linguistic:translation, stylistic:style_transfer, structural:scholar_edition
Beginnings in New York City

Bhaktivedanta Swami had no support or acquaintances in the United States except the Agarwals, an Indian-American family, who, although strangers to him, had agreed to sponsor his visa. Upon reaching New York, he took a bus to the town of Butler, Pennsylvania, where the Agarwals lived. In Butler he delivered lectures to different groups at venues such as the local YMCA.

After a month in Butler, he returned by bus to New York City. He stayed at various places — sometimes in a windowless room, sometimes a Bowery loft — until with the help of early followers he found a place to stay in the Lower East Side, where he converted a store-front curiosity shop at 26 Second Avenue with the serendipitous name “Matchless Gifts” into a small temple. There he offered classes on the Bhagavad-gita and other Vaishnava texts and held kirtan (group chanting) of the Hare Krishna mantra:

Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare.

After he and his followers held Hare Krishna kirtan one Sunday under a tree in nearby Tompkins Square Park, The New York Times reported the event: “Swami’s Flock Chants in Park to Find Ecstasy; 50 Followers Clap and Sway to Hypnotic Music at East Side Ceremony”. He slowly gained a following, mainly from young people of the 1960s counterculture.

In contrast to the 1960s countercultural lifestyle, he required that in order to receive spiritual initiation his followers had to vow to follow four “regulative principles”: no illicit sex (that is, sex outside of marriage), no eating of meat, fish, or eggs, no intoxicants (including drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, and even coffee and tea), and no gambling. New initiates also vowed to daily chant sixteen meditative “rounds” of the Hare Krishna 'mantra' (that is, to complete sixteen circuits of chanting the mantra on a 108-bead strand). During the first year in New York, he initiated nineteen people.

In July 1966 he incorporated the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON).

In December 1966 he made a recording of Krishna kirtan (along with a brief explanatory talk) that took the form of an album entitled Krishna Consciousness, released under the “Happening” record label. The record helped the early spread of what he called “the Hare Krishna movement”.

With his small band of followers in a little storefront, he was already sharing a vision of spreading “Krishna consciousness” around the world. He asked them to help, for example, by typing his manuscripts for the second canto of the Srimad-Bhagavatam. After he completed his Bhagavad-gita As It Is (by mid-January 1967), he asked a new disciple to find a publisher for it.

Bhaktivedanta Swami personally taught his first followers to spread Krishna’s message, prepare food to offer to Krishna, collect donations, and chant the Hare Krishna maha-mantra (“great mantra”) on the streets.