720620 - Letter to Stokakrsna written from Los Angeles

Letters by Date, 1972

Tridandi Goswami
A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami
Founder-Acharya:
International Society for Krishna Consciousness
CENTER:
Los Angeles, ISKCON

DATE ...............Jun..20.............1972....

My Dear Stoka Krsna,

Please accept my blessings. I am in due receipt of your letter from Dallas dated June 14, 1972, and I have noted the contents carefully. Upon your recommendation I am very glad to accept the boys and girls you have recommended to be my duly initiated disciples. I am sending their beads under separate post, and their letter is enclosed herewith. Now you may hold a fire yagna and give Gayatri mantra to Dhristaketu, Narayan, and Hiranyagarbha. I think you have got a tape of me reciting Gayatri mantra, so you may give second initiation by letting them hear Gayatri mantra through earphones into the right ear. I am enclosing the three sacred threads and copies of Gayatri mantra herewith. The fire yajna may be held for all seven devotees.

I have indicated in my previous letter of several days back some hints for giving Krsna Consciousness children their proper education. I consider this Gurukul school to be one of our most important aspects of this movement and it should be given all serious consideration by the members. If we are able to make a whole generation of our children into fine Krsna Conscious preachers, that will be the glory of our movement and the glory of your country as well. But if we neglect somehow or other and if we lose even one Vaisnava, that is very great loss. So I am very glad that you are taking your business very seriously and you may consult always with Satsvarupa in all matters of management and policy, and if he cannot answer to your satisfaction, you may also ask me something. For children it is a long time between 8:45 a.m. and 1:30 p.m., therefore they are naturally hungry long before the lunch time. If it is convenient you may add another period for light prasadam between those times. The children should be allowed to eat as much as they like, therefore if children are complaining from hunger we must feed them. On the second point, if someone is coming to our school for the first time, still, they must eat what we are eating, namely Krishna prasadam. Yes, everything should be prepared for the pleasure of the Lord, without any other consideration. Our policy is that the children should be so trained that they will enjoy performing austerities, it is not that we shall spoil them at young age by indulging them in sense gratification. If there is obedience then there will be discipline, and without any discipline the management is very difficult. So first thing is obedience. Now you must become the master of how to evoke obedience by the children. That is not always by punishing or by force, but sometimes by showing the stick, without necessarily hitting and sometimes it is learning how to trick them or even cheat them into obeying you voluntarily and enjoying by their obedience. If there is difficulty for taking the smaller children on public sankirtan, there is no need. Unless they are behaving, what is the use of taking them into public? The smaller children can have their sankirtan party within the school grounds daily and they will enjoy as much. The main point is that these children may be given the two-fold program of education in Krsna Consciousness, namely, chanting and performing devotional activities on the one hand, and some knowledge of our philosophy and other subjects of knowledge on the other hand.

Yes, you have got the right idea when you say that your preaching work shall be directed toward the children and the devotees and not so much to the Dallas public. We may thin the milk till it becomes useless, or we may boil it until it becomes thick and sweet, so now we have got enough followers, let us train them up perfectly in the philosophy and activities of Krishna Consciousness way of life. Unless all of my students become very much fixed up in their spiritual progress, what is the use of so many programs for expansion? So you are the leader at Dallas, now it is your task to become very, very responsible for the spiritual well being of all of the students there, so Krishna will give you all intelligence and facilities to serve Him nicely if you are very much sincere to do so. This will please me very much.

Hoping this will meet you in good health,

Your ever well-wisher,

A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami

Stoka Krsna das Adhikari c/o ISKCON Gurukula, Dallas

ACB/sda