Wednesday 21 March 2018

Sunday, March 18th, 2018

Honolulu, Hawaii

They Paved Paradise

There’s Joni Mitchell’s famous song, “Big Yellow Taxi,” with lyrics that go, “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot / With a pink hotel a boutique and a swinging hot spot.

“They took all the trees, put ’em in a tree museum / And they charged the people a dollar and a half just to see ’em.”

Gurudas, Kapu and I were walking along the beach with surfers nearby, and runners and walkers moving past, when Kapu, a native Hawaiian, said, out of the blue, “The pink hotel, Joni Mitchell sings about, is right here, downtown.”

“On our way back to the temple, can we take a look at it?” I asked Gurudas, our driver, out of curiosity.

So we did, and we imagined the green that was there before erecting the monster, and, of course, the parking lot.  Interesting!

I delivered two classes today—one was on the topic of the 11th, 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th, and 16th avatars as listed in the book, Bhagavatam, and at 5:00 p.m. I spoke from verse 9.6 of the Gita regarding the wind contained in the sky and how even the forceful is under control by the Divine.

These were stories and concepts that lingered in my mind, which occasionally veered over to the theme of Joni’s song.  It’s in the chorus.

“Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone / They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.”

We take so much for granted.

May the Source be with you!
5 km


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