Kadamba Kanana Swami was born on April 12, 1953 in the Netherlands to a family of entrepreneurs. Seeing that money did not make his father happy, young Paul Kok renounced his inheritance and went to India to look for the meaning of life.

Kadamba Kanana Swami: “If you are busy, you are the right person”In 1978, he and his wife joined ISKCON in Vrindavan and immediately after that the couple moved to India. A year later, Paul accepted Bhavananda Goswami as his guru, receiving the spiritual name Kadamba Kanana Rasa Parayana dasa.
The future Kadamba Kanana Swami performed various services – he preached in Australia, from 1985 to 1990 he supervised the construction of Srila Prabhupada’s pushpa samadhi in Mayapur, and from 1990 to 1995 he served as president of the Krishna-Balarama temple in Vrindavan.
In 1987, Kadamba Kanana accepted another spiritual teacher, Jayadvaita Swami, and 10 years later he received sannyasa initiation from him and the spiritual name Kadamba Kanana Swami. Since then, he has preached in Europe, India, Australia and South Africa, taught at Bhaktivedanta College in Belgium, as well as the Mayapur Institute. In 2001, Kadamba Kanana Swami began accepting disciples, becoming one of the first gurus in the history of ISKCON who were not disciples of Srila Prabhupada. Kadamba Kanana Swami: “If you are busy, you are the right person”

If you want something done, then go to a busy person
In 1986, I was very busy supervising the construction of Srila Prabhupada’s samadhi in Mayapur. I had so many things to do, there was no end in sight. One day I looked at this samadhi – it looked like a face with a big mouth, and the mouth was saying, “Aniyor! More! Bring me more!” And I was delivering truckloads of cement, steel, bricks, stone, marble; bringing engineers, artists, technicians, workers; stopping strikes; I had to do so many things, and chant my rounds during mangala-arati, because my work day began at six in the morning, and by evening I was so tired that I would just fall down, what rounds… I was absolutely busy!
And in the midst of all this fun, one fine day in 1986, Lokanatha Swami appears. At that time he had a pada-yatra. And there was a mad elephant! He was grabbing people and throwing them, and there was a camel that was biting. And a lot of Hindus from the village, all you could hear was, “Ha-ha-ha!” And there were dioramas, exhibitions, tractors and all that.

Kadamba Kanana Swami: “If you are busy, you are the right person”
Lokanath Maharaj with the Pada-yatra
Lokanatha Maharaj came to me and said, “I want you to look after the pada-yatra while we go to Mayapur.” I said, “Maharaj, be merciful! I am so busy, I hardly find time to chant. If I have to do anything else, it will be that blade of grass that breaks the camel’s back.” I thought I had got rid of Maharaj. And he said, “In my village they say, ‘If you want something done, go to a busy man.’ A man who is not busy is lazy. If you go to him, he will not do anything at all. And a busy man may not do much, but at least he will do something!” I was defeated by this practical village logic.
So here I am with a camel that is always biting, and a mad elephant, and I have to keep a safe distance from them. And the villagers: “We are hungry, we are thirsty, we want maha-prasad!” And they wanted pocket money. This was too much!
This story is just for you, because I know that you are all busy people. And because you are busy, you have no time. I also used to think so, until I met Lokanatha Swami. He shattered all my illusions and showed me that if you are busy, you are just the right person to do something else! Not necessarily something big, but something, because busy people are active by nature.