Thursday, May 29th , 2008

Thursday, May 29th , 2008 – Catonsville, Maryland, USA

“You Hare Krishna?” said the black man in official blue collar uniform.
“Yes!”
“You Chantin?”
”Yes I am”
“Will you chant for me?”
”Indeed I will”, as I moved on and so did he, each of us in good cheer. The town is Catonsville a Baltimore burb. Flags boast of the town as Maryland’s Music City. Two blocks away from the downtown core is the Hare Krishna center and there monks mostly from Nepal and Bengal are singing and conducting bhajans (devotional songs) on a daily basis. The building is a large house with historic building status. It is made of partial stone with the balance of loud coloured paint on wood. It looks a bit like a day care center.
I was asked to deliver a talk on the day’s verse from the Bhagavatam book, Canto Six on the topic of atonement for offenses committed. In essence the verse raised the point fo doing good things to absolve oneself of bad things done bit it often happens that bad acts are executed again out of habit. So how do you end the bad things? How to atone? How to shake off habits that lead to bad karma?
The example given is of the elephant who bathes and after enjoying the cleansing and cooling sensation of the water will then gather dust and / or roll in it making himself dirty again.
To answer the question in a synoptic way is when one immerses oneself in a higher purpose and relishes its higher taste then low-scale inclinations are less likely to transpire.

6 Km