{"id":6474,"date":"2008-09-26T12:15:07","date_gmt":"2008-09-26T11:15:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/?p=6474"},"modified":"2008-09-26T12:16:31","modified_gmt":"2008-09-26T11:16:31","slug":"reflections-at-the-japa-retreat-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/?p=6474","title":{"rendered":"Reflections at the Japa Retreat 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

Karnamrita.das:
\nMoving Temples within Krishna’s Temple of the Holy Name
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Offering respects to Prabhupada, Sacinandana Swami, Giriraja Swami (who are teaching) and all the Vaishavas who have taken up the holy name as their life, joining together for a week to go deeper.<\/p>\n

Inside the Temple of Krishna’s
\nmulticolored Lights
\nsit Krishna’s many moving temples
\nchanting and hearing the Holy Names.<\/p>\n

Inside these bodily Temples–within the Temple
\nthe soul sits in his heart seat
\ncovered by layers of desires and attachments
\nfrom countless births crystalized into
\nthe bodily machine of blood, guts, bones, organs.<\/p>\n

These fortunate souls trying to wake up
\nfrom their forgetful dream of being the center
\nof life and the universe, by taking up the chisel
\nof the holy name, to the shapeless, ever-changing,
\nplastic stone slab they thought defined them.<\/p>\n

Beginning to wake up from the dream
\nof forgetfulness from Krishna, inhabiting a fool’s paradise,
\ncoming together to also wake up from another dream
\nthat they understood what the holy name was,
\nthinking they were fully engaged to their capacity.<\/p>\n

Reflecting on this as I sit by the river
\nin the beauty of the external, sleepy energy of Krishna,
\nI am covered by a Harinam (holyname) shawl
\nas this is fitting because the
\nHoly name of Krishna is all there is!<\/p>\n

According to Baladeva’s commentary on Vedanta
\nevery Sanskrit word is a name of God–
\nShri Chaitanya taught this returning from initiation,
\nin his grammar lessons he showed every word
\nmeant Krishna–our goal to see him everywhere.<\/p>\n

Also, in explaining his shiksastam, Chaitanya
\ntaught that God has many names
\nsince people have many desires–as many
\ndesires as there are, that is the number of
\nhis names–“As they surrender, he reciprocates.”<\/p>\n

We can have whatever we want as
\nthe world is fueled by our desires, attachments,
\nbut is this the end of life?–or do we as
\nsouls have a nature and relationship to God
\nwhich is the perfection of our longings?<\/p>\n

Shrila Bhaktisiddhanta taught that the only
\nworldly scarcity is the lack of Krishna consciousness,
\nso as our soul becomes uncovered we
\nwill see that everything and every creature
\nis dancing to the will of Krishna.<\/p>\n

The Vedas say that the wind is blowing out
\nof fear of him, the sun is shinning out of fear
\nof him, and so every material object
\nis resting on his will, taking their shape
\nand nature according to his guidelines.<\/p>\n

And further, as we walk down the
\ndirt road and observe the bugs biting us,
\nor crawling, or birds flying, animals
\nmoving–all are existing due to his will,
\ntruly chanting to him in their own way.<\/p>\n

As Haridas Thakur replied to the questions
\nof Chaitanyadeva, when we chant and hear
\nthe echo, that is actually the chanting of
\nthe unmoving living beings, so as we
\ntake the name to awaken, we can share that.<\/p>\n

As we fill the day with chanting and
\nremembering Krishna, we can have a glimpse
\nthat within the 14 worlds there is nothing
\nof value, save the Holy name, pastimes of Krishna
\nand serving the Vaishnavas who embody the teaching<\/p>\n

We read the Bhagavat, serving those
\ndevotees who are considered the book in flesh,
\nas we make friends with and share our heart to
\nour pears; and the overflow of our spiritual
\ntaste is sharing it with others.<\/p>\n

The hope is that they too will be transformed
\nby the holy name, and become mad (after Krishna);
\nas we watch them wake up and surpass us
\nwe are happy that gurus, the Vaishnavas,
\nand Krishna are pleased–that means success!<\/p>\n

I am happy I took this time to reflect
\nas there is still time to finish 64 rounds–
\nbut then I was interrupted from my revelry–
\nthe Unexpected brings my wife holding her
\ngut, in agony, in need of medicine.<\/p>\n

She spoke of a splendid morning of chanting,
\nand then Krishna put her in his left hand
\nof pain and distress; as I was dispatched to
\nthe drugstore, and I remembered I forgot
\nto feed Giriraja and Shalgram—O!<\/p>\n

So I felt partially to blame for my wife’s
\nsuffering–as we are one–and Krishna serves
\nmany purposes—I saw my fault, my wife saw
\nhers, and we both experienced the different
\nkinds of mercy Krishna gives his devotees.<\/p>\n

As I drove to the drugstore on my mission,
\nto my left passed a funeral procession,
\nand I laughed at this obvious reminder
\nthat we can go at any moment,
\nwhether at home or at a japa retreat.<\/p>\n

We all have to appreciate our tenuous
\nand temporary material plight—where we
\ncan be kicked out at any time; so today
\nwhile we have a sound mind and health,
\nlet us take the holy name as our life and soul.<\/p>\n

HARE KRISHNA HARE KRISHNA
\nKRISHNA KRISHNA HARE HARE
\nHARE RAMA HARE RAMA
\nRAMA RAMA HARE HARE<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Karnamrita.das: Moving Temples within Krishna’s Temple of the Holy Name. Offering respects to Prabhupada, Sacinandana Swami, Giriraja Swami (who are teaching) and all the Vaishavas who have taken up the holy name as their life, joining together for a week to go deeper.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6474","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=6474"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6474\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}