[Update] Spending Time in my Second Favorite Peninsula
Michigan is my second favorite peninsula in the United States (and possibly in the world). There are some reasons for this which will be disclosed in the contents of this entry. The first one is, of course, Florida, because that is where I’m from. One always holds a little fidelity for their homeland.
Traveling with Paramesvara Prabhu over the past month and a half is what brought me to Michigan in the first place. In previous entries I may have referred to him as just “Paramesvara,” but henceforth when I talk about him or other very senior spiritual people I will likely follow their name with the word “prabhu,” which means “master” in Sanskrit, and gives honor to the person in question. It’s a nice practice. While writing this blog, I have been unsure about how much Sanskrit jargon or Hare Krishna cultural things to include, but lately I have just been feeling like writing naturally and authentically. This is how I think and talk. I am a Hare Krishna monk so I give respect to those who I view as senior to me, and the title of “master” reminds me that these people are worthy of my appreciation and service and it behooves me to remember this.
So I got all the way up to Michigan and spent a good portion of April there because I was traveling with Paramesvara Prabhu doing the college book distribution program I had mentioned previously. From March 19th-April 25th, almost every week day, in Texas, Louisiana, Kentucky, Ohio, and finally Michigan, we spent 6-8 hours on a university campus trying to share spiritual books with people, eating very simply, showering in the morning with 2 gallons of water in a parking lot, after sleeping there in his van, and doing our other personal spiritual practices all the while. It was probably one of the best times of my life, and although this year is only halfway over now, this has easily been the best year of my life.
Some amazing things happened to me while I was distributing these wonderful books to the fortunate souls of the South-Midwest USA, which I may recount more in the future, and it probably would be a good idea for me to do so. One thing I will say for now is that I have never felt the same kind of happiness as the happiness I felt when I gave a Bhagavad Gita to Marco at Michigan State University (shout out, Marco) and then saw him explain the Gita to the next person who came up to the book table. After they left me at the table I felt the greatest euphoria of my life physically, emotionally, mentally, in all capacities it seemed. I had a really hard time speaking to the next groups of folks who came by the table but they understood that I was really happy and they wanted to take books despite me not being able to converse well.
I was super intrigued with the variety of the schools we visited. Some schools only had a few thousand students, some were really populated, some campuses seemed more prosperous, and others less, some had incredibly modern and weird architecture (like the University of Cincinnati which kind of looked like a dystopian city in my opinion), but at all of them, an amazing effort of uplifting people through sharing of spiritual knowledge took place, which makes them all wonderful places.
We went to three schools in Michigan, Michigan State, Grand Valley State, and Central Michigan, which is more schools than in the other states that we visited, so we spent a considerable amount of time there.
In between going to distribute at these schools, we spent a lot of time at the Goloka sanctuary in Maybee, Michigan. It’s an idyllic monastery situated in rural south Michigan, an extension of the dynamic, progressing, and flourishing Harmony Collective temple in Ypsilanti, and it really is a sanctuary for several reasons- the people staying there and the community of Hare Krishnas in Michigan are of the utmost amazing character with superb dedication to their spiritual practice, affection towards one another, and a mood of sharing the happiness of Bhakti with others, the property is tranquil, and their library is aesthetically pleasing and full of various interesting theological and philosophical works, amongst other things.
Now I am back to traveling with my original partner, Brihat, and things are looking exciting and hopeful for the future. I’m playing catch up with these blog entries, so I’ll leave it here for now.