OUT OF THIS WORLD

Today I start my long journey to New Vrindaban and I am very excited about it, especially since I’ve heard they have cows and goats and peacocks and swans and raccoons and deer and cats and even a donkey! Of course I am looking forward to seeing the beautiful deities and associating with many wonderful devotees too.

I am going for the second international conference of the ISKCON Academy of Arts and Sciences (IAAS) which I am helping to organize next weekend. The theme of the conference is “ISKCON Scholarship and the World: Academic and Cultural Contributions”, and it should be very interesting. The conference participants are devotee scholars who are involved in academics. The schedule and abstracts etc. are here. The conference is by invitation only but its not too late to apply for an invitation if you meet the criteria specified in the first announcement and you’d like to come along.

For the past few days I have been taking digital photos of each page of an old Bengali book. The book is so old and crumbly that I have to be very gentle, and using a scanner would be too damaging. I take photos of about 40 pages, then transfer the photos from my camera to my computer, rename them for future reference, delete the photos from the camera (it has a small memory), check on the computer that the photos are not blurry (I am not a good photographer), re-take the photos for any blurred pages, transfer the new shots to the computer, rename them, then start the same process again with the next 40 or so pages. I can think of nothing more mind-numbingly boring to do and it is hard for me to understand how some people actually like to do this kind of thing and even have full-time permanent jobs that involve such repetitive tasks that require so much attention to detail.

The only thing that is keeping me going, and the only reason that this hasn’t driven me complete mad yet, is knowing that this book is written by Bimalaprasada Siddhanta-Sarasvati (aka Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur) and that I am helping to preserve our Gaudiya Vaisnava heritage.

The book is the Vrihaspati and it is dated 1897. In this book, Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur provides Bengali translations and commentary on the Goladhyaya of the Siddhanta-siromani of Bhaskara, as well as the Laghu Jataka of Varahamihira, and he also gives some astronomical tables that I presume he calculated himself.

I suppose that the moral of this blog post is that unbearable tasks become bearable when done for Krishna. This reminds me of the time when I took some students from the University of Southampton to Bhaktivedanta Manor for the weekend and their kitchen service was to cut up big blocks of cheese into lots of small cubes. One of them remarked that “I never knew that cutting cheese could be so much fun!” – they had understood that doing something for Krishna is quite different to doing something for material gain. I have had similar experiences rolling hundreds of puris for the Sunday feast.

Still, if I had to do this book photography for more than a week, I doubt that my surrender or devotion would stretch that far. Hopefully I will finish in the next couple of days.

When I have finished taking the photos, I will try to get the book preserved because this may be the only remaining copy of the book in existence. I’ll also try to find someone who can translate the book from Bengali to English so that the book can be used for research purposes for the Temple of the Vedic Planetarium in Mayapura, but it is a very difficult translation task since the translator must know Bengali, Sanskrit, English and mathematical astronomy. Please let me know if you have ever met such a person!

I have decided to break my silence on this blog to announce my personaldna.com personality type, following in the footsteps of the great Vaisnavas that have gone before me (Sitapati, Candidasa, Dave Jorm).

According to the test I am a “respectful inventor.” The full report is here.

I think it is mostly accurate. The part that might surprise some of my friends is where it says I am laid-back and easy-going, calm and centered. Although my natural condition is like that, I haven’t been so much that way for a while. I would say that this is due to my not being properly situated. The term properly situated is a bit of an ISKCONism. To me it basically means being in a situation that feels right for me, where I am more easily able to progress materially and spiritually. It means being involved mainly in activities that suit my propensities (personality) and having a living arrangement and lifestyle that matches too.

When a person is improperly situated for a long period of time, they are very likely to become stressed, even if they are by nature quite laid-back and easy-going. Sitapati wrote a good article (here) on his blog about the need to work according to our natural tendencies, or in our zone, as he puts it. I have been mostly outside my zone for quite some time now, but i am working on getting back into it.

What do you think is humanity’s greatest challenge? The X Prize Foundation is running a video contest to find out.

“The X PRIZE Foundation is an educational nonprofit prize institute whose mission is to create radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity.”

Sounds a bit like ISKCON.

You can see some of the entries here. I would like to see some Krishna conscious entries. Any devotees out there with video cameras want to try?

It would be nice to see some more Hare Krishna devotees out there in the Vlogosphere. There are some videos of devotees chanting at festivals and some videos of Prabhupada, but not much in the style of a Vlog. The closest thing I have seen so far to a KC Vlog is a couple of Hare Krishna’s in wigs playing guitar and singing Hare Krishna like some rock stars (here). It was quite amusing but we also have a serious message to communicate and the Vlogosphere does seem like a powerful medium. Oh yes, and I recall seeing some devotees from Brisbane chanting. But we need more! Speak to the camera and speak to the world!

Video Blogging Week 2007 is coming up very soon. So, any devotees out there with a video camera, now’s a good time to start. Pretty soon people all over the world could be watching your KC Vlogs on their mobile phones.

Now I have almost convinced myself to get a video camera.

I’ve been brushing up on my Sanskrit recently. I did take some lessons a few years ago but I didn’t use my knowledge much since then, so now I needed a refresher course as I am preparing for graduate studies on the Bhagavata Purana (Srimad Bhagavatam). I have been using “Beginning Sanskrit” by Dermot Killingley and it is going well. He goes quite slowly but you learn to use your knowledge straight away with helpful excercises and lots of repetition. I have tried Coulson’s “Teach Yourself Sanskrit” before but I didn’t like it and didn’t get very far with it. Killingley’s book suits my way of learning and I would definitely recommend it to others.

Recently I had an idea. Some of my ideas are good and some are not so good. I’m not sure which category this new idea fits in. It goes like this:

If I don’t manage to chant my 16 rounds one day, I should make them up the next day.

There are approx. 23 years that I didn’t manage to chant my 16 rounds (before I met the devotees and started chanting).

For approx. 2.5 years I chanted an extra 16 rounds per day, and for approx. 2 years I chanted an extra 9 rounds per day.

Therefore I have approx. 20.5 x 365 x 16 - 2 x 365 x 9 = 119720 - 6570 = 113150 rounds to catch up for this lifetime. (forget the previous lives!)

If I chant an extra 16 rounds per day for the next 20 years I will be able to catch up all the rounds I ever missed in this lifetime! I could spread this debt over 40 years by chanting only 8 extra rounds per day.

Now, the problem is that I don’t know how many years I have left in this lifetime. If I chant 64 rounds per day, I can make up my rounds in less than 6.5 years. Maybe I have that much time left. But, oh no! I don’t think I can manage 64 rounds per day right now.

Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. What do you think? I probably could have chanted another couple of rounds in the time it took me to think this up and make the calculations!

It’s been a long time since I last wrote anything on this blog. Last time I wrote, I was living at the temple in Brisbane, Australia. Things didn’t work out there and I ended up homeless again shortly after my last blog entry. Finally, in January I got a place to live in a small historic town called Llantrisant in Wales, and that’s where I am now.

I am pretty busy these days juggling house work (the down side to having a home!), my research work for the Vedic Planetarium in Mayapur, and my science work at Cardiff University, and now I will try to add this blog to my juggling act. Please forgive me if I sometimes drop one or all of the above.

In the fourth week of events, I led a meditation workshop. There were about 6 of us there. It was exam week so I was not expecting a big turnout anyway.

I began with a brief talk about meditation, and then we did some relaxation. I asked the students to sit comfortably with their eyes closed and focus on their breath, trying to forget about their exams and all the other things on their mind.

Most students go through a day at university without once stopping to relax. In an average day on campus the students will fill their minds with heaps of information from lectures and books, they will eat, drink, talk, worry about their future. Going home at the end of the day, if not talking with friends, their minds will tick over with plans for the night or for the weekend, or for the rest of their lives. No time to stop and just breath.

Even when the students in this workshop did stop and relax, they could not achieve the peacefulness they desired. They reported that they were unable to control the mind and that although they tried not to think about their exams, those thoughts still kept coming to their minds, causing stress.

I explained to them that their minds need something to focus on. I also told them (in a nice way, of course) that their minds are filled with junk due to the lack of a proper cleansing routine. Then we tried some of the solution: mantra meditation. We started with the mantra “Aum.” We chanted this several times and most liked it, though some found it difficult to pronounce.

Next we chanted “Nitai Gauranga.” As with “Aum,” we chanted in unison, drawing out all the syllables. This may not be a prescribed Vedic mantra, but I have found that it is very effective in preparing students for the Mahamantra. It is very easy to feel happiness in chanting “Nitai Gauranga” and it breaks down some inhibitions before moving on to more difficult mantras.

Finally we chanted the Mahamantra (the Hare Krishna mantra) together on beads. We only chanted about quarter of a round because one girl had to leave by that time for another engagement. One of the other students who had just started to chant at home commented that it was much easier to chant together with other people and that he found it very hard to concentrate at home. I told him that it would become easier with practice, and after some time, if practiced properly, he would come to relish it.

As usual we finished with some prasada snacks. These students can’t get enough halava

In the third week of events, the topic for discussion was “Understanding your karma.” I gave a short talk on the topic, interspersed by questions and discussion, and we read several verses from the Bhagavad-gita as we went along.

As there were a few new people there, we started with the very basics, verse 2.12:

“Never was there a time when I did not exist, nor you, nor all these kings; nor in the future shall any of us cease to be.”

We discussed about the difference between the body and the self, and how we are eternally individuals. This last point is often a new one for students today as they have usually heard from various sources that when they “merge into oneness” they will lose their individuality. However, most students seem not to be particularly attached to that idea and, when presented with the philosophy of the Bhagavad-gita as it is, they don’t have a big problem with it.

Then we read a few other verses from the second chapter, including 2.13 and 2.22 which led us into a discussion about reincarnation. I explained that the soul transmigrates through different species. The question that usually comes next is “How do I know what type of body I will get next?” And that is where the discussion about karma begins.

We read several verses from the eighth chapter, beginning with verse 8.3:

“The Supreme Personality of Godhead said: The indestructible, transcendental living entity is called Brahman, and his eternal nature is called adhyatma, the self. Action pertaining to the development of the material bodies of the living entities is called karma, or fruitive activities”

We talked about good karma and bad karma and how both these types of karma keep us stuck in the material world, going around and around in the cycle of birth and death (samsara). Finally we discussed how to perform activities without karma (akarma) and how to break out of this cycle and return to the spiritual world through bhakti yoga.

The eighth chapter ends with a great purport. OK, so they are all great. You can read the whole purport here. For those with less time, here’s an excerpt (the last paragraph):

“One who has a little faith in Bhagavad-gita should learn Bhagavad-gita from a devotee, because in the beginning of the Fourth Chapter it is stated clearly that Bhagavad-gita can be understood only by devotees; no one else can perfectly understand the purpose of Bhagavad-gita. One should therefore learn Bhagavad-gita from a devotee of Krishna, not from mental speculators. This is a sign of faith. When one searches for a devotee and finally gets a devotee’s association one actually begins to study and understand Bhagavad-gita. By advancement in the association of the devotee one is placed in devotional service, and this service dispels all one’s misgivings about Krishna, or God, and Krishna’s activities, form, pastimes, name and other features. After these misgivings have been perfectly cleared away, one becomes fixed in one’s study. Then one relishes the study of Bhagavad-gita and attains the state of feeling always Krishna conscious. In the advanced stage, one falls completely in love with Krishna. This highest perfectional stage of life enables the devotee to be transferred to Krishna’s abode in the spiritual sky, Goloka Vrindavana, where the devotee becomes eternally happy.”

I’m getting a bit behind on my KC@uni journal, so although the title says recent, this event is not so recent:

On May 25th, we had the second session in a series of four at the UQ Bhakti Yoga Club. For all these sessions we used a clubs and societies meeting room, next to the Red Room (campus bar). The talk/discussion was advertised as “India’s Spiritual Wisdom” on the flier we made for this semester. I was going to give the talk but fortunately my spiritual master, HH Devamrita Swami was in town, so I asked him if he would be so kind as to bless the BYC with his association. He agreed to give the talk. He had arrived in Brisbane the night before and I only asked him about it on the morning of the talk, so there was no time to do any extra advertising, but we did send the message out by email to some of our regulars.

When we arrived at the room, we set it up for the talk. Campus rooms tend to be a bit stark and uninviting. In our regular room we have a pile of chairs (of various old-fashioned colours and shapes), a couple of round plastic tables, one rectangular table, and a big white-board that is propped up by two mismatched chairs. It’s not exactly the tasteful decor and comfortable setting of Atma Yoga, but there is not much I can do about it, and students seem to be immune to the austerities of university interiors anyway. I just try to do my best to arrange the chairs as well as I can and make sure there is not too much mess in the room.

Nobody came for the talk so Sukanthi Radha dd, Brisbane’s top book distributor, went out to distribute some fliers and invite people. One new person came in the that way - she was on her way somewhere else but Sukanthi distracted her from that and brought her to the BYC. A couple of regulars also turned up a bit late so we began. I introduced Devamrita Swami as a disciple of Srila Prabhupada who has been practicing and teaching Bhakti Yoga for over thirty years and I mentioned his books and his travelling.

We decided to make this a question and answers discussion session. I started the discussion by addressing one of our regulars (a student of international relations) who has been reading the Bhagavad-gita and I asked if he had any questions on what he had been reading. He did, and the discussion continued from there.

One of the first lessons that Devamrita Swami gave to the students was about how to read a book. It had come out during the course of the discussion that a couple of them had been reading the Bhagavad-gita by “dipping-in” wherever the book happened to open for them, reading a bit here and a bit there, sometimes at the beginning, sometimes at the middle or end. Devamrita Swami explained that you start at the beginning of the book, you go on reading through the middile, and you finish at the end. I have often heard him say that it is not enough just to give people the books these days, you have to hold their hand and take them through it. Here were some of the future leaders of society, already at university, being taught, by a monk, the basics of how to read a book!

Most of the discussion centred on how to best help society, and how to rise above material sense enjoyment. All those present agreed that material sense enjoyment is ultmiately meaningless, not fully satisfying, and a distraction from their higher, spiritual aspirations, but they did not know how to control it. Devamrita Swami explained that by experiencing the higher taste in spiritual activities, they will no longer feel so attracted to the lower, material pleasures. At one point, the new student protested “but isn’t it natural, I mean we have these bodies, right, we have these senses, so we should try to satisfy them?” Devamrita Swami pointed out that this argument was based on a misunderstanding of the real purpose of our body and senses - our senses are actually not meant for our own enjoyment, they are meant for engaging in spiritual activities.

We finished with a tasty carrot cake and cream, lovingly prepared by Sukanthi Radha dd.

On May 18th I gave a talk for the Bhakti Yoga Club called “The meaning of yoga.” There were nine persons present, including myself and a couple of the other club organizers. Mainly, I described the dhyana yoga process but we also discussed karma yoga, jnana yoga and bhakti yoga. I recommended the bhakti process as the best (of course).

Some of the students had some misconceptions about bhakti yoga, considering it to be only suitable for a certain type of person, so I tried to clear up those doubts. One student thought that bhakti yoga is only for people who are into loving all of Gods creatures and hugging trees etc, whereas he is more interested in martial arts. I explained to him that Arjuna was a warrior and that Krishna taught him bhakti yoga on a battle field in between two opposing armies.

We also had some discussion about the nature of the self and whether or not there is anything higher than the self. A common misconception about the self is that “I am everything” and that therefore “there is nothing higher than me.” I explained that, whereas such ideas are quite popular these days, and although such ideas might make us feel good about ourselves if we believe in them, there is really no substantial basis to these ideas and it is better to acquire some real knowledge of the self. That knowledge can be found in the Bhagavad-gita and it can be realized through the process of bhakti yoga.

By the end of the discussion the questions turned more to the specifics of the bhakti yoga process. Most of the students who came for the talk already had a Bhagavad-gita As It Is, so I recommended that they read that to find out more about what bhakti yoga is.

We ended with prasada - some halava from Govinda’s.

There are three different types of suffering

1. Suffering due to the body or mind
2. Suffering due to other living entities
3. Suffering due to natural disturbances

Recently I have been dealing with types 1 and 2:

1. I went back to the doctor about my knee. I found out I had an infection there and I needed to use the crutches for another week. Using the crutches made my whiplash worse too.

2. I was attacked by some small living entities. Somehow I managed to get head lice. At the same time, my room at the temple became infested with some kind of biting bug that you can’t see but it makes you very itchy. I threw out the mattress and the bed and that seems to have solved the problem.

Despite these difficulties, I can’t really complain. Krishna is actually very kind. I surely deserve much worse karma than this, considering all of my previous sinful activities. It is only due to the small service that I have rendered to my spiritual master that my suffering is reduced.

Sanatana Goswami asked Lord Chaitanya:

“Who am I? Why do the threefold miseries always give me trouble? If I do not know this, how can I be benefited? Actually I do not know how to inquire about the goal of life and the process for obtaining it. Being merciful upon me, please explain all these truths.”
Chaitanya Charitamrita, Madhya Lila 20.102-3

Lord Chaitanya replied that “Lord Krishna has bestowed His full mercy upon you so that all these things are known to you. For you, the threefold miseries certainly do not exist. Since you possess Lord Krishna’s potency, you certainly know these things. However, it is the nature of a sadhu to inquire. Although he knows these things, the sadhu inquires for the sake of strictness.” So Lord Chaitanya went on to explain the position of the living entity and told Sanatana that although a living entity has the facility to live in either the material or the spiritual world, when he comes to the material world he suffers the threefold miseries of material existence because he is influenced by nescience, which covers his constitutional position. Not only did Lord Chaitanya explain our fearful condition in material existence but he also explained how to become free:

“When the living entity is attracted by the material energy, which is separate from Krsna, he is overpowered by fear. Because he is separated from the Supreme Personality of Godhead by the material energy, his conception of life is reversed. In other words, instead of being the eternal servant of Krsna, he becomes Krsna’s competitor. This is called viparyayo ‘smrtih. To nullify this mistake, one who is actually learned and advanced worships the Supreme Personality of Godhead as his spiritual master, worshipful Deity and source of life. He thus worships the Lord by the process of unalloyed devotional service.”
Chaitanya Charitamrita, Madhya Lila 20.119 (quoting from Srimad Bhagavatam 11.2.37)

Lord Chaitanya further described and categorized various transcendental forms of the Lord and then he gave information about our eternal relationship with Krishna (sambandha), the process of devotional service (abhideya), and life’s ultimate goal – love of Godhead (prayojana).

At least one good thing has come out of my recent material suffering – I have become more motivated to reflect on these important topics, to engage more seriously in the process of devotional service, and to attain the goal of life.

A couple of days ago I fell down, literally. I was on my way to the physiotherapist, to get some more treatment for my whiplash injuries, when I tripped over the pavement and flew through the air before landing hard on my knee. Ouch! So instead of going to the physio, I went to the doctor and he sent me for x-rays. Fortunately, the x-rays showed no signs of fracture but it is still quite painful and the doctor told me to use crutches until my knee gets better.

Now I am suffering with multiple injuries. I am realising how much I take the various working parts of my body for granted when, in reality, any one of them could stop working properly at any moment and cause so many difficulties. And there I was, thinking myself so independent.

The good news is that devotional service can be performed in any condition. My bodily activities may be more difficult now, but I can use this struggle as an opportunity to take more shelter of Krishna. I expect bigger tests in the future. One day this body will come to an end. My current small struggles are like preliminary exercises to help me pass that final test.

The prasada and book table at the Uni of Queensland went well yesterday. We sold all the samosas and carrot halava and sold about 6 books, including 2 Bhagavad-gitas. A lot of students were interested in our society and took fliers, and some of them signed up for the email list. The samosas were a big hit and many students asked us to do this every week.

The table, the cooks, the organizers, and the sales persons.

Here’s an update on the KC@uni project.

Last weekend I met with Janaka, the organizer of the UQ Bhakti Yoga Club and we talked about organizing some talks/discussions once a week at UQ. We also decided to do some more advertising for the club activities. Currently there is a yoga class once a week. Up until this week the only advertising was done through the club’s email list but on Monday we put up some posters around the St. Lucia campus. I took one of the old posters that I made for the Southampton uni Vedic Society several years ago, and I made some changes to the text. You can download the poster as a word document here.

I went along for the yoga this Wednesday and four other people came. Next week the yoga class will happen in one of the busiest parts of the campus, on the grass near the library. We are doing this as part of diversity week and it is advertised in the diversity week poster. Hopefully it will attract some more people to join in.

We have booked a room on campus for the talks and discussions that start from next Thursday. I have made a poster/flier to cover the rest of the semester. You can see it below. The poster was originally made by Candidasa for use in Southampton and I just changed the text to advertise the UQ events.

On Monday we have a food stall on campus for diversity week. We will sell some prasada snacks and we’ll also use that as an opportunity to advertise our club and make contact with potential members. We’ll have some books on the stall too.

I am still collecting names and email addresses of interested students at Griffith Uni. Until we have a club there, I will invite those students to the UQ club. I am starting to get some contacts at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) too.