The Jagannatha Dasa Babaji remembered in anecdote is not a solemn, remote figure but a startlingly direct and often playful one, and nearly everything recorded of his personal character in old age survives because his devoted servant, Bihari Dasa, witnessed it at close quarters and passed the stories on.
The Dogs at His Plate #
Living in a tent on the bank of the Ganges at Nabadwip, Jagannatha Dasa Babaji shared his dwelling with a litter of puppies that had been born nearby. Whenever he took his prasadam from a large brass plate, the dogs would come and lick food from it, and he never objected. When Bihari Dasa, disgusted to see dogs eating from his guru's plate, finally drove them off, Jagannatha Dasa Babaji reacted at once: "If the dogs can't eat, I won't eat!" Bihari Dasa had to go and bring the puppies back before his guru would touch his own meal. "These dogs are residents of the holy dhama," he told his servant on another occasion when the same argument arose. "You may not abuse them. If you wish to drive them off, you may take my plate away as well — I shall not eat today." When the puppies returned to share his plate once more, he exclaimed, "All glories to the dhama's dogs!"
Twelve Rupees Hidden From a Nearly Blind Old Man #
In his final years Jagannatha Dasa Babaji was nearly blind, and many visitors came to offer him donations for Krishna's service, all of which Bihari Dasa kept in a bag on his behalf. On one occasion, having set aside twelve rupees for a service he had planned for his guru's benefit, Bihari Dasa reported a smaller total than the bag actually held. Despite his failing eyesight, Jagannatha Dasa Babaji detected the discrepancy immediately: "Bihari! Why have you kept twelve rupees aside? Give me all the rupees!" Bihari Dasa, caught out and smiling, surrendered the rest. The full amount, some two hundred rupees, Jagannatha Dasa Babaji then had spent entirely on sweets and rice cakes for the poor and on feeding every cow in Nabadwip.
The Beggar and the Torn Kaupina #
Not everyone who came asking for charity from Jagannatha Dasa Babaji found him generous with money. He preferred to direct beggars toward service rather than dole out alms, and one man, Gaura Hari Dasa, who came asking for money and was refused, simply sat outside his tent and fasted for three days rather than leave. Jagannatha Dasa Babaji eventually relented — but not with money. He tore a piece from his own kaupina, the simple loincloth of a renunciate, and had Bihari Dasa present it to the beggar, making the point without a word of lecture: before taking up the profession of a saint, a man must first learn to control his own senses.
Against Professional Recitation of the Bhagavatam #
He held one especially firm and uncompromising position, on a practice common enough in his day: professional public reciters who read the Srimad-Bhagavatam aloud for a fee. "This kind of professional Bhagavata-recitation is simply prostitution," he is recorded as saying. "Those who make their living reading Srimad-Bhagavatam are offenders against the holy name of Krishna, and no one should listen to the kirtana or Bhagavatam readings they produce. Anyone who listens and thereby commits offence against the holy name certainly goes to hell." He held that such people should give up the practice at once and take up, instead, the humble worship of Vrindavana's residents, considering themselves the most fallen and praying only for forgiveness — a severity of judgement that matched, in this one area, the same uncompromising standards his own eventual spiritual grandson, Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura, would later bring to his own confrontations with doctrinal deviation.