Numbers Count
Villagio hare Krsna, Italy
Spontaneity is often times the way to go. I sometimes convince myself of this.
One of the local devotees with administrative clout saw me as I walked into the temple room, ran over to me and said, “ You can give the class?” “Now? Today? But I’m not prepared!” “Please”, he pleaded.” “The person assigned can’t do it.” “Alright, “ I surrendered. “Give a little advanced notice the next time,” I said with a smile. There I went rushing into the fastest prayer of all times before sitting on the vyasasan (the speaker’s chair) and viewing a mixed peer and junior-to-me audience. The verse from Canto 3 of the book Bhagavatam was Vedically technical addressing the pradhana, the element of the universe. It’s called sankhya philosophy when the cosmic make-up is analyzed. I ended up speaking mostly about the relevance of itemizing the things we work with, the need to be orderly, to be result-oriented. Numbers matter. To make things interactive I asked the listeners to vocalize the golden sacred numbers given to us by our guru, Srila Prabhupada. here were some of them with corresponding items.
108- beads on a japa meditation items
16 - rounds to chant daily on beads
4 -regulated principals
50 - the age recommended to renounce
7 - purposes of ISKCON
2 - double the distribution of BBT books
8 - 4 varnas and 4 ashramas (social+spiritual divisions)
1 - one mantra, one scripture, one god
10 - avatars
12 - Cantos (parts) of the book Bhagavatam
24 - elements
this is a partial list but these are the numbers that came up first. Numbers are important. In any event the spontaneity went alright. You have to be ready for any service if it calls for it.
5 KM
No comments:
Post a Comment