By Anita dasi
We sat down in our spot, arranged the books and began bhajans. One fellow with rosy mountain cheeks squatted down grinning and swaying with the bhajans. We had a Hindi song book so he so he followed along. He sang with us the full set of morning bhajans, when I would glance at him between songs he became happier and happier until he was beaming. He stayed with us the whole morning chanting and clanging the cartels.
Around two we began to pack up and to go back for lunch; we explained to him that it was the appearance day of Jahanva devi and Sita devi and we were going to have a small program at 5. He lives down in Manali but decided to stay and wait for the program.
The afternoon was very busy. I am quite lazy when it comes to preparing to speak; I guess I hope if I ignore it it will go away. But there was no more avoiding it. I decided to focus on Sita devi because the program was at a Rama temple and the temple of Vashista Rsi was just down stairs. While searching through old harikatha lectures I found one nice pastime that I had heard before but never realized it was Vashista Rsi. I was was able to weave it into the class in an attempt to emphasize the importance of sadhu sanga.
“Visvamitra Muni and Vasista Muni once had an argument about which was more powerful and important: tapasya or bhakti. They asked Anantadeva, and Anantadeva replied to Visvamitra, ‘Take the burden of one of my hoods. Take one universe on your head.’ Visvamitra gave fifty thousand years worth of the results of his tapasya. Anantadeva then placed the universal planets on his head, and the planets immediately pushed his head down. Vasista then gave one minute's result of his sadhu-sanga, and he was immediately able to hold the universe on his head” – from a class on Aug 23 2001 in India
Our god-brother Jitendriya prabhu sponsored halava, but we only had one small pot that Jagat-mohini didi loaned us. He arranged that we could use the temple kitchen, but it was 4:30 and the man with the keys was missing. He finally came and opened the door. Karuna-mayi dasi quickly got to work.
There are about seven or eight devotees from different sangas staying here in Vashishta who came, our friend from the morning and several temple visitors sat down and joined us for some of the bhajans or class. Kunja Kalika dasi lead very sweetly Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakura’s Bhavarnave Po’de Mora.
ogo sri jahnava devi! E dase karuna
koro’ aji nija-gune, ghucao jantrana
“Oh most revered Sri Jahnava-devi! Please show mercy to this servant today by virtue of your own good qualities, and kindly relieve all his afflictions.”
At the end we distributed prashadam to those who came to the program and also visitors to the temple. It is so inspiring to be at a 5,000 year old Rama temple remembering the pastimes and mercy of these divine incarnations.
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