Letters to the editor

Hare Krsna.

AGTSP. Paoho. It is 2.36AM. We just finished answering all the Reports in the Blog! We have a couple more that were sent separately (there is a risk that we may not get them there). It is nice having to formally only take responsibility for five dozen students.

Jaya!

We made it to the Kolkata Temple. We are in Room 301 again. It has a mosquito net on one window. The A. C. only makes a strange "Gaaaa Gaaaa Gaaa" sound when we turn it on and produces no cold air. It is starting to get hot here but not too bad with the fan on.

Such a hard day yesterday.

Piggy - Aren't they all hard?

Monkey - Yes... but they can be hard for Krsna or hard for The Evil One.

Plane was delayed by 45-minutes. A child kicked our seat in the back for the entire flight, 1-hour. We are going blind. In anxiety to pack everything, get print-out of Boarding Pass. Left Rupees 70,000 with Sarad-gaurangi DD, Hari-das Swami, Vana-mali Das et al for printing. Seems the University of Bhagavata Culture is still alive That was B. S. Damodara Swami's ambition. We gave the first class. If we just stay alive in KC then these projects stay alive and EVENTUALLY they will succeed!

Got three rounds chanted. Fought with the internet yesterday. Went to gift shop looking for Deity for Dr. Desai, temple room and joined the Bhajan and Arati. About 65-devotees there. One devotee, Prema Das (?) leads every evening. We had a distant vision of Gaura lila for a moment in the Bhajan.

From our point of view. Which is contaminated. The Kirtans do not have enough internal development. If you chant properly you can make your internal body loosen up, just like stretching your muscles after sitting in one position for a long time. Aaaaaa!

Kirtan is a great form of education. Chant, lead, LISTEN. Communicate your Bhava, attitude, perspective.

A Brahma stamba paryantam, sarva maya, mayam jagat, satyam, satyam, punah satyam, hari nama eva kevalam!

From Lord Brahma down ..... to the most insignifican blade of grass, everything in this world is a product of the illusory energy of Maya. The Holy Names, are alone truth. They again and again are truth.

Best education is to become attached to chanting the Maha-mantras.

Piggy - But we will be unable to do so many other duties!

Monkey - Then maybe so many of your 'duties' are useless, non-essential! Once you are connected to the Holy Names, then you get a proper connection with this movie!

Chant more! Wake up faster! Distribute more books!

Is today the day we become Uttama-adhikaris, forever?

How much of your identity is based upon PLANS? I will do this, I will do that. How much of your definition of your family, business, church, community, is based upon PLANS? We shall do this. We shall do that, but do all of those plans come from the mind and we just identify with them? Oh, yes, what ever you say, Sir (My Mind).

Chant and let Krsna make plans. Chant and watch the plans evolve through the intelligence and then form in the mind and then express in the senses. Hare Krsna!

TB - Hare Krsna! Brother Ass had a flash case of diarrhea. Something his body did not like and then flushed out with a ton of water. Maybe it was an overindulgence in Salted Cashews. Dancing in Mangala is a good medicine for any disease, even the whole material disease.

Some more conversations with Dr. Samaresh. Seems the printer may have some copies of Siksa-drsya read before we go. We will have to co-ordinate rapidly while we are in Kolkata Friday to Monday, get money, arrange shipping. Harsh will be there to help us!

The books have been so useful. We have printed about 500-copies of Pratya-prajna-pradipa, Bharatiya Sanskriti and distributed only a few so far, but it has all been worth it. When we showed them to Lokeshcandra of ICCR in Delhi he was totally convinced about NIOS's bona-fides and offered that ICCR would pay to send five scholars to Peru for Art and the Sacred.

(Ooof! The Ambassador of India failed to give us the help we needed for that!)

This morning we met with Hari Dasa Swami, the 11-candidates for first and second initiation here. He is the Siksa guru, we are the Diksa-guru, and Srila Prabhupada is the Founder-Acharya. Should work! So many devotees arriving here. Will be big Gaura-purnima Festival. Last night was a cultural program with two traditional drum dances (pung cholam and dhon-dholok cholam), Manipuri folk dance, Manipuri martial arts, Bhajan, and rasa lila. Was very very nice.

We hope there can be a nice connection between Manipur and Peru! Anandamya can lose a few pounds and he and Karuna mayi can learn Manipuri and visit here with Peruvian, Andenan culture and history tour etc.

Now it is 4.15PM. Our nose is burning (ouch) from the smoke etc. Three devotees have come into offer obeisances. We had a good nap today! Ahhh! No class. Now we go to the Temple and chant on the beads for the tomorrow initiations and associate with the devotees.

Thank you.

See you here or see you there. Sankirtan is our only care!

Hare Krsna. 3.05PM. Little allergy pain. Weather nice. Prasadam mangeable but some problem digesting the 8-different preparations offered daily! Our Big Project Today was recording our MOE pptx with the Jungian friends in mind. The final show was 30-minutes and took three attempts to get it straight. Still needs more work but our audience has to do their work too! Sent it by We Transfer (Sadhu Das has got good internet for us here) to Ambo (Ambarisa Das) and Patricia Llosa with goals of editing it a little and putting it up on the You Tube and forwarding it to Shonu Shyamdasani.

Answering mail. Letters from Chile, Vaisnava Protection Team, situation.

MOE requesting summary of our show! Same one we just sent off.

SUMMARY

A Philosophy of Education

Hanumatpresaka Swami

Hoping to address and even suggest fundamental principles of education for ISKCON we start with a broad perspective of looking at the Philosophy of Education from the Encyclopedia Britannica. This is very fruitful, leading us to suggest that Western tradition has reject mere acquisition of facts, information, as education, the standard of the Karmi, and has gone on to declare that one should learn speculative tools such as grammar, mathematics, reasoning, the standard of the Jnana. Beyond this, the standard of the Dhyani, contemplation, meditation, intuition, imagination is not so much addressed in Western education but we go on to show that it is quite systematized in the Western theater education tradition. Actors learn to change their Persona.

Beyond even this (which is very useful in developing our techniques in Bhakti yoga) is Bhakti yoga itself. We have learned this in seed form from Srila Prabhupada's lips and this leads to studying his books, especially NOI, which leads us to a simple Mission Statement for Education in ISKCON and steps in development from Sraddha to Prema, through and for Sankirtan, with a little background education in Varna-ashrama-dharma eg. the Pregnancy of Diti in the Evening. Finally, we introduce our own very specific example of this with our intriguing work with the Jungian community, much appreciated by Srila Prabhupada.

3.10PM our NOI seminar starts in 50-minutes. Have to prepare. Is good work. today Texts 9-10-11. Being recorded in English and Manipuri. Then at 6PM a cultural program. About 100-devotees have already arrived from half a dozen different exotic nations eg. Meghalaya, Assam. May want to talk with us ... difficult.

O.K. Back to the mail.

Hare Krsna. AGTSP Paoho

4.30PM in Manipura. Cloudy today and some rain during Mangala arati. We have almost continuous burning in our nose and even our skin from some kind of allergy reaction to the air or something.

Yesterday Toe Bull, today full moring program, SB class and then big television interview. It was quite good. The questions were quite practical. Haridasa Swami said a few things we said will have to be edited out because they would be inflamatory to certian groups here in Manipur. We see an undercurrent of potentially violent terrorists activities here by different groups. Right now the economy and access to Western technology, education, dream of happiness, is enough available so that these are not manifest like before.

After the television interview - one hour - we chanted Hare Krsna and watched some Dhanur veda to relax our brain and had a nap and then forced ourself up to answering letters etc. Many people are starting to arrive from Meghalaya, Silchar etc. They quite naturally expect some emotional reciprocation from us but it is hard in unkown languages, not being able to remember everyone we initiated.

O.K. We write one essay for here and go to the 5PM NOI seminar.

Thank you.

Hare Krsna. Been a pretty good day. AGTSP. paoho & bw. Yes it was about six hours out for the program in Toe Bull. Not to be confused with the other town where we THOUGHT we were going Two Ball. It is way out in the country and also the birth place of H. H. B. S. Damodara Swami. About 75-devotees came. There was no special reason for all of us to go there but was nice Sangha. We act as a dignitary in many ways - sit in a chair, very sincere, highly elevated, men and women, with boys and girls, pay their obeisances, give 20-500 rupees (25-cents to 7-dollars) and we try to avoid them touching our feet. AGTSP. We also took charge of the program and started a Kirtan that was very nice. We can really communicate our consciouness through Kirtan. then a translated lecture. it is hard, for the translator, and us. Have to talk slow, clear, use simple words, repeat, but also seemed to come across well. We talked about Guru, Sankirtan of Srila Prabhupada and our Sankirtan with Bhakti svarupa Damodara Swami.

Then one-hour back through the dust. Our nose is stinging a lot here. Finished all but 21-Annual Reports.

Devotees arriving for the festival. Now we go to the Temple for the arati. Ekakasi has been pretty good. By eating once a day we are greatly improved. Sadhu Das and devotees offer like 5-7 course feast every day. We pick out like two basic items and honor those in bulk and then take a little taste to honor the rest. Is tough, but then we can usually digest it all within one day. There is no place or job nice in this world. Always best use of a bad bargain, and when we accept this as austerity for Krsna, is wonderful!

Thank you.

Hare Krsna! Hare Rama! Jaya Radha, Jaya Shyama, Jaya Sri Vrndavana Dhama. AGTSP! paoho.... It is 7.02AM... We go for Mangala arati, chant during a lot of extra hymns that the Temple does after MA and until just before Srngara arati and Guru-puja. During that we come back to our cave and read and write.

Yesterday was a donkey killer from Daytona! Three lectures. Tough lectures. The first was a Regional Medical Conference sponsored by the local university hospital, RIMS. We had to struggle to understand the audience and then put a PPTX together, but it was good. We were impressed but the love of the scientists for their work, the level of dscipline and organization existing in Manipur. Right before us was Medical Ethics and then we pushed it to Integral Medicine - Body, Mind and Spirit. Audience was about two hundred and the Doctors and Professors and Chairpersons listed with continuous attention. We saw that we could have followed up a lot more. This is Manipur. B. S. Damodara Swami is from here and he is a reknowned scientist.

Some war, bloodshed, with mosquitos here.

Next was NOI seminar third day. Eight nice students. We are reviewing our study guide.

Finally, regular ASA Saturday Morning ABC symposium. We were dog-donkey-dumpling tired but we knew that once we got on line and associated with devotees it would be possible. Upendra, Sugopi radha, explained their weeks reading and HpS summarized the classes from Kolkata, Manipur and showed the RIMS pptx in summary.

Too tired to do Reports or post this DTC.

Now, 12-rounds done, leaving for Tubal at 8AM for 6-hour program. B. S. Damodara Swami's birth place. Nice shrine there.

We will nap, bathe, and work on the Annual Reports.

Today is Ekadasi!

Watching for Urgent news in the Blog.