{"id":3458,"date":"2007-05-15T20:01:16","date_gmt":"2007-05-15T19:01:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/?p=3458"},"modified":"2007-05-15T20:01:16","modified_gmt":"2007-05-15T19:01:16","slug":"van-bihar-parikrama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/?p=3458","title":{"rendered":"Van Bihar Parikrama"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Deena Bandhu dasa<\/strong><\/p>\n

Every year on the second day of the moon after Nrsimha Caturdasi there is a special parikrama of Vrindavan called Van Bihar Parikrama. All the Brajavasis do parikrama of Vrindavan at night. If you go out the Krishna Balaram Guesthouse gate turning toward the Parikrama Marg, but on reaching the Parikrama Marg, instead of turning, you go straight through the gates in front of you, then you have entered the Ban Bihar Ashrama of the Nimbarka Sampradaya after which the night’s parikrama is named.<\/p>\n

Since it is very hot at this time of the year, (it was 45C) from about 7:30 PM onwards, everyone does parikrama at night when the weather is rather pleasant. At Ban Bihar Ashrama there will be a beautiful phul bangalow, flower palace, for the Deities of Radha Ban Bihariji. In fact from here on, along the small section of the Raman Reti part of the Parikrama Marg, there will be 5-6 phul bangalows. Everywhere in all the ashramas, they are distributing water melon, green and orange melon, and the famous thin long cucumber (kakri) prasadam and sweet water to all the pilgrims.<\/p>\n

In the old days at the Ban Bihar Ashram, they used to have a tank full of water in front of the Deities filled with lotus flowers with a small fountain in the center made from what we in the west would be using as a sprinkler for our garden. When I asked where they got all the lotus flowers from, the sadhus told me from Rohini Kunda in Nandagrama. Our Vrinda Kunda pujari also told me that he used to bring armloads of lotus flowers from Rohini Kunda which is not far off from Vrinda Kunda to to the seva-puja of Vrinda Devi. Now unfortunately, there are no lotus flowers there, but the kunda is still in existence. If anyone is interested to restore the kunda, they can contact me.<\/p>\n

After the Sandhya Artik in our Krishna Balaram Mandir, we take all the devotees on a sankirtan procession to see all the beautiful darshans. First of course we stop at Ban Bihar Ashram, where thousands of pretty white jasmine and mogra flowers have been stretched across a wooden frame in a very artful manner to make a nice phul bangalow. Then a little ahead and across the street there is the lane that goes to BB Govinda Maharaja’s house. As you enter the lane on the left is the entrance to a small ashrama. There they have a very gorgeous flower palace made for the Deities. You are overwhelmed by the wonderful fragrance. Unfortunately, they had no light at the crossing, so many people missed going there.<\/p>\n

Now across the street, there was a new phul bangalow that I have never seen before, for some beautiful two-foot tall wooden Sri Sri Gaura Nitai Deities. Crossing to the other side is the phul bangalow of two Govardhan Silas in the form of Krishna and Balaram of Santa Dasa Baba. On seeing me, he smiles and puts some melon and kakri prasad lovingly in my hand. Then we continue on to a few more phul bangalows with the final one just in front of where the Krishna Balaram Tree used to be for a very beautiful Gaura Nitai. All along the way the devotees are relishing the darshans and the melon and kakri prasadam.<\/p>\n

Then we head down to the Krishna Balaram Mandir Gaushala. There in front of the gate to the beautiful garden there, the devotees have set up tables and are distributing melon and kakri prasadam to all the pilgrims. A nice place on the lawn has been arranged for us with lights and all to sit and do kirtan for the pleasure of all the pilgrims. Here instead of just sweet water, we have mixed gaushala milk and a reddish flavor called roof afza, which is very cooling, with the sweet water of our gaushala. Here I saw the biggest crowd around our prasad distribution from all the others. Best of all, instead of polluting Braja with plastic cups like everyone else, were using biodegradable paper cups! This has all been sponsored by Madhumangal Dasa, a retired businessman from Bombay who has adopted our gaushala. He along with Sanaka Sanatana, our gaushala incharge, have made all the arrangements. All the devotees take pleasure in serving prasadam to the pilgrims or doing kirtan. It is a very transcedental atmosphere beneath a huge old mango tree and next to the lily pond!<\/p>\n

Almost 25 years ago, my godbrother Drupada Prabhu, who was incharge of the gaushala, considered that on this side of Vrindavan, sweet water is very rare, but our gaushala has the sweetest. In order to make Srila Prabhupada’s name famous among the Brijabasis, he conceived of this idea of giving out water and prasadam in front of the gaushala with kirtan. That time we had some old paper mache dolls of Krishna, Balaram, gopas, gopis, Mother Yashoda, Nanda Maharaja, and Srimati Radharani that had been very expertly crafted by Mother Jagattarini. We somehow made arrangements for lights and started our prasada and water distribution. Everyone was amazed at the beauty of the display of paper mache dolls and would come and bow and take darshan. Of couse many years ago they have been lost to the ravages of time.<\/p>\n

Somehow over the years, I managed to keep this tradition alive. Only a few devotees are around who still remember it, and newer and newer administrations ignore us old devotees or bother to take our advice. Anyway we all had a lovely time distributing prasadam and the nectar of the Holy Names. My health was so not good, so when the prasadam was finished around 9:30 PM, I just bid the devotees happy parikrama and they went off to finish their parikrama. Then before going to take rest, I sat with Sanaka Sanatana and Madhumangal discussing how next year we could bring some Deities from some of the gaushala residents and make a flower palace there also just near the lily pond.<\/p>\n

Van Bihar Parikaram Ki Jaya!<\/p>\n

In service of Srimati Vrinda Devi, Deena Bandhu dasa<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"HareBy Deena Bandhu dasa<\/strong><\/p>\n

Every year on the second day of the moon after Nrsimha Caturdasi there is a special parikrama of Vrindavan called Van Bihar Parikrama. All the Brajavasis do parikrama of Vrindavan at night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-deena-bandhu-dasa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3458","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=3458"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3458\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}