(Kadamba Kanana Swami, 10 February 2013, Simhachalam, Germany, Srimad Bhagavatam 9.1.34)
Sometimes, making money took over. There was a time when the feeling was that if we sell records, then we will make more money than with books. So we started to sell records and sometimes we would do books. Then of course, you know, paintings make more money than records so we started to sell paintings. Some sold Krsna paintings and some sold any paintings, Hong Kong paintings. Then carpets made more money than paintings!
And before we knew it, it was business and business! I remember these things going around the offices – a roll of paintings and then girls in the office who liked the paintings but there was no time in the day so you made an appointment for the evening, to visit them at home. Then together, you sat on the carpet looking at the paintings and sometimes she liked the paintings a lot but she liked you even more! We lost a few brahmacaris in those days (laughter!). There were some casualties in this program.
So we went for the money but this was not Prabhupada’s idea. Prabhupada’s idea was that we become absorbed; we become absorbed in glorifying Krsna. We read the Bhagavatam and as we distribute the book, we glorify the book! We take elements of the book, we glorify it and distribute the book on its merit – that is the key – and not with salesmen tricks. In this way, the purity of the book distributor is guaranteed and then the movement has strength.