ISKCON Halifax

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

and so many other peo­ple too are work­ing there and doing ser­vice there.  So they have a recep­tion­ist who directs calls to the cor­rect recip­i­ent or phone located in dif­fer­ent places in the com­plex.  There are prob­a­bly 40 or so such phones, and the recep­tion­ist is busy all day long answer­ing the phone.  Actu­ally they have 3 recep­tion­ists who are on rota­tion, cov­er­ing the 24 hours of the day. 

So its been around 5 months since I called.  When the recep­tion­ist picked up the phone I asked for my monk friend.  And he said “who may I ask is call­ing for him?”  I said my name, and his voice was full of affec­tion, like I had just called my brother.  He then goes on to offer his respects, and ask how I’m doing.  Its been almost 6 months since I was liv­ing in that ashram, and for sure I get oppor­tu­ni­ties to inter­act with the recep­tion­ists in the course of mak­ing phone calls and receiv­ing calls but never on a really per­sonal level.  But through this expe­ri­ence I real­ized that because we are all chant­ing Hare Krsna and try­ing to become bet­ter peo­ple through the process of bhakti yoga, irre­spec­tive of our daily roles, we are one big happy fam­ily!  Wow I’m so for­tu­nate to be part of an inter­na­tional family.

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