DTC January to March Report
DIARY OF A TRAVELING CREATURE
January – March 2016
By Tom Brown (Monkey) and Buck White (Piggy)
ANJANA SUTA ACADEMY
www.JayaRama.us
Hello, Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls,
Here we are, Tom Brown and Buck White (more graphically know as Monkey and Piggy), with Hanumatpresaka Swami at the ISKCON Kolkata, Albert Road Temple. It is about 83⁰ F here at 5AM and by 5.30AM the sky is just becoming light, the mosquitos begin to gently search for blood and the jungle flowers secrete intoxicating perfumes.
During January we trans-versed South America and then reloaded in the USA for this Asia trek. This involved 36-hours from:
Murfreesboro, Tennessee to,
Nashville, Tennessee to,
Newark, New Jersey (where we were in transit for 6-hours and met a retired Sea Captain of the big international oil tankers) to,
Brussels (where we met a Catholic Priest) to,
Delhi where we rested for 2.25 very nights and did 5-lecture/cultural programs with 200-600 people each.
Our driver one evening was a very nice gentleman with a very nice car with nice A/C whom Uncle Gismo harassed until he explained the difference between cellular 3G and 4G connections. He managed about 500 Erickson Engineers who developed the towers and all else for about one third of the world.
Back in the aluminum Wiener.
One night in Dr. Samaresh’s house in Kolkatta and the next day sharing a taxi from Kolkata airport to Mayapura with two ladies, sisters, from Peru, living in Australia, HpSwami’s disciples.
Mayapura is the birthplace of Sri Krsna Caitanya about 1486 AD. Many Bengali organizations have Temples and Cultural Complexes there and the ISKCON one stands like a Tyrannosaurus amongst smaller dinosaurs. It is jungle, farms along the banks of the Ganga, four hours from Kolkata.
Oink! Oink! Whoop! Whoop! We really hope The Rooster of Peru is appreciating all the purposeful, though possibly mad, austerity.
For ten daze we were in Mayapura ISKCON. There was a mass conflict between different administrative divisions a week before and one of HpSwami’s students was pummeled unconscious. We were there for the ILS meeting (ISKCON Leadership Sanga). About 1,200 ISKCON second level leaders from around the world were there.
The last three days we got sick - cold and fever.
Our room-mate was our old friend Sukadeva Swami, formerly a doctor, from South India.
We were representing the ISKCON Ministry of Education. HpS gave one presentation during three different slots on “Harvard, Oxford and the Bhagavat in Dialog”. It was sold-out every time. The MOE did nine more presentations in the over 240-other slots. Lot of work.
We also had to organize and attend MOE administrative meetings, Spanish language lectures and meetings, feed the elephants, visit Srila Prabhupada’s Samadhi Mandir, check-in with people left and right, coming and going, that we haven’t seen for months, days, years, decades.
HpSwami is a fanatic: Up by 2AM, chanting rosary, reading esoteric classics, writing, bath, barefoot to the Samadhi arati at 4.30AM. The Security Guards and street dogs stand sleepily to salute him and Rtu-raja as they passed by.
A loving mother and father, a dutiful king, they can protect you, but the Holy Dhama, She never sleeps.
(I guess you get the idea about our life for the past ten weeks. (Reading this, we start to get the idea.))
After Mayapur: Four hours with Hari Das Das back to the Kolkata airport. Zoom! Zoom! Zoom!
Kolkata to Imphal and Thoubal, Manipur.
Now we are in the North East. This makes the jungles of Mayaura look like a Beverly Hills Country Club. Simple villages in the foothills of the Himalayas. Have to shoo the cows off the runway to land. Soldiers with machine guns every quarter mile in the tougher areas. Feelings of love and communal wisdom that bring you to your knees, and remind you of Jung’s words to the scientific elite during the Tavistock lectures: You think that these ancient Indian and Chinese cultures were fools. They aren’t the fools. We are the fools. They have a realization of introspective life that is simply marvelous. In terms introspective psychology Europe is just a peninsula of Asia.
HpSwami has been trying to help there for 10-years, after his Sannyasa Guru, B. S. Damodara Swami died as a result of a bomb blast. HpS is obviously a stupid white-man but the people were traveling by bus, car, buffalo for even three days to join the festivals and in the end they donated 100,000 Rupees, even 10 at a time, for the progress of this Peru-Manipur dialog, and pledged there intellects and talents to the effort.
All this has been in a foreground of our background of Professor Samaresh and Dr. Kalyankumar. During the 36-hours in Delhi, when we first landed, we were able to meet with Dr. Kalyan. He was in charge of the administration of all the primary schools in Uttar Pradesh, about 800,000 children, National Education Development Institute and National Fine Art’s Academy. His view has been so parallel to ours, Hector Behar and Ramon’s et al in Peru and the drift that we profoundly feel in Prof. C. G. Jung’s perspective, that unless we nurture, serve, these traditional cultures, then we have a funeral waiting for our souls and the existence of human life on the planet.
So here, we let our borrowed ASUS Net book take rest. It is 3.15 PM. We spent one hour with one of the Temple Brahmacaris tranfering Light of the Bhagavata files and our old but happy eyes are about to collapse.
Enough work for one day.
We will send this report and in the next week we hope to have substantial progress on our written contribution to the Symposium in Peru in June, Miguel’s magazine and our other ASA and NIOS efforts.
We are still planning to leave this body (through the mouth?) November 2024.
Please write to us. We cannot live without your mercy.
Tom Brown and Buck White et al
ANJANA SUTA ACADEMY
NIOS (North American Institute for Oriental and Classical Studies)
