ISKCON Halifax

Most of our ashrams and tem­ples around the world con­duct a large pro­gram on Sun­days com­monly called the ‘Sun­day Feast.’  It con­sists of a philo­soph­i­cal dis­cus­sion, group mantra med­i­ta­tion or kir­tan, and a sanc­ti­fied veg­e­tar­ian din­ner called prasadam.

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On Fri­day we drove out of Van­cou­ver about an hour to Stawa­mus Provin­cial Park.  Keith, Cory, and I hiked up about 750 m to the high­est peak in the area.  It took about 3 hours.  It was steep.  There were chains and iron lad­ders at some spots.  Along the way we met Chris who was hik­ing bare foot.  Ini­tially I was think­ing, boy this guy is austere! 

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Today I called India to speak to one of my monk friends.  He lives in an ashram where there are another 140 monks,

I just fin­ished writ­ing two let­ters, one to my brother and another for my sis­ter. We have been so busy trav­el­ling and help­ing with fes­ti­vals that I haven’t taken the time to con­tact them. As I was writ­ing the let­ters I was reminded of a favorite author of mine who recently passed away. J.D. Salinger’s writ­ings inspired me to search for a more per­sonal under­stand­ing of the Absolute Truth, and to inves­ti­gate the inner cor­ri­dors of my own spir­i­tual identity.

The drive from Hal­i­fax to Toronto usu­ally takes around 20 hours of dri­ving. Recently, we made this voy­age in a whop­ping 34 hours. Here’s why…

12 July 2010

Lis­ten­ing to oth­ers when they are speak­ing is a great way to learn. I was dis­trib­ut­ing books Thurs­day, 8 July, and met an author from New Glas­gow. The working-title of his new book is Are you lis­ten­ing, or wait­ing to talk? In his youth, his father had cor­rec­tively asked him this ques­tion. He meant it to con­trol his son’s urge to speak. His ten­dency was that as soon as he got a chance, he would say some­thing and inter­rupt his father. It is a com­mon ten­dency that causes us to some­times miss the oppor­tu­nity to lis­ten and ben­e­fit by hear­ing the expe­ri­ence of others.

Bhak­ti­marga Swami begins by explain­ing some of the per­son­al­i­ties that devo­tees are named after, and then the big moment…

Hope you enjoy reliv­ing this moment again, or for the first time!

Hare Krishna!

At mid­day, we walked the path beside the river in New Glas­gow, over the bridge and to the main street. There is no dif­fer­ence between Prab­hu­pada and his books, and our mis­sion was to give Prabhupada’s asso­ci­a­tion to the town’s peo­ple. When, in late Jan­u­ary, we had come to cel­e­brate Lord Nityananda’s appear­ance, we had also tried to go out on book dis­tri­b­u­tion. The day we went out, snow was blow­ing in our faces. Some of us paced up and down the town’s main street, try­ing to stop peo­ple and give them a book. In an hour we had dis­trib­uted thirty-seven books to those who were brav­ing the cold with us. The expe­ri­ence was really extra­or­di­nary because we were not think­ing that so many books could be dis­trib­uted. New Glasgow’s pop­u­la­tion is con­sid­er­ably smaller than that of Hal­i­fax, and we dis­trib­uted more books that hour than we had in an entire day back in the city. New Glas­gow became a mem­o­rable place to distribute.

Last Sun­day I was stand­ing in the park­ing lot at the Yoga Loft, lean­ing on our van and speak­ing to my dad. He was telling me he is happy that I am devot­ing myself to this monas­tic lifestyle.

I was find­ing it dif­fi­cult to focus on what he was say­ing after I heard a ris­ing kir­tan com­ing through the win­dow of the brick build­ing beside us. H.H. Bhak­ti­marga Swami was start­ing the post-lecture kir­tan, singing one of my favorite melodies. The col­lected voices of fifty guests sounded like a group of hun­dreds stuffed into the small room, and my atten­tion began to shift its focus.

This year our event­ful sum­mer cal­en­dar will be tak­ing all the res­i­dents of our ashram on a tour through­out Canada and across to India. There­fore, our reg­u­lar pro­grams will be post­poned from July, 2010 until our return in April, 2011.

That means that we have only two Sun­day gath­er­ings left: June 20th and June 27th. The last Sun­day of the month (June 27th), we will again have Bhak­ti­marga Swami as our spe­cial guest. For this event we will return to 5663 Corn­wal­lis Street so that we can have more space for chant­ing, danc­ing and veg­e­tar­ian feast­ing. There will also be a the­atre per­for­mance by the vis­it­ing Swami and his troup.