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September 8, 1966 : New York

Satsvarupa: At six o'clock, Prabhupada came down and was about to give his morning class as usual, when one of the boys asked if he would read from his own manuscript. Prabhupada appeared shy, yet he did not hide his pleasure at having been asked to read his own Bhagavad-gita commentary. Usually, he would read a verse from Dr. Radhakrishnan's Oxford edition of the Gita. Although the commentary presented impersonalist philosophy, the translations, Prabhupada said, were ninety-percent accurate. But this morning he sent Roy up to fetch his manuscript, and for an hour he read from its typewritten pages.

For observing Janmashtami there were special rules: there should be no eating, and the day was to be spent chanting, reading, and discussing Krishna consciousness. If anyone became too weak, he said, there was fruit in the kitchen. But better that they fast until the feast at midnight, just like the devotees in India. It was a mental and physical strain to go all day without eating. Most of the prospective initiates spent several hours that day stringing their shiny red wooden beads. Having tied one end of the string to a window bar or a radiator, they would slide one bead at a time up the string and knot it tightly, chanting one mantra of Hare Krishna for each bead.

Prabhupada said that devotees in India chanted at least sixty-four rounds of beads a day. Saying the Hare Krishna mantra once on each of the 108 beads constituted one round. At first, some of the boys thought that they would also have to chant sixty-four rounds, and they became perplexed: that would take all day! How could you go to a job if you had to chant sixty-four rounds? How could anyone chant sixty-four rounds? Then someone said Swamiji had told him that thirty-two rounds a day would be a sufficient minimum for the West. Then Prabhupada offered the rock-bottom minimum: sixteen rounds a day, without fail. Whoever got initiated would have to promise.

The bead-stringing, chanting, reading, and dozing went on until eleven at night, when everyone was invited up to Swamiji's room. As his followers sat on the floor, contentedly eating prasadam from paper plates, Swamiji sat among them, telling stories about the birth of Lord Krishna.



Reference: Srila Prabhupada Lilamrta Volume 2 - Satsvarupa Dasa Goswami