ISKCON Halifax

Writ­ten by Heidi Hlu­bina

This is a long over­due entry about our trip that we took back in Feb­ru­ary to Bramp­ton Ontario to attend the first annual Ash­tapra­har 24 Hour Kir­tan Fes­ti­val. Five of us Hal­i­fax devo­tees decided on a whim to rent a car and dare the icy win­ter roads for this won­der­fully cap­ti­vat­ing event. Our trek began from Hal­i­fax at 5am and we booted it to the Mon­treal tem­ple and made it there by 8pm where we were warmly greeted by devo­tees and was able to lis­ten to a read­ing about Lord Chai­tanya. After hav­ing an overnight rest we attended the morn­ing Mangala-arati and then we con­tin­ued our trav­els to Ontario where we had intended to go directly to the Toronto tem­ple, only hav­ing acci­dently ended up at the Kir­tan due to won­der­ful map read­ing skills by yours truly. After spend­ing a short time at the Kir­tan we made our way to the Toronto tem­ple, mak­ing a lovely left handed turn into a tram tun­nel along the way! Hav­ing recov­ered from that with­out inci­dent, we were very warmly received by the tem­ple pres­i­dent Mad­haven­dra Puri Das and got to meet some devo­tees see friends while hav­ing a deli­cious meal at the tem­ples own Govin­das Restau­rant.

Dur­ing our meal we were intro­duced to Ras­min who expressed inter­est in com­ing along to the Kir­tan with us, so the six of us piled into the car and drove back to Bramp­ton where the Kir­tan was tak­ing place. When we arrived we were blown away by just how many peo­ple came out to chant and take part in such a bliss­ful expe­ri­ence. Through­out the evening the mood kept get­ting more ener­gized as peo­ple became more engaged in chant­ing the Maha Mantra (Hare Krishna Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare!). We even observed one par­tic­u­lar soul in the crowd who danced non­stop for the six hours we were there, being com­pletely entranced and spir­i­tu­ally ele­vated by the whole event.

This trip was a fan­tas­tic expe­ri­ence because we got to meet some really won­der­ful devo­tees in Toronto and Mon­treal, and it also brought us Hal­i­fax devo­tees closer. I per­son­ally real­ized the ben­e­fits of chant­ing and saw how it can reveal true hap­pi­ness from within and how it can have a pos­i­tive effect on all those who par­tic­i­pate. Chant­ing gives one the free­dom to dis­cover the purity that love can offer to every­one in a world that is over­whelmed with anx­i­ety, frus­tra­tion and dis­sat­is­fac­tion. With reg­u­lar prac­tice, it can help lib­er­ate us from these unpleas­ant feelings.

See for your­self with the video footage we took while at the Kir­tan in the link below!

Click Here

“In a gen­tle way, you can shake the world.” — Mohan­das Gandhi

Tags: 24 hour kirtan, appreciation, bhagavad-gita, consciousness, Devotion, friendship, halifax meditation, happy family, hare krishna, hare krsna, iskcon halifax, kirtan, late, maha mantra, meditation, personal, self realization, sound, warmth, yoga

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 10th, 2011 at 12:12 pm and is filed under The Maha Mantra Experience. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.