This year I had decided to spend Gaur Purnima in Istanbul - a place where I had never visited before. I had met Nrsimha Krishna Prabhu, the Regional Secretary, at the ILS in 2020, just before the pandemic started. Already then he requested me to visit, and finally now I found an opportunity to do so.
Turkey being a Muslim country, the devotees in Istanbul don't have a regular temple but preach in their "Goranga Yoga Centre" which also has a restaurant downstairs. And gradually, more and more people are coming to Krishna consciousness. Harinam and book distribution in the public streets is not allowed, but devotees preach through the internet and distribute books at the centre and on a stall at various book fairs.
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Since Gaur Purnima fell on a weekday, we had the main celebration on the Sunday before. Saturday, the day after my arrival from Mayapur, I went to the wholesale market to choose nice flowers, and I spent all day making vases for Srila Prabhupada and the altar - my favorite way of tuning my heart into the devotional mood of a Vaishnava festival....
As the devotees can't regularly have Deities in the preaching centre but only bring Them for festivals, they did not realise how important it is to make things festive with vases and flower decorations. So it was something new for them, and everybody felt happy and inspired. I was invited to offer the lecture for Gaur Purnima - the program was well attended by mainly local people, a few Russian and Ukrainian devotees and only one family from India! And it was so wonderful to see all these people chanting Hare Krishna - in this part of the world, while the namaz prayers were flooding the whole city of Istanbul...
A Gaur Purnima Festival in pioneer spirit...
As the devotees can't regularly have Deities in the preaching centre but only bring Them for festivals, they did not realise how important it is to make things festive with vases and flower decorations. So it was something new for them, and everybody felt happy and inspired. I was invited to offer the lecture for Gaur Purnima - the program was well attended by mainly local people, a few Russian and Ukrainian devotees and only one family from India! And it was so wonderful to see all these people chanting Hare Krishna - in this part of the world, while the namaz prayers were flooding the whole city of Istanbul...
A Gaur Purnima Festival in pioneer spirit...
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I spent another week in Istanbul, churning various topics in discussion with eager devotees, and we enjoyed each other's association.
Family life with its various responsibilities offers many challenges to keep the holy name in the centre of our life. Unless we mould our life around the chanting of the holy name being the most important activity, we’ll easily end up in a vicious circle which many householders experience in their lives. When taking rest late, we cannot rise early the next morning and, consequently, we don’t find enough time to chant a major part of our rounds or have a morning program in our home. We are forced to immediately start the day with so many family duties. Thus, the spiritual focus for the day is lost, and our japa is pushed to secondary or even last level of importance.
We may try to chant in between different household activities – one round here, half a round there – or even while performing our duties such as driving to work, going shopping or tidying up the home. Such chanting is entirely inattentive and gives neither any taste nor much benefit. With such low-quality practice, how can we mindfully turn to Krishna and call out to Him in helplessness – feelingly and in a prayerful mood? We can’t. We may even ignore Krishna altogether, while mechanically repeating the syllables of the maha-mantra. Such chanting will not satisfy the soul. And it can hardly be called chanting the holy name. In order to become more "efficient" in our inattentive way of chanting, we may even accept the practice of chanting on a counter or a clicker, which further establishes our inattentive chanting as a firm habit. We may keep our rounds for the late evening – starting to chant japa after 9.00 pm, or resorting to leaving them for the next day! As a result, we may accumulate a debt of rounds...
In this way, chanting the holy name becomes a burden – an ordeal and torture, a dry and mechanical duty which we somehow or another try to get done, as fast as possible. And our joy and relief we experience results from getting them done – not from chanting the holy name.
In the above-mentioned vicious circle, we may drown in the whirlpool of poor chanting and, as a result, we may lose all our spiritual strength, taste and enthusiasm for Krishna consciousness. We may even give up the regular practice of chanting japa altogether. Unfavourable habits and tendencies for sinful activities may creep back into our life, which may lead to attraction for sense gratification, fall-down, divorce and so forth. This unfortunately happens more commonly than we may imagine. Therefore, it is of the greatest importance that we adjust our lifestyle in such a way as to have it place the chanting of the holy name in the centre of our life.
Attentive chanting being the most important activity of the day, failing to do so will be a major cause of devotees struggling to make spiritual progress within married life. Our bhakti lata is then undernourished – it does not receive enough water and, as a result, it shrivels up and dies. Or it may remain a dried-up creeper which does not bear any fruits.
On the 14th of March I moved on to my next destination...
Your servant, Devaki dd
Family life with its various responsibilities offers many challenges to keep the holy name in the centre of our life. Unless we mould our life around the chanting of the holy name being the most important activity, we’ll easily end up in a vicious circle which many householders experience in their lives. When taking rest late, we cannot rise early the next morning and, consequently, we don’t find enough time to chant a major part of our rounds or have a morning program in our home. We are forced to immediately start the day with so many family duties. Thus, the spiritual focus for the day is lost, and our japa is pushed to secondary or even last level of importance.
We may try to chant in between different household activities – one round here, half a round there – or even while performing our duties such as driving to work, going shopping or tidying up the home. Such chanting is entirely inattentive and gives neither any taste nor much benefit. With such low-quality practice, how can we mindfully turn to Krishna and call out to Him in helplessness – feelingly and in a prayerful mood? We can’t. We may even ignore Krishna altogether, while mechanically repeating the syllables of the maha-mantra. Such chanting will not satisfy the soul. And it can hardly be called chanting the holy name. In order to become more "efficient" in our inattentive way of chanting, we may even accept the practice of chanting on a counter or a clicker, which further establishes our inattentive chanting as a firm habit. We may keep our rounds for the late evening – starting to chant japa after 9.00 pm, or resorting to leaving them for the next day! As a result, we may accumulate a debt of rounds...
In this way, chanting the holy name becomes a burden – an ordeal and torture, a dry and mechanical duty which we somehow or another try to get done, as fast as possible. And our joy and relief we experience results from getting them done – not from chanting the holy name.
In the above-mentioned vicious circle, we may drown in the whirlpool of poor chanting and, as a result, we may lose all our spiritual strength, taste and enthusiasm for Krishna consciousness. We may even give up the regular practice of chanting japa altogether. Unfavourable habits and tendencies for sinful activities may creep back into our life, which may lead to attraction for sense gratification, fall-down, divorce and so forth. This unfortunately happens more commonly than we may imagine. Therefore, it is of the greatest importance that we adjust our lifestyle in such a way as to have it place the chanting of the holy name in the centre of our life.
Attentive chanting being the most important activity of the day, failing to do so will be a major cause of devotees struggling to make spiritual progress within married life. Our bhakti lata is then undernourished – it does not receive enough water and, as a result, it shrivels up and dies. Or it may remain a dried-up creeper which does not bear any fruits.
On the 14th of March I moved on to my next destination...
Your servant, Devaki dd
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