to all religious groups in India. Giriraja informed me. It's being given to all religious groups in India, that they can get three years. The government has passed it. It wasn't specially for us.
Jayapataka: Hindu, Muslim?
Tamala Krsna: Anyone. Any of these groups that have foreign people in it now will be allowed to stay. It's a general decision of the government. It wasn't...
Jayapataka: Not of ISKCON.
Tamala Krsna: No. Srila Prabhupada, would you like to take rest now?
Prabhupada: Hmm.
Tamala Krsna: Okay. They must be tired. They traveled all night long. The kaviraja didn't sleep at all, I heard. Is that true, Jayapataka?
Jayapataka: Yes. The flight was three hours delayed. Three hours he was sitting, and he didn't leave Calcutta... The 8:00 flight left at 10:30, 11:00, and arrived in Delhi 1:00. Then it took to 5:00 to get here, so he's quite tired.
Prabhupada: It did not start on time.
Tamala Krsna: No, three hours delayed.
Jayapataka: The flight was late.
Tamala Krsna: So everyone can take rest now.
Jayapataka: Just seeing Your Divine Grace gives us so much strength.
Tamala Krsna: If you can just request Krsna to allow you to stay, Srila Prabhupada... Everyone wants you to stay. [end]

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