1. Biggest mistake – declining Srila Prabhupada’s invitation

    In 1971 I was the leader of a book distribution party. We were about five of us, and we were traveling in a van. Prabhupada was in Los Angeles, so I wanted to take the members of our party to meet Srila Prabhupada. I thought we will meet him, but we will also learn a Sanskrit prayer, and then we will chant that Sanskrit prayer for Prabhupada. So, we all practiced chanting and memorizing the verse. Then, when we went to L.A., Srila Prabhupada was very kind and called us to come up and see him. He was always very interested to encourage the book distributors. So, when we went to Srila Prabhupada’s room, we all offered our obeisances. Then we sat down, and Prabhupada asked us how the preaching was going. And we told him how many books we had distributed, and he was very happy; he had a big smile on his face. Then he said, “Thank you very much.” And he said, “My Guru Maharaja will be very satisfied.” He was preaching to us about Lord Caitanya and His desire to spread love of Krsna throughout the world, and that he was simply following the order of his spiritual master and he had presented his books and was very happy that we were preaching.

    So then I said, “Srila Prabhupada, we’d like to make a small offering to you.” Then we all chanted this verse from the Srimad-Bhagavatam:

    tvam nah sandarsito dhatra
    dustaram nistitirsatam
    kalim sattva-haram pumsam
    karna-dhara ivarnavam
    [SB 1.1.22]

    “We think that we have met Your Goodness by the will of providence, just so that we may accept you as captain of the ship for those who desire to cross the difficult ocean of Kali, which deteriorates all the good qualities of a human being.”

    Prabhupada was very happy. And that was just about lunch time. So Prabhupada invited us to stay and have lunch with him. So, like a stupid fool, I declined; I said, “No, no, Prabhupada; we want to go out and distribute books.” (laughter) I thought this will impress him. So he said, “Oh!” (laughs) Then we left. We made a big mistake; we should have stayed and had lunch with Prabhupada. I turned down a tremendous opportunity. I think that was the story of a lot of my association with Srila Prabhupada.

    Told by ISKCON’s Sridhara Swami from “The Jolly Swami” by Adbhuta Hari Dasa