The community is a young sanga with a recently acquired preaching centre. We had nice programs, and devotees were eagerly accepting the books I offered.
I also had an opportunity to visit the temple in Berkeley and give the Sunday feast lecture. It was a great honour and pleasure for me to visit this temple which Srila Prabhupada had established. The Jagannath Deities are unique and historic, being carved by Syamasundara Prabhu for the very first Ratha Yatra in 1967 at nearby San Francisco! Such temples are truly historic holy places...! I always feel fortunate to connect with some of these disciples of Srila Prabhupada who sacrificed themselves for his mission in the early days....
​

A nice team of serious devotees are living together to inspire and support each other in their services and spiritual practice. The very foundation is a strong emphasis on sadhana with a full morning program every day. Mother Sandamini, a disciple of Srila Prabhupada, serves as the caring and nurturing mother to all devotees and truly creates a family atmosphere. She is hard working and reaches out to everyone in affection, with spiritual strength and vision. Suresvara Prabhu, another disciple of Srila Prabhupada, is also a part of the community and adds another spiritual dimension to the atmosphere, with his strong preaching on Srila Prabhupada being the Founder Acarya. Since the leading devotees are in Western bodies, it attracts more Western people to take up Krishna consciousness.
On the temple property is a little birds' sanctuary with a variety of birds and a peacock-couple, their famous calls reminding us of Vrindavan. The days were warm, with cool and refreshing nights - the typical desert climate for this time of the year...
Devotees kept me busy with programs every day. On the last evening of my visit I got to experience a little preaching adventure - a visit to a community called "The Global Temple". Their leader had recently left this world, and people were a little lost and thus very open to hear about Krishna consciousness. I met people from all around the world, and some had met the devotees in Australia, New Zealand and also Germany. It was a refreshing "outside-the-box" preaching event....
​

As the situation quickly escalated, I rang the German consulate in Dubai and got the advice to leave the country overland to Muscat/Oman which was not so affected by the disturbances, and thus the airport in Muscat was still functioning. I was also advised to register with ELEFAND – an Electronic Registration of Germans Abroad, an official crisis prevention list managed by the German Federal Foreign Office. They regularly send updates according to the country mentioned in one's registration.
I spent time researching things and finally came to terms with the idea to better leave the country. I was not so concerned for my personal safety but was rather afraid to get stuck there and miss my flight booked for the 17th of March from Frankfurt to the US. So I had to make sure I would reach Germany within the next week or so! In the early morning of Gaur Purnime, my hosts drove me across the border to stay with the devotees in Sohar/Oman. The border crossing was very smooth – no traffic, no queues and no questions asked! I expected something different. Later I heard that 12 hours later there were huge queues! In times of war we have to be quick....!
Sohar has a nice nama hatta community, and we had a sweet little Gaur Purnima gathering with around 50 serious devotees participating. Upon the request of the local devotees I stayed another day and had an evening program which was also well attended.
The next morning, the devotees drove me from Sohar to Muscat where I was well received by an eager gathering of devotees. They have the tradition that whenever a preacher visits, the devotees gather in somebody’s home and take lunch together with the visitor. A nice tradition and loving exchange which brings devotees together. We had an evening program on the same day which was very well attended by around 60 or more devotees gathering in a big home.
In the middle of the night I received a call from the Office of Foreign Affairs in Berlin, offering me to get on a special flight to Frankfurt the next evening, designated to evacuate stranded German tourists. I had left a message through ELEFAND that I have to return to Germany as soon as possible, and indeed, within 10 hours, they contacted me! Something which I didn’t expect considering that there were 30,000 German tourists stranded in the Emirates. I accepted the offer to get on this flight, although I also felt sorry to leave the nice community of devotees. But I concluded it was good to return to Cologne as soon as possible since I had a lot of errands to do before flying out to the US.
During my time in the Middle East I remembered that His Holiness Niranjana Maharaja was in Kiev at the same time, and I felt I was sharing a little of the war-adventure and spirit....
The short visit to the Middle East gave me a good idea of the nice communities of devotees there, and I hope to be back in the future....

Death is the only part of life that is a hundred percent certain. Everything else may or may not happen; we don’t know. But death will happen for sure! It is unquestionable! And yet, we expertly keep pretending that death will never happen to us. And death sometimes reaches us quicker than we expect it to. Even when we are young, something may suddenly happen and boom – we are
instantly kicked out of our body. We don’t know when this tragic moment might strike us?
Despite Krishna having given us many warnings about death – when death comes to knock on our door, we exclaim, “Oh, how unexpected!” Why should we allow it to be unexpected? In fact, it must be expected to come at any time. The fact that we call death an unexpected incident clearly shows just how much we want to keep ourselves deluded. Merely joining ISKCON and taking initiation does not mean that we have successfully embarked on the internal work of confronting ourselves with the topic of death. Devotees may sometimes be caught by death without warning. And then they say, “Oh no! I never thought that this would ever happen to me!” Or, “to my wife or husband.” So even when we are initiated devotees, we run the risk of conveniently maintaining an attitude of denial while turning a blind eye to the existence of death, pretending it will never happen.
A Vaishnava can turn any calamity into a golden opportunity to take shelter more seriously of the lotus feet of the Lord and His devotees by holding on to them. Adversities have the power to shake us up and drastically transform our spiritual practice. They can have us shifted from our comfort zone of material satisfaction and complacency and make us wake up to the facts of reality that we will soon have to move on. We may realise that all our big successes and achievements will have lost all their significance when we face death – they will have no importance then. All that we will be allowed to keep is our relationship with Krishna and His holy name – that’s all. Nothing more. A sobering experience when we stand closer to the edge of life.
I remember hearing one of our sadhus sharing with devotees some personal experience in this connection. During his routine medical check-up, some irregularity caught the attention of the sadhu’s doctor, who immediately exclaimed, “We have to examine this – it could very well be cancer!” So the doctor took a biopsy, and the results of the analysis took more than a week to come. And then Maharaja laughingly said, “In these ten days, I probably chanted the best rounds of my life!” He had experienced an entire shift in
his consciousness, thinking, “This may very well be it! The end of this life!” A true wake-up call! Later, it turned out not to be cancer after all.

On the 7th of March I flew from Muscat to Frankfurt....
Your servant, Devaki dd

Please visit www.theholynameretreat.net
             www.therootsofspiritualculture.net
https://www.facebook.com/instituteforspiritualculture/
​

When accompanying my father through his final days, only 45 minutes prior to his departure, he talked about South India – how nice Kerala is, with comfortable, big houses. It was almost as if informing us where he was going. I am sure he is there now, continuing his journey, having taken birth in a devotee family. He had such a strong affinity to India! He would often say, “I don’t know what it is, but I feel so comfortable and at home in India; taking my hot tea with milk early in the mornings on the tea stalls, together with all the other men. I lead a double life – I am at home in Germany in my nice house, but also in India.” And I responded, “I know what it is – you were in India in your previous life.” He wasn’t sure whether to believe it or not. He always had a sun tan all year round, and he sometimes pointed at his sun-tanned arms, exclaiming, “You see! I am actually Indian; only by mistake, I’ve ended up in Germany!” Some of his friends in India would commonly introduce him to others by saying: “He is actually Indian, but somehow he took birth in Germany.”
Now, visiting the devotees in Trivandrum, I could understand why he was so fond of Kerala....
​

In The Nectar of Devotion, Chapter Three, Srila Prabhupada explains:
"Therefore, anyone who has any desire or aspiration for satisfying his senses by becoming more and more important, either in the material sense or in the spiritual sense, cannot actually relish the really sweet taste of devotional service."
Reading this statement for the first time with attention deeply affected my heart. It struck me how we have to give up this deep-rooted desire of becoming a more and more important person – even in a spiritual sense – if we want to eventually taste the sweet fruits of pure bhakti. Unless we give up the desire for fame and recognition, we will simply taste the fruits of ego satisfaction. Such fruits have a very different taste than the fruits of pure devotion. We may often confuse those two kinds of fruits, and we may easily mistake the taste of ego satisfaction to be the taste coming from devotional service. But there is a vast difference between them – as different as iron is from gold.
If we are not fully satisfied in our devotional life, not relishing the sweet taste of our services, we may ask ourselves, “What is my motivation? Maybe I desire fame and recognition? Maybe I am not truly selfless and unmotivated?”
In Sri Guru-vandana, His Holiness Gour Govinda Maharaja warns us:
"Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati says, jadera pratistha, sukarera vistha. Labha, puja, pratistha – desires for name, fame and adoration – are the stool of a she-hog. [From Vaishnava Ke?] The Vaishnava who runs after this name, fame, and adoration is merely running after the stool of a she-hog, sukarera vistha. Srila Bhaktisiddhanta has cautioned us that we should be very, very careful not to run after name, fame and adoration because it creates a great obstacle to the growth of the bhakti-lata. Instead of making advancement, your advancement will be checked and you may fall down."
The desire for recognition may manifest in very subtle forms, and thus we may not so easily detect it. The process of Krishna consciousness offers ample opportunities to place ourselves in the centre and feed our false ego. Giving classes and leading kirtans may create an ideal forum for trying to receive such gratification.
In the name of Krishna consciousness, we can do the opposite of what we should be doing: Instead of subduing and dissolving the false ego, we can feed and expand it to the maximum. It is all going on in the name of devotional service. In this way, we can miss the target of spiritual practice entirely. Instead of developing pure devotion to the Lord and His devotees, we may simply use the process of devotional practice for our own self-aggrandisement.
It requires introspection and honesty to detect those weeds within our hearts. We have to reflect: “What am I trying to do here? Am I trying to cultivate pure devotion to the Lord, or am I on an ego trip, running after the fruits of satisfying my ego? What is my motive?”
We can easily maintain our hopes and illusions, thinking that these fruits of ego satisfaction are also very tasty and juicy. We may even mistake them to be the fruits of devotional service, believing that we are doing the right thing. But we are not. We are missing the goal.
As Srila Prabhupada explains, when we run after such ego satisfaction, trying to become a more and more important person – even in a spiritual sense – we cannot experience the really sweet taste of devotional service.
Therefore, we do need a confidential, well-wishing friend on our side who has no other interest except assisting us in our spiritual growth. Such a person will be able to help us distinguish the weeds from the bhakti-lata. On our own, we may be lost.

On the 19th of November I moved on to Trivandrum/Kerala.....

Your servant, Devaki dd

Please visit www.theholynameretreat.net
             www.therootsofspiritualculture.net
https://www.facebook.com/instituteforspiritualculture/