The spirit of selfless service to God

Visakha Devi Dasi: Back in Juhu, much to my dismay, Mrs. Nair was carrying on her husband’s fight and, on May 18th, a municipal demolition squad paid off by her began tearing down our temporary temple, a simple building of brick, steel tubes, and asbestos sheets at the front of the property. Some frantic phone calls by influential life members activated upper-echelon Bombay politicians, who stopped the demolition team just before they dismantled the Deities’ roof. Then, under the direction of Prabhupada and leading life members, Yadubara and I became part of a citywide campaign to inform the press and public of Nair’s and the municipality's illegal actions. Within four months the land was finally in our name. Prabhupada said simply, “It was a good fight.”

Later, an editor of the monthly Back to Godhead magazine suggested I write an article on the protracted battle to acquire Hare Krishna land. I did some research and wrote three initial pages. After the editor, who was Prabhupada's secretary at the time, read these pages to Prabhupada, Prabhupada said, “To publish this magazine we must spend so much money on paper and printing. And then devotees must take so much trouble to distribute it. If people read about this struggle, how will they benefit?”

In the article, I'd explained how Nair had cheated us by taking our down payment while retaining possession of the property, how our lawyer was unethically in cahoots with Nair’s lawyer, and how both the lawyers and Nair had been unreasonable with us throughout the transactions. The three pages I'd written were accurate but mundane and, although the Hare Krishna land battle had absorbed Prabhupada for two years, to him this aspect of it wasn't a noteworthy part of his mission. Prabhupada’s focus, I was reminded, was bhakti—the spirit of selfless service to God.

Both the magazine editor and I had thought this article was a good idea. Had I so quickly forgotten Prabhupada’s focus on bhakti? Had my spiritual vision so easily blurred? What would happen when Prabhupada wasn't around to clarify things for me—and for all of us? Such thoughts left me in a tizzy.