Hare Krsna
Dear Vaisesika prabhu & Sarvatma prabhu,
I read both your comments and thought they were good points. But, as both of you have distributed books with tilak and sikha showing and not showing I also have, and personally I can say my consciousness was much better with tilak and Sikha showing. I even have found that I distriute more books with tilak. This last summer I was distributing in Boston, all the seasoned book distributers know that Bostonians can be pretty tough. At first it was alright, books were going out but at one point it became very very difficult, so I thought I've got to do something so I decided to put on tilak. I was shocked at the response that I received, people were taking books so much easier. For the rest of the time in Boston about 2 months I continued wearing the tilak, one day I forgot to put on tilak and I was thinking "O no! I forgot to put on tilak this could be a tough day". In the past if I forgot to take off my tilak I would dutifully take it off thinking how can I distribute with tilak on.
Here in Australia I'm also wearing tilak and showing sikha. I was just in Germany for the end of the marathon gathering and found out that most of the devotees wear full devotional clothing on sankirtana and do quite well. In one of Prabhupada's letters he says wearing tilak and sikha cannot be compromised (it's his absolute statement not Chandrasekara's), he said you can wear your western dress, overalls, nice shirt and tie and slacks. Chandrasekhara's only point was that we wear tilak and sikha, and he got that from the letters of Prabhupada. Nowadays people are into seeing things that are different (maybe even in the Smokies, I wonder when the last time was that someone tried). We have to remember the Krsna factor, if a devotee is sincere and enthusiastic people will recipricate. Devotees all around the world are finding it to be very nice to show that we're Hare Krsna monks. Many of them have never talked to us before and when they do they find these are nice people. If we're Krsna conscious which means a gentleman or lady, then their previous ignorant prejudgement of us will be washed away and they'll purchase a book as we've seen, and go away with a good impression of a Hare Krsna. believe it or not people like us,"lets come out of the closet".
Your Servant,
Vijaya Das
