Thursday, August 11th, 2011

Oh My God, More Youth

Seattle, Washington

I have to say this about today, my time was tied in beautiful knots. I had anticipated trekking a few kilometres, oops - miles, I’m in America, but things came up.

After setting up chairs, curtains, stage wings, to create a theatre atmosphere for the evenings Bha Ra Ta Program, along with helpful efforts of my assistant, Nirguna, I was going to go for a cat nap, then freshen up, and then go for that walk. But Krishna had another plan. The temple leader here in Seattle asked me to host 90 youth coming to visit the centre as part of a four day camping excursion.

“Thanks for tidying up the temple”, said the appreciative servant leader by the name of Nanda Suta. “Maharaja, there are a group of Sikh students coming.”

“Sure, I’ll be happy to look after them.” I asked Mitra to team up with me in the presentation that we made. He brought his home made slide guitar, composed of a medium sized crushed tomato can, some wire, some scrap wood, and some bent discarded metal. Mitra demonstrated playing his craft to the accompaniment of the maha mantra. The students got a kick out of that. I did the bulk of the talking and left a space for questions. One question came up whose answer resonated well with the youth group. “What does the knot of hair on the back of the head represent?” Asked a girl. “This is called a sikha, and it signifies that we agree to follow Krishna, and that He takes to any which way He feels is best for us. Now you are known as members of this Sikh community. Sikh means follower, that implies you take direction from God and/or His representatives.”

The students were happy that we shared this common ground terminology, concluding that we are all not that much different than each other in our spiritual pursuit.

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