ISKON Temple Visit

Am a very ordinary person to write about Krsna & his leela. Iam not a great devotee of Krsna but my visit to west virgina & burnaby ISKON(The International Society for Krishna Consciousness ) temples made me attract towards the lordship of universe ie. Krsna.
A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada is the founder acharya of the hare krishna movement, even though i have a half baked knowledge about the guru, his life is inspiring for lakhs of devotees across to world.
The temple, like the other shrines of ISKON, has been constructed with the prime mission of spreading the messages encapsulated in Bhagwad Gita, the sacred book of the Hindus.Numerous Krishna devotees from across the globe flock to different ISKON temples to soothe themselves in the holy sanctum.
The first time when I went along with my parents & my elder brother my heart was filled with over joyful happiness listening to kirtans, pravachans and aartis performed by the temple ,which are particularly attended by devotees each day.
Iam really not able to understand as how to share my experience of my visit to ISKON temples because there are few things in this world for which description is very hard to give and yeah my trip to ISKON is one such thing..!!
Till the last moment i was not sure if my trip was possible to west virgina , as there was lot of hindrance going in and around my job and client calls coming up… but as they say destiny is bound to happen and if the LORD wants to see me there are no means of stopping…
We(mom,dad and my elder brother) started off on Saturday morning (July 21st ,2007) around 7:00am with all food stuff, enough for 4 days..!
First we went to Pittsburgh temple where there is Lord.Venkateshwara and other small temples…. had darshan took some snaps and left that place within half hour or so. By evening i.e around 7:20pm reached ISCON Krishna temple in west virgina. As soon we got down the car there was some kind of magic I felt within and soon we were surrounded by peacocks, as usual with excitement clicked my parent’s snaps with them...!
Actually we missed 5:30 aarthi,so the temple door was closed but there was so many foreigners and Indians who were dancing to tunes of Krishna and chatting the maha mantra…hare krnsa hare krsna krsna krsna hare hare hare rama hare rama rama rama hare hare… cant even explain the moment of happiness I was having seeing them dancing forgetting the world around them. The sound, the place, the environment , the people , their un-forgettable chants were enough to mesmerize my soul…my dad,mom and me joined the group or should I say were pulled in the group…couldn’t dance as was literally tried but my dad danced and I picked up some snaps there too..!!
My elder brother booked a 5 bedded room, we all relaxed for sometime, had our bath and then around 9:20pm came down had food in the cafeteria in the temple premises. Now even the food was un-explainable in terms of taste or the neatness with which devotees were serving, even though it was costly but it was worth to have there. Had a good food and were about to leave when we were informed that there was a swan festival in another half hour or so, immediately we rushed in to room grabbed our shawls as it was chilly out there… now first time in my stay in US the joy of staying here was felt, around 70-90 people marched towards a lake chatting and doing Krishna bhajan’s along the way…on the banks of river we settled down to sit and after 15min or so a swan boat decorated with lights, flowers came with Lord.Krishna and Radha mount over the boat. It was such a wonderful view to eyes that you forget that there is a materialistic world around us, it was as if we were watching the LORD himself riding around the lake to give us his holy darshan… clicked lots of snaps, but again it weren’t enough for such a gripping event…!
We all left back to room talking about the event and all through the night I was having dreams about it. WE all got up early in the morning but as it was a weekend lots of people came,so had a to wait a lot of time for bath. Around 8:30am we all headed straight to the temple which was hardly 2min walk from the rooms.
Woh or should I say that we entered a paradise of earth. The chanting,puja,the LORD himself was in front was us and nothing more could I have asked for in my life.The calm eyes, the beauty of temple left me speechless. For almost 2hrs or so couldn’t even talk properly nor was even understanding how could ever in this world a place like this could be missed by people. Really felt as why we fall into a maya of man’s creation when the supreme GOD is himself standing in front of us..!! But again maya is maya,we tend to look around the things all in negative way….
Lots of foreigners who cant even speak hindi or understand it were chanting Sanskrit slokas and explaining the meaning of each word clearly. Till 12:30 we were there in the temple and we started off exploring the place around. The best part being taking around 10 or more snaps of LORD which in every ISKON temple is allowed. Went to peacocks garden,radha Krishna statues, palace of gold(this is a garden is dedicated to prabhupada and so is the building).
Actually his devotees wanted to build a temple their but un-fortunately his death was a big blow to the organization, so they converted the building to his monument with some precious scripts written by himself and few wall paintings explaining about the life from birth to death,couldn’t click anything as photography was strictly prohibited.
As usual after such a long walks were damm tried, went back rooms packed our stuff and shifted to lake side cottage.As my bother and father are life time members of ISKON,we were provided with the best of amenities. Oh its again a big one with 3 bedrooms.Had a hearty meal with all the things we packed from home, slept for 2hrs or so.
Marched back to temple which is only 10min walk from the cottage and everywhere there was only greenery and it was pleasant to eyes. Everywhere the magic of LORD was just felt and his leela was splendid. Again in the evening there was GITA lessons from a foreigner and the way he was explaining made me shameful for a second. He read out a chapter from GITA and explained word to word also gave examples as how a person should follow DHARMA and how we are captured by maya..!
As it was Sunday most of them were leaving the place,so it was like hardly 20 or maybe less than that people in 3000 acres of temple premises…yes its 3000 acres(it was 6000 acres but the land was sold because of donations not coming in..!)
Everywhere there was greenery and peacocks and deers running around us. I recorded bajans in my mobile and was listening to them all through the night, still even after coming to US those tunes were echoing in my mind and feeling for going again is doubled.
On Monday there were hardly any devotes except those who stay there….my brother made a friendly talk to one the maharaj in the temple and luckily he accepted to show us where prabhupada moment was started and where he was staying at the time he started ISKON temple in west virgina. Oh it’s a complete jungle path with more than 1hr walk in dirt, jungle grass walk but its worth going there. On our way he narrated many incidents, stories, about the place and how prabhupada struggled his life to get krishna consciousness among people. Uff.. so many things to write but its just tough for me to even think about putting it down on notes. We went to the cottage where he used to stay with his disciples and also to building where the founder of the ISCON temple was. Of course both the building were completely insolvent to use and also there was not many funds coming up to renovate them and thus they were in some remote jungle area left for memories.It was only me,my elder brother,a devotee and maharaj went to that place as it was very tough was for anyone to walk along the way…clicked some pictures in which you can actually see how difficult it was to walk along the path..!
There are so many things which iam not able to pen down in this blog but for life long they will remain in my mind as memories and one of the most life journey I ever had. I promised to myself that if by any chance I have to travel again then I will be the first to do so without hesitation or even a blink
I can say that its “ A new paradise to love, self consciousness, journey to know yourself, a mesmerizing world to enter “.
I don’t know when that time will come again to go there but my stay in US has been a pleasure to be with this visit and I will be dying to go there again and again…..