Wednesday, June 9th, 2010

Two Guys and Spencer

Toronto, Ontario

It was another one of those insomniac attacks. I had no alternative but to get out of bed at this moment of frustration and attempt to walk off the sleeplessness. The clock struck 12 midnight and so I decided to make Yonge st. south my destinational trail. It’s interesting what happened.

I walked past a strip joint. Out came a husky-built middle-eastern-type man who said, “Hey, what’s with the robes?”

So I told him I am a monk.

“What do monks do?”, he asked. While thinking about it I mentioned first what we don’t do such as disrobe ourselves in public. (He laughs). “We also don’t eat meat. In our order, we don’t eat meat. We eat real healthy good-tasting food.”

Just then another fellow walked out of the joint. This guy was much slimmer. He saw my robes and burst out not knowing at all of our conversation and said, “You guys got the best food in the world. I ate at your Govinda’s in Prague.” That was a positive insertion point. I left the two men who were quite satisfied with the encounter.

A few blocks later on my return swing back to the ashram a young man, Spencer, started talking. He lives rather close to our ashram. He describes himself as an artist and plays some guitar. “Oh, free spirit!” I thought.

I started talking about the crazy city life. “Look at all of this mad construction. Will this city ever get finished?”

“Ya know, Krishna left the country side to go to the city when he was young. You’ve heard of Krishna, right?”

“Yes, I have. Why did he leave for the city” asked Spencer.

“To take care of political scandal”, I replied.

Spencer wanted to know more so I explained one of His greatest contributions was to speak the Bhagavad-Gita, a conversation about improving the quality of life. From there Spencer and I got deeper into the dialogue which is consistent with Krishna’s own way with talking to Arjuna.

It was now almost 2am when I finished with Spencer. I went to sleep shortly after bidding him good-bye.

I did wake up for the morning spiritual exercise at 4am. Miraculously there was no problem there and caught up with a lengthy nap later.

I was really happy to have met those three guys at such an ungodly hour. It turned rather Godly.

7 KM