“Your specific talents are to be engaged under direction of the Spiritual Master. Everything, every talent can be employed in Krishna’s service, and how to do it is known to the Spiritual Master.
“You have the tendency for botany, you can grow nice flowers and fruits for Krishna, that is the utilization of your natural tendency. If you have got specific training in this connection, then after establishing this center in Hamburg you can come to our New Vrindaban and grow things, or you can grow things in Hamburg also. Fruits and flowers can be produced anywhere.”
Letter to: Sivananda — Los Angeles 11 November, 1968
(existing letter in the VedaBase)
the soil splits
above a daffodil
early spring
Only the first daffodils at my house are peeking through the soil but in the warm ground next to Tejo’s house they are up and running. I noticed my honeysuckle vines have started to open their leaves, and I am sure, on closer examination, many things would be breaking dormancy.
I have been caught up in copying the unpublished Srila Prabhupada letters. The current plan is to sort out the ones where New Vrindaban is mentioned and publish them once a week or so on the Brijabasi Spirit.
The next one to go up there is dated March 17th, 1968 wherein SP names the new farm project New Vrindaban. That would make the 17th the 40th anniversary of New Vrindaban if you taking SP’s naming it as the official authorized beginning of the community.
The one thing that strikes me overall about these letters is how dear NV was to SP and how it played an integral part in the development of his vision for preaching in the Western countries. He mentions it over and over in these letters, as well as so many others that are already in the VedaBase.
The popular, or should I say “unpopular”, current perception of New Vrindaban among many people is that it is joined at the hip with Kirtanananda Swami. Thus when they fixate exclusively on KS’s mistakes, SP’s project suffers by association.
I didn’t come to , and sacrifice for, New Vrindaban because it was Kirtanananda Swami’s project — I came to NV because it was SP’s project and I was attracted to his vision for it and for society in general.
I still feel that it is SP’s project and I resent those who live here and feel that the WalMart lifestyle is not only acceptable, but preferable, and for whom the temple is simply a convenient and ego satisfying way to make an industrial society based living.
Even worse than them are those who continue to dedicate their energies to keeping NV so closely associated with the mistakes of KS and work tirelessly to maintain that image of the place. They don’t seem to have noticed that he hasn’t lived here for about 17 years — they seem attached to weeping for the past and unable to acknowledge any possibility of a brighter future.
They are actively damaging SP’s project by ignoring the realities that other devotees had and other realities that could manifest. I hope by spreading these letters so carefully preserved by Hayagriva from SP, including so many about NV, that the winter of KS’s mistakes can pass into the spring of rebranding NV as SP’s project, and we can finally get back to working on his vision.
