Archive for February, 2008
Tuesday, February 26th, 2008
Sermon on the Mount Reflections
Two things standout the most to me about Christ’s Sermon on the Mount. The first thing that really stands out is that the essence of his teaching is about how we relate to our fellow human beings. Here is just one of the many sections where Christ is e…
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Monday, February 25th, 2008
mondays are filled with unique experiences.
I don’t know if my ear hurts right now from talking on the cell phone so much this evening or from the painful crunching sound of the deer smashing into the car that I haven’t really processed yet.
Mondays are just not my days I guess. Each of my past three Mondays have been marked […]
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Monday, February 25th, 2008
mondays are filled with unique experiences.
I don’t know if my ear hurts right now from talking on the cell phone so much this evening or from the painful crunching sound of the deer smashing into the car that I haven’t really processed yet.
Mondays are just not my days I guess. Each of my past three Mondays have been marked with dangerous experiences. February 11th I drove alone to Southern West Virginia for a lecture at a University. On my way home my car spun out of control. First it started swerving to the left then to the right then to the left then it just hit ice again and
started spinning out of control. I closed my eyes and remembered my dear Lord Govinda. The car got spun 270 degrees and got stuck on the edge of a ten foot embankment. It was a total blizzard. I got out of the car and some one got out of their car running towards me asking if I was ok and said they were calling a wrecker. I was really confused not understanding the term wrecker. It is the Appalachia term for Tow Truck. Not wanting to pay the 50 bucks for a tow I waved down a large truck and asked him to pull me out. With out much hesitation he took out his tow strap and easily pulled me off the embankment. A police officer who was present gave me a panthlet inviting me to his church if I was ever around town again. He said everyone needs Jesus in their life. I asked the man who pulled me out for his contact info so I could send him a thank you card but he stopped half way through writing his address and said, “you know what, just do something nice for someone else some day.” I drove the rest of the way to Athens in great anxiety about slipping on the ice again. I made it home safely but in about three times as long as it normally would have.
On February 18 I drove from Athens to Columbus. The weather was great all day long. I stoppped into the Accra African market to buy plantains. palm nut cream and fufu for our African lunch later in the week. I then went to the temple for Darshan where I ended up doing kirtan and speaking for half an hour to a weekly meeting of new devotees about Bhagavad Gita and Lord Nityananda. When I left the temple at 7:30pm four inches of snow had covered everything and it was still snowing. Out of nowhere a blizard hit! I drove over to Mother Kamagiri’s home to see the family and have dinner. We talked for about two hours and I had to hit the road. It was horrible! Because the storm hit so late and unexpectedly the snow just packed down and turned to ice. There were no snow plows out. Literally every hundred feet there were cars off the road. We were driving about 20 miles per hour. I had another 70 miles to drive at night, after a huge gluten feast, and in a blizzard. The weather got worse and worse so I pulled over into a shopping center and read for about an hour hoping the storm would stop. It was about 11 pm so I decided to sleep some. I woke up to the sensation in my toes of frost bite. I got back on the road and drove the rest of the way home where i made it in bed by 1:30am.
Today I stayed at New V until all the festivities were over. After the huge paneer subji had entered my body I needed to rest for about two hours. Around 4:30 I packed up the car and jumped in. Chris and Devanada Pandit Prabhus were wishing me off when I started the car and removed the emergency break. It was then that we heard a huge SNAP!I tried to back up but the car would not move an inch. The rear wheels locked up. No mechanics were around so Devananda Pandit Prabhu and I jacked up the car to see what we could find out even though both of us knew nothing about cars. Chris Prabhu chanted next to us for spiritual support. We had to removed each wheel and then bang on the break drums to loosen the brake pads from the drum. We think that the freezing weather kept them locked. Maybe the emergency cable broke too. We now know that I need new break pads. So it worked and I got off to the road. I made it to Athens safely.
When I got to the house one of the high school boys who comes to our program was sleeping in the living room. I woke him up and asked him if everything was ok and if he needed a ride home. His mother called at that time to see if he was ok then we drove home. On our way to his house a deer jumped out on to the road. I was driving about 40 miles per hour. I cringed and slightly swerved. The deer smashed into the side of the car breaking the side view mirror. We stopped to look for the deer. We could not find it anywhere and there was no blood on the car. It was a very loud sound which instantly reminded me of a story a close friend was retelling a month back as he picked me up form the airport in Albany.
He was a bit reserved for some time when we were driving. After about an hour of talking he shared what was on his mind. He told me that just three hours previous he had remembered hitting and killing a woman when he was a teenager. He forgot about the whole incident that morning. After it had happened his father told him to forget all about it because he had taken care of everything. So he did that. He went on with his football playing and high school partying. He went through college, He worked for 20 years, had got married and had two kids. This day while sitting having breakfast with his father in law and wife, his father in law told him a recent headline. A woman took her two daughters out to a highway removed everyones clothes and walked out in front sick. He excused himself from breakfast table and went to another room where he laid on the floor in great pain. He felt like vomiting. He was bewildered why he felt so much pain. All the remembrances of his own experiences entered his memory after so many years. He was driving home one night when a woman jumped out onto the highway. He hit her and she flew into the windshield. He clearly remembers the striking sound of her bones crushing against the windshield. It was present again, the whole experience. The whole traumatizing experience which he was told to forget. That experience didn’t disappear it was hidden deep within and some how it was time to come out.
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Monday, February 25th, 2008
Eternal Identity As Divine Entities
On one of the most sacred of days in our Vaisnava calendar, I’d like to throw up a late-evening tribute to one personality who inspires me greatly and constantly every day, HH Bhakti-Tirtha Swami Maharaja, born fifty-eight years ago this day.From his b…
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Monday, February 25th, 2008
Memories of Gita
Shelda made cookies for Gita and he loved to eat them
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Monday, February 25th, 2008
Scene Waiting in a Teller’s Line
Through a plate glass window:
Shed leaves of trees all raked away, yellow
flowered cannas still stand tall and green,
preserved by the stored warmth
of the brick southern wall of the courthouse.
A backdrop for the sun-drenched lawn
between a cannon and the WW1 Memorial.
There a wedding party of six takes pictures of itself,
the men dressed in colored shirts, ties, […]
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Monday, February 25th, 2008
Gettin the New Vrindaban Experience
This past weekend, two intrepid reporters from Ohio University’s student-run indepedent newspaper The Post, Rob (the photographer) and Eric (the reporter), visited the Dham in order to meet devotees and do research for their thesis paper on the inner workings of an intentional community (they are also visiting a Mennonite community, an all-woman community, and […]
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Monday, February 25th, 2008
Sermon on the Mount
And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain: and when he was set, his disciples came unto him:And he opened his mouth, and taught them, saying, Blessed are the poor in spirit: for their’s is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they that mourn:…
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Sunday, February 24th, 2008
Kow-Katha
by Taru dasa, from the February 1978 Issue of the Brijabasi Spirit
ISKCON’s champion milker, Sarasvati, came fresh for the fourth time in the beginning of January. Last lactation she established, at 116 pounds, the record for one day’s production for an ISKCON mother. This season she set out rapidly to demolish all her previous […]
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Sunday, February 24th, 2008
Memories of Gita
Gita with Chaitanya Bhagavat and Shelda
I turned to stroke his face and he began licking my hand with his sandpaper tongue. I took a few steps away from him to continue the tour with Balabhadra and Gita followed me closely wherever I walked. We became fast friends.
By Krishna’s mercy, I was able to spend many a day serving and caring for him over the past couple of years. The experiences and lessons from his association are so meaningful to me I could write a book and probably should.
The last few days of his life, I spent with him morning and evening. I would go to the barn and rock his head in my arms. He would just collapse into me as we both sat in the hay listening to Srila Prabhupada chant “Manasa Deha Geha.”
When I found his body that morning as I walked into the barn, Srila Prabhupada was speaking the purport to that song. His exact words as I approached Gita were; “My life, my body, my home, I surrender everything unto you.”
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Sunday, February 24th, 2008
Finding True Happiness
Can You Teach the Pursuit of Happiness Online?
By Sudip Ghosh, MD
William McDougall, Harvard social psychologist, wrote that people can be happy while in pain and unhappy while experiencing pleasure. While the philosophical and semantic ramifications of the term “happiness” are still far away from being well-defined on a universal basis, it is generally accepted […]
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Saturday, February 23rd, 2008
Steps Toward Inner Peace Reflections
Since I posted the Steps Toward Inner Peace and the documentary about Peace Pilgrim I’ve gotten many letters of appreciation from people all over the world, which just proves how universally inspiring genuine spiritual truth is. I wanted to just pick o…
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Saturday, February 23rd, 2008
Memories of Gita
At LA Rathayatra, I witnessed how people were in awe of him. I cannot help but think he influenced the minds of the people who saw and met him. Some realizing they were eating such a wonderful animal in their daily diet and perhaps becoming vegetarian or at least swearing off eating cows.
Srila Prabhupada often commented how if the people would do this one thing (stop cow killing) the consciousness of the world would change for the better. All glories to Gita, a sweet servant of the Lord!
Submitted by Tranakarta das (ACBSP)
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Saturday, February 23rd, 2008
February Past and Present
I was planning to go to New York City this weekend but a major storm ended that plan. We will try again next weekend.
Instead I am watching the birds and checking out the witchazel. We had a couple of record setting warm days the first week of February so it came into bloom, […]
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Friday, February 22nd, 2008
More On The Fire at RVC Temple
Right now the only real damage is to a series of spots on the temple floor that have been warped by the water, but it certainly is repairable, and we are also working on getting some maintenance to our trusted sprinkler system, which saved the day during the fire and has likely guaranteed itself a […]