Letters to the editor

Hare Krishna Guru Maharaja!

Please accept my respectful obeisances,

All glories to Srila Prabhupada!

It's a great pleasure for me to receive your association in Nueva Vrajamandala, a beautiful place and tremendous Vaishnava community project. I'm very happy for this new opportunity that God gives me to be close to you.

Below I'm writing the report of the first visit of Radhika Raman Das to Chile (Professor Ravi Gupta) from October 23 to 26, your disciple who is now in charge of leading the academic preaching of NIOS. Radhika Raman came to Chile accompanied by his family, his wife Amrita Keli, their two children and his father Ananta Rupa.

HpSwami ASA--He is 'in charge of'?

We had not heard this.

Is it a post given by President, Directors?

There are so many nice preachers in NIOS, including you.

Of course, Prof. Ravi Gupta is a unique example!

None of us would like to work in NIOS without his energy!

🐂👍👍👍

Your disciple Arjuna Das again naturally took charge of the leadership of the coordination and management for the events at the universities, IF and Iskcon Chile.

On Thursday, October 24th at noon, the first talk was held at Universidad Católica. There was no audience, so Radhika Raman decided to change the format and instead of giving the conference, a very entertaining conversation spontaneously developed between him and Claudia Lira about the main topic “Ecology and the Sacred” and other related topics. Vishvanatha from Dhatri school of yoga was the translator. Lily Jiménez, professor at Universidad de Chile in the area of ​​Art and Religious Studies and from the Center for Judaic Studies, also participated. I met professor Lily in 2018 just a week after “Art and the Sacred.” She is a student and active participant in Dhatri and that time when she told me that her specialty is religious art, we connected and wanted to work together someday.

Same Thursday by night, the conference “Ecology and the Sacred, the care of the environment from the ancestral Vaishnava philosophy” was held at IF. Vishvanatha was the translator. Your disciple Jagad Guru Das was the host. Your disciples Manjuali Devi Dasi and her husband Lalita Madhava Das were in charge of the cocktail and once again surprised everyone with a luxurious prasadam. There were about 70 people in the audience, most of them new people, some influential people, businessmen, academics, artists. The conference was held at a new IF headquarters in Las Condes, an upper middle class area in Santiago, near to the Las Condes Cultural Center where we produced the "Psychology and the sacred" in 2016 and one of the days of the "Art and te Sacred" in 2018

On Friday 25th at noon the conference “Ecology and the Sacred, principles of environmental care from a Vaishnava theology, theoretical and methodological perspectives” was held at the Faculty of Social Sciences of Universidad de Chile, thanks to the efforts of Professor Lily Jiménez and her friend, Professor of Anthropology Francisco Araos, who is focused on the practical development of the concept of Conservation Anthropology, focusing on research and dissemination of the human dimensions of biodiversity conservation. About ten students from this school came. Your well-wisher Sruti Priya Devi Dasi was the translator.

We had very little time to do the production and promotion. I found out at the end of August that Radhika Raman was coming to Chile to organize these events. So, although the participation at the universities was very low, I consider that the events were successful. With better organization and more time for production and adequate economic resources, we will be able to organize larger events with Professor Ravi Gupta, including a tour of Chile visiting different universities.

In any case, academic events have ceased to be attractive in Chile, as we have been told by professors from different universities with whom we have a relationship, even important events organized by the same university have very low attendance, is the tendency after pandemic. Perhaps it's necessary to think about and design a new strategy for academic preaching.

After the Universidad de Chile we went to the temple to take prasadam and during the afternoon Amrita Keli mataji gave a conference about Homeschooling at Iskcon Chile and after Gaura Arati Radhika Raman gave the Bhagavad-gita class.

On Saturday 26th, after Mangalarati and Govinda, Radhika Raman gave the Srimad Bhagavatam class, the temple was almost full. After breakfast we took the whole family to get their luggage and for a sightseeing tour of different attractive places, such as the Church of the Dominicans and San Cristobal Hill. They got on the cable car, they seemed happy and enthusiastic about getting to know a little of the city quickly, because then we took them to the airport to take their flight back to Utah.

The congregation in Chile greatly appreciate Radhika Raman and his family, they are lovely and he had a very positive impact on the teachers and scholars with whom he had direct contact during the conferences. Radhika Raman is a very special devotee, he is a genius and a very loving and humble human being, and he is also a master, he is a Guru.

Ananta Rupa Das stay at Iskcon Chile until Friday November 15.

Thank you very much Guru Maharaja for the opportunity to do this service and allow me to associate with such special devotees.

Please accept my respectful obeisances,

All glories to Srila Prabhupada!

Your aspiring servant,

Carlos.

ASA - Thank you for this fantastic journalism.

If you continue like this Krsna will kidnap you and you will become one of the Newscaster green parrots on Vrndavana?

Krsna will decide when to send the people, massive crowds,

🐂🐂🐄🦍🦍👺🌞🌴🌴🐒🐕🐒🐵,

our job is to be academically prepared to receive them, and invite them as best we can?

Hare Krishna GuruMaharaja!

Please accept my humble obeisances!

All glories to Srila Prabhupada!

Thank you so much for everything you are giving to us

Is not only words, but it comes from the gratitude that I feel every day for the help you are giving us from the beginning to this family that is trying with your inspiration to continue this process of Krishna consciousness.

We've already moved to the mountains, it's been a pretty busy few months organizing the new place with four kids. Now we have a little more time, the first thing is to thank you eternally for this mercy towards me

My sadana continues the same, fighting to finish the rounds and the worship of my deities the rest of the day is to bring these children forward.

I would like to have a phone call one day if possible.

We are praying to Krishna not to let me forget him and

that one day my Gurudeva will feel proud of me

Your servant

Murari das

HpSwami/ASA - Desculpa, tlgaSP, la demora responder.

Our body and brain 70% deaf, dumb, dead.

Our parents, Srila Prabhupada, have made us better men than they were.

We are doing the same!

Muchas gracias su noticias.

Espero you are making friendship with your neighbors in the mountain.

If you follow us on Twitter [X] you will know we are in New Vraja Mandala until December 3.

Maybe we can call with Jayanta das.

You seem to be a really, very sincere servant of Srila Prabhupada.

Thank you!

Your association is healthy for us and everyone.

Post some art 🎨 from the kids.

🦍👍👍👍

Hare Krishna Gurumaharaja,

please accept my respectful obeisances. All glories to Srila Prabhupada. Jaya Guru and Gauranga!

We had a wonderful ceremony, series of programs and the installation of H. H. Gopal Krishna Goswami’s samadhi last weekend. So many incredible stories were told and deep appreciations expressed and sincere glorifications. Very purifying and uplifting to say the least.

Thinking of you in Radha Kund all the time and trying to be there in spirit.

In the process of making Govardhan Hill in our yard. Inspired by something you said in a class years back. It’s changing our relationship with the land here. One of our all time favorite pastimes. Going deeper into it..

Trying to stay off the mental platform like the song suggests “one toke over the line sweet Jesus”.

Feeling connected to you when I chant and pray sometimes.

All 5 movies that you made are such wonderful recourses and conservation starters. We want to watch them again and again and share them.

Thank you, Gurumaharaja.

your aspiring servant,

Nitisara das

HpSwami/ASA -- Trying to respond to this post for weeks!

Hope our posts on Twitter are enlightening.

Guess you know we are still in Spain.

Ten to thirty enthusiastic participants in FMS daily.

Then day is super.

Chances to become practical members of Lord Caitanya’s movement.

Boise city as a community is kind of an illusion, no?

It is shared effort to supply utilities, water, electricity, no?

Traffic facilities.

No one knows each other.

No village life.

Temple must be oasis in the desert for many.

How was Govardhana Puja?

Build high your Hill?

Then you can offer people the chance to jump off it and go back home, back to godhead for some economical price, no?

😄

Hare Krishna

Mis más humildes reverencias

Todas las glorias a Srila Prabhupada

Todas las glorias a Usted

Agradecemos infinitamente su misericordia y el tiempo que se toma al leer cartas insignificantes como esta. Estamos al pendiente de sus viajes y ofrecemos lo que esperemos sean buenas rondas, siempre pensando en su salud.

Retomamos servicios junto con el festival del Señor Balarama, volvimos a tener servicios de guirnaldas y hemos vuelto a la Boutique del templo de Radha Madan Gopal.

Con la partida de mi madre a USA, hemos tenido un mayor esfuerzo en ofrecer un buen estándar para las deidades de casa. Nos esforzamos por ofrecer alimentos, cambiar a sus señorías de vestimenta y al mismo tiempo hacer un pequeño kirtan en casa.

También hacemos una lectura cada 2 o 3 días en familia.

Se nos dificulta conectarnos directamente a las clases, pero hacemos un esfuerzo por seguir sus pasos en España y en Radha Kunda.

Mantenemos también una relación muy bonita con el devoto Caitanya, junto con madre Jana Priya (madre de Caitanya) me apoyan mucho a no mantener un buen sadhana.

Hacemos el intento de participar también en Food for live, que lleva acabó Sakhi Vrinda y su familia todos los domingos.

Tuve también la oportunidad de poder tener un poco de asociación con Su Santidad Maharash Mahavishnu Swami, en su visita a el templo de Radha Madhan Gopal. Reforzando mucho mi fuerza en el servicio.

Deseándole siempre una buena salud, le ofrezco mis más humildes reverencias.

Seguiremos con el deseo de algún día poder tener su misericordia.

Oramos mucho por su salud.

Muchas gracias por la inspiración.

...

Hare Krishna

My most humble obeisances

All glories to Srila Prabhupada

All glories to you

HpSwami ASA -- 🐒👍👍👍

We are infinitely grateful for your mercy and the time you take to read insignificant letters like this. We are aware of your travels and we offer what we hope will be good rounds, always thinking of your health.

We resumed services together with the festival of Lord Balarama, we had garland services again and we have returned to the Boutique of the Radha Madan Gopal temple.

With my mother's departure to the USA, we have had a greater effort to offer a good standard for the deities at home. We strive to offer food, change their clothes and at the same time do a small kirtan at home.

We also do a reading every 2 or 3 days as a family.

It is difficult for us to connect directly to the classes, but we make an effort to follow in their footsteps in Spain and in Radha Kunda.

We also have a very nice relationship with the devotee Caitanya, along with mother Jana Priya (Caitanya's mother) who support me a lot in not maintaining a good sadhana.

We also try to participate in Food for Live, which Sakhi Vrinda and her family do every Sunday.

I also had the opportunity to have a little association with His Holiness Maharash Mahavishnu Swami, during his visit to the Radha Madhan Gopal temple. It greatly strengthened my strength in service.

Wishing you always good health, I offer you my most humble obeisances.

We will continue with the desire to one day have your mercy.

We pray a lot for your health.

Thank you very much for the inspiration.

HpS/ASA -- Thank you. Keep trying. Once you get a taste for Srila Prabhupada's regular Temple sadhana, see the powerful result it has on every aspect of your life, you will keep it.

Krsna is calling you back to His service!

Hare Krishna Maharaj,

Please accept my humble obeisances forever on. All glories to you, all glories to his divine grace Srila Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada.

I believe in Bhaktivinoda Thakur's writings, he once told an analogy: That describing a world without time in words - was akin to a mute man trying to describe the taste of a mango 🥭 to someone who had never tasted it.

A lot of time has passed since I first met you in this material lifetime. 14 years actually. 14 years I still wonder why your spiritual master cast his mercy down on me! I've been stuck interpreting his benevolence ever since.. (most recently the last five years ago).

Well, I'm definitely no pretty Hare Krishna 'Disney movie' of a lifetime so far. That's for sure. Material amnesia is nothing to shake a stick at. My real memories are distant, clouded and uncertain (if I'm being truthful).

What holds me back? I am not sure entirely, in truth. Jung said shame was one of the most powerful emotions, and deep down it is that. Fear. It's fear of failure, to not be blessed by Krsna to succeed, even when you ask for Krsna for it. That's tough to accept. Was it because Bhagavan desired such, or I diverged from Bhagavans will? What good is it all if I lost the most crucial favor of the local Vaishnava community?

It seems it goes full-circle. The bhakta is the lost souls first encounter, then comes back to be the most important eternal service.

Well, as HDG stated: "Guru is for questions." And I undoubtedly have seen you as my siksa-guru these past 14 years. I am writing to once more express my great thanks for tolerating my foolishness, troubles and half-heartedness. I'm sorry it wasn't prettier. Yet I had just one remaining question if you'd cast some mercy on me:

What can I do to best serve you and HDG's mission going forward?

HpSwami-ASA -- AgtSP!

What about the Preface to "Nectar of Instruction"?

That is where we orient ourselves?

Following us, 'huber_robinson', on Twitter [X]?

Chanting some regular Jaw Paw?

Know my heart still stirs, it's hard to keep it clean in this world. . I'm also certain I'll find your further guidance in you and HDG's discourse and writings over time (funny how they work like that often times).. and I'll one day hope to be blessed to see you "up ahead" and give my thanks again!

Jaya Sri Radhe, Jaya Sri Krsna, Jaya Vrindavan!

-Your eternally indebted servant-

र

Hare Krsna Gurudev,

Please accept my most humble obeisances. All glories to Srila Prabhupada. All glories to your Vrindavana Dham pastimes Gurudev. Praying for a dust of Vrindavan dam and that we can have again in this life or the next.

Our computer crashed along with the data a month ago and we apologize for the delayed response. We have recovered the data.

Here is the writing we have been doing. We see it in the genre of prose. There is no ending so far. The last few paragraphs can be expanded and worked on. We are not sure what the next chapters could bring....maybe how we travelled across Canada on sankirtan, ended up in the Columbus Ohio ashram selling cookies and then going to Vrindavan with Arudha Mataji. We just see what has the most feeling/poetic opportunities to expand on and go with that. We would like to speak to an audience that may know nothing about Krsna or the Bhakti path. It could be for devotees too.

We really appreciate Gurudev that we can share this. We are still trying to hold on to some menial service doing Sunday school classes online and in person until the season gets colder. We are traveling with our Nimai Nitia deities each day going back and forth while we chant manga Aarti and our rounds. Trying to offer incense and flower now everyday, wake them, put them to sleep and change outfits every Sunday. We read an offering at Gopal Krsna Swami's reunion event. They fit perfectly in the car dash in a sacred box.

Right now we are also changing our private practice office and will have better facility to run group therapy. Kids are doing well and happy. One group will use the format from Dharma Recovery. It is a Buddhist inspired recovery model, but there are a lot of Vedic principles taught. This group teaches eastern principles such as the importance of sanga, how recovery from substance use or process disorders is renunciation, and how we can get in touch with the Paratmatma within.

The Cult I loved. The love, the stillness I am still in. 

This picture represents a time in my life when everything flipped. My sister had heard murmurs from mom that her 18-year-old sister 3 months prior had hopped on a transnational bus.   The allure of hearing new words such as “ashram,” and joining the “Hare Krsnas” helped my sister have hope that escape was possible if new eastern words were intermixed. The murmurs that her former raver turned saree-wearing sister was “doing better” after joining the farmland commune in Burnaby , British Columbia Canada.

Reiterations of 4 am wake-ups where fellow monks would partake in five-hour temple darshan sittings overwhelmed her senses. My sister recalled on the phone that I would go on about “Downtown transcendental literature distributions” and “services” where marigolds are endlessly strown for garland stands at the Sunday love feasts. Her new found family was a secret home with a narrow passage. How to enter it seemed as daunting as trying to understand how words in Sanskrit could be recited like songs.

Her sister, now “Bhaktin Kristie” pointed to the short white haired leader who was a former street punk. Another had been Initiated and given the name Dhanishta. 

The last girl crouching and pulling weeds in the carrot garden “shaved her dreads when she joined.” The new derelict group shared a damp second-story apartment where sleeping bags were rolled up because “the reality is we don’t need a lot….”

When my sister first arrived with my mom, she was taken by the marigolds vastly growing in yellow and orange rows around the farm. Sitting with her sister overlooking the groves she finally could see that there was coherency in her sister’s thinking despite leaving the family behind 6 month prior. She was trying to figure out how she was still standing.

“I found myself scrubbing this oversized pot. I couldnt do the laundry because I bleached the deity clothes… but scrubbing the kitchari burn spots created this dim reflection of me. 

I could feel it finally. Our parents divorce. What I was chasing. In the end I did hug that pot. I rushed off from the evening service to find a few sweet balls hiding behind the altar. Its like my new father and mother had my back. Just in an esoteric way. They will always be around.”

As the farm tour progressed, more sociological observations emerged. Young men in pink dhotis kept themselves at a distance. The women’s uniforms seemed at best second hand mounds of bright synthetics fastened to hanes T-shirts. Their hair was strewn back like a chore instead of an ornamental object. The boy’s strange shaved heads were dismantling their 19 year old ego (in a good way) like they had traded n patriarchy for an unnamed hyperreality.

“We would sing louder than the brahmacaris and they would seem annoyed and ignore us more. They even reported us to the ashram leader and it just made our rowdy girl group want to sing and dance more uproariously during kirtan. The Hare Krsna calling and response becomes a type of hollering if we were leading the prayers. Then we had the realization that it isn’t just about us and our egos. Despite, we still kept up with the unsaid rule that whichever group got to the first morning kirtan prayer at 5 am won.”

As we walked down the hill and with defeated sighs and a head buried in silk cloth, my sister disclosed the hardest part of my day to her.

“They want me to chant. I really had no idea how to do that….the older one Dhanishta sat with me and tried to show me. One day though everything became a lucid dream.

In the space between the marigold farm and the temple I watched myself sit in lotus. The nettle bushes that enclosed the garden became a wall that felt like a closing in that only observing mind could create. The solitary beads in a bag became something to knead, now held like glistening halos. One breath in and one breath out with the nettle slowly made the residual muck wade away the everyday tasks that are hard to shake. 

The atmosphere started to glimmer for my sister too. She put together that the archetypes mother and father was just a few corridors down. A hill foreshadowed an apartment complex of what she described as “the fairy godmothers who made themself avail to us. Four elderly Indian women cooking, cleaning, sewing, appearing as if we had just knocked on their entrance a moment ago, their heads nodding with delight. “

After a long tour, we did sit down for evening service in the temple wherein what seemed like the leader of the young saffron and saree wearing pact bowed down and sat adjacent. A boisterous, heavy French accent came through the loud “Hari bol!!” in a beautiful rage above multiple mrdanga loud bangs, clouded glasses heavy with transcendental sighs and new hands to bandage up again after the altar curtains closed.

“He always would stand up for us, because believe me….not everyone in the community wanted our derelict monk group to stay.He didn’t want his temple donations I guess to support a group he couldn’t understand."

Was the reiteration to our ghetto punk-turned-Indian attire offensive to some? Even if we did sincerely wear sarees like a tattered uniforms, the assimilation was sometimes not understood. We wanted to be a part of a different time, not in present Kali Yuga times but possibly a different Yuga, a before tech age of peace and anti establishment that the Vedic ethereal world could open up. We could feel on a subtle level and the daily sadhana practice, that this world existed beyond this one, but it was still understandably uncertain to the jollier and wealthier donors. Our seva of digging out carrots with the utmost love or dancing through China town scared those who really felt jolted by strange street cymbals did look strange. We had wounds from what we can now call “the material world.” Giving our all with intensive inquiry during Sanskrit briefings infuriated the established gentleman who wanted a normal Hindu temple to call his own. 

Vedaveyas reassured the mixed group that turning us away was never an option. “If I did, where would you have all gone?”

 Even when the ashram dismantled due to an older trainee falling “in love” with our bhakta leader, we remembered the omen from a popular African American formally Princeton-educated guru who danced in the temple with temple-only sneakers. 

“Maya (the goddess of illusion) won’t like this. Its just too good what you have going on here.” 

There was a knowing that my sister had never seen in my eyes before. “I have unanimous agreeance: illusory powers will always be our bait to mortal reprise or waking up to a strange job in an unhandpicked time of our life that will feel drudged, uncertain and stuck. But this slow demise will wake us up. 

Even the other senior twenty something goth girl who wore black sweaters over draped paisley prints was looking for our clear eye glance. With every sleeping bag roll up and when we chose to be thoughtful and say “Let me do that” even when we were in our own dark demise from maybe 4 lives ago that thing we did that kept wrestling with austere sock line clips is now. 

The focus on the Bhakti latha creeper stages that seemed so far away from our past snagged us like jolted waves. Sometimes Dhanista was having a seizure and we held her while another swung, cleaning up the ashram and giving hugs before bed.

One upper level apartment so normal from the street view there was a series of living room sacred altars with multiple Govardhan shelas. The black shiny sacred rocks had painted lotus eyes that gently greeted everyone who reverentially entered. Once I met them they started to come in dreams like Mexican worry dolls and said goodnight to all of us before bed. 

The Shelas represented a new world. Natural forms that were non different from a living breathing force. I was told by the guardian of these sacred Gange river found representatives of the divine that Shelas are non different than Krsna. I could see them in my mind’s eye as land marks on a gem filled walk to the real Mazatlan that actually had an end that wasn’t melting ice cream. I could talk to the shelas that were alive because God also walked that trail and became the mountain that shaded us. The mountain journey to the wise man in the cave was finally outside of Casablanca and peyote dream scribes. 

I welcomed feeling spaced out and happy with being in the shelas home as much as the owner of the apartment’s. On various plush platforms she had something beyond children. I was scared, enamoured, and captured by a vibration that enveloped me. I would walk out to the street to breathe again. Sitting with God wasn’t something described to me before I entered.

HpS/ASA - It is super great 👌. We got to your leader falling in love with the Bhakta Leader and have to go to temple program.

Really great!

Try and block it into maybe three chapters???

Great

Refreshing

🌴🌴🦧🌴🌴🌴