Today is the auspicious disappearance day of HG Jayananda Das, a modern day vaisnava saint. Jayananda possessed a great mystic power. Those Ratha-yatra festivals would not have happened without Jayananda. He was empowered by Krishna to do superhuman feats that made Ratha-yatra happen … even when the situation seemed impossible.
Especially the New York Ratha-yatra in 1976, which Jayananda considered to be his crowning glory and the perfection of his life. At first he was not going to build the carts due to a bad back, but he got swept up into the service and agreed to do it. The New York temple had no money and Adikeshava Dasa said that “Srila Prabhupada doesn’t trust us,” meaning that it was “iffy” in Srila Prabhupada’s mind whether they could do it or not.
At first, Jayananda and devotees just drove around and around that area of town, and some devotee asked, “Why are we just driving around here all the time?” Jayananda was casing out the place. They were on a very low budget, so Jayananda made mental notes on where lumber and stuff just seemed to be laying around … and then they came back in the dead of night for some discount lumber and parts. Sometimes this is known as a five-finger discount, and in devotee circles sometimes it’s known as transcendental repossession. As everybody in the world is thinking, “This is mine, this is mine,” but the reality is … that it’s all Krishna’s property. Always was and always will be. It was like Jayananda was saying to the New York residents, “My dear inhabitants of the Big Apple, please know that Lord Jagannatha already owns everything we see in this town … actually He owns everything in the universe, we just forgot. And you may feel reluctant to freely donate, and so we guess that we’ll just have to take some transcendental repossession of a few things for Lord Jagannatha’s service … and you will all benefit from it.” Jayananda gathered his materials by hook or crook. And sometimes (like his bhoga shopping) he could persuade some merchants to donate or give big discounts.
As for manpower, Jayananda would grab people off the streets or out of the temple – bums, hippies, lazy devotees – and get them to work day and night, even against their will. You just couldn’t stop your lazy self from helping Jayananda, it was impossible. Jayananda’s enthusiasm was a most powerful and contagious spiritual energy that spread and infected everybody around him. And carts that normally would take many thousands of dollars to build, Jayananda would just transcendentally extract all the materials and manpower from the very woodwork of the neighborhood, so to speak – and he would stir his transcendental cauldron with the ladle of his great love for Srila Prabhupada – and poof! … there would magically appear out of thin air … these wonderful and colorful and majestic carts for Lord Jagannatha! In this way, Jayananda pulled off a veritable miracle by building carts on a practically nothing budget. Who could imagine such a feat? But wherever there is Jayananda and his ragtag band of merry street urchins (and discount parts and lumber laying about), there will certainly be opulence, victory, and extraordinary power. And then these wonderful majestic carts will certainly be rolling down the streets of big cities with thousands of devotees loudly chanting and dancing all around them to bless everyone with the Lord’s mercy
Excerpt from “The beautiful life of Jayananda Thakur” Written by Vishoka Dasa
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