Tejiyas Prabhu on Srila Prabhupada and Relationships
"One of the things, if not the main thing, that deeply impressed me about Srila Prabhupad was his unconditional acceptance of each person he encountered and his immediate and spontaneous treatment of that person as being vitally significant to him.
Put simply, if you want someone to be the way you want them to be, if you do not see them as being significant and special as a person seperate from their qualities, if you do not see special and admirable qualities, and do not like the person, what chance will there be of real affection and real friendship and service and love? How could someone love someone they did not even like? Being a devotee, or a servant of a devotee, one will learn to offer respect, to accept wholeheartedly every living being, and to see their intrinsic worth as part of Krishna and their covered potentiality as a devotee. One will then admire their specific qualities, become attracted to them and desire to interact with them by service. This should be the natural form of relationship that is predouced, not out of the mind, but out of the heart of one who is in Krishna Consciousness. Although you cannot take Krishna consciousness out of a second of Srila Prabhupads life, he did not realate to us from the head, nor the mind nor the buddhi, but he related to us from the heart. Heart to heart, because he was pure, he really enjoyed meeting each person, and dealing with them on a person to person basis."
