ISKCON Halifax

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.

Cour­te­ously end­ing the con­ver­sa­tion with my dad, I ran into the room and sat behind one of the guests. Maharaja had just given Dustin his ini­ti­ated, San­skrit name [Dhruva], so the atmos­phere was very good-natured. Then guests were lift­ing them­selves from the floor as Bhak­ti­marga Swami encour­aged us to dance. I stood near a wall, as he brought guests for­ward to dance center-stage. Want­ing to avoid com­ing for­ward and exhibit my enthu­si­asm in front of the crowd, I tried not to make eye-contact with Maharaja.

Actu­ally, I had been build­ing up excite­ment for this kir­tan for all day . At the ashram, we had spent Sat­ur­day and Sun­day busily mak­ing all prepa­ra­tions for Dhruva’s ini­ti­a­tion (tak­ing of vows before a spir­i­tual teacher) and the Sun­day Feast. To give an idea of how close we were to fin­ish­ing on time, Jeff and I were com­plet­ing the last of the six­teen dishes as the per­for­mance of Maharaja’s play, Lonely Peo­ple, was tak­ing place. So, the entire time we were arrang­ing these events, I was antic­i­pat­ing the time when I would for­get my respon­si­bil­ties and dance in kirtan.

Even­tu­ally, Maharaja caught me and I came for­ward with­out reluc­tance. Dhruva gave me car­tels to play, and I began jump­ing uncon­trol­lably and per­spir­ing next to the other guests. The kir­tan lasted over an hour, and Maharaja took the assem­bly with him on a dra­matic adven­ture through the maha-mantra. The les­son is not to hold your­self back when you know you want to give your­self to spir­i­tual activities.

One nice thing hap­pened to me on Sat­ur­day, 26 June, while I went look­ing for flow­ers to make the gar­lands for the ini­ti­a­tion. At 5:00pm, I went across town vis­it­ing dif­fer­ent flower shops, but didn’t find any­thing suit­able. All the flow­ers I came across were nice, but I wasn’t ready to set­tle until I felt sat­is­fied and sure that I had tried my hard­est. When I showed up at the last store, the florist was just about to leave, but she rec­og­nized my hair cut and started a con­ver­sa­tion with me. She hap­pened to be some­one who we had met sev­eral times out on sankir­tan. When I told her that one of the monks was tak­ing vows, she was con­cerned that I get the best flow­ers. In the end, I returned to the ashram with five bunches of red and yel­low spray roses, given to me at a dis­count. That night Jeff and I didn’t sleep until mid­night because I wanted to make the gar­lands for the ini­ti­a­tion the next day. I knew we would be too busy and wouldn’t be able to make them if we waited until the morn­ing, so Jeff read a chap­ter from Krishna Book as I strung flowers.

Tonight, instead of a Sun­day Feast, we are hav­ing a sim­ple gath­er­ing at our now almost-empty ashram. We will be leav­ing for New Glas­gow on Tues­day, to spend six days in a friend’s house while we dis­trib­ute books and pre­pare to set out for the Toronto Ratha-Yatra.

Jacob
 

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