While there are a host of well-known devotees throughout ISKCON from whom we derive inspiration, there are also many, many who exist “under the radar.”

Devotees who have steadfastly carried out their service for years on end, with very little recognition and no desire for it.

But if we search them out, we may find that they have set perfect examples for us all about what it means to be a Vaishnava.

One of these devotees was Jivapati Das, who passed away on February 8th at sixty-eight, after nearly thirty-five years of dedicated service to his beloved Sri Sri Radha Gokulananda, the presiding Deities at Bhaktivedanta Manor, England.

Known amongst his peers as quiet and reliable, this pujari (priest) is estimated to have offered a staggering 7,000 mangala aratis to Their Lordships, as well as 5,000 evening aratis.

Born in 1944 as John Boehnen to middle-class parents in Milwaukee, USA, Jivapati was brought up a Catholic but began investigating other religions in his late twenties.

After finding himself unimpressed by a variety of paths from Scientology to Transcendental Meditation, he read an article in the Hare Krishna magazine Back to Godhead that made a lot of sense to him.

In 1975, at the age of thirty, he attended a Bhagavad-gita class at the ISKCON temple in St. Louis, Missouri, liked it, and began visiting every Sunday.

His connection with Krishna was cemented during his first attendance of mangala arati, the 4:30am service held at all Krishna temples.

As soon as the curtains opened to reveal the Deities, Jivapati’s whole body began trembling, and tears flowed from his eyes.

As he had not yet read many of Srila Prabhupada’s books, he didn’t know what was happening to him. If he had, he would have found his experience described as ‘ecstatic symptoms’ in Vaishnava literature.

True to his humble personality, Jivapati never told anyone about his experience until many years later, although it surely made a great impression on him.

After this first gift from the Lord, Jivapati returned home and then moved back into the temple several times, receiving initiation from Srila Prabhupada along the way in 1977 and also spending some time on the Radha Damodara Traveling Sankirtan Party.

Finally, he returned to full-time temple life for good in 1978, moving to Chicago where he first started doing pujari service under then temple president Sivarama Swami.

Then, in December 1979, he was unexpectedly sent to England, where he continued to serve as a pujari. From then on, he remained there as a celibate monk, steadfastly serving the Lord until the end of his life.

“He did approximately eleven hours of service a day, seven days a week,” says Gadhadhara Das, who became the head pujari at Bhaktivedanta Manor in 1994. “He would rise at 1:30 every morning, chant his japa, and offer mangala arati to the Deities. Then he would assist the other pujaris by changing the backdrops on the altar, cutting up fruit, washing paraphernalia, and taking care of all the other details that ensured the pujari department ran smoothly.”

Every evening, Jivapati would again offer arati and put Sri Sri Radha Gokulananda to rest. He would then sleep on the temple room floor with a priest’s truncheon by his side, guarding the Deities throughout the night.

“He was the type of person that Radha Gokulananda could always depend upon,” comments Sivarama Swami. “Often we want Krishna to be dependable. But Krishna is a person. And He wants devotees who He can depend on too. And for me, Jivapati Prabhu was a devotee who no doubt Krishna could always depend on. He was always there to render service. He would never let Their Lordships down.”

Jivapati was fastidious about his service, noticing every detail when it came to the Deities. He was often seen carrying a notebook with him wherein he would jot down things that needed to be corrected.

With his mind always fixed on service, Jivapati was economic with his speech, never gossiping about others and never wasting time in idle conversation. Although he had a good sense of humor, he took time to get to know people and only opened up to those he knew well. In between his service, he liked to read, and when he did speak, it was usually to share some insight from one of his favorite books, such as the Srimad-Bhagavatam.

“Often, I would suggest to him, ‘Jiva, take a break—let’s go to India,’” Gadadhara recalls. “But he would respond, ‘What would I do there? I’d get bored.’ He didn’t want to take time off—he was just fixed in his service.”

When asked what advice he would give from a long life in Krishna consciousness, Jivapati offered, “Always be engaged. Always be doing service, or reading and chanting. Keep busy. The worst enemy in Krishna consciousness is complacency.”

In the last ten years of his life, Jivapati suffered from a degenerating lung disease that worsened with every passing year. But even then, it was nearly impossible to get him to take a break from his beloved service to Sri Sri Radha Gokulananda.

“Every two or three years, he’d get a chest infection,” Gadadhara recalls. “But he wouldn’t tell us he wasn’t feeling well. The other pujaris would come to me when they saw him leaning on a cabinet on the altar as he tried to offer mangala arati. Then we’d say, ‘Jiva, you have to go take rest.’ And we’d have to force him to go upstairs. He’d be out of action for about a month, and then he’d recover, and continue again.”

In the last two months of his life, Jivapati had a persistent chest infection and was under the care of two doctors. However, less than a week before he passed away, he was still insisting on doing service for Radha Gokulananda.

Even after he was admitted to the local hospital, and was suffering from what doctors referred to as “delirium,” he was remarkably clear about he wanted to be doing.

“Once when I went to see him at the hospital, he said, ‘Give me my keys,’” recalls Gadadhara. “I asked, ‘Which keys do you want?’ He said, ‘I want my keys, so I can go to do my service.’ I said, ‘Jiva, where are you?’ And he said, ‘I’m at the Manor, in my room, and I want to go do my service.’ And that’s how he was. His consciousness was completely fixed on the Deities and his service to Them.”

By Thursday February 7th, news of Jivapati’s imminent departure had spread throughout not only the Manor community but the rest of the ISKCON world too.

At the Manor, devotees took time off from their daily duties to begin a kirtan vigil which lasted until the Monday after his passing. In Mayapur, India, fellow priest Jananivasa Das offered a special puja to Nrsimhadeva, the protective form of the Lord. And at the sacred Kumbha Mela event in Allahabad, spiritual leader Radhanath Swami dedicated a bathing to him at the confluence of the holy rivers Ganga and Yamuna.

At 7:30am on February 8th, around twenty devotees from Bhaktivedanta Manor surrounded Jivapati in his hospital room. They decorated his body with garlands, Tulasi leaves, Nrsimha oil, and Ganga water, and chanted the Lord’s names until his auspicious passing at 10:22am.

That Sunday, Jivapati’s last rites were conducted by fellow Prabhupada disciple Kripamoya Das at Bhaktivedanta Manor. As hundreds of devotees arrived to offer their last respects, his coffin was carried in circumambulation around the temple.

From 9 o’clock on Monday morning, devotees who knew and worked with Jivapati, such as Siddha Deha, Bala Gopal, and Dhananjaya, shared their memories of him. And finally, all the devotees cooked a huge feast in his honor.

In his absence, a picture of Jivapati will be placed in the pujari room at Bhaktivedanta Manor, to remind other pujaris of his legacy of service, and to inspire them to follow in his footsteps.

“I am greatly honored to have known him and served with him,” says Gadadhara. “He was always there, regular as clockwork. He was the backbone of the Manor. You could always count on him. He will be greatly missed by the pujari department here and by all the temple devotees.”

Sivarama Swami, meanwhile, has no doubt as to where Jivapati’s next long-term home will be. “I’m sure that he will continue his service to Srimati Radharani and the bliss of Gokula [Gokulananda],” he says, “In a dimension that we hope we’ll all be elevated to if we follow his example of real devotion.”