Laxmi has left her body. See pictures, courtesy of Jaya Murari, here:

Laxsmi Departed Late yesterday

The last time I saw her alive, she was moaning some, making some half hearted gestures to move her legs, and seemed like she wasn’t aware of her surroundings.

A small Lord Jagannath was on the window sill above her head, there were flower garlands hanging on the walls, and a tape of Srila Prabhupada was playing. Not that anything truly mitigates the misery of death, but nice nevertheless.

I have been advocating that an older cow be kept at the temple barn. One reason is to try to disabuse devotees of the illusion that the primary concern of cow protection is milk production, which seems to be the operative conception of a majority these days (If you consume factory farm milk without tangibly supporting cow protection, you are ipso facto one of those of whom I speak).

They think of cows and the image they get is similar to the spin foisted by organizations like the California Milk Advisory Board. No sign of oxen or aged cows, only young, healthy milkers.

As I have heard Balabhadra say frequently, “Cow protection — not just milk”.

I wanted devotees to see that although a cow gives milk for a year or two for each calf, they continue to live, some even reaching 20 years or older. I want them to see that, and to experience a cow dying in the natural order of things, and for the cows to leave under circumstances of love, not lonely and forgotten in some out of the way place.

In this case the death is not an older cow, but the unfortunate death of a young heifer, practically a teenager. That is always harder to process.

This has created some backlash, some of it deserved, some of it simply sentimental, but I remain committed to the idea of having devotees face the reality of what milk drinking connects them to even if cow protection is practiced.

Hopefully this will help them become more committed to assisting cow protection, if not hands on, then at least by supporting cow protection programs financially. Then even if they have to buy milk in the market, it will amount to the same concept as carbon credits that is gaining so much popularity for those industries using irreplaceable fossil fuels.

But I digress.  When the devotee went to buy the 5 heifers Laxmi was one of, when he entered the pen to make his choices, he said he felt like he was in “Schindler’s List”, where he could only save a few and the rest would go into The Machine, ultimately ending at the slaughter house.

So however tragically short Laxmi’s life was, qualitatively is was much better than her fate would have been had she not been brought to New Vrindaban.