FINAL OFFERING

Mid 1980's
Trying to find service to Srila Prabhupada.
It wasn't easy.
A few months here... a few months there
This temple... that temple
traveling alone distributing books
It's not like I didn't have my own personal battles
going on internally.
Where is service?

Finally Wash DC.. Potomac.
But it was very different
from when I was serving there in the mid 70's.
The beginning days when we first bought the property,
Four acres in Maryland
just outside of Wash DC.
Previously a day camp.
Collecting for the payments, for the renovations.

Exciting days.
Srila Prabhupada came for a visit 1976.
Put His toe in the swimming pool.
Circumambulated the capitol buildings
in a motor vehicle caravan
during the bicentennial celebration July 4th, 1976.

But now it was dirty.
Very, very dirty. Spilled. dried this and that.
In disrepair.
Grimy hand marks everywhere.
The walls, the floors, the hallways.
The filth was appalling.
The kitchen. The rest rooms... everything.
I cleaned.
But it would be filthy again the next day.
The devotees were all Indian.

The temple president was Western and an old friend
and he found service for me.
The morning breakfast offering.
Also I was maintaining a book table at a nearby college.
I would bring students to the Sunday program.
But it was not something geared for preaching to them.
It was a Hindu temple.

The few students I managed to bring to the temple
were lost in the crowd of stationary statues
standing with folded palms before the altar during arotika.
The program was not to facilitate them
coming to Krishna consciousness.
Obviously.

One morning... While preparing the breakfast offering.
Halva, hot milk, fresh fruit, hot oatmeal,
dried fruit, nuts and spicy chickpeas
Somehow the spicy chick peas
didn't get onto the Deities plates.
The offering went onto the altar
and the spicy chick peas were
still there on the stove.

Two brahmacaris came into the kitchen.
One was to do the offering, the other was just there.
When the one brahmacari came off the altar
They began talking about the spicy chickpeas.
Debating whether they were offered or not.
They got into a long and heated discussion.
One saying that they were prepared to be offered
and so they were considered prasadam.
The other claiming that they
were not placed before the Deity
so they could not be considered offered.
They went back and forth about this for quite some time.
While I was washing the pots.

Something snapped in me.
I was there. I prepared the offering.
And they were talking as if
Like milk just comes out
but that there is no living entity,
a cow.. who is making the milk
That is not a consideration.

It was just too much for me.
I was already in a very fragile state
with all the dirtiness
lack of book distribution,
no Hari nam and just Indians everywhere.
I didn't even think about it..
I took large stainless steel spoon filled with hot oatmeal
and tossed it with perfect accuracy all the way across the kitchen
to hit the pujari brahmacari perfectly on the leg.
Hot oatmeal sticking on his dhoti.
He screamed. Like a woman... shrill and high pitched.
and jumped all around. "Oh, Oh..." Hands flailing in the air.

But that was just the beginning.
I behaved outrageously after that.
I took everything in the kitchen and threw it all around.
Prasadam,. pots, spoons, clean and used...
I threw everything everywhere.
I'd gone completely mad.
I opened the kitchen door and threw
bhoga and prasadam all over the walls
that were already filthy.
It just added a little something more.

This went on for half hour or so,
No one stopped me.
I packed up my few things and left the temple.
My final offering.