Dear Hanumat Presaka Swami Maharaj,
Please accept my humble obeisances, all glories to Srila Prabhupada!
It's been some time, I just wanted to check in. Still traveling sankirtan, this time I'm with Bhakta Chang, a young brahmacari from San Diego. We were given a free invitation to Bhakti fest, (a popular yoga festival in joshua tree) so we tried it out last weekend. Of course, much of it is rather materialistic, and there are a great deal of prevalent misconceptions about Bhakti, Krsna, etc, but as far as festivals in the western world go I was pretty impressed. No intoxication, no meat, and everyone was chanting hare krsna all weekend! Probably they don't get much benefit from chanting, but most people were innocent and inquisitive.
Radhanath Maharaj is doing fantastic preaching out there, so many people are getting a chance to contact pure Bhakti. We adapted our style to preserve his relationship with the organizers. Mgmt there doesn't like what they perceive as 'proselytizing' so instead of stopping people we set up a little display table on the main drag and performed Kirtan with some other devotees in attendence. It was ecstatic, some people said it was their favorite Kirtan of the whole event, and somehow we managed to distribute quite a few books as well. I think one day we did about 40 big/maha big and collected about 180$, which was surprisingly decent for just calling people over.
Since then we've been mostly in San Diego, trying to get rid of some adhibhautika klesas before moving on. We've been waging chemical warfare with bedbugs for several days, and so far there's been some heavy casualties on both sides. Its taking a toll on our sleep and our sankirtan... but it's nectar. We joined Vaisesika prabhu for MSF here today, and he compared these challenges to Prabhupada's Jaladuta. My realization from today was that we all have some anxiety, it may be bedbugs, it may be tarantulas, but we've got to keep a song in our heart and perform our duty for purification.
I had another question for you about jiva tattva. I haven't spent much time on this topic since in general it can be distracting and nonessential, but I still see this as a relevant and significant topic nonetheless. Where do jivas come from exactly? When we say "Back to Godhead" does that specifically mean Goloka?
HpS-ASA -- AGTSP. Such a controversial topic before, no? "My Guru, knows more than your Guru!", "My Guru gave me better knowledge than your Guru!", "My Daddy can kill your Daddy!".
[Maybe your Daddy would not want to kill my Daddy]
In general Prabhupada doesn't seem to make a specific point about it so much, but mentions it in passing. Some people say that Naranaya Maharaja said, that in "Jaiva Dharma" Bh. Vinode Thakur says, that we fell from Mahavisnu loka, but I have never been able to find that, even in Maharaja's translation of "Jaiva Dharma", and no one has been able to show me the citation.
As far as I understand we could have fallen down, chosen to check out Maya Devi's Top Gun Theme Park, at any time and from any place, Goloka, Ayodhya, Vaikuntha, but also could have "fallen" from Goloka to Ayodhya and then got back up, or Goloka to Maha-visnu loka and then entered the material world from there. Murari Gupta is a Rama bhakta and Back to Godhead for Him means back to Rama lila, no?
HpS - Your note about Svasa was just lost. The Blog is having technical difficulties from our end for the last few weeks. We never got the letter of recommendation. Can he send to [email protected] and drop us a text message to 209 505-3219 that he send it?
May all your Burning Men be big ones. Please send us news as you can!!