Jagat

Binode Baba with Pandit.  Well I am back, folks. Radhe Radhe. Barsana is really my best place right now. I feel so natural there. I love the narrow lanes and streets. I love the sandstone stairways that go up to the temple. The upward climb is invigorating and I try to do it without stopping or slowing my gait. As I write I can feel the effects in my upper calves. I also love going on the Parikrama around the hill with Vinode Baba and his entourage. Brahmachala is amazing. The view from Ladili Lal's wide deck is like a glow of orange brown effulgence in the orange setting sun sky. When you walk along the ridge from Maan Mandir towards the Jaipur temple, with all these shriveled trees and the skinny monkeys it seems to shimmer with a divine luster. The monkeys run like mad when Vinode Baba comes disttributing his goodies -- sweets and chapatis. I don't think there is that much food on the mountain. The monkeys in Barsana are much smaller than their cousins in Vrinda...

I have been enjoying getting back into the "groove" as it were. I had been off-kilter since the latter portion of the Jiva Tirtha program and was finding it hard to orient myself. Too many foreigners!!! Going to Barsana and immersing myself in Braj bhava and Bhakti Sandarbha has been tremendously rehabilitating. The company of Binode Bihari Baba in particular has been very salutary. Kirtan each night with him and his core group -- Pandit, Madhu Baba and Ram Kamal Dasji -- was a very powerful reinitiation into the Yuga Dharma. The heat was stifling. I had a room on the top floor of the Radhika Nivas guesthouse. 250 Rs. a night. No A/C or cooler. I spent my days sleeping and working on Bhakti Sandarbha . In the evening I would go to the Ladli temple and drink in the ambience. Then at about nine I would go to Binode Bihari Baba's ashram for kirtan. For my main meal I was going either to Binode Baba's or to Ladli Das Babaji's ashram in Radhika Bagh. I sl...