BROOKLYN THE NEW GENERATION

Vyasa-puja offering – from Back to Godhead magazine 1990

Part 1

From all around the world they came
To 26 Second Avenue.
Back in 1966
They came to be with you.
They came for the Sunday feast,
Filling the temple room floor,
Sitting five people across,
From front to back, some twenty-four.
Spilling out onto the courtyard ground,
And onto the garden's small ledges-
To the temple on the Lower East Side,
And a garden full of hedges.
A part of eternal history-
The courtyard you passed through everyday,
From your second-floor apartment
To the temple where you'd pray.
Near the courtyard's birdbath
We took your photo – full of glory-
For the back cover of your first record album,
Containing the holy name's story.
Everyone tasted your love-feast recipes-
The bharats and cucumber raita.
There were peas nestled in the fancy rice;
The fried curd balls made it even better.
Brahmin spaghetti, gulab jamuns,
Were only half the eve.
Repeating your words about a personal God,
Trying to get them to believe.
The hippies, the intellectuals, and the beatniks
All gave the best arguments they knew,
But being soundly defeated,
They surrendered unto you.
With our newly learned logic and arguments,
To them we passed your knowledge on,
Defeating their example of the waterpot-
Smash! – their Mayavadi logic gone.
The Mayavadis say the jug,
While filling, does abound
With gurgling noise and splashes
'Till full – then no more sound.
They say at the point of fullness
One becomes silent like a stone.
One realizes he's the one God,
The only – all alone.
The Mayavadis view of God-
Impersonal and formless-
Their self-realized soul need not talk:
There's nothing to profess.
Our reply to them was simple;
We'd just heard it that morn,
In your Caitanya-caritamita class,
Where truth, for us, was born.
Youu said then, "The devotees say,
With a fullness from within,
'Before, we talked all nonsense;
let our real talk now begin.'"
A waterpot is not alive;
There is no similarity.
We are living force to speak on Krishna,
Twenty-four hours does not suffice.
A big part of our devotional life
Was presenting to them your way....
Nirvisesa-sunyavadi-
Pascatya-desa-tarine.

Part 2

Now they're all coming to see you
From other planets, other nations.
Triumphantly you're still manifesting
Through the third generation.
We feel your presence
In their zeal;
They feel your presence,
They know you're real.
College students, high-school kids,
Businessmen and punks,
The straight edge and the hard core
Becoming undercover monks.
They're coming to your temple,
Having met you in your books.
They're writing, drawing, preaching, dancing,
And becoming Radha-Govinda's cooks.
From your books you've entered their hearts.
It's you who've brought them here.
You inspire them to sell your books,
To take the holy name here.
You are their spiritual guide;
Your words make their hearts glow.
They advance even faster
When they see your video.
You wrote a letter to Malati
In 1968:
"The spiritual master is the principle,
Not the body's gate.
"Anywhere you remember him,
He's immediately here,
Like the principle of relay message,
As a TV make things near."
Now its starting all over again:
History repeats itself anew.
The new generation wants to visit
26 Second Avenue.
We feel your faithful energy,
Seeing the new generation deal.
You're there in their acts of devotion;
It's your encouragement they feel.
It's like you told us in '67,
Just back from San Francisco, it was spring....
"Since Krishna's encouraging you in your heart,
Your temple is improving."
Everything you say is encouraging
Because you always give
Krishna the reality.
With Him you let us live.
The first time we met you,
In October of '66,
In your apartment on the second floor,
You said something like this:
'We are eternal,
And everything around us is temporary."
You sat back, you were self-realized,
Even hippies could feel your purity.
You said that God lives,
And that we could all live with Him-
"Krishna is yours."
You have the power to give Him.
Shouting 'Krishna! Krishna!"
We're running after you.
To give them you
Is all we have to do.

(written by Jadurani devi dasi)
Your servants in Brooklyn, New York.

Back to Godhead magazine: http://www.krishna.com/