Jagat

I don't go out all that much, but whenever I do, the transformations that are taking place in Vrindavan on a day-to-day basis are constantly at the forefront of my perceptions. The other evening I cycled the length of the Chattikara Road from NH2 to the house and found it quite amazing to see how rapidly everything is mutating. But that is quite the road at night now. New buildings -- hotels, ashrams, guesthouses, apartment buildings, residential developments, temples -- popping up everywhere, many of them looking quite posh in the night with their glass and polished granite facades and colored neon signage. With the dark night backdrop obscuring the old Vrindavan from view, one could be forgiven for thinking we were actually in at least the 20th century. I went into the huge Akshaya Patra complex and attended arati there. It is a separate ISKCON, just a couple of centimeters different enough to be a "not-ISKCON", with a personality quite different from Krishna Bal...

With Malati Lata Dasi on Govardhan Parikrama in 2005. This is the Dauji temple in Puchari  where I stayed in 1980. It is now a Nimbarki ashram and being well taken care of. A few days ago I was on a bit of a roll... and it stirred up so many memories of my life in Nabadwip and Braj in the early 80s. In my kaupin, the sweat rolling down my chest as I chanted japa, the heat reminded me of the way my summer days back then were spent sitting, almost entirely inactive except for chanting, meditating and studying. I was feeling a bit of appreciation for the immobilizing heat. It seems to push you inward... not such a bad thing, on the whole, despite all the prejudices and pressures to externalize, externalize, externalize. After reading Ramdas's book , I was thinking about his idea of laminar flows ... that material and spiritual activities are separate and parallel streams that do not really affect one another, existing side by side, ebbing and flowing to their own rhythms. Ramd...