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Going on book distribution is always an adventure. We never know what lesson Krishna wants us to learn next.<\/p>\nGoing on book distribution is always an adventure. We never know what lesson Krishna wants us to learn next.<\/p>\n
Recently, I was distributing on 16th Street in downtown Denver, Colorado. A young man approached me with a concern.<\/p>\n
He said, \u201cHey, why don\u2019t you carry your books like a real monk on your back? Why do you cheat and use that rolling bag? That\u2019s not very honorable.\u201d<\/p>\n
Slightly amused by the ridiculous accusation, I was surprised that he then kept insisting that he knew what the dharma of a brahmacari is. I became a little disturbed, but remained tolerant.<\/p>\n
I said \u201cIt was nice meeting you, but I\u2019ve gotta go meet a friend now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then he walked away, saying, \u201cStop pretending.\u201d<\/p>\n
I thought, \u201cGlad that\u2019s over,\u201d and went on distributing, feeling a little proud that I was able to tolerate that provoking situation.<\/p>\n
A few days later I was out with books and ran into the same man, not recognizing him at first, and tried to hand him a book.<\/p>\n
He arrogantly said, \u201cOh, it\u2019s the fake monk again. Why don\u2019t you just carry the books on your back like a real monk?\u201d<\/p>\n
I then lost my tolerance and tried preaching to him about avoiding fault-finding and seeing the good qualities in others. I lost my cool, and it seemed to make him happy. At that moment I realized that I had failed a test of tolerance sent by Krishna.<\/p>\n
He said, \u201cI\u2019m just trying to get some emotion out of you.\u201d And he left laughing.<\/p>\n
I stood there bewildered, and I was disappointed that people passing by may have gotten a bad impression. As I was thinking this, one of the buses that drives through the mall stopped next to me and the doors opened. A man within stood there looking me in the eyes.<\/p>\n
He said, \u201cWe\u2019re all learning a little something today aren\u2019t we?\u201d<\/p>\n
I said, \u201cWhat did you say?\u201d<\/p>\n
Then the doors closed and he rode off, continuing to look at me as if to say, \u201cYou know exactly what I mean.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thus I took it as a situation arranged by the Paramatma to teach me humility and tolerance.<\/p>\n
A few days later I was distributing books, and people were being very dry. They were rudely rejecting books over and over again.<\/p>\n
Then, when I had almost lost my cool, a young man wearing a hoodie and sunglasses passed by, turned around, and said to me, \u201cDon\u2019t worry. Their souls are still sleeping. You keep on trying.\u201d<\/p>\n
After that I thought: Krishna really works through his various energies and shows us how He\u2019s always right next to us facilitating our purification and advancement, especially out on sankirtana.<\/p>\n
I hope this story is relevant, and devotees can relate to how Krishna arranged these \u201cmessages\u201d out on book distribution for purification.<\/p>\n
Your servant,
\n Amala Purana Dasa<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Going on book distribution is always an adventure. We never know what lesson Krishna wants us to learn next. Recently, I was distributing on 16th Street in downtown Denver, Colorado. A young man approached me with a concern. He said, \u201cHey, why don\u2019t you carry your books like a real monk on your back? Why<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[94],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-101025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-testing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=101025"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101025\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101026,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101025\/revisions\/101026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=101025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=101025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=101025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}