NOT EVEN FOR KRISHNA

I learned a lesson the hard way...early on as a new devotee in the early 70's.

It was my service to go around the neighborhood, this was Brighton outside Boston, and ask the neighbors for flowers. It was a neighborhood where the old temple was. People were very nice. They would come out of their houses with scissors and cut the flowers for me to take to the temple. It was really a sweet sankirtan service. I had BTG's and sometimes prasadam cookies or cakes. Very sweet service.

One house had really great roses growing all over a fence that bordered on the public sidewalk. The people in the house said no. People very rarely did that. Two old women. Very snippy.

I started to collect some roses from the part of their bushes that grew over the top of the fence onto the public sidewalk. They came running out of the house mad as hornets. Took the large 1/2 bushel wooden basket with the days collected flowers in it and tossed it over my head. It was weird. The flowers meant for Krishna's feet they poured over my head. Very weird. But I got it.

Those roses were their quota. I had no right to take them without their consent. Not even for Krishna.