Tuesday, December 31st, 2013

Toronto, Ontario
 
Two Monks at New Year

I sat down with two of our young guys who have been treading the path of renunciation for some time.  Brihat Mrdanga (formerly Jeff) has been with the mission for five years now and has traveled across Canada and India more than once since taking up the life of the cloth. He’s a great soul with a healthy spirit pushing on in his free celibate life.

Maha Mantra (formerly Matt) is our second Ontario chap to join within a short span of a golden period when a nice group of young men trickled in to become monks. Like Brihat Mrdanga he was looking at the New Year with openness.

The interesting thing about Brihat Mrdanga and Maha Mantra is that they reach a crossroads, not about being single and serving in a spiritual capacity like they have been doing, but instead of travelling throughout the Maritimes in a small bus together, with a third monk, Hayagriva of Quebec, or grounding themselves in our Montreal chapter, he expressed a small adjustment.  Hayagriva likes to commit himself to sharing the Bhagavat philosophy in French Canada. Maha Mantra expressed a desire to be reaching out to youth based in Toronto and working within the parameters of the downtown Bhakti Lounge. And Brihat Mrdanga conveyed a passion for backpacking and cycling from city to city in the Maritimes, in the eastern most part of the country with another chosen renuonciant. Of course, this cycling around sounds quite adventurous, I mean, moving around with no particular fixed address, sounds a little like “the walking monk” genre of life.

The three men, actually, did not mean to say they were sick of each other traveling together. They had reached a point of exploratory horizons. “Let’s do something different” was the theme and take responsibly for different turfs.

As usual the very tail-end of a year hits a high point in a Krishna monk’s life in Canada. Perhaps the most explosive kirtan of the year finds its way to a public venue. For the New Year’s countdown Maha Mantra, Brihat Mrdanga, myself and hordes of other Krishna chanters converged in front of Old City Hall for the most outrageous time. While the temperature was an easy eighteen degrees Celsius below, the fire of kirtan to the beat of different drums lifted even higher the spirit of those two fine monks that I sat with in the afternoon.

It looks as though there is strategy and ecstasy that are embracing the minds of these two monks.

May the Source be with you!

9 KM