Jagat

It has been hard to keep up on my correspondence. It seems that the busier I get, the more work I take on. This weekend, believe it or not, I gave Bhagavad-gita classes in Hindi on both Saturday and Sunday at the Madhuban temple in Muni-ki-reti , not far from Ram Jhula. I actually proposed myself earlier last week as I really felt the need to do some direct bhakti activity or bhakta sanga. When introducing myself, I did not hide anything about my checkered (in Iskcon terms) past. When you see Madhuban, it makes you appreciate what Srila Prabhupada accomplished. Bhakti Yoga Swami has done an admirable job of building a striking temple with beautiful deities--Gaura Nitai, Radha Krishna and Jagannath-Baladeva-Subhadra. The guest house and restaurant are modeled on the Vrindavan concept and maintain the same if not a higher standard. One of the temple’s major annual events is the Rathayatra, which they conduct not only in Rishikesh, but in Dehradun, Hardwar and other towns in the region. T...

This morning we had a lengthened meditation session, 3 1/2 hours at one shot, with Swami Veda there for about half the time. Swami Veda said it was a penance for the Gurukula students for not learning their hatha yoga lessons well enough, or something like that. It was voluntary for the rest of us. I was fairly concentrated for about 2 1/2 hours, then I switched over to Harinam, which does not require quite the same kind of concentration. You can just scream out the Names in your mind and forget the rest. I may have mentioned that there is one young man here, Suresh, who was formerly with Iskcon in Bombay. We talked a bit about the way japa is done in Iskcon and whether it was effective. My personal feeling is that no doubt the Holy Name has a beneficial effect, but Jiva Goswami says that the diksha mantras are there because we need to correct bad samskaras. To me, that means that the mantras are about a special kind of concentration that the facility of Harinam does not need, at least...