Hare Krsna, Amigos y Amigis,
Follows the report we just sent to our Officers and Directors of NIOS. It took us 45-minutes of hard work to write it but it is like a stick of dynamite to put in your hand.
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He Radhe, Vraja devike, He Nanda suno, kutah!
Our respects to His Divine Grace, Srila A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami, Prabhupada, author of the book "KRSNA: The Supreme Personality of Godhead", and other unlimited transcendental resources.
Our respects to the Advisors, Directors and Friends of NIOS.
We write this from ISKCON Buenos Aires. It is beginning of Fall here so the weather is mild but one must be a little careful of Dengue from the few mosquitos who patrol the area.
Brother Ass, our dear body, after eight weeks, two months of hard, hard, hard travel has finally stumbled and we are running through a fever and probably some kind of virus.
It is some torment but manageable like having to clear the sinus passages every few moments.
In general, we took advantage of the friends and disciples here and a complete eye check for new glasses shows only a slight stigmatism, no glaucoma nor cataracts. Cleaning the teeth after two years showed only a small tartar build up and good strength for all the remains teeth, two having already gone-to-Goloka(?).
Yet, typing on the portable key-pad onto the HP Cell phone is a little tedious.
DON'T STRAIN YOUR EYES.
So, as we make the turn and head North, back to our base camp, Murfreesboro. The body and equipment are in reasonable order for 70-year old ass.
We spent the morning with three very, very competent Brahmacari disciples, pulling all the Argentinian pesos out of the cracks and a rough calculation shows that we have covered the expenses of the tour.
RESULTS:
We see our 'Anjana Suta Academy' (www.JayaRama.US) as our root and esoteric community. Then the middle world is the ISKCON Ministry of Education. Finally, our full effort to dance with the secular world is NIOS. Of course none can exist without the others.
The central point of the MOE was the GBC College seminar in Campino Grande, Brazil. Besides that we can probably organize everything else around 'Viplavah', the Ministries quarterly periodical of which we are now the Acting Editor and one of the founders.
There are now 1-million people in ISKCON of which a good estimate is over 150,000 are school age children. The work, the potential, is immeasurable. Of course, a lot of our travel has been to ISKCON centers and after all this, and oceans of discussions with intelligent people a concise report seems to be bubbling to the surface. So we pray for you help with that.
Today we will write this NIOS midway report and work on our 'Srimad Bhagavatam' study guide development. (Then at 6.30PM do a consultation for Lomasa-rsi Das and 7.00PM Gaura-arati and class on Sita Devi's appearance day festival, next Monday, for a full house of about 50-devotees and friends).
We have not been able to make a great number of stalwart allies in this effort to promote 'Art and the Sacred' as we hoped. For example, while in Argentina, Buenos Aires, we hoped to meet with the Director of the National Library who is a cosmic scholar and publishing house editor, and the Jungian psychologist who translated 'The Red Book' into Spanish. The Jungian gentleman was out of town and even after recommendations from close friends we have not been able to meet with the Library Director.
On the other hand, the Symposium promo video by Oscar Natars has received nothing but rave reviews and is up on the YouTube (look for NIOS Images) and a twenty page, first class folio of the event is going out in the hundreds.
We have contacts, we have resources, when we return to Lima on Friday it should be a turning point. Alejandro has sent the promo video to Ramon Mujica. If he is enthused to work on the project then we are still in the water. We are also hoping for a copy of a Mission Statement for ‘Solaris’ from our Editor, Miguel Polo.
After long struggle Rama-giridhari Das and ourselves talked and he has been making progress with Ambica on the fund raising with Meta soft.
Last I looked the web-page had not been updated with Joshua. I will try to contact him and see what his critical situation is.
After Peru we will be in Mexico City for the weekend. We have a university program there and what may be the premier of a Manipur/Mexico (Art and the Sacred) connection. That will be Sunday, April 29th, ‘The International Day of Dance’.
It seems we have expressed our situation well. We tried to call Prof. Samaresh but the Voice Over Internet would not hold so we will try to go out tomorrow and use a public phone station.
It is now 1.48PM, about 45-minutes on this Report.
Hope to hear from you.
HpSwami
Prof. H. H. Robinson
“All that is needed for evil to prosper is for good men to do absolutely nothing”, Thomas Paine, USA Revolutionary.
