Jagat

Since arriving in Montreal I have been having dreams. I don't really know why, it may be the coffee-drinking that I started since I came here. My son had purchased a whole box of coffee beans from a wide variety of countries and had become something of a fledgling connoisseur. So it is a part of what he left behind that I am consuming in his honor and memory.

The entire Brzezinski and Campeano families have been shocked and devastated by the news that my son Pavel (30 years old) disappeared in a popular wilderness and mountain biking area near Quebec City, Vallée du Bras-nord . He went up last Sunday, the 15th, and went missing on the same day. We have no idea what happened to him.  He was a beautiful child, smart, talented, full of potential. He had growing pains, but was just coming through them all -- he finally got his computer science degree, got a good paying job he liked doing, had friends and a girlfriend. Life was looking up for him like never before. He had seemingly come through a dark zone and was opening up to a life of achievement. It is terrible not to know what happened to him. It is terrible to see it all come to such a sudden and meaningless end. He was blessed in so many ways. From childhood he had been hearing the Holy Name. He had taken prasada and loved it. He was a lifelong vegetarian, and a great advertisement...

Alanah and Jamie, a nice young couple from Nova Scotia, who are students staying here at Jiva, have been working the garden with organic methods and are breathing life into it. With our guests from Bhakti Marg contributing, the compost heaps are growing exponentially The time they have on their hands has given a positive result. Here it is April 23, 2020.  We have been in lockdown for more than a month. For some time now I have been reluctant to write and especially indifferent about revealing my personal situation. There were a couple of things that I did want  to say. I came back from Canada after a three month stay back in September last year. I think I was already on a bit of a downturn before leaving, with the residue of all that Vrindavan Today business that I went through back then. The whole episode still traumatizes me. Dr. Martins is here on the Jiva premises somewhere, but he is practicing social distancing with vigor and I have barely seen him once or twic...

Photo taken on Feb. 26, which was my 70th birthday. Sorry to post a picture of myself here. Sorry I have no photos, camera not working. Hopefully I will be able to add later. One may well ask, at least a devotee might ask, what greater good fortune could befall one than to be stuck in Vrindavan and unable to leave? The Covid-19 phenomenon has struck here like everywhere else in the world, and although India does not seem to have been hit as hard as the US, we should logically expect it to spread in this still mostly undeveloped country. Nevertheless, the official lockdown, which has been in place for more than ten days now, appears to be administered quite effectively, sometimes quite aggressively. I don't know much about what is going on outside as I am very happily sitting inside and taking full advantage of the peace and quiet. Reduced vehicle traffic and industrial activity due to the pandemic have resulted in a sparkling blue sky, with practically no khaki haze on the...

The roof at Parananda Sukhada Kunj. There is some painting work to be don. I am thinking to have some shlokas painted on the walls, either from VMA or RRSN or maybe Dhruvadas . yad rādhā-pada-kiṅkarī-kṛta-hṛdā samyag bhaved gocaraṁ dhyeyaṁ naiva kadāpi yad dhṛdi vinā tasyāḥ kṛpā-sparśataḥ | yat premāmṛta-sindhu-sāra-rasadaṁ pāpaika-bhājām api tad vṛndāvana-duṣpraveśa-mahimāścaryaṁ hṛdi sphūrjatu || May the wondrous glories of Vrindavan, the understanding of which is so difficult to reach, which are only completely accessible to the heart that has become absorbed in service to Radha's lotus feet, which can never be meditated upon without the touch of Radha's mercy, and which bestows the flavors of the essence of the ocean of nectar of Prema, be manifest even to those who are devoted to a sinful life, like me. (RRSN 266) Madness is best reserved for the silence of the night when one's alone, without reservations, and out of sight. I probably have n...

śrīmad-vṛndā-kānane ratna-vallī- vṛkṣaiś citra-jyotir-ānanda-puṣpaiḥ | kīrṇe svarṇa-sthaly-udañcat-kadamba- cchāyāyāṁ naś cakṣuṣī gaura-nīle || In Vrinda's beautiful forest, sprinkled thickly with jewel vines and trees, their flowers shedding colorful joyful light, under the shade of a kadamba tree risen from golden ground, that fair and dark couple now fills our eyes. This verse strikes me as a bit of an interlude, a reversion to te kind of meditation that we saw in verses 2.30-32 , so it fits a general movement here to a meditation on the eternal abode. This is especially so since the next few verses continue a theme to which it seems Prabodhananda has been building. I have always found it difficult not to play a role in my own explanation of these verses, though it is, for all intents and purposes, freeing oneself of one's worldly identity, even that of the sādhaka-deha itself, to become immersed in that mood of the divine madhura-rasa . But I have to...

The procession around Radha Kund and Shyam Kund At 7.30 yesterday morning, when most of us at the Jiva Institute were still engaged in our morning bhajan, Manjari came to my neighbor Pradeep Das’s door and in a trembling voice announced that their Guru, Ananta Das Babaji, the Mahant of Radha Kund, had left his body a few minutes before. There are three initiated disciples of Mahanta Maharaj living at Jiva. They immediately made arrangements to go to Radha Kund. I joined them. We traveled in silence, each preoccupied by our own memories of Pandit Baba By some turn of events, Babaji had left his body in Vrindavan and was being transported by ambulance to the Gopinath temple in Radha Kund, where he lay in state for a few hours near the samadhi temple of Srila Raghunath Das Goswami, whose throne he had adorned for the past three decades. There I sat with the kirtaniyas, thinking that I am only a distant admirer of Babaji Maharaj and I should not get in the way of his disciples and ...

There is an old children's book by Dr. Seuss, To think that I saw it on Mulberry Street , where a child imagines fabulous events on the quiet neighborhood street he has to follow to go to school. I wasn't making anything up, but it seemed that there were bands and parades, camel-drawn carts and tractors pulling trailers full of Brijbasis and all manner of things that would be strange if one was not from here. But ever since I got back from Bengal I have been in a kind of limbo in the Jiva Institute, living in Braj but almost not here at all, in a strange paradoxical way. So this was really the first time out of the confines of Jiva since I got here more than a month ago. I didn't take any pictures. I was trying to take brain pictures. On Dwadashi I went to Radha Kund I saw a crowded street of people flowing in both directions and a constant stream of vehicles the mood was joyous. The month is Karttik. There are Radhe Shyam songs in the air from morning to night...

"On Ekadashi I was visited by old friend Ralph Neuburger [Radharaman Das] who donated me his vast library of Gaudiya granthas and manuscripts, as he is migrating." ( Advaita Das ) I was a bit surprised the other day when my old friend Advaita Dasji from Holland sent me a postcard I had written from Nabadwip to Radharaman Das way back on New Year's Eve, 1983. "Radharaman was here. He cleared out his godown here and gave me his entire collection of books, khatas, handwritten documents and letters from Braj. Among them was this letter you wrote him on December 31, 1983." Once again, I was completely baffled about the context of the letter. My bad memory astounds me. Obviously some untoward incident had taken place, but I could not recall at all what it was all about. I asked Advaita and he wrote back to me telling me that he remembered the whole thing very well. "You and Gadadhar Pran stayed in his kutir one night on the way back from Radha Kund t...