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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