Cell phone vs. Gita

CELL PHONE vs. GITA I wonder what would happen if we treated our Gita like we
treat our cellphone? What if we carried it around in our purses or pockets?
What if we flipped through it several time a day? What if we turned back to go
get it if we forgot it? What if we used it to receive messages from the text?
What if we treated it like we couldn’t live without it? What if we gave it to
Kids as gifts? What if we used it when we traveled? What if we used it in case
of emergency? This is something to make you go….hmm…where is my Gita? Oh,
and one more thing. Unlike our cell phone, we don’t have to worry about our
Gita being disconnected because Krishna already paid the bill. Makes you stop
and think ‘where are my priorities? And no dropped calls! ((((KRSNA is COOL))))
by Sanjeev Jaiswal

The Believer

The true Believer is a Searcher

Helping a stranger

This evening on the way home from work, I was chanting Japa, (Hare Krishna!). I was nearly home when I noticed some flashing lights up ahead and as I got closer I realized something had very recently just happened and as I got closer I saw a body in the road. One man had ran over but looked like he had no idea what he should do so I quickly pulled over and ran to the man in the road. He had just been hit by a car and he was unconscious. I still had my bead bag wrapped around my hand. I checked his pulse while other people started running over and flipping him on his back and touching him, which they really shouldn’t have done, but I had no control over the situation. One woman declared she was a nurse and that he wasn’t breathing and started doing this and that to him as I sat there feeling his pulse, I knew that he was alive but this “nurse” thought for sure he wasn’t. An ambulence happened to be driving by with their sirens on to another accident when they came across everyone in the road trying to help a stranger. I could smell alcohol on the victim’s breath. Why on earth he had been running accross that section of the street I am really not sure. He was my age, late 20’s I think. Anyhow, some people came out and asked if this man had just been hit and they were his friends. It was a little strange if you ask me as they didn’t seem overly concerned. I got the gut feeling that they may have all been intoxicated. I looked down at my bead bag and just chanted for a moment until the ambulence attendees decided they would stay for this accident and got out to start helping the young man. The people that had hit them were two Mexicans and they sat in their car the entire time. They never got out. Why? I’m not really sure. Maybe they were scared because they weren’t legal or their car wasn’t completely legal but I thought it really odd that someone would just sit in their car and not try to offer any help. I think that the boy/man will live. Maybe this experience will help him gain some insight into the meaning and purpose of life. I thought that once about my brother too. He was in an awful car accident and he really shouldn’t be alive but somehow he managed to get by with barely any injuries. He felt really blessed for a very very short period of time, but quickly Maya erased the reality check that had been so preciously offered to him.

On a totally more positive note, Dena gave me a awesome CD with tons of kirtans on MP3! I listened to some at work today and she really picked a great mix of things. Thank you Dena!!

4th of July weekend with Srila Prabhupada

fireworks

I had a very ignorant and most stupid Wednesday July 2nd which seemed to hover over me for the rest of this holiday weekend. I do not wish to speak of my actions on Wednesday, only to try and promise again to myself that I will discontinue this horrible behavior that seems to wash over me uncontrollably.

The thing about Forgiveness is that you have to actually stop doing the very things that you need forgiveness from before you can even begin to think about recovering and eventually by Krsna’s grace maybe even forgiving yourself.

Thursday, July 3rd was must unproductive and uneventful. The entire day was a waste, trying to recover from Wednesday night. I didn’t go to work.

Friday, July 4th was the holiday. I had wanted to spend time with the devotees, some of which were having a get together barbeque with kirtan but I felt too guilty, self loathing, and too foggy from my actions and behavior still from Wednesday. My mother called and invited herself and he friend over (2nd time so far this summer) to light off fireworks together. Previously in the week, I had phoned my Aunty Louis and invited her over to watch the works. She is now living in deceased Grandma Brown’s home alone. She has spent the passed I can’t remember 4th of July’s with GB and I felt horrible thinking of her all by herself just after GB’s passing. So this is how the evening matured, with Lois, my mother, Louise, and Jared all on their way to gather at our residence.

Everyone showed up. Mom and Louise both with some form of alcohol. Louise, whom is deathly obese with her cigarettes. And then Dan, my partner whom is always here with alcohol and cigarettes. The very things that are killing my spirit and soul I just can’t seem to get away from. All the intoxication, all the ignorance, and I still fall into the trap myself so what a hypocrite am I?

Everyone had a good time. The kids, Jada and Jared screamed running around like mad children, the adults smiling and talking. All in all it was okay. Nothing spiritual though, which is the type of association I am really craving.

I was sad that Grandma Brown is gone and can no longer enjoy another day here, but I know that this is only a material place and that everything in the material universe has a beginning and an end. In the material world, there is no permanency. Everything you can think of such as life in the form of humans, animals, insects, plants… or even thoughts, relationships, businesses, places, any thing you can think of eventually no matter what has a beginning and an end. The only thing that is eternal here is spirit soul, and this we all have but we don’t understand the whole big picture as a universal society on earth. We don’t understand spiritual life vs.. material life. Some people understand this, but they are the lucky few. We need to serve Krsna and even this we cannot understand. This is why we must serve a spiritual teacher so that we can be taught through our own perseverance and strength and through guru’s will and mercy to have a little piece of Krsna’s spiritual knowledge.

Me, I am still much too ignorant and filthy muck is covering my soul to ever even sit before a spiritual teacher. I pray to the His Lotus Feet that I can someday chant away the filth from my heart and soul and be able to approach a bonafide spiritual master that can help save me from this ocean of ignorance.

The whole weekend was not a complete wash though. I have been reading through Srila Prabhupada’s Lilamrta and I can honestly say that this book is saving my life and giving me so much inspiration to continue forward and not give up on things. I cannot put this book down and have spent days reading doing very little else besides some sleeping and eating and chanting. Here, Srila Prabhpada came to the West, to America and so patiently saved these western kids from wandering around lost on LSD and other hard drugs. He couldn’t save them all of course but he truely and genuinly cared for and loved the ones that tried their hardest to become good devotees and just try in all honesty to love Krsna on the path of bhakti yoga. This book is an amazing account of how one man, single handedly brought Krishna Consciousness to the west. It is purely amazing and almost inhuman how one little old man could produce so much in such a short time. I find myself, laughing and crying through the story. Srila Prabhpada was so simple and humble. I find myself crying when the devotees have to see him off to leave for his preaching duties because they feel such seperation from him. Please read this book if you are at all interested in Krishna Consciousness. Another thing that struck me as very important for myself was that Srila Prabhupada started these young western kids off very slow into KC. He didn’t expect them right off the bat to know and do everything. It took time and training and Srila Prabhupada was so smart about how much he could expect them to take in – only so much at a time and at what times it was appropriate to add in more.

Srila Prabhupada

I wish that I had been alive to meet Srila Prahbupada in person but I am so lucky to be alive in an age where I can easily access his teachings through his books. We are all so lucky and we should use every moment possible to try and be good devotees and give up this material position we are in. It is a very dificult situation for us to be in, but to Srila Prabhupada it was very simple. Simply chant Hare Krishna and purify the heart, that is the best thing to do in this age of quarel, kali yuga. Other things may/will come, but most importantly just chant. This will slowly purify the heart and other things will come. No need to rush, just chant, that is the first step.

I look around sometimes and think that chanting japa is the last thing some people are willing to do these days. It takes time and we become so distracted with the very things we need to be striving to stay away from, maya. I know that when I first started re attending temple, I went straight into trying to offer service to people, which is great, but we need to chant! It is not difficult. I think that perhaps we should put more emphasis on this aspect of our culture because until reading this book, I hadn’t been able to understand it’s importance in the same way that Srila Prabhpada could describe it.

Alas one more great event of the weekend. The Sunday progam at the temple which I will attend shortly this evening.

All Glories to Srila Prabhupada!!!!!! I am but a lowly, rotten wishing to be servant of the devotees of Srila Prabhupada. Please accept my humble obeisances.

Hare Krishna

Forgiveness

Forgiveness Mandala

Monday through Friday on the way to work I drive by a Seventh Day Adventist Church that has the best phrases on their reader board.

Last months:

Forgiveness is giving up the idea of having a better past.

16 Rounds

Chant the Holy Name!

Today will be my first day having ever chanted 16 rounds of japa. I want to make a commitment to Lord Sri Krishna that I will chant 16 rounds of japa per day, and with his love and strength, I will keep this vow and not break it.

All glories to the devotees whom inspire me so much, probably without even knowing it, to take on with enthusiasm this vow. I look up to the members of our society and I am so thankful to be in their shelter.

I don’t know why exactly that taking on this vow is all of a sudden important to me, but I know through Srila Prabhupada’s teachings that it is definitely good for my soul and will help to purify me. I think that this change of events in my life has something to do with my Grandmothers leaving her body and some lessons I have been learning from it. I’m still trying to process the loss. I find solace in my chanting japa.

Next on my list is to exclude entirely the use of onion, garlic, and egg products from my diet. I go back and forth with this one. I find it easy to replace hing for garlic and onion when cooking foodstuffs from home. This is easy. It’s the pre processed store bought items and going out to eat for lunch and some dinners that is the real culprit. These activities need to stop. I just am not organized enough at the moment to make a full commitment to stopping these activities. I work full time, go to school part time, am practically a single mother to my 10 year old daughter and keeping all of these things together sometime isn’t always very easy for me. Sometimes I feel that everything my life will bust at the seams because it’s all so difficult and complicated. This fast paced life of business, eating, sleeping, etc has got my mind in a fuzzy blur and things go by so quickly that it actually scares me sometimes. I am afraid I will be 70 years old and still in the same position, having never taken action on the goals and dreams of my life.

I really did do things so backwards and really wrong in this life so far, and sometimes I go into a daze, thinking in my mind, speculating about my past and in utter disbelieve on the things I have done and the roads I have taken. I honestly don’t feel fit to be a devotee or person that God could love sometimes. Other times I am off on an adventure trying to forget the past, but it never really goes away. I wonder if God can forgive me? I’m not sure I can forgive myself. If I can’t forgive myself, then how will God?

I hope that by keeping this vow of chanting 16 rounds per day that my soul can become a little purified and that I can find some peace and forgiveness in Krsna’s name. I understand that only by his mercy can this really happen and I am hoping against hope that he will accept my chanting His name’s. I give everything up to Krsna. My life is guided by Him. I am at His mercy, in His love. I want back my relationship with Him that was lost unknown times and ages ago. Please accept me Krsna and my vow of chanting your name. PLEASE, I beg of you. Let me serve you through the chanting of your name. Please lovingly guide me and show me the right path.

I am your must lowest servant.

Bkgoswami’s Thought of the Day

I checked me email this morning and curiously looked at yesterday’s thought of the day from Bir Krishna Das Goswami. I receive these email in my inbox everyday but I don’t always look at them. Here was yesterday’s thought of the day:

bkgoswami.com

THOUGHT OF THE DAY

Once you have faith… what happens when you have faith, that sort of faith? You become determined – ekeha kuru nandana – and you get off the mental platform. Mental platform means that you are not completely convinced. Prabhupada said, “I am acting as I am because I am completely convinced.”
(From Srila Gurudeva’s lecture on ‘Universal Form’, Zagreb, June 19, 2008)

This thought of the day exactly relates to a questions I had been pondering last night about God and faith. Krsna is giving me this message I feel. One must be completely convinced and completely surrender to God, and one must act on this because it is of the most urgent matter. I must step off of the mental platform and dive into the univeral peace and love of Krsna and his devotees.

Last night was difficult. I fell asleep reading Srila Prabhupada lilamrta, which was the easy part. I woke back up when Dan came to sleep and was overtaken by sadness. I cried myself to sleep and woke up still crying. I miss her so greatly right now.

Last night at temple I was talking to Bhakti Rasa about my Grandmother’s death. She asked if the whole family was there when she passed. I shortly explained that the whole family is broken and that only a few family members were present and about my Uncle and the joke book. I told her that on Friday, I had sat at Grandma’s bed for a few moments and chanted Hare Krsna in my mind but wasn’t able to do so out loud in the pressece of my relatives and there was never a time when one could be alone with her to pray.

I am so scared that I didn’t do enough for her. When she started to go, I had really wanted to come over and read scripture to her and pray for her, and I had tried to get her going in this direction but she was so distraught over death that she quit thinking, out loud anyways, about her faith in God. She was scared, and just like my post yesterday and directly relating to Bir Krishna Das Goswami’s thought of the day yesterday, she was on a mental platform still. She wanted to believe and have faith, but she still wasn’t 100% convinced I think. If she had been 100% convinced then she would have sought shelter of God. Instead, durring her last conscious days and hours, she spent them coloring in a coloring book of birds that I had purchased for her some time ago one time while she was in the hospital.

I really wish that I just could have done something more spiritually for her in the end. There is a lesson for me to be learned from this experience and about death and about planning for death and about what really matters while you still have life.

Thank you Krsna for not giving up on me and for teaching me these important lessons. I am nothing, just the smallest minute part of you. Thank you for being patient with me and loving me. Please allow me to keep on this path of becoming completely convinced in you. I know that I am not there yet and that I have so many flaws. Please help me be more humble and engage me in your service. Hare Krsna.

She never

She never got to see me get married
She never got to see my new house and all of the flowers and gardens that I have now, she would have just loved

Thunder and My Grandma Brown

Lightning

Grandma Brown left her body earlier today. I am unbelieveably sad. I miss her so much already. I want to know where she is now. I keep replaying in my mind the thought of her last breath and wondering what happens after the last breath. Do we have souls? Is her soul on a new journey at this very moment. Deep down I get very fearful that when you die, that is the end and that we don’t go anywhere. But then I think about a creator and I think, no way can all of this be here including you and me without something having had created us and everything we call things. I am just utterly mind boggled by death, by my Grandmother’s death.

I am so sad for so many reasons. I wish that the whole family had been at her bedside, praying and loving her. The last day I saw my Grandmother was on Friday. I knew she probably wouldn’t make it through the weekend. She was completely unconscious and hadn’t eaten or drank any fluids in at least 3 days. My Uncle was at her bedside reading a joke book out loud for all in the room to hear. It was his best way of dealing with the situation and trying to keep everyone’s minds off of Grandma’s impending death. He also thought that if by chance she could somewhere and somehow still hear what was going on, even though she appeared to be in a deep sleep, that this would too keep her mind off of dying. I felt so helpless and sad and disturbed because dying isn’t something that we should take lightly or “joke” about. I know that he realy truely was trying to do the right thing in his mind and was trying to help the situtation, but I just felt so sad. A few weeks before Grandma got really sick, I had tried to talk to her and see if she wanted anyone to come and read to her. More importantly I wanted to come by and read the Bible to her, she was a Christian. She said that she didn’t very much feel like reading, because she just couldn’t concentrate on it, so I never did ask her if she would like it if someone came and read the Bible to her. She seemed very unhappy and perhaps fearful of dying. When she still thought that she had a fighting chance a while back when she was on Chemo, she acted as if she was okay to die and that she had great faith in God. I hope that this was true, although I felt bummed when towards the very end, there appeared to be nothing really Godly or Godly thinking going on around her. Her pasture did come by a few times and that was nice.

I just can’t believe she is no longer here. Yesterday I was taking a nap and I woke up all of a sudden with this very surreal out of body feeling that very soon Grandma just wouldn’t be here and I can’t even describe the feeling in words. It was very eary and strange to comprehend and grasp the feeling that I felt. I wish I could describe this better.

While Grandma died this morning, we were either on our way to river or at the river swiming. I felt really sick when I got the voice message to call my family when we got back. I was pretty sure that I knew what the message was going to be. I am upset that I wasn’t there when she passed and that I didn’t get to see her before they took her body away. We all should have been there.

I just can’t believe that I can never call her again. I can never go to her house and see her again. Soon her phone number will be entirely gone, I will need to delete the number from my mind. Her house will eventually be gone and sold too. I just really can’t believe this is happening. I want to know where she is right now. Where do we go? Where is she? Why can’t I see her one more time, or 10 more times? I love her so much. I don’t know how I will get by with her sometimes. Grandma was the only one who truely understood my heart condition and I could ask her questions about hers and it would make me feel better. That is totally gone from me. Away and I can’t get that back. When I was at work and would have bad heart tremmors or feel just awful, I would always call Grandma and I always felt better knowing that she was only 10 minutes away from my work. I can’t believe she is gone.

There are some lessons that can be learned from my Grandma’s life and passing. I will reflect on that more latter. I just can’t go there and do that right now. I wish I could feel her now or see her and know that she is in someway or form carrying on somewhere. I feel so conflicted. I want to have a clear believe in faith, God, and an afterlife, but then I always have that doubt. I wish and wonder if there is a way to 100% erase that doubt. I wish I could somehow see something just really magical and spiritual that would make me say that without I doubt I know that there is a creator and an afterlife and reason to live a life based on faith and love of God. I know that a life based on faith and love of God is beautiful and it makes one feel very nice and pleasant, but I want to know that it’s real. God will you please reveal some of your spiritual power to me?

Today, Sunday, June 29th, was smoldering 97 degree day which ended in thunderstorms and some fat raindrops that fell from the sky. When Jada and I exited Temple, there was these beautiful beams of sunshine filtering through the clouds. Jada asked if it was someone doing this with lights, but no it was Mother Nature. I told Jada that it was Grandma Brown.

Grandma Brown

Grandma Brown is dying and I love her very much. I can’t believe that she will no longer be here very soon. I am at a great loss without her.

Today I went to visit her at her bedside. She is unconscious and gurgeling on her phlegm which sounds unbelievable horrible as if she is drowning in her own fluids. I think that she is peaceful and hopefully not aware of the uncomfortable bodily symptoms.

I am so very sad and at the same time so angry with my Father and Brother for their behaviour during this time. I really feel like I don’t know my Father anymore. He isn’t the same man he once was. I don’t like his decisions and the paths he chooses to take. I just don’t know him any more. The Father I knew would never behave in this way. The father I once knew would be at his dying Mother’s bedside as she left her body.

Uncle Rob has shown tremendous strength throughout all of this. He has been there from day 1 since Grandma found out that she had the cancer, taking her to appointments, taking her out to experience life and to try and keep her mind off of her own impending death. He has personally seen to having the best care for her and made it possible for her to remain in her own home instead of some nasty hospice center to die in. I continue to be amazed with his compassion and ability to think so clearly and walk the good path. I’ve come to realize that I didn’t really know my Uncle Rob either. He is a much greater and kinder man that I had thought.

Grandma, I love you so very much and wish you well on your soul’s next great adventure. If I should never see you again, I would like you to know that you mean the world to me. My life wouldn’t be what it was today… I wouldn’t be who I am today, without your guidance and all of your help along the way. I wish for you the best in the world. You are a beautiful soul and I will never forget you in this life. I love you with all of my heart and it’s so very hard to let you go. Goodbye Grandma.