The Hare Krishna Movement, by Haripada dasa
The Hare Krishna Movement was founded by Srila Bhaktivedanta Swami Srila Prabhupada in New York in 1966. Srila Prabhupada was born in Calcutta in the year 1896, he was born into a family of pure devotees of God or Krishna and from his childhood lived the whole environment was full of the love for God. An astrologer predicted that this great soul at 69 will go to foreign countries to preach Krishna consciousness, open more than 100 temples of Krishna, and write more than 80 books.
These books will be the law books for all humanity in the next 10,000 years. His Spiritual Master ordered him to go to Western countries to preach the message of the conscience of God or Krishna. At the age of 69 he left India to the USA to fulfill the order given by his Spiritual Master to spread the message of Krishna consciousness in the English language. He started chanting the Maha-mantra: Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare / Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare in Tompkins Square park in New York. There he started his movement. Many young people approached him to receive spiritual training. Many people abandoned illicit sex life, gambling, drugs and the consumption of meat, fish and eggs and sang every day 27,648 names of God in their rosaries.
These people felt so much spiritual happiness that in a natural way they wanted to help Srila Prabhupada to spread his movement, so that everyone would be happy. Srila Prabhupada initiated more than 10,000 disciples around the world, went around the world 14 times, wrote 80 books of 400 pages each, opened more than a hundred temples around the world and many farming communities. He slept every day only 3 hours from 10 in the night until 1 in the morning. Then he got up to translate the great classics of India such as Srimad-Bhagavatam and Sri Chaitanya-Charitamrita. His disciples and admirers have distributed more than 500 million of his books in all the languages of the world. Srila Prabhupada is Acharya, which means he who preaches by his personal example.
As the saying goes, the words convince but the example drags. Srila Prabhupada says in Srimad Bhagavatam, 5, 12, 13, that this movement for Krishna consciousness has been founded to engage people in the service and glorification of the Lord twenty-four hours a day. In this institution, students devote themselves to the cultivation of Krishna consciousness from five in the morning until ten at night. Thus they have no opportunity to waste time unnecessarily speaking about politics, sociology and current affairs. All this follows its own course. A devotee is only interested in serving Krishna in a serious and positive way.
Unhappily, in his last days, as Srila Prabhupada was almost ready to depart his body, he said that he was being poisoned. He ordered his disciples to initiate in Hhis name, and not to change His books. Unhappily, when Srila Prabhupada departed His disciples did not obey the order to initiate in His name and they became gurus in an artificial way. Srila Prabhupada says in his books that a guru is not made by votes, but the current self-appointed gurus make other gurus by votes. They made more than 6,000 unauthorized changes to Srila Prabhupada’s books. Srila Prabhupada sacrificed His life to found the Hare Krishna Movement, but now His movement is run by very strange, envious and very dangerous people. Fortunately there are people who like Krishna Consciousness, and we try to help people to know, serve and love Srila Prabhupada, and let them go back home to God or Krishna.