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DIARY OF A TRAVELING PREACHER >>

by His Holiness Indradyumna Swami

VOLUME VII

Chapter 21 - "Vyasa Puja Address to Partha Sarathi das Goswami" (South Africa, 11/11/06)

Dear Maharaja, Please accept my most humble obeisances. All glories to Srila Prabhupada.This evening you have asked me to speak at your auspicious Vyasa Puja celebration, but with your permission I would prefer to read an offering. Please don't feel that this is inappropriate ...>>

Chapter 20 - "Disappearance Day Offering to Srila Prabhupada" (Vrindavan, India 26/10/06)

Dear Srila Prabhupada, Please accept my most humble obeisances in the dust of your lotus feet. All glories to you! I am writing my offering to you today at Sankari Cor, a most sacred place at the foot of Varsana hill, in Sri Vrindavan Dhama. Though I have visited this holy tirtha a number of times, I still cannot fathom my good fortune in being here. Nevertheless, I am fully aware that the source of such auspiciousness is your Divine Grace ...>>

Chapter 19 - "Fruit of Vrindavan" (Vrindavan, India 11/10/06 - 25/10/06)

Dhruva das and I arrived in Delhi after our short trip to Bangladesh and took a taxi to Vrindavan. Though I have been to Vrindavan many times in the last 35 years, coming into that transcendental abode is always a fresh and exhilarating experience. I wanted to enter Vrindavan in the proper frame of mind, so during the three-hour drive I started to read from one of my favorite books, Vrindavan-Mahimamrita ...>>

Chapter 18 - "Mysterious Antiques" (Bangladesh, 06/10/06 - 10/10/06)

As autumn descended on Europe, I started thinking of my yearly pilgrimage to India. Going to India is more of a necessity than a luxury for one in the renounced order of life. To do his service well, a sannyasi must remain always pure in heart, and there is no better means of purifying the heart and building one's spiritual strength than spending the auspicious month of Kartika in the holy land of Vrindavan ...>>

Chapter 17 - "Luck of the Irish" (Ireland, 19/09/06 - 05/10/06)

When I was young, my mother would often speak of her Britannic forebears. "Your grandmother was from Wales," she told me on many occasions. But what she liked best was the Irish part. "Your grandfather was an Irishman from Cork," she would say proudly. When my father would talk of his German roots, she'd pretend not to hear. "Look at the faces of these children," she would say. "Irish eyes are smiling." "Luck of the Irish, boy!" she yelled from the grandstands when I won a high-school swimming race against all odds. Sometimes she'd say the same when I got good grades on my exams. No wonder, then, that I was always curious about Ireland ...>>

Chapter 16 - "A Lion among Men" (Russia, 13/09/06 - 18/09/06)

I boarded a flight from Moscow to Krasnoyarsk with my secretary, Uttama-sloka das. We tried to get comfortable, but it wasn't easy. The seats were small and close together. Although the plane had been renovated, it was still a vintage model, dating back at least 20 years. But it was midnight and we were exhausted, so we eventually fell asleep on the five-hour flight to Siberia. Half an hour before landing the cabin lights came on. I woke up and noticed a man across the aisle staring at me. Finally he stood up and came over ...>>

Chapter 15 - "Bearing the Burden" (Odessa and Baku, 09/09/06 - 12/09/06)

During the festival in Odessa, one of my aspiring disciples asked to see me. Fifteen-year-old Radha Sakhi dasi was born into the Krsna consciousness movement. When she was a child, I gave her a lot of attention and care, as I do for many children, and while we talked, I could tell that such love had borne fruit. She told me that her mother had recently passed away, a few weeks after suddenly coming down with a lung infection. Radha Sakhi was alone in taking care of her and was with her when she died. Though shaken by her mother's impending death she bravely collected herself, and put a Tulasi leaf into her mother's mouth, poured Ganges water on her head, and loudly chanted the Hare Krsna mantra into her ear ...>>

Chapter 14 - "Our Fervent Prayers" (Hungary, 26/08/06 - 26/09/06)

After the Polish festival tour, I went to New Vraja Dhama in Hungary. Under the guidance of Sivarama Swami, it has become one of the most successful communities in ISKCON. I had planned to read and chant in the spiritual atmosphere there, but instead I found myself giving most of my time to my disciples, some of whom had even come from Croatia, Bosnia, and other neighboring countries to see me. And I, having been away from them for a year, was just as eager to see them ...>>

Chapter 13 - "Giving and Receiving Gifts" (Poland, 08/08/06 - 25/08/06)

During the final phase of our summer tour, more and more people were coming, as many as 6,000 on some days. The mayor of a beach town told us that just before summer his secretary had been inundated with calls asking whether our festival was coming. By the time we were due, there wasn't a single room to rent in town. "The hotels are all saying that people are here for your event," said the mayor. "Even I myself had to open my house to a family who had come for your festival but couldn't find a place to stay." ...>>

Chapter 12 - "No Ordinary Festival" (Poland, 02/08/06 - 07/08/06)

After Woodstock, we moved our operation back to the Baltic coast. It wasn't easy. Our 250 devotees were tired from the 18 festivals in July, not to mention Woodstock. Only their determination to serve guru and Gauranga enabled us to set up a festival in the town of Dzwirzyno after a break of only three days ...>>

Chapter 11 - "Modern-Day Pastimes" (Poland, 27/06/06 - 01/08/06)

Devotees worked day and night for a week to get Krsna's Village of Peace up and running in time for the Woodstock Festival. In the evenings, people from the nearby town of Kostrzyn would drive out to the site and sit on the grass watching devotees set up the tents. Whenever a piece of framework for the large tent was raised or a lamppost installed, they would clap and cheer ...>>

Chapter 10 - "The New Site" (Poland, 23/07/06 - 26/07/06)

Our festivals continued, unaffected by the deceitful anti-cult campaign of the government. At least for the time being, we had the upper hand: our programs were entertaining tens of thousands of people every week, giving us good publicity. Still, I had learned long ago never to underestimate the enemy. "If you know the enemy and know yourself, your victory will not stand in doubt." ...>>

Chapter 9 - "For the Benefit of Everyone" (Poland, 18/07/06 - 22/07/06)

Amritananda dasa and I were on our way to set up a festival when we stopped at a car lot in Trzebiatow to look at a truck. We were greeted by the owner of the lot, a man in his 70s. "You have not been here for a long time," he said. "For years you held your festival every summer here. Then you stopped, and you started doing them nearby, in Mrzezyno." "More people," I said quickly. I was anxious to see the truck and get to the festival ...>>

Chapter 8 - "The Will of the People" (Puri, India 22/06/06 - 29/06/06)

Though I relished every minute of my pilgrimage to Jagannatha Puri, I was worried about the Polish tour. With Jayatam dasa and me in Puri, all the responsibility for organizing the tour was on Nandini dasi. Nandini is certainly capable, but taking care of the whole tour is a lot for one person. This year we had bigger plans than ever. We had chosen "A Summer of Yoga" as the tour's theme. Jayatam and Nandini had both taken intensive teacher-training courses in yoga during the year in order to give lessons at the festivals ...>>

Chapter 7 - "Jagannath Swami" (Puri, India 22/06/06 - 29/06/06)

I took a five-week break in America and focused on my health. I exercised almost every day, rested, and honored healthful prasadam. I kept my correspondence to the minimum to avoid stress and used the extra time to study. By the fourth week I had completely recovered and was feeling better than I had in years. I was ready to return to Poland for our summer festival tour. Then one morning I received a phone call from my Godbrother Radhanath Swami ...>>

Chapter 6 - "My Two Most Important Services" (Ukraine & UK 1/05/06- 21/06/06)

Much of my year is spent in preparation for our Festival of India in Poland. The festival lasts only two and a half months, but because of its size it needs much planning, organization, and fundraising. On the first of May, I flew out of the United States to England and on to Ukraine for my Vyasa-puja celebration. I was excited at the thought that the festival tour was just six weeks away. After Vyasa-puja, I would take only two short trips before the festival, one trip to England and one to Russia ...>>

Chapter 5 - "Such Mercy" (India 17/03/06 - 31/04/06)

After my visit to Mexico in mid-March, I went on a whirlwind preaching tour of the temples in the United States until the end of April. I kept a record of the programs I did in those six weeks, and I was surprised to see they totaled over 100. I must have done thousands of such programs throughout my career as a traveling preacher, and as I thought about my 57th birthday, just weeks away, I smiled. "Physically, the tour been exhausting," I thought, "but spiritually, I'm more enlivened than ever." ...>>

Chapter 4 - "My Muslim Brother" (16/03/06)

Each day, before downloading my email, I mentally prepare myself for dealing with the good, the bad, and the ugly. With hundreds of disciples and many other devotees regularly corresponding with me, the laws of nature force me to see the gamut of situations in this world. March 16, 2006, was no exception. There were names to be given for babies, condolences for the families of departed souls, blessings for disciples (and chastisements for two), guidelines for a new marriage, and a plea for a departed student to return ...>>

Chapter 3 - "City of the Gods" (Mexico, 02/03/06 - 15/03/06)

George Harrison once entitled a song All Things Must Pass. It's an old saying. Everybody has heard it. Even Lord Krsna speaks of the temporary nature of this world in Bhagavad-gita: "After attaining Me, the great souls, who are yogis in devotion, never return to this temporary world, which is full of miseries, because they have attained the highest perfection."...>>

Chapter 2 - "The Best of All Companions" (India, 06/02/06 - 01/03/06)

After regaining my health in Mauritius, I began to wonder about taking precautions for my flight to India. I wanted to avoid situations like the group of drunken tourists who had harassed me during my last flight. One option was to travel with a servant, but that would prove too expensive. Another was to travel in ordinary clothes, but that would be too much of an austerity. I'd simply have to depend on the mercy of the Lord, who is the protector of His devotees. So as I boarded my flight to Mumbai, I chanted a prayer I had memorized after the incident with the tourists ...>>

Chapter 1 - "Reflections on Paradise" (Durban & Mauritius, 1/01/06 - 5/02/06)

After my preaching tour in South America, I flew to Australia via London, a grueling 32-hour trip. I rested in Sydney for a few days and then joined in a week of festivities at the temple. Then I took another long-haul flight, this time to South Africa. When I arrived in Durban, I was so exhausted I didn't know whether I was coming or going. Worse yet, the next morning I began to feel a familiar, dull pain in the right side of my abdomen. A visit to the doctor confirmed my suspicion: my liver was swollen again ...>>

volume VI     volume VIII      volume IX

all chapters