Change Will Do You Good

No less a personality than Gandhi weighs in with 10 ways to make this big blue-greenish globe a more hospitable and spiritual place to live in. I particularly like and relate to this one right now...

4. Without action you aren’t going anywhere.

“An ounce of practice is worth more than tons of preaching.”

Without taking action very little will be done. However, taking action can be hard and difficult. There can be much inner resistance.

And so you may resort to preaching, as Gandhi says. Or reading and studying endlessly. And feeling like you are moving forward. But getting little or no practical results in real life.

So, to really get where you want to go and to really understand yourself and your world you need to practice. Books can mostly just bring you knowledge. You have to take action and translate that knowledge into results and understanding.

I realize more and more that I'm not an "ideal" person. I'm all for the big picture, but to really motivate me, I need the plan, and how I can be of service to it. It's a big pet-peeve of mine, and a common experience in my life, showing my own shortcomings, to be surrounded by well-wishers and friends with a hell of an idea, only to watch that idea float into space mere moments later, never to be realized.

We gotta boil the milk! That means something to my fellow devotees, but to each and all it means we have to put into practice and live, breathe, think, and eat the Truth! Come down to Earth from the satellite-spheres of our virtual realities and communicate and inspire one and another to grab hold of the divine harmony that is our God-given right. It's time to be an Earthling (as HH Varsana Swami would say).

The Most Censored Stories of 2008.

Bewildered by false ego, strength, pride, lust and anger, the demons become envious of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, who is situated in their own bodies and in the bodies of others, and blaspheme against the real religion. Bhavagad-Gita 16:18
Every year Project Censored, a website devotes to revealing "the news that didn't make the news" presents its top 25 censored stories of the past year. This year's list is no less chilling than its predecessors, and it's more and more motivation to cling less and less to the illusions of this world. At the same time, it's also a big motivation for us to get up up up off our Vaisnava behinds and saturate this place with the Holy Name.

Check out this year's list here.

The Solar Garden of Eden

Two of New Vrindaban Dham's dearest devotees, HG Vyasasan Prabhu and HG Loka-Drsti Prabhu, have started up a wonderful home decor and garden business based entirely around solar power. Their website is real snazzy and their environmentally enlightened products are the real deal.

Check it all out here at www.solargardenofeden.com

Aho! Mitakuye Oyasin

A few moon-lit nights back, by the mercy of HG Madhava Ghosh Prabhu and HG Soma Prabhu, I was able to participate in my first sacred sweat lodge ceremony. I'll leave you with the impressions...a straight narrative isn't going to cut it. It isn't going to make you sweat like we all did.....

Grandfathers....Giriraja. Ghosh twinkled his eye in his way, promised it would be an adventure. I just wanted to take a nap on the ride there. This ancient tradition...Ghosh told me I would die and suffer, burn away my impurities. Seeing as that I have mounds and mounds of all kinds of collections of unholiness from lifetimes uncountable, a little heat might go a long way. And hey, if Adi-Guru was down for a sweat, I was down too.

Aho! Haribol! Even in the drizzle, as the Holy Name rose itself into the clean, green air, there was no need for faith that the atmosphere was ready, willing, and able to clear our minds and hearts. But still that faith was there. The fire initially gave itself with difficulty, reluctance...fanning the flames with vigor, that strength of determination that comes automatically from trials and tests of adversity and also from the trust of loving relationships. We banged drums and stood in the mud...Our Mother waiting for us to return to her womb.

Om Namo Bhagavate Vasudevaya! Her womb...It is said that when we are within our mother's womb, we are so uncomfortable at the prospect of another life in this material world, that we pray with all urgency at our disposal to Krsna to give the upcoming life in service to Him. This would be the barometer of our experience this evening...

Entering the lodge now, smudged, all brothers, deep respect, a careful anxiety and anticipation. Giriraja...The first five stones enter to our silence. I inhale...exhale, trusting You to do what's right, for You can only do what is right for me, even if my whitebread middle-class mind recoils and flees in fear. I sit determined, stuck to the hottest spot in the lodge, nowhere else to be. I am not my body.

Hey Govinda! The first big wave of heat hits...I wail. Nothing else to do. Don't move. Watch for ashes. Hey Govinda! Soon I start to understand....We swim, deeper and deeper. Our only breath is our prayer, collective and personal. All the halfhearted statements I may make to Your Lotus Feet throughout the day now are the only thing on my mind. Sweat rolls...brothers together. So many things I desire...for now the steam is able to cut through the layers of dust upon my heart. There at the core is the one...sincerity, seva, commitment to vows, taking full shelter of my Guru Maharaja. It becomes one prayer....Hare Krsna Hare Krsna...I realize that if I could just chant my japa always in such heat, such sweat, I would be on the right track.

Grandfather, Mysterious One,
We search for you along this
Great Red Road you have set us on.

Sky Father, Tunkashila,
We thank you for this world.
We thank you for our own existence.
We ask only for your blessing and for your instruction.

Grandfather, Sacred One,
Put our feet on the holy path that leads to you,
and give us the strength and the will
to lead ourselves and our children
past the darkness we have entered.
Teach us to heal ourselves,
to heal each other and to heal the world.

Let us begin this very day,
this very hour,
the Great Healing to come.
Let us walk the Red Road in Peace.

Nrisimham adim sharanam prapadye....Adi-Guru delivers this prayer in his comforting tone of sound...Exactly what I was thinking. Couldn't think of a better place to leave this 80's made Ford vehicle that is my body, but so much work to do. All glories to Prabhupada! All glories to the devotees in this circle, on our Mother Earth! Despite all my faults, addictions, and inabilities, please let me serve all living entities sincerely.

Cool air...we exit offering respects to all our relations, Grandfathers, Giriraja....Giriraja, I beheld You by Your mercy a few months back on sweet parikrama. Now You behold me and give me the heat of your purity so that I may recognize further and further that Your strength is always with me.

Aho! Mitakuye Oyasin (All My Relations)

For Bhakta-Joe...

This one is for my dearest transcendental chum and fellow graduate of the Ann Arbor Asrama, HG Bhakta-Joe Swift aka Swift aka Joe-Dasa, this blog's biggest fan, who by his own account checks this lowly website no less than three times daily. His absorption in this blog is but a spark of the absorption he has for the Holy Name, and I aspire to taste what he is tasting one day.

This is a short excerpt from Prabhupada's purport to verse 2.9.36, the last of the nutshell verses of the Srimad-Bhagavatam. I take a lot of comfort from this passage, because this has been a rough few months for me as I stumble and bumble my way onto this most sublime path of devotional service. Many tests I haven't passed, and a few I have scraped by. I know I am not qualified. I know I am still addicted to so many sinful actvities. I know I am very much inexpert in so many aspects of this wonderful process, yet I know that as long as I keep going, under the proper guidance of all those exalted above me, then the fire of the Lord's love will burn away all that keeps me from the true desire of my heart, which is to serve all living entities as a devotee of Lord Caitanya, with all sincerity, earnestness, skill, and creativity.

"Therefore there is no need to seek properly qualified candidates for discharging devotional service to the Lord. Let them be either well behaved or ill trained, let them be either learned or fools, let them be either grossly attached or in the renounced order of life, let them be liberated souls or desirous of salvation, let them be inexpert in the discharge of devotional service or expert in the same, all of them can be elevated to the supreme position by discharging devotional service under the proper guidance....Even if a person is fully addicted to all sorts of sinful acts, if he happens to be engaged in the loving transcendental service of the Lord under proper guidance, he is to be considered the most perfect holy man without a doubt. And thus any person, whatsoever and whosoever he or she may be — even the fallen woman, the less intelligent laborer, the dull mercantile man, or even a man lower than all these — can attain the highest perfection of life by going back home, back to Godhead, provided he or she takes shelter of the lotus feet of the Lord in all earnestness. This sincere earnestness is the only qualification that can lead one to the highest perfectional stage of life, and unless and until such real earnestness is aroused, there is a difference between cleanliness or uncleanliness, learning or nonlearning, in the material estimation. Fire is always fire, and thus if someone touches the fire, knowingly or unknowingly, the fire will act in its own way without discrimination. The principle is: harir harati pāpāni duṣṭa-cittair api smṛtaḥ. The all-powerful Lord can purify the devotee of all sinful reactions, just as the sun can sterilize all sorts of infections by its powerful rays."