Friday 17 September 2010

Sunday, September 12th, 2010

To Montreal

Montreal, Quebec

As usual it is hard for me to wait for my driver to be prepared for a trip. I expressed to the person who was going to be behind the wheel, that I'll start walking.

"Pick me up. You'll see me. I swear I'll be the only monk on the road," I told Gaurachandra, our Hungarian-born devotee, who resides in the same ashram as myself.

I had no regrets about being the 'advanced party.' After the freak rainfall I relished sniffing in the aroma of late summer/fall foliage. Red berries of all sorts and kinds are recessed in green richness. This is what you see along Rosedale Valley Road and then further on past Brickworks on Bayview. It is a section of wild splendour in Toronto, a city known more for urban life than for its treasure of tucked away green.

After an hour and a half of great solitude Gaurachandra pulled up with his hatchback Toyota Echo to drive us through a rain-drenched day to Montreal. It is a pleasure always to walk into a temple room full of smiling faces from people who perhaps have had a hard week of maintenance monotony. Their visit to their temple is an anticipated stress reliever. And it is my responsibility at least this evening to offer some inspiration that they, the visitors, will hopefully carry to their contacts of the coming week.

What to speak on? I was given no topic so wing it I did. I quickly leafed through the pages of the Gita when my eyes landed on the chosen verse which was full of imagery. From Chapter three it describes different states of consciousness which are compared to fire covered by smoke, a mirror covered by dust and the embryo covered by the womb. These analogies illustrate the soul's state of deception from good to bad to worst.

I won't elaborate on the topic which would stretch out too much for my daily report but somehow or other the message flowed on how to overcome life's illusions. It begins and ends with chanting as suggested by our guru, Srila Prabhupada, in his explanation of this verse.

7 KM

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