Your mercy or Krishna's mercy

Visakha Devi Dasi: Yadubara and I went into Prabhupada’s room to meet with him, just as we had in Bombay when I'd first arrived. Yadubara asked Prabhupada if he should complete his master’s thesis for Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT).

“How long will it take?" Prabhupada asked.

“Three or four months.”

“Yes, why not?” Prabhupada said. Then he asked me about my parents.

“They're both atheists, Prabhupada," I said.

“Do you have a brother?” he asked.

“Yes, and he’s an atheist too, and a communist."

“How did you come to be here?”

“By your mercy,” I said because it sounded like the right thing to say, if only partially true—after all, it was by Vrindavana’s and Yadubara’s influence, too. Yet, sitting before Prabhupada, I knew that neither Vrindavana nor Yadubara had evoked my excitement for spiritual life the way he had.

“No,...” said Prabhupada, “...it was by Krishna’s mercy that you came.”

Krishna’s mercy notwithstanding, neither Yadubara nor I liked living in the asrama. In spite of Prabhupada’s stirring talk and some practical improvements made under his direction—like augmenting our diet with cheese—asrama life was difficult. To transform theory into practice was a slow, tricky, and often halting the process. Yadubara explained our feelings to Prabhupada, who commiserated: the Calcutta asrama was not the best place for newcomers. But, Prabhupada said, “Isn't it more difficult to live outside the asrama?”

“Well,...” I thought, “...it wasn’t more difficult in Vrindavana, but in Calcutta, yes, it would be. Renting a place here would strain our finances and, unlike Vrindavana, our neighbors’ habits would be a disturbance.” But we didn't need to consider alternatives—along with Prabhupada and most of the other Calcutta devotees we were going to Delhi on November 10th for another pandal program.

I was being tossed by a turbulent sea: attracted to Prabhupada yet disturbed by some of his followers, wanting to pursue my chosen path yet aware of its shortcomings, attached to Yadubara yet unsure of his choice of Krishna consciousness. I hadn't thought of telling Prabhupada, but I'd mailed in my RIT admissions forms, and Delhi was a little closer to RIT than Calcutta. I'd made no commitment to Yadubara or to Prabhupada and was open to options.