Dear Guru Maharaj,
Please accept my humble obeisances, all glories to Srila Prabhupada!
Forgive me for being late writing you this month, I've just had a lot going on lately that I find difficult to articulate.
Someone once advised to me to make plans five years in advance. Find something worth doing and commit yourself to it for five years with singleminded focus, then at the end of that time reflect on your experience and consider whether you want to keep going on the same track or try a different course.
HpS - Bhakti Svarupa Damodar Maharaja, our Sannyasa Guru and Sankirtan Leader had the similar advice. He was from Manipur, an old culture, and older than most of Godbrothers. He also said to fix long range goals, but he didn't say that you had to take them with narrow intensity or not be able to reform them frequently. He said that if you had a long range goal then when you encountered local obstacles they would not bother ou so much. You might have to put aside you long range goal for one month because you had some other service that you were ordered to do, but that little deviation would not bother you if you had long range projects.
Five years ago this July I made a commitment to join the brahmacari ashram and distribute books at least until five years were complete; so I'm at a crossroads now and I've been doing a lot of introspection about my experience so far and how to move forward in devotional life.
By your mercy I was able to accomplish my three main goals for that duration, namely taking diksha initiation, going on pilgrimage to India, and passing the Bhakti shastri exam. I feel like these three things plus a solid five years of tksp experience has given me a strong foundation to build on in Krsna Consciousness. As Brghupati prabhu puts it, I've completed basic training and now I'm looking for my MOS.
HpS - ASA -- MOS (=Mother of Soup????)
Essentially it's the same old thing I've brought up before; basically I'm happy with the practice of Krsna consciousness and with my association etc, but I'm frustrated with my service. Even though I know how important and glorious it is, somehow or other I lost my enthusiasm a long time ago and even though day after day I force myself to go out, I'm not having any breakthroughs and I'm feeling progressively more discouraged. Basically it's just not my dharma. I've been bottled up way too long and now I'm just trying to control the explosion.
I'm sure you're probably tired of hearing about it by now,
HpS - No, we like hearing about this. We have the same problem. Probably the Gopis have a similar problems.
...and I get the impression that as Guru you don't want to take a "managerial" role and get mixed up in a whole ordeal. I get it.
HpS - It doesn't have to be a managerial role. We can do that if you want to join our ASA Sankirtan like working on the Psychology and the Sacred symposium in Lima.
So basically I've been chanting enthusiastic Japa and praying and discussing some options with my local authorities (H.H. Badrinarayan Maharaj & H.G. Svavasa prabhu) to try to figure something out.
So to give you the thin version, a few weeks ago I was thinking about coming to assist you with your Rathayatra in the Fall when I make my annual visit back east (when is the exact date by the way?).
HpS - First Saturday in October.
While I was there, I thought another fun/productive thing I could do would be to put on an art exhibition with some spiritual theme. So I connected with an old contact in SC and set it up.
HpS - Jaya. Sacred art.
Afterwards I was working on some projects and I started thinking I might as well put together an online portfolio. Then I realized it's only a few more steps to make a website. Meanwhile I was getting a good response from recent work on social media and I did some research and realized there's a burgeoning market for art developing on the internet and utilizing technology could be a most effective way to broadcast Krsna consciousness in the public sphere. I began to realize that it's actually a viable career option to be an artist in the modern world. If I was strategic I wouldn't even have to resort to doing tattoos or working at Starbucks to get by. Immediately I understood that my renunciation of my life's work is false. I have a huge void in my life that can't be filled by anything except realizing my trajectory in conjunction with Krsna consciousness.
Naturally Badrinarayan Maharaj was skeptical that it's possible to make a a living as an artist, and he graciously presented another opportunity which was to take some college courses to learn digital media so I could do graphic design for the BBT. Yesterday, we discussed at length and he left it up to me to think and pray it out and then decide what to do.
So I went for a long Japa walk and I thought I'd have to be crazy to turn down such a proposal. What I learned about myself, however, is that I can give up a lot of things; like sex, drugs, meat-eating, (and fish), and gambling; I can even give up art for a while. But the one thing I can't give up is the insane determination to do something inconceivable and revolutionary. Something only I could do.
In other words, my attachment is not so much for making stuff in general, it's more for the creative process. I would be bored to death doing graphic design. My whole life I've struggled with the fact that the creative process is not something I can just turn on like a faucet for a few hours in my spare time. It's more like a kind of samadhi.
My apologies for the lengthy letter, it's not easy to summarize everything I'm going through right now, but I want to submit myself humbly and ask your advice before making any final decisions. I'm really not trying to be stubborn, it's just that over the years I've seen that if I'm not fully convinced about something I can't be enthusiastic, and if I can't be enthusiastic I can't be successful. I'm supposed to meet with Svavasa prabhu tomorrow, but just let me know if you would like more details about my plan or Maharaj's proposal. Also, if you like you can check out the website I'm working on here: ekashmadas.weebly.com -it's mostly a resume of old stuff right now since I'm basically starting over.
ASA - "Wending mendicant" or "Wandering Mendicant".
We looked at some of the art. We like it very much. We also struggle to define a deeply satifying service for ourselves. As far as we understand ISKCON managment should not order us to do a service that is against our Karma-yoga or Svarupa, but we should not work for our own service satisfaction, ultimately intimate satisfaction of Krsna that only we can offer, whimsically. We should understand that the administration is also trying sincerely to adjust the Big Institution and help. For exampe, Rasa-raja, B.S. Damodara Swami, Abhimanyu Das all wanted to go to India, so HpSwami was left being President in San Francisco, BI. It was contrary to our nature but we realized it had to be done, Jnana yoga as above Karma yoga, so we did it, but to do it we had to take a lot more than our healthy Burfi level and hear about frogs and dogs is Krsna consciousness rather than just BG and Krsna book, but everyone, even the supersoul, seemed to confirm this.
Abhirama (?), husband of Mother Dhrti, super nice BBT artist, was still very active Krsna theme painter, but to makee ends meet he had an on-line etc. business of laser cutting designer moulding. Vaisesika Das was selling water filters to augment his income for his Vanaprastha Ashrama. Hmmm.
Do you want to stay B'cari? Take Sannyasa ultimately? Or go into Grhastha ashrama and have 1, 5, 15 kids with a like minded lady? Kardama had to go into Grhastha ashrama, but did it with full success.
Don't be afraid to try short term experiments also.
The Web-Page seems very nice.
We try our very esoteric stuff, like Journal writing, but we also respond to requests eg. Radhika-raman Das, Prof. Ravi Gupta, has been mentioning that we should write down our presentation on Sankhya. At the last presentation during Psych and the Sacred he was rather insistent. I asked if he would help a little and he said, "YES". O.K. We started posting our draft work here in the Blog and we will continue.
Final conclusion is belong to ISKCON as an Institution and do our work. Help the King and criticise the King. Then keep your own friends in the institution and finally have a direct relationship (through transparent via-media) with Srila Prabhupada. This is from "The Gopis Attracted by the Flute of Krsna".
Your rascal servant,
Ekāśma Dās
