Friday, January 30th, 2009

Georgetown, Guyana

Every evening Padayatra (the festival on foot) is held at a different location. This evening’s was set up at Guyana’s old drive-in movie theatre. From the stage, Rajarsi of Trinidad spoke. He told a story of about approaching spiritual life with some intelligence.

“A disciple had served his guru on a journey by having the guru ride on a horse while the disciple walked along behind. They started getting cold and the guru asked the disciple, “What happened to my blanket?”
The disciple remarked, “It fell off the horse some time back.”
The guru responded, “Anything that falls from the horse, pick it up and bring it back to me.”
The horse released some dung and so the disciple picked up the dung and presented it to the guru. The guru became upset and made a list of all the items that if they happen to fall from the horse that could be picked up. After some time, the guru fell off the horse. The disciple checked the list to see if the guru was on the list. When he didn’t see the guru’s name on the list, he left the guru behind.

What we are to glean from this message was that we don’t become a mere “yes man” in spiritual life. We must make use of our intelligence. Naturally, the audience, which increases by size each day, had a good laugh and got the point.

Carrying on with a similar type of theme, I could not contain myself after trekking with Rupa for three hours and noting the huge amount of trash along the sea wall as we headed west today. With a concerned passion, I addressed the crowd, “While we cleanse ourselves through mantra, eating holy food (prasadam), and hear messages about being bright, don’t we have an obligation to look after the cleanliness of our environment?”

Indeed the culture of plastic and trash has hit Guyana leaving the beaches embarrassingly unkempt. Rejected refrigerators, TV guts, buckets, and millions of plastic bottles litter the water’s edge. If we are human and to add, a spiritual community, can’t we be somewhat more conscious? The third world tends to follow the so-called developed world in most habits. In Guyana, there is currently neither infrastructure nor the sensitivity to do much about it.

Basically we were imploring all there to play a role in ecological protection. For the long haul and the future generations, “let’s be more conscious and then it’s possible to be God Conscious.”

15km