Jagat

Sunset on te banks of the Yamuna. PC Thinking Particle I have usually avoided talking about environmental issues on this blog. Vrindavan Today was really meant for that, and I am really happy that Jagannath Poddar is taking the environmental side of Vrindavan consciousness very seriously and is leading Vrindavan Today into a more activist direction.  Part of the Braj Vrindavan Heritage Alliance (BVHA) strategy that I participated in was to administer the Save Yamuna to Save Vrindavan FB page that was first started by Vaishnavacharya Chandan Goswami . It is now being jointly run by me and Katie Jo WalterShoemaker . Katie Jo, like many others, is driven to distraction by the state of the world environment, and like many people whose heart lies in Vrindavan, is trying to do something about it by focusing on the Yamuna and water issues.. The more I think about it, an active environmentalism should be an essential part of the Krishna conscious movement. It is someth...

Vrindavan summer temperatures are hitting record breaking highs as a month-long heat wave strikes the north of India. This is an annual occurrence towards the end of the hot season as everyone anxiously waits for the monsoon to come. But it appears this year that things are a bit more severe and the heat wave is getting worse with new record temperatures over 50 degrees Celsius. Global news services are taking note and counting the deaths. Global warming means extreme weather events such as this. We spend a lot of time worrying about the forlorn state of the Yamuna: More and more water has to be taken for agriculture and the teeming millions of the capital region metropolis, while the city's filth drains into the Yamuna. Water scarcity, drought, desertification -- these are among the very real dangers that accompany the warming of the planet. These effects of development and global warming are now inevitable, "locked in" as the scientists like to say. We do ...

 Yogiraj Prem Prakashji responded to a recent article addressing environmental concerns and I started to answer, but it spun out of control and became too long for a comment. And it was also becoming incoherent. So I decided to give it a little more thought and write it as a separate article. The environmental issue in Vrindavan is really a big deal. It is so everywhere in the world, but here we can feel it much more acutely. People in the "first world" can only imagine the kind of environmental degradation that is ongoing in India. Just think: India has four times as many people and only one-third the terrain of the US, what to speak of Canada. Many people are enthused by India's material progress and the rapid urbanization, but it is a bit harder for me to join the chorus. Every so-called step forward simply means more of the same haphazard construction of ugly buildings surrounded by heaps of refuse and open, garbage-filled drains emptying into what were once c...

This morning I bit the bullet and posted the following on Vrindavan Today : Dear friends, lovers and well-wishers of Vrindavan Dham, Due to lack of time and funding, it is not possible for me to continue with this project for the time being. If anyone wishes to sponsor this important endeavor so that we can get competent help and material facilities, we welcome their help. Vrindavan Dham, Braj and India as a whole, are at a crossroads. Indeed, the entire world is facing tremendous challenges in the coming century. In many ways, Vrindavan is a microcosm of those challenges. The clash between modernity, with its technological advances on the one side and its neo-liberal economic rapaciousness and consumerist ethic on the other, and spirituality, which values above all the internal evolution of the individual and one's relation to God, other human beings and the environment, is perhaps nowhere more transparently manifest than here. Vrindavan Today is meant to both chronicle ...

Boat on Yamuna near Keshi Ghat. Well-meaning volunteers diverted the Yamuna stream to come to the ghat, but polluted water draining into the river from town sewers still predominates. If I had to say what the main event for me was in 2011, it was definitely the move to Vrindavan. Since the end of 2007, I have been spending most of my time at the Swami Rama Sadhaka Grama in Rishikesh, which was recently named the fourth best yoga ashram in India. Life was good there and, in terms of my own spiritual practices, I was given plenty of time to study, learn, teach and write. This year, I finished editing the revised and enlarged edition of Swami Veda Bharati's Yoga-sütras.  I went back in September for a month to complete the project, and there are still bits and pieces left. I am also signed on with Swami Veda to work on a couple of other books. I like Swami Veda and I like his people; I also like the ashram. But Vrindavan has been calling for a long time. Vrindavan is my home. A...