DESCRIPTION AND DISCRIMINATION

About the difference between description and discrimination:

Devotee comment:
Yes sometimes I am talking to my kids about people we know, and I might say, oh you mean the Asian Gopali, and they say, don't say that mum that's racist. And I tell them no its descriptive. If I said something bad about Asians and related it to Gopali then sure that would be racist. But calling someone Asian is definitely not racist.

My comment:
Yes. We do that. It's like making oneself color blind or something. No distinctions. Just black and white. No red, purple, green .. Just black and white. Actually not even black and white... Just it's all one......................To make any distinction is to discriminate? This tendency is everywhere. We can't tell what's what. How to use things properly. OMG. It is Kali yuga... intelligence...

Further consideration on the inability to discern..
The July 9th letter from Srila Prabhupada listing 11 disciples to perform ritvik initiation on His behalf... is a "managerial" directive.
It is not an appointment of gurus.
Actually gurus cannot be appointed anyway.
Guru is not a managerial function.
A guru is far more "spiritual" than that

REMEMBERING A TRAGEDY

Remembering a tragedy.
In Atlanta in the 80's I was living in a 14' travel trailer in the temple parking lot. I had a small flower business and was supplying stores with incense with 50% to the temple. Periodically I would go for a few days at a time and sell books around the state of Georgia. Sometimes some of the new bhaktins would hop in the van and go with me. Ballabhadra and Gandhari the manager of the temple and his wife were very supportive. It was great fun actually. Chanting in the street in the morning, distributing books in the afternoon and if there were devotee families nearby we'd drop in around dinner time.

There is a large health food store in Atlanta near the temple and they were one of my incense customers. A young black woman was the manager for the incense department. She was very favorable to Krishna consciousness and I would bring her prasadam from the Deities. It was more than just a business decision for her to order every month. She even went out of her way to set up display where people could buy just one stick if they wanted to. She was very very nice like that and happy to engage in service.

I would get a kind of creepy feeling when I would ask for her. Another black woman, very tall and thin would peer at me from around the shelving watching my every move as I talked with the manager. I could feel an icy stare. I thought maybe she just doesn't like Krishna because I would wear devotional clothing.

One day I arrived there to supply the store and was told there was some bad news. The young woman had been murdered. I was in shock. No. How could that be? It was crime of passion. The other woman that I had noticed staring at me had shot and killed this woman and then shot and killed herself. She left a note. "If I can't have you, then no one can have you." The whole store was morose.

I saw two black women today that reminded me. It was like deja vu. One of them had that same icy stare.

How does this relate to Krishna consciousness?
Don't fool around with Maya...

SANKIRTAN CAN BE DONE ANYWHERE

What was that about turning orange from eating a lot of papayas?
Would you trust someone that looks like this?
(I can't wear tilak yet, eye surgery last week. Nothing can be put on my face yet.)
Great day at the nursing home..
Jaya Sri Krishna Chaitanya.
Sankirtana can be done anywhere, anytime in any situation. Time of death here I come....Hari Hari bol.. 

Dad (96) was tired, sitting in a chair in a quiet part of the hallway. He would be awake and mumble half a sentence and then doze off.
The radio was blaring throughout the building. Much too loud.
I only wanted to remember Krishna, not save the world.
I started singing the Mantra with the material moded-out "music" playing in the background with the same melody and beat as the material music but Hare Krishna. I couldn't fight the situation and I couldn't stop it. My senses were being bombarded with driving primal scream vibrations and lyrics that conjured up sex, sex, sex. "All night baby." Not particularly appropriate for a nursing home but the workers play stuff like that sometimes. I think for their own "sanity." It's music they like on a Friday night.
Pretty soon the hallway started filling up with people. Sitting next to my semi-conscious father ( he doesn't like Hare Krishna) clapping and singing kirtan as the seniors all with dementia and Alzheimer walked back and forth in front of us. They pace the hallways all day.
I had some books. I put them on a chair and there I was with a book table and Hari nam.
It was ecstatic.
They would stop and say some nonsense. I can never understand what any of them are saying. But the tone of their words is friendly and they are telling me something very important that is certainly going to help me.
Clapping and chanting the maha mantra... they would stop put their ear towards my face so they could better hear. I could see light in their eyes and energy flow through their faces and bodies as they heard attentively. Hare Krishna.
Even my father woke from his semi-slumber state and was very blissful. The nurses and nurses aides were blissful.
it was ecstatic.
I wasn't trying to save everyone. I was just trying to find Krishna in a difficult situation.
One nurse's aide was calling out someone's name trying to find them. From inside a room a response... "I'm here."

THE IDEA OF AN ORGANIZED CHURCH

ISKCON since the disappearance of Srila Prabhupada....

Spirit cannot be contained in it's pure state. "This individual soul is unbreakable and insoluble, and can be neither burned nor dried. He is everlasting, all-pervading, unchangeable, immovable and eternally the same." Bg 2.24
When the soul is contaminated with material identification then it can be contained by the illusory energy of the Lord in a state of forgetfulness of its own uncontainable nature.

Similarly, for a spiritual movement. Such a spiritual movement cannot be contained in its pure state.

"The idea of an organized church, in an intelligible form, indeed marks the close of the living spiritual movement. The great ecclesiastical establishments are the dikes and the dams to retain the current that cannot be held by any such contrivances. They, indeed, indicate a desire on the part of the masses to exploit a spiritual movement for their own purpose. They also unmistakably indicate the end of the absolute and unconventional guidance of the bona fide spiritual teacher." Radical Krishna Consciousness, Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Goswami.
http://www.krishnapath.org/…/Bhaktisiddhanta_Sarasvati_Thak…

WHAT WAS I LOOKING FOR"

Raised in a Jewish family born just after WWII. My mother was always in anxiety about family. But family never brought her any peace of mind or joy. The relatives were always angry with each other and would take turns not speaking to each other for years. Even my mother's own relationship with her mother ended when her mother passed away at sixty four and neither her nor my mother had tried to speak to each other in two years.

I grew up hearing all the horrible stories about both my mother and father's childhoods. Broken homes, fighting arguing, child abuse, neglect....So at an early age I decided there must be something more. Family certainly wasn't going to bring me happiness, love and joy. My  parents certainly hadn't had that experience. And yet they pinned all their hopes on my brother and myself that somehow we would be able to find happiness, love and joy in family?

I began searching. But where do I look? Who do I ask? Does anyone know anything that can help me?

My friends were Catholic. We had a lot of carefree days of childhood play. I loved them. When adolescence arrived those days were gone. Now we saw all sorts of differences that separated us. Where we were free to enjoy and appreciate each other's company we now hated each other and saw only flaws and reasons to reject.

School offered no solution. The only question they seemed to be able to address was, "What occupation do want to pursue to earn your way in life?" But I needed to know what was the purpose of life? If family was not my motivation for earning my way in life, what was my motivation?

The Jewish community at that time was very small where I lived. Ten families. I went to the makeshift temple faithfully every Saturday morning. Walking or riding my bicycle several miles. There were only two or three very old men davening (rocking back and forth and chanting prayers to themselves barely audible) and one old man who was senile who would come up close to me and try to touch my private parts.

Someone must "know something. It can't be all ignorance.

I began to read. Sometimes eight books at a time. Nietzsche, Sartre, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, but the classics, Socrates, Aristotle and Plato seemed to say something that I faintly resonated with. The Greek mythology opened another door. Reincarnation, generational curses, demigods...
I was getting closer. I absorbed myself in mathematics finding some shelter for my mind in the predictability of the science. If this then always that. 1+1=2. It provided some stability. Here were facts and laws and rules that always held true in a world I was finding increasingly unstable. (That would change when later in college I took a course in abstract algebra with an Indian professor who pointed out that all integers are generated from a set of (0,1) where 0 and 1 cannot be defined. So much for stability. Given my fragile mental and emotional state it's good thing I didn't try to study theoretical physics.)

Off to college. Surely I will find real knowledge now. I approached my Greek language professor after class one day. It was a private girls' college in Boston. He was from Ethiopia and spoke so nicely. His voice was beautiful and seemed to be refined, peaceful and intelligent. I waited until the students left the room and approached him at his desk. I remember how he had long fingers, piano player's fingers, folded together resting before him on his desk.

I asked him, "I am so confused. Do you know anything that can help me? Is there a purpose to life? Is there a goal"

He thought for a long minute.... and replied very sincerely and honestly, "You know, I have a good job here, tenure, a nice house, a beautiful wife and children, and I ask myself that same question. And because I do not know the answer, I become so depressed I sometimes want to commit suicide."

I appreciated his straightforwardness. By his manner and appearance I had thought he really knew something. Now I knew it was all show. Not just him but all the so-called successful pwople. It was all show.

Just in time for the hippie revolution and anti-Vietnam protests and that great "gift from God" LSD and it's little brother marijuana... pot,.. ganja...

The message music... Moody blues, Beatles, Doors, Rolling Stones, Dylan, Jefferson Airplane..."Don't you want somebody to love?"

Along with the mythology books and the classics I had also read during high school a pornographic books that my class mates had been buzzing about. It was a very sensually descriptive novel about an illicit connection. This was in the 60's and the sexual revolution was just starting. So throw that into the mix.

Talk about the gates to the lower planets opening wide.

I was determined to find answers. I was not going to leave any stone unturned. Someone somewhere must know something. And if no one does then I will search inside myself for answers. LSD offered a pathway into consciousness. It did help to get rid of the constant chatter in my mind that played like a broken record. It just dissolved it all, hence "acid." There I was in the present like it was a completely fresh and new moment each moment. All the "shoulds" and shouldn'ts" and "what abouts" were gone. There was life all around me and I was part of it. I was free in the sense that my mind no longer considered unnecessary restrictions and judgements that hampered my awareness, and only considered what was needed to grow and connect with the life around me. I could now discern the difference between spirit and matter at least somewhat and I was enthusiastic to keep going.

But without the drugs I didn't have access. And it was worse having experienced something "mystical" and then back down into "reality" I became extremely depressed. The conversation with my professor haunted me."Because I don't know the answer sometimes I want to commit suicide" I made some feeble attempts. Hanging, cutting wrists, pills, drowning... but then it seemed to me that this was becoming more of a meditation than any real attempts. I was trying to get rid of the body but didn't want to die. I ended up a raving lunatic. Not actually raving, since  I took a vow of silence. I took a vow not to speak until I got some answers. I held the question in my heart. "What is going on?"

That landed me in the state mental institution. I was able to keep my vow of silence and added a Zen Koan, "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" This was where I got what I needed for the next step.

I finally had some people I could actually relate to. There were two Jesus's and Buddha. A devil gambler complete with very red face playing poker all day, a woman who said rosary all day long, a few lesbians, and some hookers. The staff wore white.

I noticed that the people there would take a shoe off, bang it on a window and scream and yell. Sometimes they would break the window. It was a very popular thing to do and totally accepted since this was the nut house. Even the color of the walls was conducive to mental insanity. They were that eerie bluegreen color that suggested ghosts and spirits were lurking in every dark corner with heavy steel doors with the small wired-mesh-reinforced window eye level that would clang locked-shut with an echo.

This was my chance to break a window and scream and yell have it be totally normal and accepted even lauded by the other patients. I took off my sneaker and began. A nurse I  had never seen before stopped me. (You can't break a window with a sneaker anyway) Told me to follow her and she led me into the nurses' conference room. Patients never went there. There was a long conference table. She stood at one end leaning on the table and staring at me as I sat at the other end looking to the side to avoid her, slightly bent over holding the sneaker.

She said (and these words still sound and resound in my heart even today), "There is nothing wrong with you. You just don't have any faith in God."

That was it. Message received. That was all she said. And "God, God, God.." began to vibrate in my heart. I had never seen her before and I never saw her again.

If there was a God I was going to find him. I was released a few days later with a full scholarship to study psychology at the University which I didn't pursue. It wasn't long after that I found the Hare Krishna movement, Srila Prabhupada and the disciples.

So what now 44 years later of practicing devotional service? Did I go through all
of that just so that I could have a happy life with family and money and position in society?

DOES ISKCON OWE ME ANYTHING?

To those of us who are old now and may feel disconnected from the institution ISKCON (not necessarily from the Hare Krishna movement.)

Maybe we feel that we were used and now since We have nothing to give any more, no youthful energy, maybe no resources, talents or position in the material world to utilize, etc and so now may feel tossed to the side like an empty sandwich wrapper abandoned, un-cared for and neglected and perhaps some of of us may find ourselves in less than adequate material conditions and perhaps we are far from kirtans and prasadam. 

I hear these complaints voiced a lot and certainly I am in this category of used, spent and discarded. 

Last night I visited my father, 96 in assisted living. He has given everything and performed his duties and responsibilities in life with the greatest sense of integrity and moral fiber.  He took responsibility at a very early age when his mother passed away, He was 9. He was the youngest of 5 but he took responsibility even more than his siblings. From her deathbed is mother asked him to. As the youngest he evidently had a special bond with his mother. 

Military during WWII as a communications specialist (the technical part of communications that is.. the wires and tubes), dutiful husband... 65 years, no straying or cheating, no abuse of substances, no smoking, a very wholesome meat eater. Strong like bull. Sole caregiver for my mother for 20 years as she deteriorated slowly with Alzheimer until she passed away at 90.

He has turned over his house and what is left after all the medical expenses to me his only surviving descendant, a renounced aspiring Hare Krishna devotee.

So much integrity in performing his material duties and obligations.
He has made so many sacrifices as a duty, A mother's instruction to her helpless child.

But now he is 96 and not at all prepared for his own passing. Has no desire to hear anything about transcendence. "When you're dead you're dead." "I believe in God, He's over there. I'm over here. I don't bother Him and He doesn't bother me." Or he will turn his extended hand palms upward and show where he has crucifixion holes in his hands.

Now there is bewilderment. Of what use was all my sacrifice? Now He is left alone and suffering. Can hardly see, has no control of bladder or rectum, cannot walk, and administered 3 pages of medications just to live (chemical lide support)  has only a few functional hours in a day since he tires very easily. Alone. abandoned. Useless. And about to die.

 I am fast approaching a similar material condition as my father and mother and their father and mother and their father and mother before them. 

I made a sacrifice to ISKCON of my youth and energy to the best of my ability which is really minuscule and insignificant. Honestly I think I was more in the way than an actual help. I came to the movement with a lot of baggage and stubbornly hung to as much of it as I could for as long as I could. I guess I was something like a Hare Krishna baggage lady.

But I have no regret. If I do have a regret... it is that I have nothing left to give.  I would gladly do it all over again and again and again. 

Do I personally expect anything from ISKCON? No. I gave my life. that's it. I didn't make a deal. I gave it. It's gone. I gladly, joyfully, blissfully and enthusiastically gave it. Oh that I could do it again.
Do I expect some repayment?

Does ISKCON owe me something? 

Absolutely not. 

MAGIC CARPET RIDE

Overwhelmed... pretty much all of the time..
It's hard for me to be around other people. The experience is so intense.

Like today, the gardeners were here at the community. It's my father's house, I have nothing...
One man from Guatemala speaks fluent English. He is friendly and we talk sometimes a little bit. "How are you. Nice day..."

Today there was some brush in the back of the house where Tulsi devi's garden is. I have a sign for them not to come there because they can be rough on the plants and I don't want anything to happen to Tulsi devi and the fruit trees there.
It is a scared space that they do not necessarily recognize.

But today I asked this man if he would take the brush away and we talked for some time near Tulsi devi. I introduced him to Tulsi. The sacred plant. And told him She would give him some special blessings. He liked that very much.

He is a little older than the rest of the crew, maybe 50. Has no family. His father is in Guatemala and his sister is here in the US but they have no communication. She is busy with her family.
He says he is just waiting to die. He reads the Bible and waits to die.
I chanted Hare Krishna mantra very loudly several times just because.

We talked about how temporary everything is. But how we are spirit.
My face hurt from smiling.
He left to keep doing his gardening work.

There was voice screaming inside me, "Give him something more to go on!!"
I asked, "What? prasadam? Tulsi leaves?"
The voice said, "The man is intelligent. He will read a book."
I don't have a supply of books to distribute... But I do have a Science of Self Realization a devotee sent to me.
When I touched the book it was glowing.

I was propelled as if on a magic carpet and found where they were working in the neighborhood. The other men were all there watching. He took the book...it was still glowing in his hands. He looked at the cover, Srila Prabhupada.. looked at me, looked at the cover, looked at me and said, "Thank you. I will read this."

I felt like I had flown in from another planet to deliver this.
And then I flew away.

I used to distribute books all day long every day for years. But this was intense.