Look After Each Other
Tirupati, India
A constant back and forth on the guest house balcony passes me by rooms of devotional peers. There is Badrinarayan from San Diego, Sivaram Swami from Hungary and Gopal Bhatta from LA who share this second floor and whom I had brief encounters with. Anyways it was a good stretch of walk with few distractions which are commonplace on the street-level with traffic, dogs and mud puddles.
Our morning session of meetings dwelt on the subject of various causes of fall down; why and what to do about it? 'Fall down' is an expression that refers to when someone on the spiritual path enters into vulnerability and sways eventually from the trail. In particular we were looking at spiritual leaders or people of seniority and what after-effects exist, what to speak of symptoms leading to a down fall. It was a healthy discussion and everyone in the room had a turn to speak.
We were reminded what our guru said in regards to our attitude towards the world of temptations. Srila Prabhupada, our guru, once said that the problem with us, meaning his students, is that we don't fear maya (the world of temptation).
At the meeting we explored possible solutions and the detection of symptoms to spiritual weakness. One sure sign of the weakness is when a person demonstrates a poor sadhana (regulated devotions). It was a grave session but left the participants with hope. One obvious gesture to implement is that spiritual practitioners need to be vigilant to look out for each other by building strong relationships.
With that being said three of us monks, Jayapataka Swami, Bhakti Chaitanya Swami and myself were comparing our seed-therapy feet with one another. How's that for looking after or atleast at each other?
8 KM
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