Thursday, May 21st, 2015

Thursday, May 21^st, 2015
Toronto, Ontario

Take it Like a Monk


It used to be that people in the public would see one of us and say, “Hey, I haven’t seen you guys in 30 years.”  Today, as our group was chanting along on John Street, an excited wiry and white haired man remarked, “I haven’t seen you guys in 40 years.”  It came to mind that time is passing by quickly, and secondly, that this is a confirmation that our effort to explore different parts of the city was a good experiment.  It’s working, people are seeing us again.  The need to be more visible as Krishna monks was obvious. 

I kept dwelling on the concept of passage of time.  A good friend, just the other day, spoke of another friend, and said this about him, “When I saw him he was walking with a cane.   I was shocked how old he suddenly had become.  He had age marks on his face.”  Then I interjected, and due to not hearing properly, almost as if I’m getting to the age of hard of hearing. 

“What did you say?  He’s got Aids marks on his face?”

“No!”  I was corrected, “AGE marks.”

“We’re all getting older,” was my thought, “and it is happening fast.”  I have these mental glimpses of myself on the streets of Toronto when I was a young whipper snapper of sorts, doing the same thing, chanting on the streets.  What comes to mind is a message of the Gita, wherein a verse implies the movement of the soul recycling itself rather swiftly.  “As the embodied soul continually passes in this body from boyhood, to adulthood, to old age, the soul similarly passes into another body at death.  A mature person is not bewildered by such a change.”

By this method, youth is followed by old age, so what is there to worry about?  We can look at aging from a mature perspective.  We must learn to take it like a ma…  monk. 

May the Source be with you!


7 km