Chasing Rhinos with the Swami

Just Let It Be. 💛

“LET IT BE” – AT LAST | The Beatles News - 14 April 2024

Leaders lead. ☀️💛

Janis Joplin was around the scene during our formative years in San Francisco. She performed at the Mantra Rock Dance concert—supporting our Hare Krishna movement. You can see that Krishna consciousness had an influence on her with Krishna on her stove.

Read about the historic Mantra Rock Dance and Janis in volume 1 of Chasing Rhinos with the Swami! 📚 🎸

www.ChasingRhinos.com

Every day during The Beatles Let It Be recording sessions, we would have yellow tulips delivered to Twickenham Studios and the flowers would always be on set. You can see for your self on the Disney+ “Get Back” documentary series by Peter Jackson. 💛

Read the whole story in CRWTS. Get the books or the volume 1 audiobook narrated by me at www.ChasingRhinos.com.

George Harrison John Lennon Paul McCartney Ringo Starr Yoko Ono

If you know—you know. ⚡️🦚⚡️

Read how George Harrison funded the Krsna Book and how Krishna himself appeared.📚

www.ChasingRhinos.com

50-year reunion with Chris O’Dell, Beatles’ secretary at Apple, who introduced the Krishna devotees to George Harrison.

“Little did we know, but the seed had been planted. Later that day, Chris took a note from Peter Asher describing our interview over to George Harrison at Abbey Road Studios, where the Beatles were working on their White Album, due for release in late November. “Did you meet them?” George asked. “Just briefly. They seemed really nice.” I’d like to meet them. Maybe we can set up an appointment in the next few weeks.”
A couple of weeks later, we got a standard, boilerplate rejection letter from Peter Asher: thank you for sending your very nice demo tape. Unfortunately, we are unable at this time…blah, blah, blah.

Never mind, we thought, this is just the first step. Let’s keep pushing. We must meet George. Now that we knew Chris—a fellow American, after all, we planned a new strategy: we would show up at Apple on a regular basis, even if we didn’t get past the bobby at the front door, and drop off gifts for Chris Odell—an apple pie, flower garlands, a copy of Easy Journey To Other Planets…We also dropped off a toy red apple with legs, “Hare Krishna!” painted around the side, that you would wound up and it danced. We were convinced that this was Krishna’s playful sport, and it was just a matter of time till we met George, and all our dreams would come true.”
—CRWTS, vol. 1

Learn the story how we met Chris O’Dell and George Harrison in CRWTS. www.ChasingRhinos.com

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Yamuna devi dasi, Srila Prabhupada and Malati devi dasi all in contemplative thought during a beach walk in India.

www.ChasingRhinos.com

GOLDEN TWILIGHT HARVEST SALE!
🌾💛

Christmas season is upon us, but there’s still time to order these magnificent gems! Three jewel-like Volumes 💎 or, as a remarkable gift 🎁 : the classic 3-volume SET 📚in a brilliant Slipcase Box. Please note also the new Volume One AUDIOBOOK! 🎧📖

OK, that’s my humble sales pitch.

A million thanks, dear Friend, for supporting these humble offerings to my beloved Srila Prabhupada! 🙇

ALL GLORIES TO SRILA PRABHUPADA!!!

Yr very grateful servant,
Shyamasundar das

Order books at www.ChasingRhinos.com

With Krishna, anything is possible. Chase the Rhinos! 🦏

www.ChasingRhinos.com

Through sheer determination and pure devotional service devotees were successful in establishing the first commemorative plaque in honor of A.C. Bhaktivedanta.

I had the great fortune of walking hundreds, if not, thousands of morning walks in parks throughout the world with Bhaktivedanta Swami. Of all the parks I visited with Prabhupada, Stow Lake in Golden Gate Park was his favorite. Preserving Prabhupada’s memory here will let you see where he walked, sat and taught us early San Francisco devotees so many important things. I hope you cherish this bench as much as I do.

Learn about the San Francisco Hare Krishna movement in my books, Chasing Rhinos with the Swami. www.ChasingRhinos.com

Vrindavan, India—1971

“We chant and dance down, Vrindavan‘s ancient streets, barely wide enough for a bicycle rickshaw—ching, ching!—as we step aside to avoid open sewers. Krishna‘s name is echoed by the time darkened walls. Haribol! shout out the shopkeepers and pilgrims we meet. We see majestic temples packed between brick and stucco homes, walled compounds, arcades in verandas, pavilions and alcoves. Iron bars, or carved stone screens, protect windows from marauding, pink-face macaque monkeys. A maze of plumbing runs down the sides of buildings and tangles of wire top every utility pole, where electricity pirates grab their volts. Everything seems run down, deteriorated. Parts of town look almost abandoned. From this day forward, Srila Prabhupada, and his pack of angels begin to breathe new life into the holy precincts of Vrindavan.”
—CRWTS, volume 2

www.ChasingRhinos.con

Frederick St. temple–San Francisco, 1967

“One thing about the Swami, he was cool. No, cool is more a word of the 50’s. Cool is Marlon Brando and James Dean. What the Swami was was hip. Hip means cooler than cool: with-it, groovy, far out, you dig? The hippies who dwelt in Haight Ashbury were independent thinkers, unattached to cultural norms and dress, keenly aware. In their midst the Swami, with his knowing look, his easy manner, and exotic dress, seemed hipper than the hip…

Summing up, 518 Frederick St. was now the Swami’s second temple in the world, and the first temple with an installed deity. In San Francisco, the Swami had realized that mass media, public engagements, and lectures to students were potent ways to reach a larger audience with his message. Here he had also seen how much music meant to the youth, and that chanting and dancing with strong musical accompaniment, was key to attracting young seekers, so he stepped up his efforts to obtain more kirtan instruments from India.”

—CRWTS, vol. 1

www.ChasingRhinos.com

Mukunda Goswami Malati Devi Dasi Roger Siegel

Close up darshan of Lord Jagannath from yesterday’s San Francisco Ratha Yatra. I carved Him in 1967 along with Subhadra and Baladeva making them the first ever carved ISKCON dieties in the West. They remain installed at the Berkeley, CA temple. Beautifully brilliant. ❤️🤍🖤

Find out the whole story in volume one of Chasing Rhinos with the Swami.
www.ChasingRhinos.com

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Chasing the Rhinos with the Swami T-Shirts!

Order now and check out the many other Krishna conscious products.

www.etsy.com/shop/SuperSoulCo

Artwork by

“On March 1, Prabhupada and his little team hopped on a flight from Calcutta to Delhi, and by noon we were in Vrindaban. Gurudas was there, and Kshirodaksayi, Gargamuni, Tamuna—not an army of devotees, jus a few of his lieutenants ready to help their general get the job done quick.”
CRWTS, vol. 1

Learn about the establishment of the Vrindavan, India ISKCON temple in my books www.ChasingRhinos.com

Thank you for the incredible time and associations in the UK. Deeply memorable and inspiring. 🙇🏼🙏🏼

You can now get all 3 volumes of Chasing Rhinos With The Swami in UK:

3-volume sets/£50.
Vol-1/£20.
Vol-3/£20.
Plus special wholesale prices. (Vol-2s have sold out, except in sets...)
Buyers need to contact:
Radha Mohan das:
[email protected]

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Wonderful to be back at the Bhaktivedanta Manor!

“50 Years at a Glance” program at Bhaktivedanta Manor, June 4. Krishna Consciousness sweeping the UK—(even the Prime Minister drops in for darshan)...The show goes on!

www.ChasingRhinos.com

Bhaktivedanta Manor
George Harrison

“Nearly twenty-four hours after leaving Brussels, in the pre-dawn of October 4, we landed at Santacruz Airport in Bombay. The air was warm, humid, and smelled of fuel and sewage and, when the men who met us slipped garlands over our heads, the deliciously exotic aroma of tuberoses, a scent I will evermore associate with Bombay.

For the airport of a major city. it was strangely empty. The jet age had not yet arrived in India, it seemed. On the way to town we passed through coconut groves, rice patties, and sprawling shantytowns with their thousands of small bamboo huts roofed with corrugated tin and plastic sheeting. A veil of blue smoke from cooking fires hung in the air. Even at this early hour there were people everywhere—and cows—and are those water buffalo? Swarms of tiny, black and yellow taxis beeped and swerved into every available gap in the traffic. Child beggars stood at stoplights even as a sun rose to reveal the Arabian sea to our right. We swung around and stopped in front of the six-story Seksaria House, 74 Marine Dr, a hundred feet from the bay, in the heart of Bombay city. India!”
—CRWTS, volume 2

www.ChasingRhinos.com

Leicester Train Station , UK - Platform 2, 1969

“ Mr. Kolhi arranged an engagement for us at the Hindu Centre in Golders Green, a North London suburb. This was the first time we interacted with a crowd of Indian people. Most of them were new to the UK themselves, refugees from recent upheaval‘s in Kenya and Uganda. Many of the Indian families were already more British than the British—some have even anglicized, their last names, and Shah became Shaw, Kapoor, Cooper. But most retained some allegiance to the Hindu gods and we’re pious at heart. We became their instant pets and were invited night after night to their homes for ten-course spicy Indian dinners and Kirtan and a short talk: this is our mission here in London. Please help us. We’d roll back to Herne Hill completely stuffed, groaning, “why did we do this again?”But the Indian community donated small amounts of money, fed us, and otherwise helped a lot. And I took small jobs repairing their bathrooms, building walls and additions to their homes, paid at the rate of 10 shillings an hour.”
—CRWTS, volume 1

Volume is now available worldwide on audiobook. Go to www.ChasingRhinos.com to download the book.

Malati Devi Dasi Roger Siegel Mukunda Goswami

April, 1967

“Knowing Swamji was leaving soon, Malati and I went up to his room. “Swamiji, we just wanted to tell you that we may not see you for a long time.”
He was surprised and asked why.
“We may have to go to jail soon, Swamiji”, I said.
“Oh, and what is the reason for that?”
“Well, in the past, before we met you, we were selling some drugs.”
An irritated look past over his face.
“That is not good reason for jail. I was also dealing in drugs for many years.” (The Swami had a patent medicine business in India during his younger years.)
This statement immediately put us at ease. We laughed. Then he asked, “And for how long must you stay there?”
“Maybe up to five years,” I said.
He closed his eyes and seemed to go very far away. Then he smiled, opened his eyes and said, “Never mind, Krishna will help you.”
To put us yet further at ease, he said, “Krishna was born in jail, so a prison is nothing. It is only a temporary position.”
—CRWTS, volume 1

Read the full story in my book. Volume 1 is now available in audiobook, narrated by me!
www.ChasingRhinos.com

Meme by Lakshaman dasa

HERE AT LAST!!! 🔈🔈🔈

For nearly 23 hours, Shyamasundar himself narrates eye-witness tales of Bhaktivedanta Swami’s epic adventures in the dawn of the Hare Krishna movement, the most intimate, detailed, and exciting account yet of the Swami’s halcyon days in San Francisco and London, 1967-1970, like the real story of Lord Jagannath’s advent in the western world, meeting the Beatles and, with them, broadcasting the Mahamantra around the globe. These, and a hundred more never-heard- before stories will transport you into those magic days: chasing “rhinos” with the Swami.

Reading “Chasing Rhinos With The Swami” is a great experience, but hearing it spoken by the author, with his Tom Waits/Peter Coyote/Sam Elliot voice, personal intonations, sound effects, and heartfelt emotions really brings this book ALIVE!

TO ORDER, GO TO: www.ChasingRhinos.com

Mukunda Goswami Malati Devi Dasi Roger Siegel

“Our daughter, Saraswati, whom we dragged around the world with us during those frantic early years—your dearest little friend, Srila Prabhupada—is more than 50 years old now. Sara. She lives with her husband and two kids in a posh Chicago suburb. Sara’s a chip off, her mother’s block, running all over the place, organizing everything. I recently spent a couple of days with her power-shopping from morning to night to outfit her daughter at Santa Clara University, where Sabrina is pre-med. Sara’s son Spencer is in Florida doing his third year of pilot training. Last year I said, “Saraswati, would you fly in a plane with your son as a pilot?” And she said, “No way!” But she did it anyway, and I guess the white-knuckle solo flight in a little Cessna went OK.”
—CRWTS, volume 3

Get the whole story in Chasing Rhinos With The Swami.
www.ChasingRhinos.com

Malati Devi Dasi

“The Bengali renaissance spawned, several iconic spiritual thinkers, such as Sri Aurobindo, Ramakrishna, Vivekananda Swami, and Paramahansa Yogananda, some of whom traveled to the West in the 1920s and 30s, creating an image for Americans of what a swami looks like, how he acts, and what he says. But in 1965, another Bengali Swami came to America: A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami. His timing was perfect. For the first time in history, ancient Vedic science and its purest form, took deep root in American soil, and then just six years the Swami’s movement spread across the globe. Bhaktivedanta Swami imparted India’s ancient spiritual science, to a thousand disciples, radically changing their lives. Now, in late October 1971, he returned to Calcutta, where it all began.”

—CRWTS, volume 2

Read more stories in my trilogy memoir, Chasing Rhinos with the Swami. www.ChasingRhinos.com

My dear friend & Godbrother Trana Karta dasa has just come out with his new book about early days of the book distribution movement at the Chicago O’Hare Airport. If you love to serve by distributing Prabhupada’s books, then this book is for you!

www.OhareKrsnaAirport.com