(Excerpt from a Lecture with HH Giriraja Swami Maharaja)
I was remembering this evening one incident about how merciful Lord
Caitanya is to even the most fallen, sinful rascals. As Prabhupada
mentions, Jagai and Madhai—they were not comical characters; they were
deeply sinful criminals. I remembered how once we were doing a Christmas
marathon in Paris and we would send our devotees to the train stations. The
girls particularly would go on the trains and distribute books to the
people just before the train left. As the train started to go, they would
jump off. One young French girl, small girl, very pretty girl, very
delicate girl, I remember she was a very good book distributor, and she
happened to approach a man on the train in a compartment. She walked into
the compartment and gave him a Krsna book. He looked at her for a moment,
then he took the Krsna book, and he was so strong that he tore it almost in
half. Then he threw it on the ground, stood up, and began stomping on it.
She broke down in tears. And he was such a demon that he grabbed her and
dragged her by her hair through the compartment and literally threw her off
the train. The train had just started, and he threw her off the train. She
dislocated her shoulder, and she had blood coming from her hair down her
neck. She landed on her face. She had this bruise for weeks. I think she
fractured a bone there. I was somewhere nearby, and someone came to get me.
So I came, and we had to carry her back to the temple. And we were cursing
that man. We were cursing him. Still, it was the marathon, and she was back
on the marathon four days later.
Anyway, what happened—it is quite a miraculous thing, in the mood of the
purport today. That man was a banker from Spain—a very wealthy banker—and
he had been in Paris doing business. The train went to Madrid. It took a
day and a half or something like that. As a joke he kept that book to show
his wife, to show her what he did, how he had stomped on the book and
thrown that nonsense girl, that beggar, off the train. He said, "See what I
did to the book," and he put it on the kitchen table. What happened was the
maid came that day, and the wife had gone shopping and the husband had gone
to the bank. The maid came, and she took the book. She thought that it was
one of the family's books and that somehow it had been damaged—a car had
run over it or something. So she dusted it off and repaired it as best she
could and put it in the library in the man's study.
About a year went by, and unfortunately that man's wife died in a car
accident. His son ran away, and his daughter got married to some low-class
person. He ended up all alone, and he was just so despondent. When his wife
died he went into a deep depression. His kids had left, and his wife had
died in a head-on car crash. He was just devastated, devastated. So, he was
in his study, contemplating suicide, and he happened to look up on the
bookshelf. He was actually looking for the Bible, although he wasn't a very
religious man. As Krsna says in the Bhagavad-gita, four types of persons
approach Him—usually the person in distress. So he was looking for the
Bible, and he saw that book.
Something compelled him to take that book out, and he opened it up and
started reading it—the Krsna book—and he read the part where Vasudeva is
preaching to Kamsa. In that discussion Vasudeva mentions the principles of
reincarnation and how the living entity goes from one body to the next just
like the worm who carefully places the front part of his body, then picks
up the next portion, and goes on. There is some analogy like that given by
Prabhupada. And it gave the man some solace to think that his wife was not
actually dead but that she had just changed bodies. It was nothing he had
ever thought of in his life, but it gave him just enough faith not to kill
himself.
So, the man went to sleep, and then he awoke in the morning. He was
supposed to go to work, but somehow he was drawn back to that book, which
was still on the table. So he went back and read it. For three days he
stayed home—he didn't go to work; he just read that book. And he had a
complete change of heart. The book gave him so much solace—that what had
happened was his karma; that he had to be forbearing, had to be tolerant;
and that his wife had only changed bodies. He was just ripe for that
knowledge. He thought about it a lot for a week. Then, you know what he
did? He looked in the back of the book, and he saw there was an address.
The book was in French, but he spoke French. He found the address and
called the temple in France and found out there was a temple in Madrid, and
he went to the temple.
When the temple president opened the door, this man was in a business suit,
and he was on his hands and knees. He was saying, "Please forgive me.
Please forgive me." The temple president was a relatively new devotee. He
said, "Excuse me?" He thought this guy was mad. The man said, "Please
forgive me for what I have done." And the temple president said, "Well, do
you want to come in and talk a little?"—because he could see that he was
nicely dressed. So the man came in and talked in the office, and he
revealed how many years before . . . He had the Krsna book with him, and he
said, "I destroyed this book, number one. And I was very rough with one of
the members of your society." And he started crying. He said, "I just want
to apologize, because she was trying to deliver me and I treated her so
roughly. I am just so sorry." Then he said, "Is there anything I can do?"
The devotee was new, and he didn't know how to respond. So the man just
said, "Let me write you a check." He wrote out a check for a large sum of
money, gave it to the devotee, and left.
That was Wednesday. On Sunday, the temple president was giving a lecture
and he saw the banker sitting in the back of the temple room listening.
Every Sunday the man would come to the temple, and he would listen. Some
time went by. He wasn't old, maybe forty or so; he was fairly young and
successful. One day he told the temple president that he wanted to move
into the temple and become a devotee. No one could believe it, because he
was so affluent. And guess what service they gave him? He was the temple
treasurer for some time. [laughter] Then came the Christmas marathon, and
he asked if he could go on the marathon. He was kind of older, but the
devotees said, "Okay, you can go." He went out, and he actually did quite
well. Then he asked, "I don't want to be the temple treasurer. I just want
to distribute books." So that's what he did. He became a book distributor.
Then we had a festival. I think it was in Italy, if I am not mistaken.
There was some big festival, and that girl came to the festival, and that
devotee came to the festival, and they met. And he was just crying and
crying, and he was begging, "Please forgive me." Now, if a Vaisnava is
offended, a Vaisnava does not hold a grudge. So she said, "No, it is all
right." It was a pretty amazing story, and I told our GBC, Bhagavan dasa,
and we discussed it sometimes, how amazing that story was!
Srila Prabhupada's Transcendental Book Distribution Ki Jai!
If you concentrate all your intelligence in distributing my books, all your
other activities will be perfect. This is my promise to you. - Srila Prabhupada
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