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Welcome
to
the planet,
This is where you live
reproduce and die.
During this time
you will experience,
the light,
to
perfection
by:
self-realization
and enlighnment.
Love.
the planet.
Practice
peace
LOVE BEARS ALL THINGS
This letter is from a friend of mine in search of spiritual wisdom.
hello family!
I'm
sitting in a one-computer internet cafe with a
computer from maybe ten years ago on a connection of
similar likeness.
So the aperture through which I wish
the extend my affection is a little constrained in the
sense that it takes about
fifteen minutes to read 5
emails, and longer to write that many. Anyway, I am
saying this in an attempt to direct your
attention to
your heart and maybe accompany that with a thought,
"oh here he is right in my heart sending me good
tidings
and fruitful fanfare", I mean I could report
some news on my activities but I prefer to share my
internal realization.
Practically that's counter
productive since communication through script in
glowing terminals isn't generally attributed
with any
special qualities as a medium for heart to heart
transaction but HERE I AM... I've been over here for
about
two weeks, the plane ride was comfortable, the
roads aren't that scary, the water hasn't made me sick
and the food is
definitely spicy but not a problem in
any way (except maybe nutritionally since I've seen a
green leaf on my plate the
whole time I've been here,
but potatoes and rice literally 2 sometimes 3 times a
day isn't weird after a little while.)
Almost all
little kids and many adults unabashedly stare at me
when I walk down the street and I have to be alert
since
about every 30 seconds or so some calls Hare
Krishna! or Haribol! and expect me to smile, bow or call
back or something.
But it made me think, or yeah and
any time you go into a place, stores or whatever, you
take off your shoes. it made
me think, American
culture is so impersonal, that something I've felt and
tried to creatively reverse in my wanderings
though
our not so great nation but now I'm over here and I
see how much its ingrained in me. Suppose you went to
the
super market and someone greeted you at the door
took you shoes to a rack and then guided through the
store giving you
there advice on bulk/brand beans and
which avocados or whatever, that would be a very
personal experience. Here its
pretty much like that
translated into Indian, indian I don't know what to
call it, but I find myself forgeting that.
I went out
to get some batteries the other day and I go up to
this little stand and say,"battery, battery" and the
guy
looked at me with the most innocent look, my
feeling from it was he was vibing me, "hey I'm a
person lets greet eachother
and establish a little
friendly relationship before i get you what you need,
slow down buddy" so i'm trying to imbibe
that, slower
more personel vibe. I went to Darjeeling for a day
last week, you have to hire a SUV to drive you over
this
raod that like highway 17 or 92 gone down to one
or one and half lanes, rutted pavement throughout,
really rutted gravel
train crossings, and loads of
pedestrians, bicycles, motorcycles, and SUV with like
10 people inside and two more standing
on the bumper
holding on to the roof rack. oh and everyone is
rushing...but the vibe is different. so i'm sitting in
the
middle row of one of these SUVs with f people and
one little kid in my row and the rest of the car is
equally packed,
the car trip was like 3 hours each
way, and we're out in the middle of the trip, (this is
like where the great ganges
basin meets the himalyanam
footh ills, this is like the first road heading into
the himalayan in north bengal on the
east side of
india, and right in the middle of the trip, the paid
drive and his helper that just hands on the back of
the
SUV in the rain like the whole time! they stop at
this little tiny roadside shop and sit down, they seem
to know the
people, and just start eating a big lunch,
they eat for like 20 mintues or more and then get back
in the car and keep
going. None of the 10+ passenger
said anything or acted impatient or anything, it was
just totally chill for these dudes
to visit their
friends and eat lunch while we all waited and had paid
for the trip. How cool is that! I liked it. and
riskshawalas
that a whole other story, maybe next
time. oh yeah if you need to pay for something there
is not change random people
will come by snach your
money walk halk a block any and change it and bring it
bakc for you, they might not even really
say anything,
and that totally normal, how cool is that! it kind of
just feel like a big old dirty (it rain like every
day
so everything is muddy all the time), goofy, cross
cultural family with a certain amount you just have to
see.
ANy way, my first experience when i got here was
a drive through Calcutta just after dark and my first
impression of
calcutta was burning man, meets a
compost pit, meets an early american industrial city,
all tinged with cigarette smoke
and Durgadevi (maya,
tara, kali, mother godess, material energy, illusiory
potency) worship. ok i'm later for lunch
so that what
has sprung from my mind at this time. that all
external, cultural type stuff which you may find
interesting
but I'll also add that none of that is why
I came here, what I'm here for or the real substance
of my experience. Krsna
consciousness, or at least my
experience with it, makes all these things, the
experience of this sort of stuff i'm describing,
like
a sublime, goofy walk through a tacky museum, real
beauty, truth proper, as far as my heart has lead me
is far
most subtle than all this, it approached with
the mood of faith, dedication and affection. So
everywhere the environment
is teaching us somehting,
listen to your heart and really try to feel what it is
teaching you, everything is consciously
arranged, so
surf that wave and your heart will begin to sproat and
feel somehting, well i'm not here to imply that
I have
any real spiritual realization, but something will
come, and if you run in that direction it will come
like
the flood...
My mind's travels on Oct. 1 around noon,
Love is the undercurrent of all realities and all
relationships...
oh
yeah and check out the what's new section at
www.scsmath.com, I've already got one update on there
and I should be putting
more stuff on there as events
unfold
Hare Krsna (blessed love)
John Cameron McKeon
Kamal Krsna Das
Today October 17-2005, I receive this letter from my friend Kamal
Krishna which he is in India traveling in search of perfection.
I was writting this email and was well into it when some came and accidentally closed
the browser I was using, yesterday I wrote and email for over and hour and then the power went out and it was lost. That kind
of what its like over here, practical dealings are subject to a high degree of uncertainty. But its nice, in this unexpected
way. It feels a lot more like a family, the whole vibe just has more of a sympathetic, less competitve type thing. But I do
get stared at, its kind of hard to get used to. I was riding the bus to Kolkata the other day and the seats spaced much tighter
than US buses and I was in the very back corner of this smokey bus taking up lots of space cause my legs just don't fit. The
bus got really full and all the guys in my row where giving me the, why are you taking up so much room vibe and I tried t
give the what can I say I'm a big awkward American look but I dn't think they were pickin' up what I was puttin' down. One
guy starts asking me what I'm doing in India and I try using the Bengali words I know and he tells me he doesn't understand
my english. I just laugh and aplogize and then it starts raining really hard and the bus leaks heavily and i'm in the corner
with all this water coming the window and I pull out a gumpcha (a bright colored plaid towel, sheet sort of thing really common
over here) and hold it over my head to absrob the water and my shirt is all wet and I'm taking up all the room and its really
bumpy and you can't sleep and everyone is staring at me and... I just had to laugh. It was so funny to me.
Every time I go out of the temple and into a town or city I feel like I'm in this silly
museum, all the people and the busyness and the bad smells, there funny to me like a dinosaur exhibit or something. What can
I say.
Last evening I was at aroti ( chanting and dancing in congregation which happens every
sunrise, noon and sunset, you could think out it as beauty making more of itself and distributing that to anyone in ear shot,
a beautiful glorification of beauty itself, I could go on and on...) so aroti was lead by Siddhanti Maharaj. He's this old
American guy in his mid-sixties who has been arund forever, he was the president of the second ever Hare Krsna temple out
side of India which happended to be in Haight Asbury in 1967-69. Anyway he's like 6'5'' and really skinny and he does this
awkward head bang knee bend stiff guy trying to groove sort of move when he fires up the kirtan but somehow or other it works.
Right next to him is the really funny little old bengali guy, maybe 5'4'', who hyper-emphasizes the first beat of every verse
and the two of them start vibin' off eachother and the kirtan goes into over drive and whenever Siddhanti Maharaj tries t
wind it down this little bengali holy man pistol, up at three am type just won't let him. I doubt anyone in the crowd even
noticed this little non-berbal diologue but I was just diggin on it. I though it was hysterical. How have these two characters
been brought together in such a harmonious, humorus way? How universal is music and the search for truth and meaning in life?
The truth in the heart supercedes all material differences, thats what I see there and thats what I'm learning over here.
So many of these life long bengali swamis are so affectinate and accomadating, they come by and ask me if want an extra
sweet ball or half glass extra water, little affectionate things that just make you melt. Iam thinkning affection is the bottom
line of all commmunication, its presence and absence is really the substance of human interaction. Thats somethnig I'm coming
to but I also think about how hard my heart is and how difficult it is for me to even want to be affectionate in all my dealings
but I think thats the goal, to just exist in this plane of affection, its presence, exchange, generation, distribution,
just live and work in an affection factory.
No much is reliable over here so I'm sorry I'm not sending more info or have the facility
to personalize things really so I hope you excuse my inability to live up to my own ideal I've just discussed.
I'm sorry.
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