02 Diary

My favorite place in Vrindavan is the Kusum Sarovar. During my recent Vrindavan visit, I savored the beauty of the Sarovar in the early morning hours. A local caretaker took us inside one of the buildings to have darshan of Vishnu’s lotus feet there. He explained how the Rajput kings who had built the Kusum…

While I was in Delhi, I had the fortune of meeting HH Gopal Krishna Maharaj. Though he had returned from a tour of the West just the previous day and was exhausted, he kindly agreed to meet me at his quarters at the Radha Partha Sarthi temple. I gave him a copy of my latest…

Around the period of Balarama Jayanti, 2017, I went on a North India tour which was as much as a pilgrimage as it was an outreach tour. Over the last few years, I have travelled more in America than in India. I wanted to correct this imbalance and, more importantly, to visit Vrindavan and seek…

“Missing? Misplaced? Stolen!” I felt the blood rush to my head as I realized with horror that someone had sneaked into my room and taken off with my laptop. It was 3.45 am at Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. I was at the guestroom of the ISKCON temple, waiting for the ride that would take me…

For me, the most encouraging part of traveling and speaking is meeting people who are already connected with me through my sites. In Houston, I met a young man who is not connected with any temple but has been regularly reading Gita daily articles. He told me that the articles have helped him better cope…

During my London visit, I stayed for nearly ten days at the house of Sunderanand P who is a powerhouse of energy. He is one of UK’s leading surgeons in his area of specialization and had operated HH Radhanath Maharaj – that’s how he became introduced seriously to Krishna consciousness. He is one of the…

My meeting with my Guru Maharaj, HH Radhanath Maharaj, was by far the most memorable meeting for me. I met Maharaja for over three hours in Chicago at the house of Balaram P, which was the house where Maharaj stayed in his childhood and youth. There, Maharaj lives in the same basement where he spent…

During my travels, I also got the association of many senior devotees who very kindly gave several hours of their time to discuss our philosophy and its practice. One recurrent theme was the challenge of presenting the personal philosophy of bhakti from within what seems like a highly institutionalized religion. Another theme was the strategies…

The most cringe-inducing question I faced during my entire tour was in Washington DC where, after my Sunday feast class on Reincarnation, a Latino devotee asked, “As scientists keep people away from God, can scientists be considered reincarnations of demons?” The question reflected a series of valid points linked together in a way that leads…

Trans-gender discomfort After my hotel program in Panama, a couple of trans-gender devotees talked about the discrimination they faced because of their sexual orientation and asked how they could see it spiritually. I had addressed a similar question when I was in Detroit where after the Sunday feast a Vaishnavi Prabhupada disciple had asked, “How…