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by Bhakta Don Muntean
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All Glories to Shrila Prabhupada! Please Accept my Respectful Obeisances.
Dear Chakra:
In the last year I became connected to this Digital Paramatma, the Internet, and have enjoyed this and other wonderful websites dedicated to the Mission of Lord Chaitanya.
I have been aspiring since 1988, and I have never lived in a Temple [yet].
In 1986 I received a Macmillan Bhagavad Gita from my farmer stepfather. It had been sold to his father by a devotee in the '70s. His father was into the mystical (my stepfather said). His dad had passed away before he met my mother and all his books were suddenly mine for the taking when they married in 1986— books by Lobsang Rampa and other esoteric authors. Buried in all these was this Bhagavad Gita As It Is and all its cool pictures. I gave away all the books but that one.
I then began to read, discovering Truth As It Is. Thus I went through different stages of acceptance of the Truth, which is another letter in itself.
I did not seek out devotees, nor did I desire to go to a temple in the first years. In fact I was even horrified at the thought of meeting any devotees of the Lord in all my contamination.
Eventually in 1988, I decided to make a deity. I offered my bhoga, listening and singing along with George Harrison's "Trancendental Tunes" and trying to preach the things I learned from Gita to my friends and family. I was drawn to meet the servants of the one who brought these Truths to me: His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada.
I had to travel to Toronto from Western Canada in 1990, and I went to see Shri Shri Radha Gopinatha and H.H. Bhaktimarga Swami and the temple.
I remember that H.H. was so merciful to me. At the time I was still having falldowns with beer. I had come to the Temple at 9:30 PM, and their Lordships were then taking rest, but he disturbed them for a loser like me.
After a Dharshan with H.H. during which I put something like 200 years of questions to him in around 1/2 hour, I then asked to use the phone to call a taxi to return to the hotel. H.H. asked a nice devotee to take me to use the pay phone downstairs. When this devotee took me downstairs, he went past the phone and got a mop and said, "Mop meet Don, and Don meet mop. Mop and Don meet floor." Then he handed that mop to me. I was not (because of my light drunkenness and other anarthas) prepared for that.
I did not mop Lord Krishna's floor that night. Nope. I was not even smart or humble enough to do that. No, I had to find out why he wanted me to do that when he was to show me to the phone. That nice devotee! He didn't even look a little disappointed in me.
I was freaked out by the experience. It was long time after when I realized my blunder for not doing some service that time. Oh, how I may have been spared some maya if I had!
I could have done it.
As time went on, I developed a telephone association with H.H. Bhaktimarga Swami and some Prabhupada initiates (and other devotees), and this continues until today (actually every day), and I now have the full BBT Vedabase. I feel so privileged to have it—a life-giver.
It is taking me years to catch up, all because I was not humble enough to mop the Lord’s floor.
Your servant,
Bhakta Don
© CHAKRA 25 January 2002
