Laksmi Nrsimhadev : The Radha Damodar brahmacharis met with Srila Prabhupada in Atlanta. Tamal Krishna Maharaj wanted all the brahmacharis on the Radha Damodar party to have darshan with Srila Prabhupada so we went up to his room. We were all excited. All the brahmacharis and a few sannyasis were there as well. Prabhupada was very happy to see us as you can imagine. It was sixty-five bright-faced brahmacharis, most of them dedicating their lives to book distribution. Most of them I feel at that particular point in time did not think of anything other than being a brahmachari book distributor, especially as Prabhupada was glorifying brahmachari life. He said, “So this brahmachari life, this is ideal for spiritual advancement. It is a simple life. You have your cloth. You have your chaddar. When you want to sleep you wrap your chaddar around you. When you want your pillow you put your arm out and you sleep with your chaddar and pillow.” He was going on and on about the simplicity of brahmachari life and how conducive it was to spiritual life. Then Prabhupada stopped right in the middle of that and he got this look of compassion on his face, and he said, “But you must be honest brahmachari.” He said, “If you are not honest brahmachari then you must become honest grihastha.” That rang a bell in my head so loud because he wasn’t really concerned, ‘kibe vipra kibe nyassi‘. He didn’t really care whether we were brahmacharis or sannyasis or grihasthas.
He wanted us to be honest in our ashram and honest in the practice of our devotional service. That instruction still reverberates in my head. Whatever I do in whatever ashram or whatever station of life, I must do it honestly.
Reference: Memories Anecdotes of a Modern Day Saint – Volume 4 by Siddhanta Dasa
