Red Panda

The night before the wedding we went to the Groom’s Dinner with about 60 people. After eating there was a series of activities, including one where everyone introduced themselves, relationship to the couple, where they were from and a story or thought.

My sons Madhu, Marken and Tulasi were also there. Madhu brought his 12 year old daughter. She got bored.

The tables were decorated with some loose little foil hearts scattered where your plate would eventually be. There was individually wrapped packets of butter in a bowl. Dessert was cake pops — looked like tootsie roll pops but made out of frosted cake.

Using what was at hand (pulling the sticks out of the cake pops) she made the following art piece:

When I saw what she was doing I gave her my hearts as well, as did her uncles.  I was so proud of her I had to bring other guests over to show them once the formal part of the evening ended.

She gets that creativity from my wife who is a gourd crafter and artist.  My side of the family does have some rhythm and can be musicians and dancers but not a lot of artists.

 

Two Marines

On the leg of my flight from Pittsburgh to Chicago I ended up sitting next to a young Marine. He is finished with his first stages of training and preparing to go to his MOS school to be a radioman. He was returning to his training from a family funeral.

That evening after arriving in Fargo my sister drove me out  to visit my aunt and uncle. He lives in an assisted living facility and she visits him daily. They have been married for 62 years.  He also was a Marine, albeit in World War 2.

It was the like seeing  the samsara diorama  in real life, one at the beginning of his life as a Marine, the other at the end.

One point my uncle was stressing was that as a way to live a life, treat people well and develop good relationships, that was the most important thing in life that makes it worthwhile. Which is  a conclusion that supports the practice of bhakti yoga which is the yoga of love, the yoga of relationships, understanding that we are all part and parcel of Krishna.

 

Madhu Gets Recognized For His Work

My son Madhu is a policeman in Georgia. He recent6ly received an award for his outstanding service.

Read article here

 

Dancing In My Dreams

The basic religious expression of the Hare Krishna movement is chanting, dancing, and feasting.  Celibacy is part of the minor cultural practice. It used to be that at the Vrindaban farm in New Vrindaban brahmacaries lived, celibate students.

I spent a year living there but even after getting married continued to spend one night a week there for years.  The brahmacaries lived in Vrindaban but worked other places, either crossing the valley by foot to the Palace construction site or walked to Bahulaban.   Bahulaban was two miles away so that meant 4 miles of walking per day plus whatever work and in most cases that involved physical exertion.

The upshot was that the 30 or so mostly young men were physically fit so when the dancing that was part of the daily religious practice ensued, it was vigorous. While dancing is by nature cooperative in nature, it was inspiring to be dancing with others and a bit competitive.   Constant practice and desire to improve made for some good dancers, always seeking better and smoother moves.

We had great kirtan leaders and none of this sit on the floor stuff that passes for kirtan today s0 the leaders actively danced.  While many of the names would be obscure, like Amburish and Taru, well known to current devotees is Radhanath, then a brahmacari. He was young and healthy and led then as now great kirtans.

When you spend hundreds of hours in kirtan with the same leader, after a while you can sense intuitively when the segues are coming, and a zen sort of oneness with the kirtan manifests. Last night’s dream was there.

While many of the moves I used to execute are relegated to memory, last night I had a vivid dream of being in a Vrindaban kirtan.  Much better than a memory, it was almost like being there again. Radhanath was leading the kirtan.

While now I can still  do  aerial 360s down beat to down beat, in my dream I was doing   540s and sticking it on the beat so I knew I had to be dreaming.

It was like a nice vacation from my current poor health and while not unhappy to awaken from it, there was a bit of wistfulness to leave the dream.

 

We can never expect to find any kind of utopia

Thursday, 25 May, 1972   Los Angeles

My Dear Jayarge and Lindon Lomese,

Please accept my blessings. I beg to acknowledge receipt of your letter dated May 22nd, 1972, and I have noted the contents carefully.

I am very much pleased that you have joined with us and that you are following all the regulative principles of Krishna Consciousness spiritual life. Upon receiving written recommendation by the president of our Seattle center, I shall be very glad to accept you as my duly initiated disciples.

So far your description of events in the Seattle temple, I have informed Makhanlal what is your opinion, so do not worry. I am going to Portland on 8 June and I understand that the devotees from Seattle are coming down there to meet me so you may also come at that time.

One thing, we can never expect to find any kind of utopia, even in the spiritual world. Where ever there are persons there are bound to be differences, so we should not expect any kind of perfect arrangement, especially here in the material world. Even sometimes amongst the gopis there is envy, but that enviousness is transcendental and should not be accepted in the mundane sense.

Anyway one quality of a devotee is that he is always very much tolerant of other people, so I request you simply to tolerate the faults of others and always think that I am myself the most faulty. In this way your humble attitude will qualify you to advance very quickly in Krishna Consciousness.

Hoping this will meet you in good health.

Your ever well-wisher,
A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami

 

New Devotee Farm in Kentucky

While at the Festival of Inspiration I spend most of my time talking to devotees.  So many interesting people.  Simply standing in a line for prasadam I struck up a conversation with a guy and turns out he works at a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) in the St Louis area that has  125 shares.

We had a nice conversation about that project and how it worked as well as other topics about gardening.   While discussing tomato varieties, he was recommending Sungold, a cherry tomato, which I am trying for the first time this year as it turns out. He predicted I would be quite pleased with it.

I also met an artist who was selling his work. Turns out he and another family just bought a farm in Kentucky.  If you are interested in getting in on supporting or being part of a new project on the ground floor, here is your chance.  From their website (which includes a blog):

The Bhagavat Commune is a project started by a group of Vaisnavas who wish to implement Vedic culture into their lives and undergo a simpler life focused on spiritual growth without having to maintain various material activities in order to be able to support themselves.

As the years slip by, we slowly realize that while “doing the needful” we are missing out on what is truly important.  Maintaining family and loved ones is certainly necessary, but there are so many activities that we can engage in which will serve that purpose as well as contribute more directly to our spiritual advancement.

At the Bhagavat Commune, devotees will grow their own food, build their own houses, and provide goods and services to the Vaisnava community around the world in order to produce the necessary income for any other necessities and expenses.  Aspects of this project include, but are not limited to, an institute for Sastric study, a Vaisnava retreat, a self-sufficient community, and production and distribution of multi-media devotional arts.

Most importantly, the devotees who live at the commune will center their lives around Krsna and create a more peaceful and satvic environment conducive to spiritual growth.  In such an environment, not only will the residents make rapid spiritual advancement, but the visitors will also get a more accurate taste of what our ISKCON society has to offer.

Srila Prabhupada wanted his followers to adhere to the philosophy of simple living and high thinking.  He also wanted his followers to scrutinize his books and present our philosophy and culture to the general public.  In 1972 Srila Prabhupada instructed his disciples to “boil the milk”, which means that the quality of ISKCON members is more important than the quantity of ISKCON members.  If we have a lot of people who follow a little of the philosophy, we are sending the wrong impression and not giving an accurate representation of this important mission.

There are a several communities around the world who are dedicated to live up to these instructions, and this is our humble attempt to do the same.

Please check out the different phases of this project by clicking the links at the top of this page to check out our progress blog, and if you would like to contribute to this project in any way, please let us know how you would like to help, or how we can help you.

thank you.

 

Making an Appointment For a Kidney Transplant Screening

I got a call yesterday from UPMC (University of Pittsburgh Medical Center).  My nephrologist, kidney doctor, had referred me to them for a kidney transplant screening.  While I am a big fan of using denial to not let impending events cloud the present, a call from the transplant center to make an appointment for screening is a difficult time to employ it.

I hemmed and hahed for a while then deferred, wanting to talk to my post liver transplant coordinator first. I needed some hand holding.   She was all about going for it, saying what has turned out to be  key in my decision making that patients that get the transplant before going on dialysis do much better than those who get it after having started it.

As I am scheduled for a Pre-dialysis class tomorrow, that is a looming probability.  So no advantage to wait for the screening.  I have at most a year before dialysis, maybe only a few months.

Of course, due to complacency in the general population, there is a shortage of kidneys available for transplanting, Most people just never think about it and if they have a sudden death, they miss the chance to donate.

Current waiting time for a clean healthy kidney is 3 years and lots of folks die waiting. A lady I met while doing adult skating this past winter lost her sister to kidney failure. She was on the transplant list but didn’t live long enough to get one.

The “plus” I have is making an opportunity out of a negative. Hepatitis C is contributing to destroying my kidneys but if an otherwise healthy kidney comes available that is infected with Hep C, they can’t put it into an uninfected person but I could take it.  That may jump me up the list.

UPMC  pioneered using HCV infected organs in already infected patients as a matter of fact.

So from having already been through screening for my liver transplant, I know the process takes several days of testing and includes fun things like a colonoscopy and an endoscopy.

I suspect I may also need a liver biopsy, as why would they put a good kidney in someone whose liver may be approaching the end of its usefulness, but my post transplant coordinator said that is only 50/50 and up to the doctor. I don’t like liver biopsies, and have had about 4 of them at last count.

At least they should be able to use the kidney biopsy I had recently so that may hurry things along.

The body is such a lot of bother, but essential to do any service.

My post transplant coordinator said there are really only two options — go on dialysis or get a kidney transplant. I told her there was a third — whole body transplant through reincarnation, but naturally,  while she was polite, I don’t think she took it as a serious suggestion.

The problem with that of course is the 20 years or more it takes to get the new brain and body developed enough to the point it is usefully productive, but then a few decades of  good times so it is a tradeoff.

 

No Email For 3 Days

Anyone wondering why I haven’t responded to an email in 3 days it is because of bizarre circumstances.  Every time I try to go to Gmail  I get a error message “The connection to the server was reset while the page was loading.. .” This happens occasionally with satellite connection which is the only option available to us out in the sticks types not near a cable line or so far out on copper phone lines that DSL doesn’t work. Normally I try again and succeed. Not recently. Multiple attempts successively fail.

In this case I am still able to access any other site on the web, just no Google product sites.

I have cleared the Temporary Internet Files folder and deleted cookies then done a hard reboot and no success. I tried doing the above again then using a different browser. I normally use Firefox  so tried IE and same result except it showed an error message from HughesNet. It had a little diagnostic procedure that failed but left me with a phone number and an error code to call in.

I spent a half an hour on the phone with a polite Indian gentleman and tried numerous things, many of which I had already done on my own. He was unable to resolve it but did say he was going to “escalate” the case and someone would be calling me back in 24-48 hours.

In the mean  time I was at the temple yesterday and someone let me check access there and I could indeed get into my account from that location (the temple has a T-1 line).  Unfortunately I was in the middle of a work flow with another devotee involved and couldn’t spent any time reviewing the messges.

While correlation is not necessarily causation, this did start at the same time I signed up for iGoogle — since then I can’t access Google products. Not even the search page.

I didn’t even want to sign up for iGoogle but I was working on a project with someone online and it arose that I needed to download an album from Picasa but to do so I had to register for it. The only way to do that turned out to be to register for iGoogle so I sort of accidentally got roped into doing so.

I thought if I got shed of iGoogle, I might be OK. Unfortunately all the instructions on how to delete iGoogle involve signing in and I was unable to do so.

My daughter Vraja happened to call while I was beating my head against the wall on this issue, so she agreed to access my Google account.  It took a while because I assume that what iGoogle did was email me a password, which because I couldn’t access my email I never got.

It was able to tell that the location being logged into from wasn’t my home and asked for my phone number to verify it was me which didn’t help because I had never finished the registration process having never gotten the password.  This stumped us for  awhile until it asked a security question which I did know the answer to.

Unfortunately none of the instructions we found on several different websites worked. It said get to My Products, click on Edit next to iGoogle, and then Delete. When we went to delete however, it kept talking about deleting Gmail as well which I did NOT want to do.  We were able to switch the Search page to Classic which in theory disables iGoogle, but after emptying the stash, deleting cookies, and rebooting, same result: no access to Gmail.

Today I have made arrangements to met someone at the temple who will let me work on their laptop so I may be able to make a dent in the backlog but in any case don’t be offended if you aren’t getting an expected reply from me.

Call.