By Nrsimha Krsna das
The things seem impossible are possible in preaching Krishna Conciousness. You may not have the best facilities to preach in some geographical parts of the world. In Turkey, we do not have chance to preach in public. We have a yoga center here and we do hatha yoga classes as well as bhakti yoga programs. Yoga is getting popular in Turkey and what we see with our programs is that Turkish people like chanting Holy Names of the Lord. We have established a kirtan yoga group three years ago and since then we go for chanting any yoga studio that invites us. We have reached many people through kirtan yoga and some of them are very regular with our bhakti programs. They want to know more about Absolute Truth.
Three weeks ago, I got a phone call from one of our followers in Ankara. Ankara is the capital city of Turkey and it is the 2nd biggest city. There was going to be a yoga festival in the biggest University of Ankara called ODTU and we were asked to chant there with our kirtan yoga group. When I first heard it, I was so excited and wanted to go there right away. I said yes to the guy without asking any other member of our devotees. I knew it was a big opportunity for us. This university’s students have the spirit of revolution. When the time came we had Latvian devotees and Dr. Somit visiting us in Istanbul. So, we took doctor and Shyam Prabhu along with us and drove to Ankara. We got books, devotional items and kirtan cds with us. When we reached there we were surprised by the natural enviroment in the university. It is a huge land and many people were in the university for the weekend. Our friend welcomed us warmly and we immediately made a small stand for us. Krishna Kirtan Prabhu and Sri Rama Prabhu started bhajan immediately. We got some attraction and students started to come to us. I had the greatest opportunity to distribute books. Normally, we don’t do book distribution outside however this was unique chance for us. Definetely, Krishna’s nice arrangement! During the day, we distributed, 11 B.Gitas, 6 Srimad Bhagavatam 1st , 4 Laws of Nature, 4 On the way to Krishna, 2 Chant & Be Happy, 2 Coming Back, 2 Higher Taste, 1 Beyond Birth & Death and collected 455 TL for BBT Turkey.
When yoga classes finished, it was our time for kirtan. We were in indoor sport saloon. There were about 100 people and most of them were there for the first time in kirtan. Before kirtan I spoke about “Spiritual Revolution”. How we should push for spiritual revolution into our lives and what the importance of it. I was also mentioning about Caitanya Mahaprabhu how he started first civil disobedience in India. Kirtan was ecstatic. After program many of them reached us to get more information. Next morning, we had successful Ayurveda seminar with Dr. Somit and went back to Istanbul. How the things were going on during our visit were amazing. It is definitely HDG Srila Prabhupada’s mercy that even in Turkey, many people chant the Holy Names, read & hear about Absolute Truth in their mother language.
Harinam Sankirtan ki Jaya!
Your servant, Nrsimha Krsna das