Salted Bread

Hare Krishna! When Srila Bhakti Caitanya Maharaja arrived in SA, Maharaja brought boxes of a book called Salted Bread. I would urge every devotee to read this amazing book!

I must offer my heartfelt obeisances at the dust of the lotus feet of the devotees from the former USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics), to HG Sacisuta Prabhu and the author HG Sarvabhavana Prabhu. Even before meeting devotees these two personalities were so incredible. How they tried to keep places of God clean, how at a very young age they questioned religion and the purpose of life, how they became vegetarian and kept to it despite jeers and pressures.

From this book I think the most important lesson for me is to take advantage of every Krishna conscious moment because you never know when we may not have access to even a simple thing like a book!

The most heroic thing for me was how all these devotees maintained there sadhana of chanting 16 rounds every single day. Their beads were always taken away, they were beaten, they did not have sufficient food (salted bread for 2 years straight!), they were living in unclean places. Yet despite this, whatever they knew about Krishna they told others about it and at the same time kept up there own faith. How many opportunities they got to escape these horrible conditions but they would rather die then sign papers claiming that ISKCON was not a bona fide religion.

THE MOST IMPORTANT LESSON, DON’T COMMIT VAISNAV APARADHA AND TRY YOUR UTMOST TO DEVELOP LOVING RELATIONSHIPS WITH DEVOTEES.

What is interesting from the political sense is that the thirst the former Soviet devotees had for spiritual knowledge was practically speaking a direct consequence of the communist culture forced upon them. The government forcefully rejected and discouraged religion which they though were based on sentiment only, thus the harassment of ISKCON devotees. Read Srila Prabhupada’s letter, http://society.krishna.org/Letters/2000/07/L00001.html, where it is described how serving or loving God is the natural proclivity of man. From that we can see how the suppression on the people of the USSR made the pure knowledge given by Srila Prabhupada all the sweeter to them.

Reading this book, particularly the hatred the KGB had for devotees reminded me of conflict between Germans and Jews. I remember hearing one class by Radhanatha Maharaja and Sacianandan Maharaja where one of them were describing how Radhanatha Maharaja is a from a very strict Jewish family and HH Sacinandan Maharaja is from Germany and his father was actually an officer or something like that in the German army. Materially speaking they should actually be great enemies but the fact is they are the greatest of friends.

I was also watching this movie of twin sisters born in Germany, when there parents died the 2 were separated at a very young age one going to Holland and the other remaining in Germany. They did not meet each other for a very long time, until they were much older. At that time the sister in Holland rejected her sister because her husband was an officer in the Nazi Army and the sister from Holland’s husband had been captured by Nazi soldiers. But actually all these young men were forced to act in these ways. The sister from Germany tried to show her sister how they were servants of their situations but the sister didn’t see this until the last days of her life.

Krishna consciousness crosses all boundaries and saves a lot of time and energy that is normally spent on being angry and hurt.

Srila Prabhupada Ki Jai!
Devotees of the former USSR Ki Jai!