{"id":8636,"date":"2010-07-13T15:21:42","date_gmt":"2010-07-13T14:21:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/?p=8636"},"modified":"2010-07-13T15:22:33","modified_gmt":"2010-07-13T14:22:33","slug":"new-vrindaban%e2%80%99s-ratha-yatra-draws-over-350-to-marshall-county","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/?p=8636","title":{"rendered":"New Vrindaban\u2019s Ratha Yatra Draws Over 350 To Marshall County"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/SS-2010-07-13_17.16.37.jpg\"\/><br \/>\n<strong>By New Vrindaban Communications<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>New Vrindaban\u2019s annual Ratha Yatra drew over 350 people from across the United States to Marshall County last weekend.  \u201cI can\u2019t believe the entire parade lasted 90 minutes!  Once I started singing along with everyone else, the time just flew,\u201d said Jenny Santilli, a Spanish teacher at South Harrison High School in Clarksburg, WV.  \u201cThe chariot was gorgeous.  There was so much decorative detail \u2013 paper swans, cow-shaped and parrot-shaped balloons, and garlands of fresh flowers.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Santilli, who is working on her doctorate in Curriculum &#038; Instruction at Marshall University, attended the Ratha Yatra to fulfill part of her Multicultural Studies requirement.  Her assignment was to visit a community that is different from her own.  \u201cI am a practicing Catholic, so the Hare Krishna community is definitely different.  But after talking with the devotees, I can see many similarities in our fundamental belief systems.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Santilli also brought her 15-year old son Jonathan to the Ratha Yatra.  \u201cI want to expose my kids to as many different cultures as possible.  Jonathan saw things he had heard about in school.  Everybody was so friendly and answered all our questions.\u201d     <\/p>\n<p>Ratha Yatra, which originated in Jagannatha Puri, India, is based on the ancient Vedic scriptures.  Lord Krishna, who is also known as Jagannatha or \u201cLord of the Universe,\u201d is seated on an elaborate chariot, along with his brother Baladeva and his sister Subhadra.  The Vedic scriptures describe how Lord Krishna was the most beloved person in his simple childhood village of Vrindaban.  When Krishna was forced to leave Vrindaban as a youth to assume his princely duties in Dwaraka, all the residents of Vrindaban went into mourning, thinking only of the day when Krishna would return.  Many years later, the residents of Vrindaban met Krishna in Kurukshetra, where they saw him in an elaborate princely chariot and fine royal dress.  The residents draw the chariot, with Krishna aboard, with ropes of love.  The Ratha Yatra, and its significance in Vedic culture, was established in the western world by His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, the Founder-Acharya of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON).      <\/p>\n<p>\u201cNew Vrindaban is a very peaceful place, and I plan to come back and bring my niece from Wheeling,\u201d said Santilli.  \u201cNew Vrindaban is definitely God\u2019s country.\u201d    <\/p>\n<p>New Vrindaban Community is located south of Moundsville \u2013 Wheeling, off Route 250.  For more information, contact (304) 843-1600 or mail@newvrindaban.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/SS-2010-07-13_17.17.26.jpg\"\/><strong>By New Vrindaban Communi &#8211; cations<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>  \u201cI can\u2019t believe the entire parade lasted 90 minutes!  Once I started singing along with everyone else, the time just flew,\u201d said Jenny Santilli, a Spanish teacher at South Harrison High School in Clarksburg, WV<!--more--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[90],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8636","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=8636"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8636\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}