Do we really have to?

Krsna Kumari : I’d only been in the movement eight or nine months when I was told to go to Dallas. All of the children there were born in the movement and they had been there about five years. These kids practically speaking brought me up in Krishna consciousness. All the children were taught to chant Bhagavad-gita slokas. They were chanting the verses and would hear the meaning but Prabhupada said the young children didn’t have to understand the purport completely but to have some idea.

I drew large cards with a picture that would give the children something to remember about each verse. I’d hold the card and they’d chant the verse. Then Prabhupada wanted us to bring the children to the temple room on Sunday and have them chant the entire Bhagavad-gita together, all eighteen chapters. I was thinking, “This is really going to be a lot for three and four year old kids to do. Do we really have to?” But Prabhupada mentioned one important reason why he wanted the children to memorize these verses and be able to rattle them off, chapter after chapter. He said that these verses are impressed forever on the subtle body. If these children don’t go back to Godhead in this lifetime, it goes with them to their next birth. They will have the entire Bhagavad-gita already there with them, to help them. So that lesson pacified me. Not only did we chant the verses in class with cards, but on the way to the playground. I had fifty kids and I thought, “How am I going to tie fifty shoes and keep all these kids sitting down and engaged?” We chanted the slokas while we tied their shoes, while we were at the laundromat, and the kids liked it. It kept them engaged and I remembered that Prabhupada said it would go with them forever.