New Vrajamandala/Spain

This was my first visit to the Spanish yatra. In my childhood I had sometimes spent my school holidays here with my family. In those days Spain was a rather poor country, and people lived very simple and off the land. Now, 45 years later economic development had brought along so many changes - just like everywhere else in Europe...

My first destination was the little preaching center in Madrid, where I gave two evening programs. A hand-full devotees are maintaining the little restaurant here and conducting classes and harinamas whenever their time permits. The center is a little store front in good location - on a square in a trendy and new-agey suburb, surrounded by little shops, bistros and the Spanish style street cafes. Childhood memories came to my mind - visiting the beautiful city of Seville and feeding the pigeons on those big city squares, together with my sister. I also used to accompany my mother when she was going out to draw sketches of big old churches, houses and narrow lanes. I immediately remembered the little Spanish style balconies with glass doors, which the houses have instead of windows, and which I had drawn so many times. And the balconies are so narrow, that you can barely put a few flower pots there.....

The devotees then took me out to the community of New Vrajamandala. Yadunandana Maharaja had encouraged me to visit here in order to offer the course "Men and Women in Spiritual Culture".
Even though Spain certainly has a strong heritage of spiritual culture and religion, nevertheless preaching Krsna consciousness is not so easy here. The atmsophere is surcharged with all kinds of alluring possibilities for sense gratification, and it seems difficult to catch people's serious interest in spiritual practice.
On our drive out to New Vrajamandala, which is around 85 km's from Madrid, we passed throuhg the little country town near our ISKCON property. My driver related how this little town of around 2500 people has eight big churches, but only two of them are functioning these days. A big decline in religious activities.....

​The property of New Vrajamandala consists of ancient aristocratic buildings and about 300 hectares of land. It reminded me immediately of Villa Vrindavan in Italy - one of those ancient mansions which was purchased by ISKCON in 1979 during the Bhagavan era. Their Lordships Sri Sri Radha Govinda Chandra, Sri Sri Gaur Nitai and Lord Nrsimhadev are residing here, served by around 30 devotees and a dozen cows. Devotees are growing organic vegetables and flowers, and nice gardens surround the mansion with peacocks patrolling the grounds.
There hadn't been any rain for several months, and the dried up and long, yellow grass with dark green pine forests covering the hills in the background, and a bright blue sky set a colorful scene. I was surprised how cool it was here at this time of the year - almost colder than in Germany....

New Vrajamandala is certainly an ideal place for festivals and retreats. Every summer they conduct a Kirtan Mela here, which brings devotees together in chanting the holy name.

I gave the course "Men and Women in Spiritual Culture" over three days. A nice little group of senior devotees came together to explore the theme. HH Bhakti Gauravani Maharaja serves as the TP here and translated the morning sessions for me into Spanish sentence by sentence. Naturally I felt a little embarrassed having Maharaja translate for me while I was sitting on the Vyasasana. However, I appreciated his humility, being eager to attend some parts of the seminar and offer his service. Such humility is certainly a sign of advancement! He highly appreciated the seminar and told he will listen to the whole thing over internet.

I spent pleasant and relaxed days in New Vrajamandala, associating with the devotees in sharing realizations. Our discussions certainly reached a few people's hearts on deeper levels, and new relationships were established while old one's were deepened.
Vayasaki Prabhu was also here for a visit, and some evenings we had nice kirtans. One evening we visited the New Vrajamandala Pizzeria, which was a nice opportunity to socialize and get to know the devotees. On my visit to the Goshala I tried for the first time to milk a cow - something which requires a little practice......

On the 20th of September I flew off to Berlin/Germany.....

Your servant, Devaki dd