Prabhupada, “It’s very easy to be critical, but to find the good is rare.”
Aniruddha: I had an ecstatic experience at the wonderful San Francisco Ratha-yatra, and I wrote Prabhupada a letter about what I felt.
Prabhupada answered, “The car festival was very simple. After all, it is a car with four wheels, but it attracted the people so enthusiastically because there was His Lordship, Jagannatha.
"Atheistic people may say that Jagannatha was made of wood, and the car was also made of wood, but spiritual bliss can be exacted from anything, simply in Krishna consciousness.
“Even accepting the whole affair as wooden, a Krishna conscious person can understand that wood is nothing but a display of Krishna’s energy. So it is the Krishna conscious energy that gives us transcendental bliss, just like it is the electric energy passing through a copper cable that gives us electric light and heat.
“Simply the Krishna conscious electric energy can immediately be attractive by developing our sense of Krishna consciousness, which I am sure you are experiencing gradually how easily it can be done…
“To implement this transcendental bliss to the people of your country there is immense work to be done ahead and this Ratha-yatra festival is only a sample. If we get the opportunity we shall be able to over flood your country with waves of transcendental bliss, by the grace of Krishna.
“We can introduce various other ceremonies in connection with Krishna and His different expansions or thing and become immersed in Krishna consciousness … There is not one incident like Ratha-yatra, but there are many hundreds of thousands of incidents in different appearances of the incarnations of Lord Krishna.
“In different cities and different centers we can introduce such multi-pastimes ceremonies of Lord Krishna. And certainly people will be engladdened to observe such transcendental and happy ceremonies.”
That was a very enlivening letter.
Makanlal, Nara Narayan’s brother, was in San Francisco when I was there. He and his brother joined in San Francisco in the early days and were sincere devotees.
Prabhupada said that they were very nice but a little eccentric (Makanlal said it was all right for me to say this).
Makanlal and Nara-Narayan were long-haired hippies who wore typical clothes of those days and were a bit Shakespearean when they spoke.
With a sonorous voice, Makanlal would chant, “Hare Krishna Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna Hare Hare,” and it used to irritate me terribly. I would get disturbed during the kirtans.
Then once, Makanlal had a preaching engagement at the YWCA in Berkeley, and I drove Srila Prabhupada there and back.
The engagement was very nice, but all of a sudden who was leading the kirtan but Makanlal and I showed my distaste—I left the room. I was not very tolerant and didn’t have the right understanding.
So, when I was driving Prabhupada home, he looked at me and said, “Aniruddha, this Makanlal sings very nicely, don’t you think?” I had to say, “Jaya, Prabhupada.”
Manadena kirtaniyah sada harih. In a humble mode you can preach and chant incessantly, and that was Prabhupada’s mode. He knew exactly how to utilize everybody’s service.
Even though there were some qualities that were not very nice, he never found fault. He found only the good.
Prabhupada used to say, “It’s very easy to be critical, but to find the good is rare.”
I didn’t have the ability to see only the good, but I’m beginning to understand how magnificently Prabhupada had it.
To see the good in others is the way to preach, the way to not disturb anybody.
Prabhupada was a perfect Vaishnava. One of the qualities of a pure Vaishnava is that he’s a perfect gentleman.
He doesn’t disturb anybody’s mind. He’s able to see the good in others and evoke it.
That’s why we all wanted to serve Prabhupada, and that’s why we have difficulty with people who don’t evoke the good in us.
It’s very rare to achieve that ability in fullness. But we can achieve it if we follow Prabhupada’s example.
—Aniruddha
Excerpt from “Memories-Anecdotes of a Modern-Day Saint”
by Siddhanta das