Monday, June 3rd, 2013

No Birds But Bees

Amherst, Quebec

The bees were busy buzzing at the beehive. Last year, Surya, the owner of these prized hives, produced three tonnes of the golden gel known as honey that his drones got together. It seems pretty labour intensive.

I was given a jar of the stuff by Bhakti Raghava Swami, who was occupying Surya’s absolutely gorgeous and rustic home atop a hill in the Laurentian Mountains. Bhakti Raghava is a big promoter of rural sustainable village development in India. He’s a born Canadian and adopted the lifestyle, as I have, the lifestyle of a monk.

Keeping bees is one way to demonstrate sustainability, and there’s no reason why there cannot be self sufficiency as a reality in rural Canadian regions. Pioneers did so, mind you, a good chunk of their diet depended on the slaughter of animals and also on fishing.

Bhakti Raghava spent so many years in India and then abroad in places like Cambodia, more particularly, Ankhorwat, the ancient Vishnu city. Once while in Maypura, India, in the 70’s, some dakoits came to our rural settlement, released one of those hand made bombs, which was aimed at him. He lost his leg because of it. It was suggested by a peer, and all in good cheer, that it is Bhakti Raghava Swami who should be the one walking cross-Canada, and hence, gain Terry Fox status.

Bhakti Raghava did tell us that the other day, not intending any marathon, that he did venture off with his two crutches in the bush by some trails. Eventually he got lost. This was a reminder of Krishna as a youth losing His bearings in the forest and was missing for hours along with his friend, Sudama.

Those of us visiting from the city did have the opportunity to divert, but not deeply in the bush. On our return to Montreal we stopped to wade dans le Riviere de Rouge. Soothing!

And another super highlight of the day was chanting at one of those old fashioned picnic tables at a park in Montreal. When you sit and face each other, there is an automatic encouragement that comes from doing so. It’s sort of a transcendental buddy system.

Try chanting using the picnic table method someday with a group of friends.

10 KM