Letters to the editor

Hare
Krsna!
AGTSP

paoho...  5.51PM here.  Our pre-mangala arati, CC reading took us to Antya 17.54, and that took us to Krsna, Dharma's Mahabharata at Vedabase.com where we are looking for the story of Pingala the prostitute, or cortesan, as some might say.

Then we got a call from Rama-giridhari Das right after FMP, 5.45AM, so we talked for about 1/2-hour, but we are all so busy with Janmastami celebration that we couldn't deal with all the details. Monday we will talk again. Was there a Latin American Educator's meeting last Friday? Did we miss it?  When is the next one?

Then we got sucked into gardening and trimmed two hedges. One is where the poison ivy is. It looks like 91% of it has gone to Goloka from the Poison we used, but it is still dangerous. We thinki we will buy two fruit trees on Janmastami. They are only $25 now.

Visala Das called six times and we called back. He wants to join the Start Meeting class tommorrow. We worked on the Powerpoint Show for that and the same one for tommorrow night.

Then we got final word from Subal Sakha in Richmond so we worked out the calendar and bought the tickets and posted the accounts!  That takes time.

Then we are here. Ready to go to NGD's home for BG class. It is hot, like 35*.

Tom Daigle called and we discussed changes in Prabhupada's books.

O.K. Let's look at the mail!
(Oh, one girl came selling ATT cable service and we told her we didn't use it but gave her a "book from  India".)

Oink! Oink!     Whoop!  WHooP!    '@'     'g'         8.11PM. We just finished "Noche Sabado Directo". "Saturday Night Live", on Start Meeting. About 11-devotees in thre groups. Is getting better and better.

For us it was almost impossible in the beginning because it comes at the end of Saturday which is a very full day, and so we were exhausted, but now we are getting our rhythm and planning our energy.

We were doing the Blog mail and then the connection collapsed!   So, we did as much as we can. We seem to be getting our senses under control more and more.   I guess and ordinary person is addicted to Peparoni Pizza and Beer and Hot DVDs with his friends Saturday night, although Sunday morning he feels like hell. So we may have problems with chocolate cake or condensed milk, or too much fruit, but still these are obstacles to doing better and better service.

Krsna loves to dance with pretty girls!!!   But you have to be a good dancer to do this with Him.  We HOPE we are progressing.  Seems that we are getting a practical rhythm here so that we can get a lot of work done in the next four months: End of August to End of December.

Our focus has been Art and the Sacred, 2018, but Ramon has been approved by the Congress in Peru as Minister for the 200th anniversary of Peru's independence celebration. So, we are suggesting Dr. Sameresh and Kalyankumar can write about this very, very strongly from the perspective of India's experience of Colonialism and the aftermanth.

This can also be done in art. If our world is dominated by this European colonial consciousness what will we have?  War?  Animal slaughter?

Is Indian and Peruvian traditional consciousness a good step toward Krsna consciousness?  Prabhupada established the "Sunday Feast". That is not a Vedic festival. He catered to his best customers, Hippies.

Art, like Ekasma Das and others can do is the way to create traveling shows that go on large scale form town to town to educate the people. Then the government will be good!!

Jaya Sri Krsna!

Esteemed Prof. Samaresh Bandyopadhyay, Anjana Suta Academy,
Here it is Thursday, night, 7.48PM and we are seated in the living room of Dr. Ravi Singh. It is very cool here, but in our cave and outside it is about 30* and 85% humidity. It makes it very hard for us to work, but we did get a small air-conditioner installed in one room of our mobile-home and it brings it down to a workeable level in that room.

Again, we tried to call last weekend but could not get through. We got your letter and will try again on Saturday with Dr. Ravi.

This week we were supposed to have a conference call with Rama-giri-dhari  Das about the NIOS work, and the ISKCON Ministry of Education, but he Skyped us apologizing that he was caught in travel, so we have not met so far.

Ramon Mujica, who was Director of the National Library in Peru for five years, and our staunch supporter and friend, has not yet been chosen by the new Minister of Cultural to retain the position, but he has been asked by the new President himself to take up the responsibility, directly under him, of Director for the Centennary Celebrations of Peru's Independence from the Spanish colonial powers. He has asked Abhirama Das that anyone of our community who would like to do anything in this regard then please present it to him. For your good self and Prof. Kalyankumar it seems like there would be excellent opportunity to make very practical comments about colonial independence in comparison of India and Peru and modern development of national identities and missions.

Solaris is going out and we are already getting new friends from it in Spain. I downloaded the English files today and I can start work on them and as discussed we were hoping that you can review the articles and then write the Foreword for this first number and the whole Journal.

Personally, between battles with lust, spiders, local projects etc, I have ordered Prof. Gerald Larson's translation of Isvara Krsna Das' Sankhya Karika, as recomended by Prof. Ravi Gupta and Miguel Polo, and hope to use it in developing our efforts in adjudicating  Sankhya with the world models of the West from such philosophers as Carl Jung, Marshal McLuhan and E. T. Hall. Is it the proper book?

Finally, our Calendar seems to be settling down and we would come to the all glorious land of Bharata on January 1st for an ISKCON-Christian dialog in Tirupati and Radhika's developing Bhagvatam syposium at Madras University about the 7th. Then we are at the disposal of your good selves until about 10th-17th February when the is a Guru, Sannyasi, GBC Sanga in Mayapura. After that we were thinking to head by the USA with a quick stop in Spain.

Well this letter sounds half-way sane and we hope to talk with you this Saturday.

HpSwami - ASA

Sit'n downtown in the Murfree's Boro Ashrama, one step ahead o' my mind!

TB/BW here.   6.30PM. R(17/18).   Pretty good day. Pigged-out a little bit on frozen orange juice, but the stress from the heat is great and we still haven't fine-tuned our auto.

Listening to Hawaii classes every day while we iron our clothes, write letter to Vais and Srivasa and Hari Lila.

Lokannatha Das called an recounted the SFO Rathyatra.   GREAT success.

He has Parkinson's: (UG) The mind uses the brain, uses the body. The mind has a vasana, fear, trauma, from childhood or previous life and it keeps that stored around a muscularly debilitated hand, because we got unfairly slapped in the hand.

We store stuff in our while body.

Then we drive our body into convulsions with sex or drugs and shake off the mind. Or we can get electro-shock treatment from the psychiatrist. Or we can get it through ecstacy in basketball or Kirtan hymns. How does this sound. Ecstacy, orgasm, is a necessary part of good physical heath. But when done with illict sex it destroys the endorphine producing organs.

Letters from Daniel and others to answer.  Peru yatra managers. Solaris promoters.
Scheduled to talk to Rama-giri-dhari Das at 11AM tomorrow.

Hari bolo, Prabhus!!!

Hare Krsna, Prabhus,

It is 11.13AM here. We come to NGD's home in the morning to us the WIFI for our SB workshop. Kala-kanta Das, a very senior devotee and Temple President of the Krsna House and the University of Gainseville is here. Many senior devotees visit here.

We answered the mail and now we will go with them to look at prospect of getting a house near the Campus here.

How are you?

We are catching up with the mail. We are getting stronger and stronger in our regualar Sadhana here. Almost certain now we will go to India 10 January to 10 February at least.  Maybe we go to Texas and Mexico for Christmas and Vyasa-puja. End the Marathon.

We bought book recomended by Radhika for writing Sankhya articles and the order number was "108"!

O.K. Some Japa and tonight at Start Meeting at 7PM for Saturday Night Live in Spanish.

We are Tweeting regularly in the hours before Mangala arati.

tWEEt
     TweeTTT   .    Hare Krsna!

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.