Transcription
Hare Krishna dear Guru maharaj, Please accept my dandavat pranams, All glories to Srila Prabhupad. Thank you very much maharaj for giving me the opportunity. Here is the transcription from 10:00 to 15:00 . Thank you also to Sugopi mataji for her help in parts of transcription
you servant
NC Das
HpS - ASA/MOE = Thank you so much. As we said in the DTC today, this was such a nice team effort. We hope to have the 'Viplavah' out soon so that we can all see how nice this is.
Why don't you write? Interview people. Make comments on modern world? Krsna will give you opportunities.
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HPSwami(10:00): For participating in being book distributors, the full morning and evening program is kind of like enough? What do you do,what is your program like reading and studying that integrates with book distribution?
Vaisesika Prabhu(10:10): Well ofcourse, Prabhupad said different things at different times and there is recording for Prabhupads enthusiastically saying Read 2 or 3 hours a day. Well depends on what the morning and evening class is like also, Some classes by the time,end up, somebody finishes singing Jaya Radha madhava and reads the verse, you get like 5 minutes of discussion, personally I need a lot more than that and when I had that experience in SanFrancisco, When Prabhupad personally said you must read my books, I felt that he was so emphatic that, I took the liberty to do that, Through out my book distribution career and continue to do so. I read at least 41 pages of Bagavatham every day and because that means that I finish the whole bagavatham in 1 year and every year, following in the footsteps of His Holiness Hanumat Preshak Maharaj , who is my mentor for reading Prabhupad books and I also take a month, at least a month, 5 weeks in Govardhan every year. This is first year, I have missed in 20 years because of the pandemic, where we sit down for 5 hours a day and hear Bagavatham every single day of kartik and I try to have longer classes here in our community, because I feel that devotees need to hear Prabhupads voice and they need to be really familiar with Bagavatham in order to have lifelong commitment to devotional service. So, I personally need more, myself to engage my mind. I just impose that upon others who come around me in the community.
Hp Swami( 11:48): I remember another letter that Prabhupad wrote, he said “are all your pujaris I think he said chant your Gayatri? Do they all have 1 hour a day to read my books and Temple president or somebody said, Prabhupad they are very busy. No, An intelligent man will not be satisfied, unless he has 1 hour atleast a day to read. So, like you are saying, Different diets, Some people very Shakti oriented, they are are just happy that other people are buying, everything else. Other people they really got to have very intellectual work so that, before they can preach
HpSwami (12:27): Number 3. What are the different modes of distribution, eg., Bhaktivedanta Institute, rock concerts…
Vaisesika Prabhu (12:36): Oh, well, Rockefeller distinguished himself as an entrepreneur because he took the production of oil to a new level, to say the least. He got thousands and thousands of uses out of one substance – oil – and that is how he made his money. So, as many devotees as there are, there are techniques and avenues for book distribution. As an example, during the pandemic we are finding ways that we had never seen before, online, using the telephone to contact people and talk to them. Bhaktivedanta Institute? Absolutely. Rock concerts? Absolutely. There is… as many places as there are people, there is ways to distribute books. So, we recommend that people start book distribution in their communities for what it makes of them to engage in it. And, when devotees have an opportunity to go out and do book distribution at least once a month, on a weekend, even if it is for a short amount of time, then they get this kind of oxygen from going out into the great unknown and doing the right thing and going out of their comfort zone. So, like right now, we just discovered, there is little free libraries that people put outside of their homes. It is actually a network, there is 42,000 of them in North America, and we are now working on a network to put Prabhupada’s books in each one of the 42,000 little libraries that go outside people’s homes. We are also putting them in hospitals and hotels, we are meeting people on the streets, we are selling books online, and the list goes on and on.
HpSwami (14:43): So, on our evening walk, we go walking every evening with Nitai Gaurasundara Dasa, and our group here, and we walk right by. One of our neighbors has one of those little places there. And what I was thinking, wow, you know, it is like we need so many kinds of books. A lot of children’s books are in there. And that’s the whole thing too, like you are saying, is that I heard Prabhupada say “every salesman has his own technique.” And you can steal ideas about how to sell from other salesmen, but in the end, you have to develop your technique.
HpSwami (15:15): Okay, number 4. Are there webpages, books, others, who our readers can contact in terms of how to develop book distribution?
