Srila Prabhupada-lilamrta, volume 1

Description

Srila Prabhupada-lilamrta tells the story of a remarkable individual and a remarkable achievement. The individual is A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada: philosopher, scholar, religious leader, saint. The achievement is the revolutionary transplantation of a timeless spiritual culture from ancient India to twentieth-century America.

This first of two volumes begins with the story of the events leading up to Srila Prabhupada’s meeting his guru, an encounter that ignited in Srila Prabhupada a slowburning flame of desire to take Krishna consciousness to the Western world. His early life was a period of patient and transcendent determination as he prepared for a mission that would later be crowned with astounding success.

In August and September of 1965 Srila Prabhupada traveled alone aboard a steamship from India to New York City, with no more than the equivalent of eight dollars in his pocket and no institutional backing, but with unshakable faith in Lord Krishna and the instructions of his spiritual master. It is the 1960s, an era in which the children of those who fought World War II were leading a sweeping revolt against a society losing its soul to godless mass consumerism. Into this milieu Srila Prabhupada brought a vision for a new kind of society, a society born of a radical transformation of human consciousness from materialism to the loftiest spiritual and ethical idealism.