The disappearance of Kṛṣṇa, mythologically or historically, is five thousand years ago. We're five thousand years into the age of iron, and we have ten thousand years in which to chant Hare Kṛṣṇa, which is to say, repeating the name of the aspect of the preservation, hope, that particular vibration of dancing joy transcending our cosmopolitical words. We have ten thousand for that play before there is a total descent into one-foot-tall monsters who eat each other up for meat because all the vegetables have disappeared, because DDT has completely geared out any biological life form except mammals who go around eating each other at that point.
For... I've known Swami Bhaktivedanta for about three years, since he settled in the Lower East Side in New York, which was my territory and my neighborhood... (applause) It seemed to me like a stroke of great intelligence for him to come, not as an uptown swami (laughter) but a real down-home street swami, and make it on the street in the Lower East Side, as also opening a branch on Frederick Street in San Francisco, right in the center of Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, so that people who were tripping in Haight-Ashbury several years ago, coming down, wanting some, quote, "permanent—eternal reassurance," formula, ritual, magic, hope, feel, one truth, if you wish, zeroed in on the Frederick Street rugged, performed, incensed, ashram, where chanting would be heard at dawn as they were coming down off a trip all night.