Waves of Devotion

Initially, I was thinking to write about Covid fatigue. You get the idea—long restriction, then a little freedom, then restriction, again and again. One can become tired of the whole thing. But the more I thought about it, it seemed Covid fatigue was just a microcosm for life in general, a kind of life fatigue. But there seems to be a purpose to it. Let me share something about my own recent fatigue. Hopefully, it will make my point clearer.

I wrote last week about how when I came here to an Ayurvedic clinic for a panca karma detox I was unexpectedly quarantined for Covid. My computer also had problems, so I couldn’t write. I was basically stuck in a room for ten days with limited sevā, reduced communication, and due to increased fatigue not even the best mental focus to chant more. Initially, I wasn’t so happy about that. That’s natural when one is stripped of what Śrīla Prabhupāda called “one’s material protective agents”—the temporary powers and possessions that give us the false sense that we are independent controllers. Quickly, however, some clarity came. It was obvious. I just needed to be “crushed” again. To the extent that you think you’re the controller, you can never see who is. I remember sitting helplessly on my porch outside my cabin, looking at the forest, meditating on our philosophy, and suddenly “seeing Krishna”. His care and protection, which is always there, became pronounced. Only when we shed the ahaṅkāra, the sense of being the doer or controller, will Krishna’s all-pervading presence and shelter be uncovered and our natural loving responsiveness (bhakti) to that presence of divine care be awakened. It is no wonder why we sometimes must be “crushed”.

Back to Covid fatigue. Barring the fact that everyone wants and should have their needs met, and when they are not it is disturbing, shouldn’t we also see this fatigue as part of God’s plan to give Himself to us by detaching us from the sense of ahaṅkāra that covers our connection to the Divine? Isn’t not being the controller part of what we are tired about? Isn’t this all part of God’s plan to put a brake on our excessive enthrallment with a material civilization that is moving at a breakneck speed to enslave us in the illusion that we are independent of God? Can we not see fatigue as part of a higher plan to help us become humble and conquer death, the illusion of non-existence? I was crushed, tired of it all, saw God, and devotion welled in the heart. I pray to always embrace the heart and wisdom of Queen Kunti:

“I wish that all those calamities would happen again and again so that we could see You again and again, for seeing You means that we will no longer see repeated births and deaths.” (Bhag. 1.8.25)

When Akrūra was on his way to see Krishna, he saw a very auspicious omen. A deer to his right was staring at his chariot. He was therefore confident that he would be welcomed by Krishna, even though he was serving as the top minister to Kamsa, who had vowed to kill Krishna. We learn this science of omens from our sacred texts. A contemporary commentator of this text gives an analogy to help explain the phenomenon of omens: “Just as when one does not put on his seatbelt the car is programmed to automatically make a sound to indicate danger, in a similar way the universe has ways of indicating auspicious and inauspicious future events.”[1]

For the last three weeks my left eye had been twitching on and off—an inauspicious sign. I knew something was coming. I have watched exactly this type of portent unfold too many times in my life. The day after I arrived in Kerala at the Vedasudha Ayurvedic Hospital for a panca karma detox, the doctor noticed I was run down. He tested me for COVID-19. I was positive. To me it seemed that this was the portent foretold. They quarantined me for ten days in a quaint forest cabin with excellent medical, nutritional, and cleaning services brought by staff in quasi-hazmat suits. My symptoms were only a slight fever, moderate sore throat, and increased fatigue and sleeping. In other words, a mild flu. I immediately took a COVID protocol of repurposed drugs and vitamins that I have kept with me for the last two years, which are prescribed by my doctors just in case I got COVID, in addition to taking whatever Ayurvedic medicine the doctors here recommended. After two days, all initial symptoms were almost gone.  Some karma was foretold, but as I thought about it, I questioned if my sickness was just destiny or whether there was also an element of free will. In other words, to what extent were my own actions the cause of my malady.

Destiny is what happens to you; free will is how you react. Both are factors to one degree or another in any karmic outcome. Basically, I think I could have avoided or lessened my ill destiny if I would have responded to my destiny more maturely, especially as there was already a hint of something unwanted to come. In other words, I will be 72 this year. I should have been much more mindful of the arduous two-day trip beginning from Mayapur to the Ayurvedic retreat center outside of Cochin, especially how I ate during the journey. Different members of the Mayapur Russian community lovingly packed different preparations for my meals for two days. The problem was that almost every preparation was heavy. I couldn’t take much, but I was hungry, and it had its effect. When I woke that morning in the hotel to go to the airport, I was already feeling run down from the four-and-a-half-hour ride to the Kolkata hotel and my late afternoon snack the day before, making me a fertile breeding ground to manifest or catch something during my journey, especially COVID.

In this regard, I think it is worth analyzing the extent to which a germ or the unhealthy body is the main cause of a disease, especially in terms of COVID, which is also connected to my original thoughts about the relationship between omens (destiny) and free will. The last time I remember getting ill in India was about thirty-five years ago. The conditions were very similar. I had eaten very heavy foods, this time at the homes of ISKCON life members in Mumbai, which was followed by a long journey—a train ride from Mumbai to Mathura. I fell ill with malaria immediately upon arriving at my destination, Vrindavan. At the time, however, I was studying a book called A Yogic Cure to All Diseases,[2] which posited the theory that although bacteria and viruses cause disease, they can only fester and harm someone if the body is unhealthy, which made sense to me. I saw in Vrindavan how although everyone at the time was drinking the same water and eating the same food, certain people always got sick, and others never did. I followed the yogic protocol for curing malaria mentioned in the book, which included complete fasting on water and enemas. The idea was that if the intestines were completely clean the virus would have no place to fester, and the disease would be finished. I was encouraged to continue the protocol as the book gave guideposts to indicate whether a particular treatment was working. For malaria it was that the intermittent fevers, the intense fever that arises at the same time every other day, would gradually come closer together until they would merge into one big fever, indicating that the disease was finished. Sure enough, as I fasted, every other day the fever would inflame several hours earlier than normally expected, until on the tenth day they merged into one big fever. I was completely cured without any medicine at all, which I believe is unheard of in the modern medical treatment of malaria.

I think we can bring this practically back to COVID. There are very inauspicious signs that portend that many or most of us will likely get COVID, which has serious side effects if not treated. In that sense, what is happening in the world is a kind of omen. We shouldn’t, however, think that the outcome is exactly fixed. We should, of course, do whatever we can to prevent it. To the extent that we can build up our immune system is just as important, if not more, a factor in how much we will suffer from COVID if we get the disease as is our destiny. And for God’s sake don’t touch anything with fried cheese and cashews during a long journey! What was I thinking? I wasn’t. Be well. I am now. Thank Krishna!

[1] I heard this analogy about omens from a lecture by Srila Radha Govinda Swami

[2] I can’t find the exact book and I am not sure of the title. Perhaps it was A Natural Cure to All Diseases, but it had an elaborate set of exercises and detox protocols for each disease.

Old Soul (and Body Too)[1]

I recently went with Jaya Jagannath to visit someone who is perhaps New York’s oldest living servant of Sri Sri Radha-Muralidhara. When I say oldest, I am referring not only to age, now past eighty, but to years at Their lotus feet, now past thirty. Jayati Radhika was visiting Sri Sri Radha-Muralidhara even before the Bhakti Center or The Sanctuary (its former namesake) existed, when They resided in a humble storefront on Manhattan Avenue in Brooklyn, just eight blocks from her home. But I think she must have worshiped Them even longer than that, perhaps for many lives. I see in her all the symptoms of an old soul.

Jayati Radhika was not a hippy or a straight edge or from the yoga scene, and she was not born in the movement, or in any of the prominent sources, or veins, from which Hare Krishna devotees are usually mined. She was just a simple middle-class New York housewife, a mother and a dedicated registered nurse, when, returning home from work in 1981, she encountered a young Hare Krishna monk on the street and purchased from him an Easy Journey to Other Planets, one of Srila Prabhupada’s first books. When she reached home, she read the book from cover to cover, searched the address of the nearest ISKCON center, and that same Sunday visited Radha-Govinda Mandir. She never looked back, even though her family, although supportive, didn’t follow her on her journey.

Jayati Radhika is now bed-ridden, spending her last days in an assisted living facility in Western Massachusetts near the home of her daughter, but somehow she still greeted me with that same simple smile of contentment, a beam that had endured forty-eight regimens of chemotherapy over the last sixteen years and the constant pain of rheumatoid arthritis. That same smile had also belied her condition as she had trekked to the Bhakti Center every Sunday all the way from her home in Howard Beach, Queens. As we began kirtan, she closed her eyes and tapped her feet under the covers. When we finished the kirtan, I began to reflect.

We read about advanced yogis who have practiced santoṣa (contentment). How many of them could have endured such hardship year after year without even the slightest scent of dejection or bitterness, not even when her husband fell ill in the last few years and was incapacitated mostly under her care?

I asked her, “How did you remain so joyful over the years despite the tribulations you faced, and how do you remain so now even in the face of death and distanced from the association of devotees?”

She replied in her simple and guileless brogue: “Krishna is in charge. Leave it to Him. Everything will be OK.”

I pressed further: “But aren’t you afraid of death?”

“People ask me that all the time. Not at all. I kind of look forward to it. I just know that Krishna is in charge and that if I leave it to Him, everything will be OK. I felt that from the first day I went to the temple.”

Although she spoke with such conviction, there was no alarm or drama in her reply. It was so matter-of-fact, almost amused, and certainly without fear. I pondered what she shared.

“Krishna is in charge. Leave it to Him. Everything will be OK.”

What takes a lifetime of trial to realize, what is the essence of approaching the world and death with fearlessness, what is a realization so deep that it guarantees us entrance to the kingdom of God (see Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 10.14.8), and a thought so transforming that it gifts us a heart of contentment and a smile of joy, was the property of this very simple housewife from the beginning of her spiritual life. How is this possible?

This is indeed a very old soul.

[1] As Dhanurdhara Swami is currently on a health retreat and is also experiencing some computer problems, we are resharing this Monday Morning Greetings originally published August 22, 2016.

My titles are usually catchy. Not this one. I think it’s kind of boring, but I wanted to personally reach out to my audience to celebrate. I started Monday Morning Greetings six years ago to the day, so today’s post will be number three hundred and thirteen! Every week I write on whatever thought or realization is prominent in my mind. Well, this was it—to celebrate with my readers.

When I begin writing on Tuesday, I usually have somewhat of a vision of expanding my initial realization. Today I thought I could expand my initial inspiration by discussing whether it’s OK to be proud of what one has accomplished, but I just couldn’t take that much further. I knew, however, that putting pen to the paper, so to speak, has a way of activating the mind if you just keep at it. Although this post didn’t exactly go where I expected, the process of writing itself became my inspiration, especially in relation to fostering my faith in Krishna.

I very much like the definition of faith that I heard from a Christian apologist[1]: Faith is trust by experience. Every single week, after the first session of writing, I feel helpless. I get to watch, however, how day by day the initial inspiration gets sculpted gradually and miraculously by an inner voice into a finished product way beyond my initial inspiration or abilities. As a result, I have gained faith as a writer—trust by experience—that the result is up to Krishna, that He has sanctioned my service, and if I forge forward with my service despite my inabilities, by His mercy the result will come, as it has every week. The process of writing for me is thus a week of watching the Supersoul at work in my life.

Contemplating the writing process also sheds light on my initial inspiration that I couldn’t bring forward: “Is it OK to be proud of my accomplishment?” I think the answer is that pride means to think oneself the doer, and the process of writing for me is seeing Krishna as the doer. I am constantly amazed how thoughts and ideas come far beyond my capability to culminate into a finished product that I can be proud of, especially as I was never a writer or an intellectual growing up, not particularly smart in school, and to this day still do not know the difference between a colon and semi-colon. What I do know, however, is where my inspiration comes from:

“I am situated in everyone’s heart, and from Me comes remembrance, forgetfulness and knowledge.” (Bg. 5.15)

I sit here today again amazed. I began lost, couldn’t imagine this post would amount to anything, or how I would even proceed, but I finished by listening to God in the heart.

As I began this post to celebrate with my reader, let’s also end it that way. For those who would like to participate in that celebration, could you please look at my website wavesofdevotion.com  and pick your favorite post for the year 2021 and send it to me. You will hear back from me personally. Perhaps even mention why you liked it. That’s up to you. On the right-hand bottom of the home page, it says “archives” and in ten minutes you can browse all the articles for 2021. For me it was a tough choice. I like many, but I seem to especially like one’s that include a personal story expressed in my own unique voice with a touch of wisdom. Anyway, here’s one I liked for that reason called Let the Dead Bury the Dead.

Monday Morning Greetings 2021 #24 – Let the Dead Bury the Dead

May you all have a prosperous, healthy, and uplifting New Year by the mercy of Sri Sri Guru and Gauranga!

[1] I heard this definition in an interview by Alvin Platinga, John A. O’Brien Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, who is arguably the most prominent Christian apologist in the world.