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DIARY OF A TRAVELING PREACHER >>

by His Holiness Indradyumna Swami

VOLUME VI

Chapter 21 - "A Little Corner of Hell" (Chile & Paraguay, 16/11/05 - 25/12/05)

After the Ratha-yatra in Buenos Aires and a week of preaching programs around the city, I was visited by a devotee with a message from Gunagrahi Maharaja: could I visit the ISKCON temples in Chile and Paraguay? I hesitated for a moment, only because I was trying to figure out where Paraguay was. I finally gave up. I turned to the messenger to agree, but before I could say anything, he handed me an airline ticket. "You leave the day after tomorrow," he said ...>>

Chapter 20 - "The Past, Present, and Future" (India & Argentina, 09/11/05 - 15/11/05)

Before leaving Vrindavan for the West, I told Sri Prahlada das that I wanted to take darsan of the famous Deity of Sri Nathji, in Rajasthan. The Deity was discovered on Govardhan Hill by a great devotee, Madhavendra Puri, more than 500 years ago, before the advent of Lord Caitanya Mahaprabhu. The Deity was later moved from Vrindavan to Nathdwar, not far from the present town of Udaipur. "That would be wonderful," said Sri Prahlada. "At the same time we could visit a famous astrologer a few hours away in the desert. He is known as a Brighu because he reads one's future from the Brighu Samhita."...>>

Chapter 19 - "Disappearance Day Offering to Srila Prabhupada" (Vrindavan, 27/09/05 - 08/11/05)

Dearest Srila Prabhupada, Please accept my most humble obeisances in the dust of your lotus feet. All glories to you! My glorious master, on this auspicious anniversary of your departure from the world, I once again find myself in the holy land of Vrindavan. It was here that you retired from family life and in your old age began your mission of taking Lord Caitanya's message to the West ...>>

Chapter 18 - "Taking Care" (Ukraine & Hungary, 26/08/05 - 26/09/05)

Soon after our summer festival season, Nandini dasi and Jayatam dasa offered to organize a retreat for me so I could recover from the strain of 61 festivals in three months.No doubt I needed rest, but I turned the offer down. "I need to keep active," I thought, "otherwise the pain of separation from the festivals will be too great." Jayatam was not happy. "Srila Gurudeva," he said, "you're almost 57. You should start taking better care of yourself. It took you a long time to get over that flu recently."...>>

Chapter 17 - "The Last Festival" (Poland, 11/08/05 - 25/08/05)

By the time I returned to Poland after my short visit to Ukraine, the devotees had broken down Krsna's Village of Peace at Woodstock and returned to our summer base on the Baltic coast. They greeted me with a small reception, and I spoke about our plans for the next two weeks. This would be the final leg of our festival tour. The devotees had been holding festivals almost every day since May, and they were tired, but when I mentioned that the season was drawing to a close, many of them had tears in their eyes ...>>

Chapter 16 - "Dreams Coming True" (Poland, 29/07/05 - 10/08/05)

After the difficulties we went through on July 7, I started having nightmares every night. One evening, after a week, I talked about it with Sri Prahlada das. "It's been a long time since I had a Krsna conscious dream," I said. "Since the tour started in May, I've only been dreaming of war or being chased or having to hide. I know it's the result of preaching in a society often opposed to what we do, but I wish there were some relief, at least in sleep." ...>>

Chapter 15 - "Difficult Lessons" (Poland, 05/07/05 - 28/07-05)

Our spring tour had been a success. We had put on 12 big festivals with a total attendance of over 60,000, so our spirits were high as we began the summer tour in early July along the Baltic Coast. Our ranks had swelled to over 220 devotees, filling to capacity the school we had rented in Siemys'l, a village of 300 people.The school would be our base for the summer, and the villagers welcomed us with waves and warm smiles, in sharp contrast to their mood last summer. I asked Nandini dasi, about the change ...>>

Chapter 14 - "The Frowning Girls" (Poland, 21/06/05 - 04/07-05)

One day, when Monika was seven years old, she surprised her mother. "Mommy," she said, "I believe in reincarnation." "Really?" said her mother, a devout Catholic. "Where did you ever get such an idea? Certainly you haven't learned this in church." "I don't know, Mommy," Monika said. "But I know it's true. After we die, we are born again." ...>>

Chapter 13 - "Back On The Front Lines" (Poland, 09/06/05 - 20/06/05)

On the flight from Moscow to Warsaw, I counted the money I had collected for the festival program in Poland. I had gone to Russia to raise funds for increasing the security of the program, but my collection didn't come to much. In fact it barely covered the costs of my travels through Russia. But I didn't lament. The wonderful experiences I'd had preaching in Russia were priceless. As Srila Prabhupada once wrote to a disciple, "Preaching in the snows of Moscow is sweeter than the sweetest mango." ...>>

Chapter 12 - "Without Discrimination" (Russia, 05/06/05 - 08/06/05)

Every morning while I was visiting Rostov, Russia we would drive from the apartment where I was staying to the temple, an old house in a poor neighborhood of dirt streets outside the city. The temple didn't have facilities for more than a handful of devotees, what to speak of guests. Over 100 devotees would line the road to greet us with kirtan, but one morning I noticed three or four dark-skinned people in ordinary clothes among them ...>>

Chapter 11 - "The Debate" (Russia, 02/06/05 - 04/06/05)

Throughout my Russian preaching tour, I had been corresponding by email with Sri Prahlada das about managing my time better. My schedule has been so intense the last six months that I have found little time to study, an essential practice for one who lectures two or three times a day. As I grow older, I also find myself hankering to spend more time chanting japa as well as worshiping my beloved Deities each morning. I was falling behind in my email correspondence as well. There are often hundreds of emails waiting to be answered. Many of them are letters from disciples who need urgent attention ...>>

Chapter 10 - "Sharing Good Fortune With Others" (Russia, 26/05/05 - 01/06/05)

My three-day visit to Tatarstan went by fast. It is said that if you enjoy what you are doing time passes quickly but if you are bored or annoyed time drags on. And I was doing what I enjoy most: sharing my good fortune with others. Several months earlier, I had been talking with my son, Gaura Sakti dasa, about how the devotees of my generation are starting to pass away. "You've lived such a full life," he said, "even if you were to die today, you would have nothing to lament." ...>>

Chapter 9 - "In Service To Him" (Moscow, 24/05/05 - 05/25/05)

Just over a thousand devotees came to the festival in Dniepropetrovsk, a large city in Ukraine. It was a three-day event: a day in glorification of Srila Prabhupada, the appearance day of Lord Nrsimhadeva, and my birthday. It also marked the 18th year of my service as a spiritual master. On the morning of my Vyasa-puja celebration, I checked through the list of my disciples. There were over 2,000. Although all of them certainly knew me, I could not possibly remember each and every one. I took a deep breath. "It's a heavy service, isn't it?" I thought. "But it's the order of my own Guru Maharaja." ...>>

Chapter 8 - "A New Beginning" (Ukraine, 16/05/05 - 23/05/05)

I took a flight from Warsaw to Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, with Sri Prahlad das and Rukmini Priya dasi. We landed in the early afternoon on a warm spring day. As we walked outside from the international terminal to the domestic for our connecting flight, we saw many people lounging about casually on benches or sitting at small sidewalk cafes ...>>

Chapter 7 - "Same Mission, Same Mercy" (U.K. and Poland, 29/04/05 - 05/15/05)

I arrived back in Warsaw on May 8, after an absence of nearly six months. My travels had taken me to the far corners of the earth, to such places as Australia, India, the United States and South Africa. People in those prominent countries often consider Poland, tucked away in Eastern Europe and off the beaten track, as a place of less importance. In fact, as I was leaving the United States, one of my Godbrothers hinted as much. "Maharaja," he said, "maybe it's time to move on from Poland. What major effect have your festivals really had there?" ...>>

Chapter 6 - "Tales of Wonder" (U.S.A., 14/02/05 - 28/04/05)

As our two-month tour of the American temples was coming to a close, I found myself drawing on my body's reserve energies. Our schedule of two or three programs a day meant I rarely went to bed before midnight. Constantly on the move, traveling back and forth through different time zones, eating irregularly, and sleeping in a different home every other day had become a taxing routine and had taken its toll on me. In Alachua, Florida, I fainted one morning as I left the temple. A devotee helped me outside and sat me on the lawn. "Maharaja," he said, "you'd better slow down. Take it easy." ...>>

Chapter 5 - "Lessons on the Road" (U.S.A.,11/02/05 - 13/04/05)

Since leaving Sri Lanka in late February I have had several dreams of the devastation caused by the tsunami and of the victims that I attended to. That real-life drama left an indelible impression on my mind. Even the most beautiful scenes of nature now appear tainted, for I realize more than ever before that everything in this world is temporary and subject to destruction ...>>

Chapter 4 - "The Medicine of the Holy Names" (Sri Lanka, 21/01/05 - 10/02/05)

The day after returning to Colombo from our trip to Matara we quickly busied ourselves for the relief work ahead. We used funds donated from overseas to purchase the basics required for cooking: tons of rice, dhal, and vegetables, as well as spices, five huge new pots and various cooking utensils. Ten devotees loaded everything on a government lorry, piled in a van and returned to southern Sri Lanka, ready to begin serving daily prasadam to five thousand displaced persons ...>>

Chapter 3 - "When Will It End?" (Sri Lanka, 12/01/05 to 20/01/05)

As my flight made its descent towards Colombo, the capitol of Sri Lanka, I gazed out at the tropical scenery below. Sri Lanka looked much the exotic land described in the in-flight magazine. It seemed all the more so when, after landing, I drove into the city with the local ISKCON temple president, Mahakarta das. The humidity, the endless array of rich green foliage, the luxuriant swirls of the Sinhalese alphabet, the multi-colored Buddhist flags and the variety of fruits on sale all made for what seemed a paradise ...>>

Chapter 2 - "Tsunami!" (Sri Lanka, 25/12/04 to 11/01/05)

Like most people, in the early hours of December 26, 2004, I had no idea what the word tsunami meant. Had I been a tourist on the beach at Phuket, Thailand, sunbathing on that ill-fated day the "harbor wave" (the Japanese translation for tsunami) hit, I probably would not have taken heed when a vacationing scientist, seeing the sea mysteriously recede several hundred meters, screamed out a warning to others, "Tsunami!" Tsunami!" and ran for his life. He survived, but most on the beach didn't ...>>

Chapter 1 - "Friend of the Shelterless" (Poland, 17/11/02 to 24/12/04)

As my autumn preaching tour in Poland gradually came to a close, my thoughts began drifting towards Vrindavan and my forthcoming visit to that transcendental abode. Each year as the month of Kartika approaches, I hanker for the spiritual atmosphere of the holy dhama. It's the natural place for a preacher to rest, recuperate and, most importantly, go deeper into Krsna consciousness ...>>

volume V     volume VII

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