Letters to the editor

Estimado Gurudeva,
Por favor acepte mis humildes reverencias
Todas las glorias a Srila Prabhupada

El mes de Julio terminó, tuvimos la suerte de tener su asociación y de poder cooperar en el servicio del simposio. Es reconfortante sentirse útil en un servicio a Krsna, contagiados por el entusiasmo de Prabhu Abhirama y trabajando en equipo con otros devotos.

En el plano familiar, mis papás se están separando.

HpS - Pues es natural - Vanaprastha y Sannyasa, solamente hacer de una manner espiritual

Es algo que se venía venir hace muchos años. Ellos son buenas personas, y por eso se mantienen como buenos amigos. Como fue por iniciativa de mi papá, fue difícil para mi mamá al comienzo, pero ahora está cada vez mejor.

En el plano personal, sigo leyendo el Srimad Bhagavatam, voy a terminar el canto 2 pronto.

HpS - Jaya!   Companera de estudios??

Leo cada día, pero avanzo lento porque es mucha información. Es muy impresionante lo elevada que es la asociación de Srila Prabhupada y lo afortunados que somos de poder leer sus libros. Cuando termino de leer, y vuelvo al mundo real [comun], veo que realmente en este mundo material estamos muy locos y confundidos, y hemos perdido el rumbo. Y me pregunto ¿Cómo lograré yo volver con Krsna? Y veo que mi primer obstáculo es mi propio deseo de seguir aquí.

HpS - Si, pero Radharani (Hara) es tan tucioso, que Ella es buscando nuevo medios extraer nostros de esta mundo.

Sigo sin disciplinarme con mis rondas y mi hora de levantarme. Nunca fui muy disciplinada en la vida material, sobre todo porque no les encontraba sentido a las cosas. Pero en la vida espiritual esto es muy perjudicial para mí. Me siento frustrada y triste conmigo misma, porque intelectualmente entiendo la filosofía, pero me dejo llevar por la comodidad y el día a día. Cuando pienso en volver a practicar estrictamente como antes en el templo, creo que tengo miedo de volver a esforzarme y sentir que no avanzo como quisiera. Entonces pienso que tal vez simplemente debo ser más humilde.

HpS - Y mas experimentado.  Levanta temprano y haz sus rondas muy bien en Ekadasi.

Este mes quiero hacer mejoras y poder reportar avances en mi siguiente reporte. Especialmente porque estoy cada vez más aburrida de mi vida material. (Disculpe por la carta muy larga, intentaré ser más breve!)

Muchas gracias Gurudeva por su asociación.

Su sirviente, Nitya Kisori dd

Hoy leí esto, quisiera que esta frase se quede en mi corazón, significado SB2.9.25:  La perfección de los deseos puede alcanzarse cuando uno desea servir al Señor, y el Señor también desea que toda entidad viviente destierre todo deseo personal y coopere con Sus deseos.

HpS - Y El Hermano Menor, como esta?  El Papa y unos familiares aprecian los libros de Srila Prabhupada?     Ensyansas de Senor Caitanya para El Papa y libro KRSNA para La Mama y La Tia.

Hare Krishna Maharaj

PAMHO. AGTSP!

Although I feel I should insist on at least sending you some Guru Daksina now, India may be the better option as I still have to give a handsome donation to the initiating brahmana!

February sounds great for visiting you Maharaj. I will endeavour to make all the arrangement on my side.

I was going to call you incidentally in the USA, but everytime I do its like 4:53am  or 11pm your time. Perhaps you could advise and appropriate time to call and I can organise myself around that.

Please see photo attached for your reference.

Your servant,

Jay.

HpS - Tell us when the beads arrive and when you have the ceremony. Good time to call us is 9AM Nashville, Houston time.   Looks now like we will go to India from beginning January to Beginning February. Should have tickets by end of this month.
Give the Brahmana a hill of sesame seeds mixed with molasses, a cow and a wife.

                   HARE KRSNA DEAR GURUDEVA,

                   PAOHO, AGTSP!!

                    WE ARE WRITTING YOU AS PROMISED IN THE LAST TEXT...

                    WE DON´T KNOW ABOUT DATES  FOR YOU TO VISIT SPAIN YET, WE WILL CHECK AGAIN SOON.

HpS - ASA ---  Hare Krsna!   I guess we will be in India from 10 January to 15 February, so we could visit The Spain, coming our going.  Which is best?

                    THIS MONTH YADUNANDANA MAHARAJA IS PUSHING US TO KEEP MOVING FORWARD

                    IN OUR STUDIES (SB SECOND CANTO) AND ALSO HELPING US TO BECOME CLEAR ABOUT

                    OUR LIFES BY CREATING A PERSONAL MISSION STATEMENT (AND FAMILY MISSION STATEMENT).

                    LOKANATHA PRABHU IS TAKING US OUT FOR HARINAMA TWICE A MONTH.

                    WE ARE LIKE DOGS DEPENDING ON THE MERCY OF THE DEVOTEES.

                    WE WANT TO WAKE UP AND DO SERVICE.

                    LIVING JUST ACROSS RADHA GOVINDA CANDRA (AND G&N, L&N AND SP) IS QUITE A HAPPY LIFE, WE

                    FEEL TAKEN CARED OF BY THEM, WE REALLY DO. FEELING GREATFULL FOR SUCH CAUSLESS MERCY.

                    CAN WE COME AND VISIT YOU? HOW IS THAT? IS IT LIKE A SCHOLARSHIP OR SOMETHING?

HpS - ASA -- We have a little mobile home with a little room etc. It is freezing in the Winter and Buring in the Summer, but Nitai-gaurasundara Das also has so place in his house for guests. We are trying to develope a permanent program on the Campus (Middle Tennessee State University), with a "Krsna House" near the campus. One could apply for grants to do a Bachelor's or Master's Degree in Education or Mass Communication (selling Coca-cola etc) as a Foreign Student, the study there, preach and get association of ourselves and the other devotees here.

                     HOPING THAT YOU ARE FEELING OK ( WE HAVE KNOWN A LITTLE BIT ABOUT THE UNPLEASANT ISSUE IN PERU)

                     YOUR SINCERE ASPIRANT TO SERVANT

                     BHADRA VARDHANA DAS AND SANANDA DEVI DAS

HpS - We are trying to get a little bit involved in the politics of ISKCON to help push things forward, so it is quite natural that we get our feelings twisted a little bit as a result. If you want to have kids you have to suffer, but the result can be pretty nice.

Do you have copies of SOLARIS?   You can meet with Enrique Galan and give him copy and discuss with him. Dandha's boy friend, Editorial Ciruela (the one that publishes Jung's works and Journey to the West), and then we can get contacts from Ramon. He is Director of the National Library of Peru and Member of the Cervantes Foundation.

Jung is such a natural base for a bridge from East to West.

Your Deities need a roof!

Esteemed Professor Samaresh Bandyopadhyay et al

We hope this meets you in the best of spirits and excellent health. Here we, Hanumatpresaka Swami, Anjana Suta Academy, NIOS, have been working hard since our return from these intense travels through India, Europe and North and South America.

If it is agreeable to your good self and others we will write a report each Thursday to be dispatched to the Nil-kamal office of NIOS and then call on Saturday with the presence of Ravi Singh et al. We post a report daily on our Blog in the spirit of the Vanaras of Hanuman who were out each day looking for Sita and would then regroup nightly to discuss the days search. Can we can this anveSaka samAgama? (We use www.spokensanskrit.de as our translator).

We have sent the University Mailing list to Rama-giri-dhari Das and the Promotional Letter in its current format. We also gave him $1000 while we were in Houston together for one year’s expense for warehousing our NIOS books and developing an aggressive program of marketing. This will include work from his in-house professional marketing agent who will be in contact with your and our good self for advice actively. From this we really expect to see our books going out.

The question then came up of printing our third book, Man Making. Should we wait and us the income from the sale of the first two books or should we try to go ahead and print it and warehouse it also.

In terms of the NIOS program in South America, we are beginning to contact the scholars who attended. From Beverly Zabrieskii of the Jungian Foundation of New York we have had no response to our preliminary contact, but Darrol Bryant of the Center for World Religions in Ottawa we have had very nice proactive contact. Everyone is very enthused to work toward a big global program in 2018 on Art and the Sacred. Sir, what do think of this theme?
The idea would then be to use the magazine, Solaris, as a focus to organize our work in developing this event.

Solaris is printed in Spanish in black and white and color. It has received excellent appreciation and is now in distribution to all of our academic and cultural contacts in Mexico, Peru, Chile, Argentina and Spain. Abhirama Das is sending me the files for the English edition and we are working toward publishing that next. I think it can be a little different than the Spanish version. For this we would hope to send the articles to your good self and see if you can write an Forward to the Journal and the project.

We have been doing work to move the base for NIOS to Houston and merge with a more general corporation, the Goloka Foundation. This has gone well. The Foundation is legally incorporated and has had its first meeting and we are working to open bank accounts etc. Besides these NIOS publications of first-class academic literature, South America symposium, the Foundation is also generating a standard curriculum for Sunday School for ISKCON’s 100,000+ congregational children and cooperative funding application for the five active ISKCON primary schools in North America.

In general we feel that ISKCON as an institution is going through very, very critical times in its historic development, that other institutions such as Buddhism, Islam and faced. Unless it develops its educational institutions such as primary schools and universities it will certainly schism. We feel the ISKCON congregations are such a valuable allies to NIOS in its work.

Our calendar is becoming more certain. We will probably be based here until the beginning of January. Then we will go (with you?) for Radhika’s program on the Srimad Bhagavatam, 10 January, at University of Madras. Then we can travel and finish with time in Mayapur, 10-13 February, for the ISKCON Guru, Sannyasi, GBC Sanga.

Please write to us as Principal Advisor for NIOS and as one of the kindest well-wishers that we have.

Hare Krsna, BhVai Sanga,
AGTSP
Paoho
It is hot here in Tennessee, but after one week of doing our regular program it is straightening itself out as the scriptures said it will and everyday now we are getting a lot of work done.
The work is also getting organized.
We just uploaded an edited tpp.docx to the Archives with latest notes for BG 10. That is our BhSastri/BhVai, class for Wednesday evenings. It is nice.
This Saturday morning we will present the updated Doc file for the series of lectures that Swami Vaisesika Das is doing and a PPTX on Module Six (maybe five) that we did for the BhVai students in Texas, the Marriage of Devahuti.
Then the following weeks the devotees from Texas will finish off the Canto with Module reviews.
Of course, this is supposed to be a way of catching up the work that we didn't get done with our group from San Jose as we went through all this. This is content review, but also chance to fill in the examinations etc, that got lost.
We were hoping to get Vaisesika Das into the academic content part, which has happened so nicely,  Now we are hoping to get Vais, us and Srivasa Pandita Das into a short discussion about organizing the academic management part.
In the broad view of Sastric Education with Rama-giridhari and the MOE it seems to be going forward nicely.
See you Saturday.
 

Dear Gurudeva,

After having for many years the romantic idea of being a full time monk, now I feel, reaching my 30’s, that I am running out of time to get some material success and so I feel like I am perishing like a riven cloud in the sky with no position in any sphere. No completely successful neither spiritual nor material. But fortunately I guess I have few more years to balance both aspects although I can die anytime.

No matter how many rounds I chant, how many hours I read, how many service I perform, how strict I am in controlling my senses, mind and emotions; PREMA seem to be just a long term promise. Although doing things from the platform of duty I guess could be consider at some degree to be LOVE, but this duty seems never turn into spontaneous service, and that worries me. Routine as full time pujari can be often very heavy, but that’s all I have for now, so no complaints.

On the other hand, college is going fine, but I am really impatient to get some financial independence to move outside the temple. Temple is helpful until you start to take things for granted, then I strongly believe it is better to live outside to appreciate again everything Kishor Kishori and you dear gurudeva are giving me.

The rest is perfect. I also started some imrov classes at The Second City just  to release some stress.

Nashville Ratha Yatra this year? I am looking forward to visit you. If not, I will keep following your instruction in the best of my capacity.

I hope Krsna protects you always.

Ys Etasa Krsna  Das

HpS - Jaya!!!   What level are you at: Adau-sraddhau, sadhu sanga, bhajana-kriya...  Different medicine at different points.

All that you have learned in ISKCON is of course 100% useful in the material world in terms of personal habits. The techincal stuff you can pick up pretty quick. Do you want to get married, have a family, society and friends.

During Kartika we will be going out to Richmond, maybe D.C., maybe Raleigh, (maybe Chicago?)?

Our annual Festival here is Saturday, October 1st.  Celebrate Nashville, but you could come before and stay later.  There is some chance there will not be a Festival because they are rennovating the Park. Watch for more news.

You seem to be on the right path and what is blocking your progress will gradually but even rapidly become obvious if you continue.