New Vrindaban “City of God” Temple Orchestra (January 1991).

Accordions: Bhakti-Joy, Dutiful Rama, Chakravarti Swami, Dhruva; Organ: Radha-Vrindaban Chandra Swami; Violins: Yamuna, Good Hope; Double bass: Herapanchami; Harps: Bhavisya, Brihan Naradiya Purana; Trumpets: Vishvatamukha, Sudanu; Percussion: Harikirtan, Wonderful Love.

Bhaktipada and I enjoyed dozens of pleasant and stimulating hours together in his house or on the road in his Cadillac limousine listening to and discussing music, writing and rewriting texts for hymns, and traveling to various cities to listen to pipe organs and purchase instruments for the temple orchestra. However, all things must pass, and so did the glorious era of Western classical music at New Vrindaban. But I am getting ahead of myself. Now I will share my memories of my time on The Pick.

The Candle Factory.

The once-profitable New Vrindaban Spiritual Sky incense business—which funded the purchase of properties such as Madhuban, Bahulaban and Guruban—folded during the mid-1970s, and the income from drug smuggling and dealing—which funded much of the construction supplies for Prabhupada’s Palace—ended soon after the September 1979 Palace dedication. (For more about unconventional sources of funding for New Vrindaban, see the author’s books, Gold, Guns and God, Vols. 2 and 3.) A new source of funding was needed.

Candles were a big money maker in 1978 and 1979. New Vrindaban established a candle factory at Bahulaban where residents dipped and carved elaborate and colorful decorative candles which sankirtan devotees sold in malls or on the road. Beginning in September 1978, I worked up at the Palace-under-construction, mostly gold leafing the interior and exterior. In October, I began painting the perimeter ceiling of the Kirtan Hall, a project I finally finished in March 1979. But around December 3, 1978, I was assigned to work for a few weeks in the New Vrindaban “Candle Factory” at Bahulaban. My service was dipping candles in 55-gallon barrels of molten wax.

As I recall, we began with a plain, generic commercial candle, purchased cheaply in bulk. The candle factory workers dipped the candle a dozen times in one barrel of colored wax to thicken the candle, then we’d take the candle over to another barrel with wax of a different color, and dip into the new barrel. We continued this process maybe a half dozen times, then passed the bulk candle over to the candle carvers, who sat at tables with sharp knives. These carvers sliced the soft, warm wax and folded the slices to create fantastical patterns with bright kaleidoscopic colors.

An ornamental candle similar to those manufactured at New Vrindaban

When the carvers finished a candle, it was then passed to the packers, who placed each candle in a corrugated box with dividers, so the candles would not get damaged during transport. Finally, the traveling sankirtan devotees picked up boxes of candles when they visited New Vrindaban, and then went back out on the road to sell the hand-made New Vrindaban product. Candles were a big seller during the Christmas season, as shoppers often look for unique and exciting gifts for family and friends.

In 1980 as I recall, the Candle Factory moved up to the Palace. It was located in the rooms behind the Palace which were in future to become the Palace Restaurant and Gift Store. Unfortunately, during the winter of 1980, the Candle Factory burned to the ground. The flames shot a hundred feet into the air as thousands of gallaons of wax blazed. Even the specially-ordered incredibly-long steel-reinforced concrete beams which supported the roof (which cost many tens of thousands of dollars and were shipped in by dozens of specially-trained tractor-trailer semi-truck drivers) were destroyed. The devastation was complete. A new source of income was needed, and traveling sankirtan evolved to fill the void. Soon New Vrindaban pickers would generate millions of dollars in income per year. But back to the winter of 1978.

During the 1978 Christmas marathon I dipped candles in huge barrels of colored molten wax at the Bahulaban candle factory. When the Christmas marathon was over, and the sankirtan devotees returned to the farm, I returned to my service of painting the perimeter of the ceiling of the Kirtan Hall at Prabhupada’s Palace-under-construction.

The six-month Palace Marathon, from March to September 1979 was intense. I will tell some stories from that time later. For now, after the Palace Dedication Festival during Labor Day Weekend 1979, I began serving as a teacher at the Nandagram Boys School. I taught music there for about month. I lived at the Vrindaban Brahmachari Ashram, and walked across the ridge to the Nandagram school, about a mile distant. Every day I returned to the Vrindaban Farm. I enjoyed teaching the boys. I had no discipline problems. I think they respected me, and I was fair to them.

The Pope Pick.

On October 5, 1979, I worked the “Pope Pick” at Grant Park on the shore of Lake Michigan in Chicago, Illinois. New Vrindaban sent out dozens of collectors in vans to Des Moines, Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington D. C., New York City and Boston—the cities on the pope’s first United States tour—to hawk buttons and other paraphernalia displaying a photo or image of Pope John Paul II to the massive crowds who came to attend Mass presided by the pope. Tens, if not a hundred thousand dollars were raised for New Vrindaban to help complete Prabhupada’s Palace of Gold, which had been dedicated only one month earlier.

Pope John Paul II was born Karol Józef Wojtyła in Wadowice, Poland in 1920. He rose through the ranks of the Roman Catholic hierarchy, becoming a priest, a bishop, the Archbishop of Kraków and then a cardinal. He was elected pope in October 1978, becoming one of the youngest popes in history. John Paul II was pope for nearly 27 years, until his death in 2005. Nine years later, he was officially canonized as a saint by the Catholic Church. He was the favorite pope in my family, as we were Roman Catholic and Polish.

The Pope Pick was my first time ever collecting money for New Vrindaban. As noted earlier, my first year at New Vrindaban I helped build Prabhupada’s Palace, and after the Palace dedication on September 2^nd I served as a music teacher for the boys at Nandagram School for a month. Now, I looked forward to the exciting experience of collecting money for Krishna. I rode in the back of a van with a bunch of others from New Vrindaban to Chicago the previous evening (October 4^th). We slept in sleeping bags on the crowded floor of the van.

As I recall, after an eight-hour drive, we arrived at Grant Park in Chicago early in the morning. Dharmatma dasa (Dennis Gorrick) was there with his own van to coordinate the New Vrindaban pickers. He provided us with shoulder bags containing hundreds of pope buttons. Some other pickers had bars of soap carved in the likeness of John Paul II, which people could hang up in their shower stall. We called the item “Pope on a Rope.”

Around 8 a.m., the crowd started pouring in, and we began picking, offering our buttons for sale. As I recall, we asked $2 per button. The buttons cost maybe twenty-five cents, if that. We were vendors hawking our wares: “Get your Pope buttons here! Pope buttons, only two dollars!” People in the crowd raised their hands, indicating that they wanted a button, and we’d move through the crowd, passing out buttons and collecting money. Some people bought four or five buttons. Some bought ten. Many, many times, I ran out of buttons and ran back to Dharmatma’s van, turning in my Laksmi and grabbing another shoulder bag filled with buttons.

I discovered that the best way to make money was to find a fresh crowd; people who hadn’t yet seen the buttons. After we’d been picking for four or five or six hours, it was not easy finding a fresh crowd, but somehow I managed to find them.

The climax of the day was an afternoon open-air Mass at the Petrillo Band Shell at Grant Park. At 3 p.m., church bells rang throughout the archdiocese, signaling the entrance procession for the Mass that was celebrated by the Holy Father and 350 bishops from all over North America. An estimated 1.2 million people gathered in the park for the two-hour-long Mass. The weather remained sunny and seasonable.

The pope was a half an hour late, and by the time he arrived, more than 1 million people had amassed in the 319-acre park. John Paul II gave Holy Eucharist to 150 people chosen from the six Vicariates of the Chicago Archdiocese, while more than 600 priests and deacons administered the Eucharist to the full crowd.

During Mass, naturally as a respectful Catholic boy, I did not hawk my buttons loudly. If I did, the people would have hated me for disturbing their Holy Mass. But I did walk quietly through the crowd waving over my head a button in one hand, and in the other hand, indicated the number “two.” I still made some sales in this way.

After the Mass, many in the crowd chanted “John Paul Two, We Love You!” The pope responded with “John Paul Two, He Loves You!”

When the Mass ended, around 5 or 6 pm, the crowds began dispersing. Of course it took several hours for 1.2 million people to get back to the taxi stands, bus stops, subway stations, and their parked cars. I found a good spot where many thousands of people had to pass and hawked my buttons again, this time only for $1. “Last chance to get your Pope buttons! Only one dollar!” I think after a while I dropped the price to “Two for a dollar!”

The sun set in Chicago that day at 6:30 pm, but we kept working, as the crowd still numbered in the thousands. Finally around 10 or 11 pm, everyone had left, except for a handful of park maintenance employees and us New Vrindaban devotees. Dharmatma’s helpers were counting the Laksmi scores.

I was quite surprised when Dharmatma announced, “Hrishikesh is the biggest collector of the day, with 1,643 Laksmi points!” In sixteen hours, I averaged more than $100 per hour. I even beat New Vrindaban’s biggest picker on the men’s parties: Muktakesh dasa (Ronald Burstein) by a mere $20.

Muktakesh was a big book distributor and a big picker for the last five years for Buffalo ISKCON and New Vrindaban. But now his big ego was bruised. He was so pissed he had been beaten by a rookie, and he told me so to my face, that he grabbed some buttons and ran out into the night in a futile attempt to make 21 more dollars and retain his title. He returned fifteen minutes later, disappointed, and he reluctantly admitted that I had taken away his crown.

After this, my days on “The Farm” were numbered. In a few months, I would become a full time “picker,” a position I maintained and (mostly) enjoyed for about seven years.

John Paul II in Chicago.

The crowd was estimated to be 1.2 million.

A button with Pope John Paul II’s image.

Muktakesh dasa, ACBSP (Ronald Burstein) (1947-2007).

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Trying to sell Prabhupada’s books in Cleveland.

On or around October 7, 1979, perhaps only a couple days after the Pope Pick, New Vrindaban authorities shipped me to the Cleveland, Ohio ISKCON temple at 15720 Euclid Avenue in the East Cleveland ghetto, a New Vrindaban satellite center. The temple president, as I recall, was Sundarakar dasa Adhikari ACBSP (Steven Fitzpatrick). The deities on the altar were Radha Muralidhara. Tapahpunja dasa Brahmachari (Terry Sheldon) was the resident sankirtan expert, and he attempted to train me up how to distribute Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada’s books, like the small paperback Easy Journey to Other Planets, in the parking lots of Kmart department stores and Kroeger supermarkets in various small towns in North Eastern Ohio.

The cover of Easy Journey to Other Planets by Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada.

Just a few days earlier, on October 5^th, I proved my prowess as a collector at the Pope Pick in Chicago, my first ever sankirtan event, where I collected $1,643 by selling buttons displaying the image of Pope John Paul II. New Vrindaban authorities suspected I might be able to learn to collect big on regular sankirtan in the parking lots of Ohio shopping malls and rock concert stadiums, but I proved myself a failure. I was terrible. I could hardly get a donation, let alone sell a book. This service was incredibly difficult for me. In fact, it was frightening.

It was one thing to sell a button which everyone wanted; and an entirely different thing to sell a book (with an image on the cover of an emaciated yogi) which no one wanted. Not to mention the police officers and security guards who constantly tell me to move on or get arrested, as Tapahpunja never bothered to apply for a solicitor’s permit.

Kirtanananda gives me a choice.

At the end of the month, I returned to New Vrindaban for a festival, and Kirtanananda Maharaja approached me quietly. He asked how I was doing under Tapahpunja’s tutelage. I replied, “Terrible. I’m just no good at this service. It’s very difficult for me.” Bhaktipada said, “Yes. I was never good at it either.” I thought this was curious, because the Brijabasis told me the pure devotee was “expert at everything.” Then Maharaja asked, “Would you like to return to the farm? You can teach music at the gurukula.”

I tossed the idea around in my mind. I had taught music at Nandagram for about a month in September, after the Palace dedication. I enjoyed working with the boys and they seemed to respect me as a teacher. Bhaktipada had once talked to me about starting a children’s choir and a gurukula band, and eventually a symphony orchestra and opera company. Teaching at Nandagram might be a good opportunity for me.

But after a few moments, I answered in the negative, “Thanks for the tempting offer, Maharaja, but at this time I must decline, because I’ve heard you say many, many times, that sankirtan is the highest service, and I want to please you the best I possibly can. If I can stick it out a bit longer, perhaps I might learn how to get people to give me money in the parking lots.” Bhaktipada was pleased. He smiled and patted my shaved head.

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Arrested by Police.

On October 27, 1979, the American rock band, the Eagles, performed the first of a two-night sold out stand at the Richfield Coliseum—a 20,000-seat indoor arena between Cleveland and Akron, Ohio. This is the first leg of the Eagles’ “The Long Run” tour. I was there before the concert in the parking lot, trying (without much success) to get donations for Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada’s paperback book, Easy Journey to Other Planets.

After a short time a security guard questioned me, then asked me to come with him to the security office where I am charged with trespassing.

My mentor, Tapahpunja dasa Brahmachari, ACBSP, bailed me out and asked me what happened. I said a security guard stopped me and asked me if I was going to the concert. I said, “No. I’m just here to distribute books.” Then the security guard arrested me for trespassing.

Tapahpunja rebukes me, “You fool! You should have said that you were going to the concert! Then he would have simply told you to stop distributing books, and you wouldn’t have been arrested!” (Tapahpunja conveniently forgot the fact that he had not given me any prior instruction on what to tell the security guards if I was questioned. How could I possibly know what to say?)

I fell bad after his chastisement, but the pained look on my face must have touched Tapahpunja’s heart, for then he encouraged me, “That’s all right. You are a brahmin, and a brahmin is always truthful.”

Tapahpunja Swami (Terry Sheldon)

Richfield Coliseum

The Eagles

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My first taste of traveling sankirtan.

On or around November 7, 1979, while I was stationed at the Cleveland ISKCON temple—a New Vrindaban satellite center—my mentor Tapahpunja dasa Brahmachari ACBSP (Terry Sheldon), took me out on traveling sankirtan for an entire week, my first time on the road.

Terry Sheldon (born November 2, 1948 in a “poor, working-class neighborhood” in Detroit, Michigan) joined ISKCON at the Detroit temple, and after a few months, he moved to New Vrindaban, and was initiated in October 1974. He admired Kirtanananda Swami and developed a strong emotional attachment for his siksa guru. For a few years he served Bhaktipada in Buffalo, New York and Columbus, Ohio. (Both were New Vrindaban satellite centers).

Tapahpunja exhibited his leadership abilities by becoming an expert sankirtan “picker” and party leader, renowned for his ability to avoid detection by the police. He also served as the New Vrindaban men’s sankirtan leader (1979-1980). Some affectionately called him “Mr. Scam Kirtan.” Tapahpunja was intelligent and personable. Dharmatma remembered him, “He was very innovative. He was quite intelligent in regards to putting things together.”

Tapahpunja (Terry Sheldon)

Tapahpunja and I left Cleveland ISKCON in a beat up old van and a couple cases of Prabhupada’s book, Easy Journey to Other Planets. As I recall, Tapahpunja drove south towards Akron where we worked the parking lots of Kroeger supermarkets and K-Mart department stores. Although this was extremely difficult work for me, trying to get a donation from a housewife on a budget for a book with a picture of an emaciated yogi on the cover, I trudged along and gave it my best, as I was told this service was extremely pleasing to Krishna.

After a few hours, after the store manager came out and told us to leave, we drove to another parking lot in another part of town. Late in the day, we stopped distributing books and drove to a K-Mart parking lot where we spent the night sleeping in our sleeping bags on the floor of the van. But first we used a small propane camp stove to heat up a quart of milk, which we drank before spreading our sleeping bags on the floor of the van and taking rest.

K-Mart parking lots were a good place to park overnight, as there were usually a half-dozen other vehicles parked overnight and we wouldn’t draw any attention to ourselves. Truck stop parking lots were also a good place to spend the night. If we parked at other locations during the night, sometimes the police would wake us up and tell us to move on.

In the mornings, Tapahpunja drove our van to a partly-seclude place, such as against a brick wall, where we opened the side doors of the van, stripped to our kaupins (a one-piece loin cloth underwear common in India) and bathed using a gallon of water in an old plastic milk jug. We had filled the jugs with water the previous day at a gas station. First Tapahpunja bathed, to show me how to do it.

Bathing is very important to Krishna devotees. At New Vrindaban we take a cold shower every morning before dressing in dhoti and kurta to attend the morning program at the temple. Tapahpunja demonstrated: first he poured a couple cups of water on his shaved head, and let the water flow down his body. Then he grabbed a bar of soap, and lathered himself. He untied his loincloth in the rear, and washed out his kaupins, while the cloth still covered the front of his body, as devotees are taught to be modest (never nude).

Then Tapahpunja poured the remainder of the gallon of water on his head and rinsed off all the soap. When the jug was empty, he dried himself with an Indian towel, changed into a fresh kaupin, and got dressed in his karmi clothes. I followed suit. I found this life of the traveling picker quite pleasant, as I am an Eagle Scout and I love camping out in the woods. (Camping in a K-Mart parking lot is not as romantic as camping in the woods, but I think you get the idea.)

After we freshened up, Tapahpunja put up a picture of Radha Vrindaban Chandra, the presiding deities of New Vrindaban, on the dashboard, and we chanted our sixteen rounds, which took about two hours. If the outside temperature was uncomfortably cold, we chanted inside our van, but most of the time we went outside and chanting while slowly pacing back and forth. Often Tapahpunja drove to a nearby park which was quiet and beautiful; a peaceful place to chant our rounds.

A photo of the presiding deities of New Vrindaban: Radha-Vrindaban Chandra, on their altar at Bahulaban.

After our rounds were completed, we had a short Morning Program, chanting the Samsara Prayers, Prayers to Lord Nrsimhadeva, and the Jaya Radha Madhava Prayers, using a small pair of kartals (brass cymbals) for musical accompaniment. Tapahpunja then read a verse from Srimad-Bhagavatam and spoke a bit about the verse.

We had our own little kitchen in the van, with a cutting board, knives and serving spoons, and a Coleman propane camp stove. Tapahpunja chopped up the vegetables, and prepared a pot of kitchari. Every day we cooked and ate the same dish: kitchari (the word means “mixture” in Hindi), a traditional Indian dish typically made with mung dal (split mung beans) and white basmati rice, flavored with herbs and spices (we used cumin seeds, dried chili peppers, turmeric powder, diced ginger root and asafoetida powder fried in ghee), and cooked with various vegetables. Some say that kitchari is the ultimate comfort food.

Asofoetida powder is made from the dried latex (gum) exuded from the tap root of several species of perennial herbs from the carrot family. Turmeric powder, made from the dried rhizomes of a plant in the ginger family, has a warm, bitter, black pepper-like flavor and earthy, mustard-like aroma. It is often used in Ayurvedic medicine.

Where did we get our vegetables? Tapahpunja liked to save Krishna’s money (we were taught not to spend money on ourselves) so instead of purchasing vegetables at the supermarket, each morning we drove our van behind the supermarket where Tapahpunja went “Dumpster Diving,” to search for vegetables which were discarded by the produce managers, as the vegetables were beginning to wilt and were unsellable. In a minute or two Tapahpunja would return to the van with armloads of wilted, but still edible produce. Dumpster diving was lots of fun. Occasionally, when we were unable to find a public restroom, we’d do our duty (morning duties we called it, passing stool) in the dumpster.

A bowl of kitchari.

After breakfast, around 11 am, we hit the parking lots in a courageous attempt to distribute Prabhupada’s paperback book, Easy Journey to Other Planets. Tapahpunja appeared to enjoy walking up to people, getting their attention, conversing with them, showing them the book, and asking for a donation. I did not. I’m not a shy person, but it was very difficult for me to approach all these people and get rejected dozens, if not hundreds of times a day. Sometimes I’d just sit in the van and chant on my beads, too “fried” from working the parking lots without success.

Around 4 or 5 pm, we’d take a break and prepare deep-fried bread sticks and boiled vegetables for lunch. Sometimes for dessert we’d split a 48-ounce container of Breyers® ice cream. Tapahpunja said that Breyers was the best brand. Eating such prodigious amounts of ice cream gave us nasty flatulence a few hours later, but it was well worth it; a real creamy and sugary treat. Eating ice cream was usually the high point of my day. We rarely got to eat such rich food at New Vrindaban, except during the weekly Sunday feast.

Then we hit the parking lots again until sunset. Before bed, we drank a glass of hot milk. I never imagined at the time that I’d be living out of a van for the next seven years!

A 48-oz container of Breyers ice cream.

Tapahpunja was dedicated to Bhaktipada’s mission and he believed New Vrindaban would become the saving grace of civilization when World War III, which Prabhupada predicted, would destroy human society as we know it. During such a nuclear winter, the government would break down and anarchy would prevail. In such a catastrophic scenario, he believed, hundreds of thousands of displaced people would take shelter at ISKCON farm communities, such as New Vrindaban, where the economy was (in theory, at least) based on land and cows.

During this week of distributing Prabhupada’s books on traveling sankirtan, we passed through Eastern and Southern Ohio, visiting small towns along the Ohio River and working the supermarket parking lots. We eventually landed in Louisville, Kentucky, about 300 miles from Cleveland. Every day Tapahpunja studied the Rand McNally road atlas to note our position in relation to the Ohio River.

“In the event of a nuclear war,” Tapahpunja told me, “the best way to get back to New Vrindaban would be to follow the Ohio River upstream to Moundsville, and then cut across country by foot.” After a week or so, we turned back and returned to Cleveland ISKCON.

“Your country, America, is very much eager to kill these Communists. And the Communists are also very eager. So very soon there will be war. . . . Preaching will be very nice after the war when both of them, especially Russia, will be finished.”—Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, Morning walk, Mayapur (April 4, 1975)

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Arrested again.

On December 2, 1979, the British rock band “The Who” performed at Pittsburgh’s iconic Civic Arena, the world’s first retractable roof major sports/concert arena. Barry Paris, a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reviewer, declared it the “best show of the year.”

New Vrindaban naturally sent a contingent of sankirtan devotees, including myself (at the time a rookie), to sell books and collect donations from concert attendees. We worked the parking lots and sidewalks. Some of the Dharmettes snuck inside the massive domed structure and worked the aisles and hallways inside.

After a relatively short time, I found myself behind bars with about a dozen other devotees in a stone building which resembles a Medieval fortress: the Allegheny County Jail. I believe we were charged with trespassing. We chanted kirtan behind bars in the holding cell for a couple hours until we were processed and released.

We all considered our treatment by the police a blatant crime against Sanatan Dharma, the eternal religion. Senior devotees tell me that Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada had, when informed of efforts by law-enforcement agents to restrict his disciples’ from distributing his books, declared, “Police are pigs. Maya’s pigs.”

The Who in concert (undated)

Pittsburgh Civic Arena

Senior devotees tell me, Prabhupada said “Police are pigs. Maya’s pigs.”

Allegheny County Jail

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I go out on the Candle Pick

On or around December 3, 1979, I went out on a solo money-collecting mission during the 1979 Christmas Marathon to sell the candles manufactured at New Vrindaban. In the morning I drove a small car belonging to the community to the shopping mall in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, about an hour-and-a-half drive. I set up a small folding card table in a prominent place inside the mall, covered the table with a table cloth, set up my candles, and hawked my wares. In the evening, I’d pack everything into the car, drive back to New Vrindaban, and give my collections to my sankirtan leader, Tapahpunja. I enjoyed it. I was performing valuable service for Radha Vrindaban Chandra, the presiding deities of New Vrindaban, and helping to provide funding for construction projects. I explained in Gold, Guns and God, Vol. 4:

Candle Sankirtan

During December of 1979, my sankirtan leader, Tapahpunja dasa Brahmachari (Terry Sheldon), gave me a beat-up car, a card table and a few boxes of candles, and sent me to Uniontown, Pennsylvania—about ninety miles east from New Vrindaban—to set up a candle table at the Uniontown Mall. He told me if a security guard asked me what I was doing to tell him that our school—Nandagram Boys School—received permission from the mall manager to set up a table. He gave me a cheap-looking ID card with my name and photo on it.

My candle table was a good money maker. Our New Vrindaban candles were big and beautiful and people liked them. I sometimes made $500 per day which I promptly delivered to Tapahpunja each night when I returned home. I was happy to help make money to complete the landscaping and gardens for Prabhupada’s Palace of Gold and other New Vrindaban projects.

I think it was Christmas Eve when the security guard approached me again; but this time he was with the mall manager, who was furious. He had no idea who I was, but he knew from the crowd of shoppers at my table that I was making money hand-over-fist without paying for a legitimate vendor’s booth. They called the police and the police questioned me, but they let me go after confiscating my candles. Tapahpunja later told me, “You should have given them a few free candles. They would have given you less trouble.”

Unfortunately, in the winter of 1980 or 1981, the New Vrindaban candle factory, which had moved from Bahulaban to a larger space behind Prabhupada’s Palace, burned to the ground. The flames shot a hundred feet into the air as thousands of gallons of wax blazed. Even the specially-ordered incredibly-long steel-reinforced concrete beams which supported the roof (which cost many tens of thousands of dollars and were shipped in by dozens of specially-trained tractor-trailer semi-truck drivers) were destroyed. The devastation was complete. A new source of income was needed, and traveling sankirtan evolved to fill the void. Soon New Vrindaban pickers would generate millions of dollars in income per year.

The Uniontown Mall

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I serve as Temple President for Pittsburgh ISKCON

On or around January 10, 1980, I move to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on the order of the New Vrindaban temple authorities, and begins serving as the Temple President of Pittsburgh ISKCON at 1112 North Negley Avenue. At the time as I recall, Pittsburgh ISKCON was essentially little more than a New Vrindaban sankirtan outpost. Weekend warriors (money collectors) from New Vrindaban, while working the area, stayed overnight in the ashram at the Pittsburgh temple.

In the past, the temple building had been a Polish dance hall. Many wedding receptions had been celebrated there. At times, wedding guests drank too much alcohol, and got in fights with members of the bride’s or groom’s family members, and (according to the late Naranarayan Visvakarma dasa—Nathan Baruch Zakheim—who lived there in 1970) so many wedding guests died in the hall that the neighbors began calling the building the “Bucket of Blood.” He said when he lived there, he heard ghosts at night. I, on the other hand, never heard anything unusual at night. I supposed his chanting drove the ghosts away.

About a half-dozen residents lived in the Pittsburgh temple: myself, Dundee (who, as I recall, had a regular nine-to-five job somewhere) and his heavy-set Spanish-speaking wife and infant daughter. Dundee, when he had spare time from work and family, helped around the temple as a handyman and janitor.

We also had a pujari/cook who worshiped the big 51-inch-tall Jagannath, Subhadra and Balarama deities. Jagannath had been carved by Naranarayan about ten years earlier. If I remember correctly, our pujari/cook was Hladini devi dasi (Linda Jury), who was exceptionally devoted to Lord Jagannath. Eight years later, in 1988, she accepted sannyasa from Kirtanananda Swami Bhaktipada, and became known as Hrishikesh Maharaja, a fired-up preacher. A couple years later, she left Bhaktipada’s service, and moved to Africa under the direction of the ISKCON guru Bhakti Tirtha Swami.

Hladini died in 1990, along with several other devotees, from gunshot wounds during an execution by a firing squad during the Second Liberian Civil War. Another devotee who served with Hladini in Africa, Mahavegavati dasi, claimed that Bhakti Tirtha Swami purposely sent Hladini to Liberia to her death because he didn’t want ISKCON to discover that he and Hladini had a clandestine romantic relationship. For more about Hladini, see Remembering Hladini Devi Mataji.

A very quiet, mousy lady, Krishna Mayi devi dasi, also lived at Pittsburgh ISKCON. She left the temple every morning, took a city bus to a different Pittsburgh neighborhood which had a small commercial district or downtown, and quietly approached people inside stores and shops without saying a word. She handed them a tiny American flag on a toothpick, with a little strip of paper proclaiming: “Made by deaf and dumb people,” or something similar. People gave her a dollar or some coins, which she brought back to the temple treasury. Not much money; maybe $100 or less per day. Of course she was not deaf and dumb, but hey! we needed money to preach and whatever she collected was going to Krishna and help build New Vrindaban into a glorious place of pilgrimage in the West.

One night, perhaps 10 pm, a sankirtan mother came in late after a hard day doing the pick. She was by herself; she had no sankirtan partner, for some reason. Usually pickers traveled with a buddy. She was a Prabhupada disciple, Muralidhara’s wife. Muralidhara (Mark Missman) was regarded by many as ISKCON’s best artist at the time; he lived at New Vrindaban and produced spectacular paintings for Prabhupada’s Palace and the temple. He also received two commissions to produce enormous historic murals for the Wheeling Civic Center.

She was about 26 years old, I was 24. Her name was Yogamaya devi dasi. I had seen her from time to time at New Vrindaban, but we never had occasion (or need) to talk. I thought she was quite attractive and pretty and energetic and sexy with a slender waist, but on this particular evening she was distraught after a very bad day on the pick. She needed a sympathetic shoulder to cry on.

No one else was awake except for me, so recognizing my duty to my spiritual master and Krishna, despite the fact that I was a pukka brahmachari and not supposed to associate with women, especially hotties like her, I stepped up to the plate for my service.

We sat on a step of the stairway leading from the temple room to the ashram upstairs, and YM poured her heart out about the extremely terrible and stressful day with profuse tears dripping from her eyes, smearing her mascara. I consoled her, and preached to her, that we should try to be steady in happiness and distress, heat and cold, pleasure and pain, and big collections and small collections. Perhaps tomorrow will be a better day.

My natural inclination was to put my arms around her and give her hugs and affectionate petting, as any father would do for a distraught teary-eyed young daughter. However, as I was a strict brahmachari at the time (I followed the regulations totally), I refrained from this natural expression of compassion and remained inches away without touching her. It wasn’t easy for me.

Most normal men I think are naturally protective of women, especially a gorgeous, distraught, crying woman, and she desperately needed (or so I thought) some masculine attention, but I kept my distance, although, to be frank, I would have appreciated some intimate female association myself.

During this time of trial for me, I derived inspiration by thinking of the great Gaudiya-Vaishnava saint Haridasa Thakur. He was born c. 1450 into a Muslim family, but converted to Vaishnavism at an early age. As a young man, a most beautiful and seductive woman named Lakshahira, reputed by some to be an incarnation of the goddess Maya Devi herself, came to him and tried to tempt him to break his vows of celibacy, but Haridasa passed the test due to his unflinching devotion to Lord Krishna.

“While chanting the Hare Krishnba mantra in Benapola, Haridasa Thakur was personally tested by Mayadevi herself.” Image and caption from Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada’s Sri Caitanya-Caritamrita, Adi-lila, Volume 2, Plate 9.

After perhaps ten intense minutes, when I finished offering counsel to the beautiful and distraught sankirtan woman, she calmed down, her tears stopped, she thanked me, and she went upstairs into the women’s ashram.

I guess I passed the test. I don’t know if Yogamaya was actually distraught, or was she ordered by the New Vrindaban administration to try to tempt me into illicit activities to test my determination? In any case, soon after, in March 1980, I was given a van filled with broken candles, a traveling partner (my godbrother Dasarath dasa), and ordered to go out on the pick, and not return until all the candles were sold! I remained on the pick for seven years, not including a few breaks here and there to return to The Farm once a month for the three-day sankirtan festivals.

For more, see Gold, Guns and God, Vol. 4, p. 60.

For more about Haridasa Thakur, see Gaudiya History.

St. Patrick’s Day in Savannah, Georgia.

On March 17, 1980, I did the pick at the 156^th annual St. Patrick’s Day parade in Savannah, Georgia.

The first St. Patrick’s Day procession was celebrated in Savannah Georgia on March 17, 1813. It consisted of Irish immigrants who walked from a riverfront hotel to the Savannah Irish Roman Catholic church. The event was organized by The Hibernian Society of Savannah, founded one year earlier for the purpose of offering aid and assistance to needy Irish immigrants. Eleven years later, The Hibernian Society hosted their first parade open to the public on St. Patrick’s Day (March 17, 1824).

Today, the Savannah St. Patrick’s Day parade is the second largest in the United States, second only to New York City’s parade. The celebrations include prominent displays of the color green, eating and drinking, religious observances, and numerous parades. The merriment of the festival is aided by a very lenient public drinking policy which allows open alcoholic beverages every day of the year in the Landmark Historic District.

Wherever large numbers of people with spending money congregate, you can bet the Hare Krishnas will also be there to try to get their share. At the time (January-March 1980), I served as the temple president of Pittsburgh ISKCON, which was basically not much more than a New Vrindaban sankirtan outpost. We only had about a half-dozen permanent residents living there to serve the giant Jagannath, Subhadra and Balaram deities and maintain the building, but on Friday nights without fail, a dozen or more Weekend Warriors arrived from New Vrindaban to do the pick in the Pittsburgh shopping centers, shopping malls, concert halls and sporting stadiums. These devotees, usually householders with young children, left New Vrindaban Friday mornings and returned Sunday evenings. Sometimes they might collect $1,000 per weekend.

As I recall, the New Vrindaban administration must have decided that they would profit more if they sent me out on the pick instead of having me serve as the ISKCON Pittsburgh temple president, and so on Monday, March 16^th, a van from Cleveland ISKCON picked me up at the Negley Avenue temple. The Cleveland temple president, Sundarakar dasa ACBSP (Stephen Fitzpatrick) drove the van. I knew him, as I had lived at Cleveland ISKCON in October and November 1979 when Tapahpunja dasa Brahmachari attempted to train me up to distribute Prabhupada’s books in supermarket parking lots and rock concert arenas. As I recall, Janakanath dasa ACBSP (Anthony Gierz) served as pujari and cook at Cleveland ISKCON. I noticed Sundarakar had a long, red scar across his forehead, but I never asked him how he got it.

Inside the Cleveland ISKCON van were maybe a half dozen pickers, mostly women. Sundarakar drove us 700 miles straight through the night. (At the time, all-night drives were not uncommon, although the pickers’ accident rate was so dismal New Vrindaban could only get automobile insurance from Lloyd’s of London at ridiculously high rates.) We arrived in Savannah early in the morning and found a parking spot near a park along the Savannah River near the Landmark Historic District.

About Sundarakar: Stephen Justin Fitzpatrick (December 12, 1954–March 9, 2017) grew up in Vermont. After he met the Hare Krishna people, he took initiation in Buffalo, New York in May 1975. He married Premamanjari devi dasi (Patricia), who was initiated a year after him (May 1976), also in Buffalo. She was tall, blonde, attractive, fair-skinned, and a big picker, and I believe she served for several years on full-time New Vrindaban sankirtan. In 1980, and probably before and after, Sundarakar served as president of Cleveland ISKCON.

Sometime in the early 1980s, the couple moved to New Vrindaban and Sundarakar served as manager of Palace Press. In addition to printing Bhaktipada’s books (Song of God, Christ and Krishna, and Eternal Love), and Prabhupada’s books (The Bhagavat Dharma Discourses and Dialectical Spiritualism), he printed bumper stickers and hats for the traveling pickers. He printed millions of stickers on the Palace Press four-color press.

No other commercial printer would print these stickers, which featured images of the cartoon character Snoopy, and many other stickers with copyrighted names and logos of professional and college football and baseball teams. This was illegal and no other printer would print these images without paying royalties to the copyright owners, but Sundarakar printed them anyway, to help build New Vrindaban into a holy place of pilgrimage in the West and spread Krishna consciousness throughout the land.

Sundarakar in prison. But on May 24, 1990, a federal grand jury returned an eleven-count indictment charging Kirtanananda Swami Bhaktipada with racketeering: conspiring to murder, running a fraudulent charity scam, mail fraud, and the kidnapping of Hayagriva’s eldest son in 1979. Also named in the indictment were Terry Sheldon (Tapahpunja); Steven Fitzpatrick (Sundarakar); New Vrindaban Community, Inc.; Govardhan, Inc. (also known as the Govardhan Dairy, Inc.); and the Cathedral of Healing, Inc.

Sundarakar was convicted on the racketeering charges, printing copyrighted images and logos without paying royalties to the copyright owners. He spent some time in prison. The New Vrindaban sankirtan leader, Dharmatma dasa (Dennis Gorrick), also spent a year in prison for copyright infingement, and Tapahpunja (Terry Sheldon) was imprisoned for five years due to his involvement in the 1985-1986 conspiracy to murder Sulochan dasa (Steven Bryant). Bhaktipada was confined to house arrest for two years.

However at great expense, Harvard University professor attorney Alan Dershowitz presented oral arguments in Bhaktipada’s defense before a three-judge panel of the 13^th Circuit Court in Charleston, South Carolina on June 18, 1992. Attorneys for Tapahpunja Swami and Sundarakar also presented their arguments. On July 1, 1993, the Fourth U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia overturned the 1991 Martinsburg West Virginia conviction on the basis of irrelevant testimony being introduced which may have swayed the jury.

After being discharged from prison, Sundarakar moved back to his home state, Vermont, and lived in a picturesque small town of about 1,200 people: Townshend, set amongst the rural hills, mountains, rivers and meadows in the southeast corner of the Green Mountain State. I believe Townshend is where he was born and raised.

Sundarakar writes to the author:

Years later, I sent Sundarakar (and others) a copy of my obituary for Swami Bhaktipada by email. (You can read my obituary: here.) Sundarakar responded:

September 28, 2011

Hare Krsna HD [Henry Doktorski/Hrishikesh dasa]

We take the gifts we [were] given, leave the wrappings & ribbons & bows to the trash, and move on. I appreciate your music, your verve and the special place you hold in trying to make this right. My personal sense (w/guidance from Gita) is take the fire and leave the smoke.

It is the nature of this world to always have some fault. It is based on a faulty conception. Who can know? Who can know what each individual soul needs to experience, until we realize the futility of existence apart from God, the conductor?

I would say our interactions with one another may be like food. We savor its flavors and freshness, gather some nourishment from it and pass out the waste. We need not spend too much time trying to dissect yesterday’s garbage.

Pray to fill ourselves with awareness and love today this moment and everything can be seen in harmony.

I have a sister who has a very, very different conception of my father and mother. Sometimes I wonder if we grew up in the same household. I cannot deny or ridicule her position though it is quite different from mine. That path is for her steps alone.

Hope you are well and the sound of the fifth note is resonating in your heart. Surely there is an Almighty Father who lovingly guides each lost child back home, however painful that journey may be.

All glories to Nrsimhadeva. Prahlada finds joy in Him alone. (You should record this again, it has some sakti.)

[Author’s aside: Here, Sundarakar speaks of my musical composition Prayers to Lord Nrsimhadeva, a setting of the English translation by Umapati Swami of Jayadeva Goswami’s Sanskrit poem from Sri dasavatara-stotra which was sung at the New Vrindaban morning service with organ and orchestra accompaniment from 1988 to 1994.]

Thanks for the nectar.

Jaya Radhe Jaya Krsna Jaya Vrindaban

Sundarakara das

The Savannah St. Patrick’s Day parade. Enough of Sundarakar, let’s return to 1980: The parade was enormous, a massive city-wide event with roughly 350 marching units, including bands and floats and dancers. The attendance was also enormous: between 300,000 and 400,000 people came from hundreds of miles distant to watch the festivities, drink Irish beer and taste Irish delicacies from the vendors’ booths and city restaurants.

I don’t remember what paraphernalia we used. Perhaps we sold St. Patrick’s Day buttons, or perhaps green carnations which we pinned on peoples’ shirts. We worked all day and into the night, as many thousands of people partied in the Historic Landmark District. I don’t remember how much Laksmi I collected, but it wasn’t very much. Perhaps a few hundred dollars.

I found that people here were not as eager to purchase our buttons and carnations as the people I met at the Chicago Pope Pick six months earlier. New Vrindaban’s women pickers (known as Dharmettes) were the big collectors that day. They were very expert at pinning carnations on single men and getting them to give (sometimes large) donations.

Mother Maharha devi dasi. One of the Dharmettes was Mother Maharha (Mary St. John). She joined ISKCON in 1970 and moved to New Vrindaban in 1971. I will quote a few paragraphs from Gold, Guns and God, Vol. 4:

Maharha became New Vrindaban’s top collector, a position she held for many years. She claimed to have collected over two million dollars for the community during her decade-long sankirtan career. She gave the best years of her life (23-34) to Bhaktipada and Dharmatma. She was known for her enthusiasm and austerities.

She worked the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade and festival at Savannah, Georgia. This event starts early in the day and ends late at night, as the entire waterfront area along the Savannah River becomes a big party with perhaps a hundred thousand visitors. I worked this event in March 1980.

Unfortunately, Maharha contracted a nasty case of diarrhea. She lost a lot of fluids and became weak. However, the pick was so huge that she decided she couldn’t afford the time off to search out and visit the ladies room every few minutes, so she decided that she would simply ignore her bodily functions and let nature take its course while she continued to work and hit up partygoers. She may have thought that since there was so much vomit on the ground from drunken revelers that probably no one would notice the smell of diarrhea dripping down her legs.

Because of her austerity, she once again proved herself as New Vrindaban’s top collector. Dharmatma was so pleased that he spoke to all the sankirtan devotees about Maharha’s superhuman feat and praised her devotion as a shining example for the rest of us.

However, Maharha couldn’t keep up this breakneck pace forever, and developed severe physical and emotional disabilities. In order to get some rest and heal, she left New Vrindaban. I remember the big January 1985 sankirtan festival which followed the 1984 Christmas marathon. Our biggest collector, Maharha, was missing and we inquired about her. Dharmatma told us, “She lost her faith; she became envious. She couldn’t appreciate the great mercy Bhaktipada gave her, and has become poisoned by Maya. Better to forget her and continue with our own service for Krishna.”

One of the downsides of brahmachari life. Back to March 1980 in Savannah Georgia: I remember the return drive back to Pittsburgh. I was one the few men on the party and I got to sit in the passenger seat of the van, while the women sat cross-legged on the floor of the van in the back. One mataji about two or three years older than me (I was 24) offered me a paper plate with maha prasadam. I accepted. Her name was Sumati devi dasi, ACBSP. Although she was not what most people might consider an exceptionally gorgeous woman, she did have a slender figure and a submissive demeanor, and my mind went crazy.

I practically fell in love with her. I couldn’t stop thinking of her. I hadn’t had any sex with a women for more than a year and a half, since I joined New Vrindaban in August 1978, as I was very serious about my vow of celibacy and the other rules. I had not masturbated once during this entire time, although I had nocturnal emissions two or three times a week. But temple authorities told me that was okay, as they were involuntary ejaculations, so I still got the spiritual and material benefits of celibacy. (Today I think they were bullshitting me.)

Anyway, when a man has been starved from food for a long time, even an old dry chapati looks and tastes like a sumptuous feast. Fortunately, I never pursued the matter (who knows, maybe she didn’t even like me), and soon after, I was given a sankirtan van filled with broken candles from the previous Christmas marathon, and ordered to go out on the pick with my godbrother Dasarath dasa (David Van Pelt), and not return until we had sold all the candles. That was how I became a full-time New Vrindaban traveling sankirtan picker. I remained on the pick nonstop for more than five years, only returning to “The Farm” once a month for three days.

For more about New Vrindaban sankirtan, see, Gold, Guns and God, Vol. 4.

St. Patrick’s Day in Savannah, Georgia.

Sundarakar (Stephen Fitzpatrick) at Palace Press (undated).

Selling candles on the road.

Soon after returning from the Savannah Georgia St. Patrick's Day Parade, New Vrindaban authorities demoted me (or was it a promotion?) from my important-sounding service as Pittsburgh ISKCON Temple President, gave me a van filled with broken candles from the December 1979 Christmas marathon, they gave me a traveling sankirtan partner, my recently-initiated godbrother Dasarath dasa (David Van Pelt from Greenfield, Ohio), and told us to get out and sell those candles and not to return until they were all sold. Dasa and I eagerly accepted the challenge.

Then in March, New Vrindaban authorities sent me out on the pick where I received my first taste of fulltime traveling sankirtan. My partner, newly-initiated Dasarath dasa (David Van Pelt)[i] from the small town of Greenville (population 10,000) in Western Ohio, and I were given a van filled with boxes of broken ornamental candles; rejects from the New Vrindaban candle factory. Most of them wouldn’t even burn. They told us not to come back until we sold all the candles.

Dasa and I traveled about 250 miles north to New York State and worked colleges such as Binghamton University and Saint Bonaventure in Olean. We set up tables on and off campus and hawked our candles to students for a dollar or spare change. We worked the dormitories at night. During those days it was easy to get into the dorms because security was light; the doors were never locked.

Sometimes campus security or local police caught us and told us to pack up and leave, whereupon we promptly went to another area on campus or another town. It took us a month to sell all our candles and we returned home to New Vrindaban with a nearly-empty van and a couple thousand dollars.

Dasa and I had fun; we enjoyed our time on the pick together. We were a great team. We enjoyed the life of traveling, seeing new towns and states, meeting hundreds of new people each day, cooking on a propane camp stove, sleeping inside our van, bathing with a one-gallon water jug outside our van every morning, and we even (mostly) enjoyed running and hiding and sometimes getting caught and apologizing to security guards and police. “Oh, you mean we’re not supposed to do that? Soliciting without a permit? Oh my gosh, officer, we’re so sorry! We don’t want to get in trouble. Will you please let us go with a warning?”

We knew that soliciting without a permit was a minor offense and was nothing to be taken seriously. We didn’t bother to even try to apply for permits, because we made more money working illegally. We had a carefree life. We mostly had a good time on the pick.

Dasa was initiated at a Christmas Day fire sacrifice at New Vrindaban in 1979.

The Iran hostage crisis.

On November 4, 1979, sixty-six Americans, including diplomats and other civilian personnel, were taken hostage at the Embassy of the United States in Tehran, with 52 of them being held until January 20, 1981. The incident occurred after the Muslim Student Followers of the Imam’s Line stormed and occupied the building in the months following the Iranian Revolution. With support from Ruhollah Khomeini, who had led the Iranian Revolution and would eventually establish the present-day Islamic Republic of Iran, the hostage-takers demanded that the United States extradite Iranian king Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who had been granted asylum by the Carter administration for cancer treatment.

In the United States, the hostage crisis created “a surge of patriotism” and left “the American people more united than they have been on any issue in two decades.” (Time, January 7, 1980) During the weeks leading up to Christmas in 1979, high school students made cards that were delivered to the hostages. Community groups across the country did the same, resulting in bales of Christmas cards. (Time, January 26, 1981).

New Vrindaban devotees, although allegedly not concerned with political or humanitarian movements, capitalized on the surge in American patriotism by designing and printing bumper stickers with patriotic themes for the sankirtan pickers. Tapahpunja dasa Brahmachari ACBSP (Terry Sheldon) was the first to begin sticker sankirtan. Dharmatma dasa ACBSP (Dennis Gorrick), at that time the Director of Women’s Sankirtan, recalled:

In the very early days, Tapahpunja was basically in charge of the men. After I moved down to West Virginia from Pittsburgh, and after some time, Bhaktipada asked me to take charge of the men and the women. Then Tapahpunja became an actual picker. Tapahpunja printed the first bumper sticker, one that said, “Don’t Mess With the U. S.” [It] had a picture of an eagle on it. And that was the first bumper sticker. He produced that one. Another one was made at the time of the Iran fiasco, there was a sticker that had a picture of Mickey Mouse [giving the] finger that said, “Hey, Iran!”

I remember the original version of that sticker, which was especially popular with devotee salesmen such as Lokavarnattama dasa ACBSP (Larry Burstein), who made a fortune in illegal business activities and years later spent time in prison, in which the Disney cartoon character Mickey Mouse emphatically proclaimed: “Fuck Iran.” My godbrother Kumar dasa (Craig Thompson) told me he would take these stickers into Pittsburgh automobile dealerships and sell dozens at a time to the mechanics; they were that popular during the 1980 Iran hostage crisis. I think we sold them for $2.00 each.

A bumper sticker used by New Vrindaban pickers during the Iran Hostage Crisis (1980).

A variation of the bumper sticker used by New Vrindaban pickers during the Iran Hostage Crisis (1980).

My English godbrother.

Paraphernalia distribution

New Vrindaban traveling sankirtan devotees, who began collecting funds for the community in 1973 by distributing Prabhupada’s books on the road, gradually abandoned book distribution in the late 1970s in favor of picking, which brought in much greater profits. Sankirtan devotees disguised in wigs and non-devotee clothes distributed a plethora of items, such as flowers, cutout record albums, candles, buttons, stickers and baseball caps in return for donations. Bumper stickers displaying the image of the beagle Snoopy from the Peanuts comic strip was a favorite picking paraphernalia.

Professional and college football games were excellent places for picking, as sports fans would pay five and ten dollars respectively for a bumper sticker or baseball cap emblazoned with the logo of their favorite team. It was not unusual for devotees to collect more than $1,000 each during a Saturday or Sunday football game.

In early 1981, I learned to do big on the pick. Somehow, after maybe a year of mostly-dismal results, I acquired rather suddenly the ability to get people to stop and listen to me, reach in their wallet and hand me some money. At the time I attributed this breakthrough to be the mercy of guru and Krishna: a result of my dogged determination to please my spiritual master.

Today however, I wonder if this breakthrough occurred because my natural sense of honesty had finally been sufficiently numbed by untold repetitions of hearing how, if a karmi (fruitive worker, essentially a non devotee) is tricked into rendering some small service for Krishna, he will make spiritual advancement. We believed we weren’t really lying and stealing from them; we were saving them from hell and blessing them with the priceless treasure of devotional service. We were liberating Laksmi (Lord Vishnu’s consort, the goddess of fortune, a.k.a. money) from people who had stolen her from Krishna. We were taking their money, not to use for our own sense gratification, but to return to Krishna, to glorify God, to help build New Vrindaban. Only when I believed this transcendental trickery from the core of my heart could I look a suspicious potential donor in the eyes and say with complete conviction, “No, I’m NOT with the Hare Krishnas! This money is going to help needy children.”

Quickly I learned how to do big on the “pick” and eventually became a Maharathi, a big gun, a respected party leader for the New Vrindaban men’s traveling sankirtan soldiers. I began collecting $2000 per week, then $3000. Devamrita Swami dubbed me the “Prince of the Pick.” My picking partner Dasarath christened me “The Professor,” perhaps for my skill in training up new pickers.

I was invited to Los Angeles and San Diego expressly for this reason. My visit was a landmark event for New Vrindaban sankirtan; in the past California devotees had slashed our tires when they caught us working their zone. But now things were different; we had something they desperately wanted: a quick and easy way for uneducated and unskilled laborers to make hundreds of thousands of dollars each year.

At the Los Angeles ISKCON temple, Ramesvara Maharaja, the guru for Southern California, even sought me out to converse with me. He was especially enamored of the term I used when referring to the low-class human beings sunk in the modes of passion and ignorance, addicted to sex and intoxication, who frequented heavy metal rock concerts: “the dregs of human society.” He chuckled and repeated that term several times “the dregs of human society,” and even used it once during one of his lectures.

After I had learned the tricks of the trade, the necessary detachment from results (it is amazing how much money a person can make if they act as if they can walk away from it all) and oral skills (flattery was a great tool, especially with women), I really started to enjoy life on the road. One year I collected $150,000. I didn’t keep a penny for myself; the money belonged to Krishna.

One pleasant byproduct of my sankirtan success was the attention I received from my spiritual master. Of course, I felt he had always given me whatever attention I needed, but now the relationship became even sweeter. I was the top collector for the New Vrindaban men’s parties during the 1981 Christmas marathon and was honored with the “Golden Van Award.” Consequently I was invited to travel with Bhaktipada in March 1982 to India for the Mayapur festival. I enjoyed serving him, massaging his feet and running menial errands for him. I had developed, by gradual increments, a very deep and sincere love for my spiritual master. I loved him so much that I think I would have done almost anything for him. And Bhaktipada reciprocated by his sweet words and affectionate smiles. He rarely chastised me, but more often he simply encouraged me to do my best, to be all that I could be, to grow and mature in Krishna consciousness.

Money is the honey

Money was never far from Bhaktipada’s mind and he liked to have huge quantities of it; the more the better. He learned the value of money from his spiritual master, who taught that although money may be the root of evil for conditioned souls, pure devotees fear it not because they use money for preaching Krishna consciousness; therefore they remain unaffected by its evil effects. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada said:

Money is sweeter than honey.[i]

Money is so sweeter than honey.[ii]

“Money is the honey” goes so far as it is employed for Krishna consciousness.[iii]

Satsvarupa dasa Goswami (Stephen Guarino), an important ISKCON GBC member and one of the eleven ritvik priests, confirmed, “Prabhupada said that money is honey for a liberated soul.”[iv]

One time Bhaktipada joked about it. New Vrindaban News reported, “The other day as Srila Bhaktipada was looking over the new master plan presentation, Mother Sanatha[v] was busily drawing. Murti[vi] asked, ‘Srila Bhaktipada, is there anything new you’d like to see in it?’ A little smile appeared on Srila Bhaktipada as he turned to walk away, ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Money trees.’”[vii]

Bhaktipada expected his disciples and followers to give him money, and when, on occasion, they took money from him, he became upset. Gopinath noted in his diary one instance when Bhaktipada cursed a disciple for selling him her house instead of simply giving it to him, “February 29, 1984: Sacimata[viii] sold ‘her’ house to Bhaktipada [actually to New Vrindaban, Inc.] for $95,000. Srila Bhaktipada said earlier she will take one birth for every dollar she took from him.”[ix] “March 2nd: Sacimata is pressing to have another $3,000 on top of the $95,000, saying she left a stove, washer, refrigerator in her house. Srila Bhaktipada says, no. If worse comes to worse, put a noose in the oven when she comes.”[x

Everyone had to comply with Bhaktipada’s thirst for money. No one was immune. After big festivals, Bhaktipada routinely visited Prabhupada’s Palace, the Palace Restaurant, the Palace Gift Store, the Guest Lodge, etc., and took thousands of dollars from the cash register and the safes and gave it to his secretary to deposit in his bank account. This practice became a problem for those who managed these businesses, as they could not pay their bills. Invoices for merchandise, books and bhoga, and bills for advertising and electricity had to be paid. How could they pay their bills if Bhaktipada took all their hard-earned money?

After one festival, the managers of the Palace and the Guest Lodge—in jest—hatched a plan to kidnap a child of a wealthy Hindu visitor and demand a large ransom in order to pay the bills. The Guest Lodge manager actually spoke of this “plan” during a Srimad-bhagavatam lecture at the temple. Bhaktipada, who was sitting in the temple, interrupted the class and snapped, “Sit down! I want to see you later.” One New Vrindaban resident remembered:

Kripamaya [John Sherwood], the manager of the Lodge, told a story at the morning program of how, after a weekend during which hundreds of Hindus had made a pilgrimage to the community, Bhaktipada had driven down in his Cadillac to both the Palace and the Lodge and made off with all the weekend’s receipts. . . .

Kripamaya called his story, “The Money is the Honey,” after one of the Swami’s favorite aphorisms. Kripamaya told how he and Garga Rishi, the manager of the Palace, decided they could pay their bills in light of Bhaktipada’s “theft.” They would kidnap the child of a Hindu, then pay their bills with the ransom.

At this point, Bhaktipada interrupted and demanded, “What’s the point of this?” “Simply that the money is the honey,” answered Kripamaya. “Sit down!” snapped the Swami. “I want to see you later.” It was quite some time until Kripamaya was again permitted to give the sermon at the morning program.[xi]

Beginning around 1980, if not earlier, the pick became New Vrindaban’s main source of income. Kuladri confirmed, “The pick was Bhaktipada’s number one priority.”[i] Bhaktipada liked the pick. During a lecture in Bombay in 1988, when I inaugurated Sticker Sankirtan using “I Love Bombay” stickers, Bhaktipada explained:

[The pick] is the greatest way to engage people in Krishna’s service. . . . There’s no better way . . . than taking little donations from many people. I’d rather have a million donations of one rupee than one donation of a million rupees. Why? Because if they give only one rupee to Krishna, their spiritual life has begun! Because they’ve engaged in Krishna’s service. . . . So don’t think this isn’t preaching; this is the biggest preaching! . . .

And it will get nicer and nicer and easier and easier the more you do it. Don’t think that after a few days people will get tired of it. I used to think that in the United States. Actually, people get trained up to give; when they see you coming they will reach into their pockets and pull out a rupee—without your even asking! . . . There’s no other service higher than this service! This is the highest service![ii]

Bhaktipada constantly preached to his disciples and followers to surrender more and more to Krishna, to collect more and more Laksmi to help build New Vrindaban more and more and attract more and more conditioned souls to experience the bliss of Krishna consciousness. In a letter dated June 27, 1980, Bhaktipada wrote:

To all the New Vrindaban Sankirtan Men. . . .

As you probably know the Palace marathon is on; when was it not on, but now it is on even more. Those of us who are in the midst thank Krishna for it every day. I only wish that this marathon could continue twenty-four hours a day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year, and I also realize that you Sankirtan devotees are out there making this possible by your marathon, and so I thank you just as much as I do the boys who are working on the Palace. It is truly a great Sankirtan effort, because together we are preaching the glories of Lord Krishna and his pure devotee Srila Prabhupada.

So I can simply pray to Lord Krishna to bless you more and more and give you more and more realization of this glorious mission of Krishna consciousness. Please keep up the good work more and more so that we can build Prabhupada’s Palace more and more and get more and more of the conditioned souls to come here and experience Krishna consciousness. . . .

P. S. My special thanks to Hrishikesh who writes me every week with his realizations and reports, and I wish all the devotees would write to me like that.

Bhaktipada’s June 27, 1980 letter to “All the New Vrindaban Sankirtan Men.”

Bhaktipada encouraged husbands to send their wives out on the pick and once indicated that a husband’s strength increased when his wife was out on sankirtan. During brick-laying marathons, devotees competed to see who could carry the most bricks. When Kripamaya—whose wife Krishna Bhava was a regular “Weekend Warrior” picker—broke the record and carried twenty-seven bricks: 216 lbs., New Vrindaban News reported: “When Bhaktipada heard of his feat, he commented, ‘Just see how much strength you get when you send your wife out.’”[iii]

Sometimes devotees were not allowed to come and live at New Vrindaban unless they agreed to go out on the pick. Once Kuladri was informed that one young woman wanted to come and live at New Vrindaban with her children. There was no housing available for her and her children, but he explained that if she was willing to go out on sankirtan, her children could live at the gurukula. Kuladri explained, “We have no facilities available for this woman. There is a possibility however, considering all of her children are gurukula age and would enter the ashram, if the woman is capable of doing sankirtan work, we could consider accepting her at New Vrindaban, otherwise, come back and see us after the season is over.”[iv]

One devotee who lived at New Vrindaban for twenty years remarked, “If you lived here and didn’t go on sankirtan you were just basically scum. Sankirtan people, anyone who brought in money, they had value. If you didn’t bring in money to the community . . . you were worthless. And you were treated much differently than the others.”[v]

The pace of construction and pressures to raise funds caused concern to some residents. One Brijabasi recalled, “The [Palace] project proceeded and we began building the temple, which I thought was untimely; ‘Let’s just stop and look at what we have done and get ourselves back together.’ Kirtanananda was just relentless however. He just wanted to expand and expand. So the place became like a perpetual construction site needing fuel so we had to go out to get money to make it work.”[vi]

The Citation Line

Some New Vrindaban devotees dressed in business suits, presented themselves as art dealers, and sold cheap mass-produced Korean paintings door-to-door in residential neighborhoods for a handsome profit,[vii] but most of us raised money by various scams in shopping malls, parking lots and sporting events and concerts. The full-time sankirtan pickers developed innovative and creative techniques, such as the Citation Line, to increase donations which brought in millions of dollars per year.

As I recall, my buddy Dasarath and I invented the Citation Line. We worked a rock concert at the Nassau Coliseum in Long Island around 1983 and Dasa noticed that when he approached a car filled with teenagers smoking marijuana, they often became fearful and hid their joints and paraphernalia. Dasa, a brilliant and quick-thinking salesman, decided to capitalize on their anxiety and began pretending he was a security guard. When he approached a vehicle he walked with a swagger, flashed a frown and indicated to the person sitting in the driver’s seat to roll down the window. Then Dasa said, “I’m sorry, but I have to place you under arrest.”

Dasa waited a moment while the teenagers’ hearts sank and then he laughed, “You’re under arrest for having too much fun!” and he’d pass them bumper stickers through the window and ask for donations for the Nandagram Boys School. The youngsters were so relieved when they realized it was a joke they started laughing and reaching into their pockets for money. After a few concerts we were arrested by Stadium Security for impersonating a law officer, trespassing and soliciting without a permit, but we knew we had a winning line on our hands; we just had to refine it.

The next time we returned to New Vrindaban, I met with the director of New Vrindaban’s Direct Mail Fundraising Department, Bhavishyat dasa (Burton Smith),[viii] and we designed a citation pad with a cartoon drawing of a police officer at the top. The word “Citation” at the top of each page was misspelled with a backwards “C.” Instead of opening with, “I’m afraid you’re under arrest” we opened with the less-threatening “I’m afraid I have to give you a citation.” There were four “charges” listed on the “citation”:

1. Girl watching
2. Smiling without a permit
3. Being with a pretty girl
4. Other

Eventually other “charges” were added, such as “Having too much fun” and “Failure to party.” The Citation Line was an incredibly successful technique for raising money and we used it at concerts and sporting events and at shopping malls and plazas. I even used it when I worked inside restaurants hitting up diners sitting at tables.

[i] Arthur Villa (Kuladri), cited in Trial Transcript 2, Day Three (March 13, 1991), 492. [ii] Keith Ham (Kirtanananda Swami Bhaktipada), “Srila Bhaktipada Speaks Out On Sticker Sankirtan,” a class given at the Sri Sri Radha Gopinath Mandir, Chowpatty, Bombay (February 24, 1988). [iii] Keith Gordon Ham (Kirtanananda Swami), cited in “Brick-A-Thon,” New Vrindaban News (August 31, 1985), 2. [iv] Arthur Villa (Kuladri), cited in Trial Transcript 2, Day Nine (March 26, 1991), 2037. (See also testimony by Kuladri on Day Three, 494). [v] Anonymous Brijabasi, cited in Religious Culture, Tourism and the Development of New Vrindaban, 14-15. [vi] Anonymous Brijabasi, cited in Religious Culture, Tourism and the Development of New Vrindaban, 14-15. [vii] I tried selling Korean paintings in Columbus, Ohio under the tutelage of Karusa dasa (Kerry Roth), but could not make one sale. After a couple weeks, I went back out on the pick. [viii] Burton Smith became Bhavisyat at a fire sacrifice at New Vrindaban in 1974. He worked as head of the wood cutting department for several years, then in the early 1980s began writing software for New Vrindaban’s computers. The Direct Mail Fund Raising department specialized in appeals to the American and Canadian Hindu Indian community. He was married to Hladini (Linda Jury). On Gaura Purnima 1988, they were initiated by Bhaktipada into the renounced order. Bhavisyat became Balarama Swami and his wife became Hrishikesh Maharaja.

Citation pad used by New Vrindaban traveling sankirtan “pickers.”

Bumper stickers printed at Palace Press featuring Peanut’s cartoon characters Snoopy and Woodstock.

One of New Vrindaban’s biggest pickers, Bhaktisiddhanta dasa (William Crockett) in his sankirtan van.

Bhaktisiddhanta counts his daily Lakshmi points.

Three women collectors relax after a hard day on the pick.

Not only New Vrindaban pickers used the Citation Line, soon it was being used by pickers throughout ISKCON in America. During one May/June 1983 trip to Los Angeles and San Diego, I was personally requested by Srila Ramesvara, the guru for southern California, to teach this fund-raising technique to his sankirtan boys.

1985 was my biggest year as a picker: I collected $150,000 for New Vrindaban; most of it in $5.00 donations. That year I talked 30,000 people into giving me $5.00. My average collection was $3,000 per week. I was good at it and I really enjoyed it. I got to travel all across the United States from Maine to California, from Texas to Florida and even three trips to Hawaii. And Bhaktipada showered me with affection. During our weekly phone calls he often ended our conversations by saying, “I love you, Hrishikesh.”

During periodic sankirtan marathons sometimes over a hundred devotees were sent out on the road. The ISKCON New Vrindaban Community Financial Status Report for the week ending Sunday, December 8, 1985, stated that the community grossed $210,047.34 in income during that week. More than two thirds of that amount ($141,681.94) was from sankirtan pickers. The Palace gate earned only $2,536.50 that week (1.2%).

During the forty-four-day 1985 Christmas marathon, New Vrindaban pickers collected an average of $22,071.82 per day, and ultimately collected nearly one million dollars. The 1985 Sankirtan Marathon Final Compilation stated that $971,160 was collected between November 21, 1985 and January 4, 1986. The New Vrindaban Community Income Statement for the Year 1984 stated that sankirtan devotees collected $2,853,899.94, or 71% of the total income that year. Another source indicated that sankirtan devotees collected over five million dollars in 1985.[i]

Dulal Chandra, the comptroller for New Vrindaban, confirmed: “I would say that eighty percent—seventy-five to eighty-five percent—of the income was sankirtan, the solicitation of funds by the devotees in the streets.”[ii] Even devotees without talent in sankirtan, such as those working in construction or the garden, were sometimes forced to go out on the pick, because even a novice sankirtan devotee could usually collect enough to pay the wages for three or four karmi (non-devotee) workers.

[i] William A. Kolibash, the United States prosecutor for Bhaktipada’s 1991 racketeering trial, claimed that New Vrindaban sankirtan revenues were substantially higher. According to his figures, the community collected $17,871,000 between 1981 and 1985. 1981—$2,000,000 1982—$2,436,000 1983—$3,857,000 1984—$4,106,000 1985—$5,472,000 Total sankirtan revenue from 1981-85: $17,871,000. [ii] Howard Fawley (Dulal Chandra), cited in Trial Transcript 2, Day Two (March 12, 1991), 351.

A big rock concert in California.

On May 28, 1983 (Memorial day Weekend) at the four-day 1983 US Festival (held in a huge field near San Bernardino, California, about sixty miles west from Los Angeles), I drove a New Vrindaban traveling sankirtan van filled with a half-dozen pickers and thousands of “I Love Rock and Roll” stickers through the back stage entrance security gate. Pickers and stickers.

I simply flashed my Nandagram Boys School badge at the security officer who was guarding the back stage entrance and announced firmly, “We’re making a delivery.” He let us inside and I parked right behind the massive stage.

The three-day festival featured twenty-six famous bands and performers including Men at Work, The Clash, Los Lobos, U2, Joe Walsh, Stevie Nicks, David Bowie, Mötley Crüe, Ozzy Osbourne, and Van Halen. The temperature peaked at a stifling 95 degrees F, and the air quality was the worst in years, what with pollution and car exhaust blowing in from the Los Angeles basin. The total attendance was reported at 670,000. Two people died at the event, I think from drug overdoses. New Vrindaban pickers collected a lot of money, I don’t remember how much. Several thousands dollars I believe.

While working the US Festival, I happened to observe one of the hundreds of Port-a-John portable potties rocking back and forth. My curiosity was aroused. What was going on inside the toilet? Eventually the Port-a-John toppled to the ground, and two people emerged, a young man and a young woman, both with their pants down. This is when I coined the phrase, “The dregs of human society,” referring to the people I saw at the rock concert who were stoned on drugs and under the influence of the Mode of Ignorance (Tamas Guna).

After the pick was over (we didn’t stay all four days as we got nipped by security sometime on the first day), we returned to the Los Angeles ISKCON temple. There, for the first time I met Ramesvara Maharaja, the ISKCON zonal acharya for Southern California. He was a very, very important man, a pure devotee (we were told) who accepted extravagant worship in the temple. I was surprised; was very friendly to me. (I was, after all, one of biggest pickers on the New Vrindaban’s men’s sankirtan team.)

Ramesvara asked about the US Festival and during my reply I mentioned “the dregs of human society.” He found the phrase so appealing, that he repeated it a few times. The next morning, he used my phrase, “the dregs of human society,” once during his Srimad-Bhagavatam lecture at New Dwaraka ISKCON Los Angeles. Ramesvara asked me to train his Los Angeles and San Diego pickers in the “Art of the Citation Line.”

The US Festival, San Bernardino, California

A national celebrity gives me a donation.

On May 4, 1984, at the 110^th running of the Louisville Kentucky Derby, I (known at the time as the “Prince of the Pick” by his New Vrindaban associates), convince the famed American ABC television sports journalist, broadcaster and author, Howard Cosell, to give me a $5.00 donation. Actually, it was Cosell’s wife who convinced her husband. My godbrother and sankirtan picking partner, Jagat Pate dasa (James Fleming), told the story in the publication called New Vrindaban As It Is. Jagat Pate explained:

Once upon a time, not very long ago, it was my pleasure to pick the Kentucky Derby with Hrishikesh Prabhu. The day preceding the Run for the Roses is traditionally one of festivity and a parade in Louisville. That evening, Hrishikesh and myself were working in large hotels. We were chipping away at the upper crust in lobbies and restaurants when, in the plushly-furnished lobby of one such establishment, I beheld an unusual sight.

Across the room sat a gentleman in a lovely high-backed chair, surrounded by his adorning retinue, and his good wife. All of the accompanying gentlemen wore sky blue sports blazers, beautified by their TV network’s sports insignia, as did their lord, and they paid reverential heed to his every word. Upon scrutinizing that worthy assembly, I realized that before me was none other than the illustrious HOWARD COSELL, famed sportscaster, along with his TV sports crew. Turning to my dear brother and the hero of our tale, I informed him of the great personality’s presence. “Naw,” Hrishikesh objected. “But, I’m not joking, just see,” I insisted. Upon my persistence, he was convinced.

Hrishikesh approached the famed sportsman, flanked by his standing protégés, and fell down upon one knee before him, as if in respectful homage. He placed the Derby sticker on Howie’s knee and recited his divine mantra. [“I’m sorry sir, but I have to give you a citation for being with a pretty girl! Rather than go to jail, won’t you pay a small $5.00 fine for charity and you can go free?”]

Mr. Cosell attempted to appear as if above the whole experience, although his face betrayed his astonishment. A tense moment followed with the Prince of the Pick and the Sultan of Sports-Speak eye-to-eye in the sacrificial arena. Then Mrs. Cosell encouraged her husband, “Let’s give a little,” [Actually, Mrs. Cosell said in no uncertain terms, "Howie, give the man five dollars! He said I was pretty!”] to which Howie nodded his consent. All the other sportsmen matched his five dollars. Hrishikesh thanked them, [pocketing about $50 for one or two minute’s work] and stood.

Finally Mr. Cosell raised his hands, stood, and in a stately gesture, spoke, “You have a good scam going here kid, but there’s one thing you’ve got to learn: You’ve got to take the money and run with it!” to which replied Hrishikesh, while executing a classic “Exit Stage Left,” complete with flailing elbows and shake of the leg, “I’m running!”

Author’s note: P. S. That year out on the pick, I got 30,000 people to give me a $5.00 donation! You can do the math!

Howard Cosell

Howard Cosell and his wife Mary Edith Abrams Cosell (known as "Emmy")

The Kentucky Derby

The cartoon character Snagglepuss, who helped popularize the phrase, “Exit, stage left!”