10. Confessions: An abrupt end
Last night a couple of friends advised me to pull back. The trolls have been fed and is getting fatter and stronger. I let them get to me.
I went to see Banke Bihari Maharaj this morning. When I sat down for meditation, I heard Bihariji tell me to come to the temple. It was early and the streets were empty except for piles of detritus and troops of monkeys. The new crop of monkeys is just in. There is not a female that does not have a baby clutching to her belly.
The Bihariji temple was empty. I didn't realize that the first darshan only comes at 7.30, so I just sat and chanted and prayed for my mind to be free of these distractions and fixed on Bihariji's lotus feet.
I am not going to continue with this nonsense. Demian is an unfortunate soul. He has everything and yet he has nothing. The first time I ever met him, my first question was, how are you doing in relation to the goal of prema-bhakti. He had no good answer.
Over the years I have watched him. I stopped associating with him a long time ago. I found his presence unconducive to my search for prema. Others told me the same thing: he was always looking for the dirt on people. Like Alex, he fancies himself a truth teller.
But the truth in Vrindavan is the vision of Prabodhananda Saraswati. The faultfinder, the chidrānveṣī, the pṛṣṭhāda, thinks the faults are the truth. Wrong. It is the virtues, especially the devotional virtues that are true. Indeed, nothing else has any truth whatsoever. The world and its piety and sin will vanish into the black hole at the end of time; only bhakti is eternal.
I have tried to see only the virtues in Demian and I failed. I admit defeat. He has defeated me. He made me angry at him. He made me want to fight him, when the example of Rupa Goswami was to let him win. Victory is not in the fighting, but in the tight grasping of Bihariji's lotus feet.
Demian can remain mired in whatever cesspool of anti-prema he wishes to wallow in. We will not follow him there.
I have plenty more to say, but I have decided not to say it. I prayed to Bihariji to banish Demian from my consciousness and let me do what I am supposed to be doing here at the end of my life in Vrindavan, and hat is bhajan.
If Bihariji and his beloved consort, the Queen of this Dham, want Vrindavan Today to be sullied by the attentions of the so-called truth tellers, so be it. I can abandon Vrindavan Today. It was never intended to be my primary service. It was meant to be a way of getting the mercy of the Dham and the Dham Vasis. This too is their mercy.
Reading Vrindavan-mahimamrita yesterday is what made me change my mind about what I was doing.
It takes all kinds to made a Dham, and Prabodhananda makes it clear that it is better to suffer the attentions of people like Demian and to remain in the Dham than to be anywhere else in the world.
Our determination is to follow the Vrindavana=mahimamrita. We follow Raghunath Das Goswami, and we will not change.
I wish the truth-tellers luck. Indeed, I wish them all a change of heart. If I have one prayer to Bihariji today, it is that these people's hearts undergo a transformation by the grace of the Dham and they get a grasp of what is meant by prema-bhakti.
They are not on the right path. They are not on the right path. Bihariji please be merciful to them.
Jai Radhe.
The End.
tyajati ya iha bhakto rādhikā-prāṇa-nāthe
na khalu bhavati bandhyā tasya vṛndāvanāśā ||
The hope for attaining Vrindavan will never be fruitless for the devotee who gives up the desire for others' wealth, others' wives, enmity, envy, greed, untruth, cruelty, vengefulness, lying words for the sake of the beloved of Radhika. (VMA 17.48)
I went to see Banke Bihari Maharaj this morning. When I sat down for meditation, I heard Bihariji tell me to come to the temple. It was early and the streets were empty except for piles of detritus and troops of monkeys. The new crop of monkeys is just in. There is not a female that does not have a baby clutching to her belly.
The Bihariji temple was empty. I didn't realize that the first darshan only comes at 7.30, so I just sat and chanted and prayed for my mind to be free of these distractions and fixed on Bihariji's lotus feet.
I am not going to continue with this nonsense. Demian is an unfortunate soul. He has everything and yet he has nothing. The first time I ever met him, my first question was, how are you doing in relation to the goal of prema-bhakti. He had no good answer.
Over the years I have watched him. I stopped associating with him a long time ago. I found his presence unconducive to my search for prema. Others told me the same thing: he was always looking for the dirt on people. Like Alex, he fancies himself a truth teller.
But the truth in Vrindavan is the vision of Prabodhananda Saraswati. The faultfinder, the chidrānveṣī, the pṛṣṭhāda, thinks the faults are the truth. Wrong. It is the virtues, especially the devotional virtues that are true. Indeed, nothing else has any truth whatsoever. The world and its piety and sin will vanish into the black hole at the end of time; only bhakti is eternal.
I have tried to see only the virtues in Demian and I failed. I admit defeat. He has defeated me. He made me angry at him. He made me want to fight him, when the example of Rupa Goswami was to let him win. Victory is not in the fighting, but in the tight grasping of Bihariji's lotus feet.
Demian can remain mired in whatever cesspool of anti-prema he wishes to wallow in. We will not follow him there.
I have plenty more to say, but I have decided not to say it. I prayed to Bihariji to banish Demian from my consciousness and let me do what I am supposed to be doing here at the end of my life in Vrindavan, and hat is bhajan.
If Bihariji and his beloved consort, the Queen of this Dham, want Vrindavan Today to be sullied by the attentions of the so-called truth tellers, so be it. I can abandon Vrindavan Today. It was never intended to be my primary service. It was meant to be a way of getting the mercy of the Dham and the Dham Vasis. This too is their mercy.
Reading Vrindavan-mahimamrita yesterday is what made me change my mind about what I was doing.
It takes all kinds to made a Dham, and Prabodhananda makes it clear that it is better to suffer the attentions of people like Demian and to remain in the Dham than to be anywhere else in the world.
Our determination is to follow the Vrindavana=mahimamrita. We follow Raghunath Das Goswami, and we will not change.
I wish the truth-tellers luck. Indeed, I wish them all a change of heart. If I have one prayer to Bihariji today, it is that these people's hearts undergo a transformation by the grace of the Dham and they get a grasp of what is meant by prema-bhakti.
They are not on the right path. They are not on the right path. Bihariji please be merciful to them.
Jai Radhe.
The End.
para-dhana-para-dāra-dveṣa-mātsarya-lobhā-
nṛta-paruṣa-parābhidroha-mithyābhilāpān |tyajati ya iha bhakto rādhikā-prāṇa-nāthe
na khalu bhavati bandhyā tasya vṛndāvanāśā ||
The hope for attaining Vrindavan will never be fruitless for the devotee who gives up the desire for others' wealth, others' wives, enmity, envy, greed, untruth, cruelty, vengefulness, lying words for the sake of the beloved of Radhika. (VMA 17.48)
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