Wednesday, September 14th, 2011

Credit

Saint Johns, Newfoundland

There was an incredible transmission of spiritual wisdom taking place at the Lotus Centre, a place where yogis, thinkers and dharmic people come to listen and learn. Townies (folks from town) and baymen (folks from outside of town) came to listen on the topic of spiritual leadership.

“If you want to be a leader, then you get the opportunity to control, but that control begins with your senses.” Now, I cannot take credit for expressing these words, nor for anything else I said to the group of about 20 people. Opening the talk with invocational Sanskrit mantras, I translated in a gist fashion, “credit goes to the great masters of the past, who transferred information through the generations.”

I then proceeded to describe that a leader in spiritual consciousness must at least follow dharma and demonstrate the highest level of morality. But the group looked at what dharma truly is, being the essence of a thing. We contemplated on Sanatan dharma, the essence of the soul. After quizzing the group, the answers they came up with were 'pure', 'love', and more. I asked for “what is the soul’s function?” and someone said, “service”, which received a number of approving nods from the group. Someone also wanted to know about karma, so we discussed. I made reference to the Bhagavad-gita as the source of all this wisdom.

One woman in the group said that she just purchased a Gita on a recent trip to Ottawa. She asked me if I would look at her copy and verify it to be a decent translation. She went to her purse and showed me her copy of Bhagavad-gita As It Is. I simply endorsed it by saying my guru translated it and puts emphasis on bhakti, or devotion. We commenced the talk with kirtan (chanting) and finished with it. Jeff is a great mrdanga player, which added so much to the joy of the evening.

5 Km