Do you think it was easy for me?

Srila Prabhupada: Do you think it was easy for me?

“The mood was very sober, but Srila Prabhupada wanted to hear from everyone. He went around the room and asked each devotee what they thought was wrong in the temple. And each person gave their realization, and everyone else listened to that realization. And then Srila Prabhupada spoke. He said that we were all here because he had followed the instructions of his Guru Maharaja and come to the West. And then he added with great emphasis: ‘Do you think it was easy for me to leave India all alone and come to America?’ And none of us had ever really thought like that – whether it was easy or hard. We had just assumed that he had done that by Krishna’s mercy. Then he continued, ‘Do you think it was easy for me when I was in Butler, Pennsylvania, and I opened the refrigerator, and there was cat food next to my vegetables? Do you think that was easy?” And all the devotees began to cry, because they began to understand what Prabhupada did for us, and it wasn’t easy. He came from a place where his mother was carried in a palanquin from one house to the other. He was from another culture, almost like another planet; and he yet came to the West with a trunk full of books and seven rupees.“

HG Yamuna Devi – A life of Unalloyed Devotion