Van Kirtan
As mentioned in the previous article, here’s an account of Van Kirtan book distribution and preaching. Sometimes service asked the ultimate sacrifice.
Going Back to Godhead in the Service of Guru Maharaja
[Dedicated to the few, the brave, the proud: the van-acharis or van-devotees]
One night in 1971 found our party of four brahmacharis traveling on a Pennsylvania highway through the wee hours in a new Ford van. Destination: a college preaching program at the U. of Ohio. Around 2:00 am, our driver Bhakta Dennis, nodded off on the interstate. Dennis, doing maybe sixty or seventy, woke up Jananivas, our temple president, calling, “I’m falling asleep.” Jananivas das, who lived to preach on college campuses, now ordered Dennis, “Get off at the next exit.” Those were his last words. I had heard the conversation, but the next thing I recall was that I was lying on the highway, paralyzed with pain. In the din and confusion, I saw the van looming above me, a twisted carnage of metal. The words “Chant Hare Krishna and Be Happy” that Bhakta Dennis, a sign painter, had scribed on the side in yellow paint were crumpled beyond recognition. Was this a bad joke or a horror story?
I had heard neither the crash nor the sirens that must have followed soon thereafter. Lying roadside, unable to move, I could see young Bhakta Will’s brown face in the flashes of the ambulance’s spinning red light. Soon the paramedics came to lift me onto the cot. When I pointed and asked them to first attend to Bhakta Will, they reluctantly shook their heads. I now realized that Bhakta Will had just left us. Will Prabhu’s countenance was one of such peace that to this day I believe he must have achieved a much higher plateau. I have faith in Lord Krishna’s promise to Arjuna: ma suchah or “I will protect you”—that our Prabhus achieved Krishna’s shelter.
Bhakta Dennis, who had broken his leg, told me later that Jananivas Prabhu had actually been decapitated by the accident. My head had been resting just inches from his in the crowded van. But from a transcendental point of view, Will and Jananivas were the lucky ones, for they had been called from this material world while in Krishna’s service. We who struggle with the six senses, including the mind, here in the dark well of Maya are the unfortunate ones.
Kirtanananda arrived from New Vrindaban to fetch me from the hospital. Laying me on the cold steel floor of another cargo van proved a most happy, yet excrutiating, ride of my life. He dropped me off at the Columbus temple, where I was informed I would now be the president. Within weeks, I was walking again, and life was returning to whatever semblance of normalcy could be expected for a resident of an ISKCON Center in the Midwest in the late 60’s. Jananivas’ mother wrote to ask that a candle snuffer on the altar be returned. The father of Manasuchandra das, who had taken care of some of the details after the crash, told me that the $134 that the van was worth in salvage had been spent on towing it. The frugal Jananivas had not bought insurance.
When Kirtananda returned to Columbus a few days later to check up on the devotees, he asked Mangalananda and me to join him on a local television interview. It was my first time out of the temple since the accident, and I had lost my sandals in the carnage. I had no shoes, so I appeared on the TV show barefooted. The preaching had to go on whether one had shoes or not. I wrote to Shrila Prabhupada, who wrote me back expressing his sadness over the loss of his two faithful bhaktas. I did not mention that I had been injured with two spinal “compression fractures”.
As Krishna consciousness caught on, new members witnessed the pure and practical potency of the message of the holy name, the yuga-dharma, and became surrendered devotees. Now preaching became the most important mission for Shrila Prabhupada’s growing ranks of disciples, who gladly took the risks of van sankirtan upon themselves. It was the era of the sixties, and “Hare Krishnas” were young rebels with a cause. In those days, we could walk out the temple door and within moments be in-your-face with the karmis strolling by about the real problems of life: birth, disease, old age and disease. We were armed with the mahamantra, a mantra we loved to give away with no price tag, the holy names of God as the final solution to samsara. By the grace of a pure devotee of the Supreme Personality of Godhead Lord Shri Krishna, such a rare benediction of this Universe of Brahma, we had found liberation from matter through chanting:
Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare
Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare.
