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Salagram and Govardhan Silas

Learn to Play the Mrdanga

January 27-29, 2002

11 AM, 27 January 2002, Qantas Airline flight 747.

We are high above Australia, flying from Sydney to Adelaide. It's an hour and a half journey by air. A few minutes ago I could see the Sydney coastline. They say Sydney has some of the nicest ocean beaches in Australia. Unfortunately, I never had a chance to visit the ocean in Sydney, but I sure had a great view of them out the window of this airplane.

I'm sitting at a window seat on the right side of this Boeing 767, over the wing, but I can still get a pretty good view looking a little forward. We rapidly passed over some mountainous and forested areas, and now it looks pretty desert-like down below. Two-thirds of Australia is desert, I'm told. Some say three-fourths.

Atmrarama is the temple president of Sydney. He wasn't there during our visit, but showed up just as I was leaving. He had been away, and when he got back he said he was sick with the flu. He was very cordial, and I'm glad I ran into him before we left this morning. He'll be going to the GBC meetings soon. I told him that regretfully I would not be able to attend the meetings this year.

Yesterday we had a program at a small temple run by disciples of Gopal Krsna Maharaja. About 50 people attended, and I gave my "Why bad things happen to good people" seminar, which entails a lot of interactive participation. The seminar was very well received, and Gopal Krsna Maharaja's disciples said that many of the people there were there for the first time. Participation was very responsive.

With the "Why bad things happen to good people" seminar, I start by telling the group a story of a devotee who was climbing mountains in California with his 12 year-old devotee son, when a large boulder above them became dislodged and crashed downward, crushing the boy and instantly killing him. The horrified father then had to carry his dead son down the mountain. After that the father, who had been a strict devotee, became discouraged, and gave up his strict practices of Krsna Consciousness.

So that I put the question to the audience: Why would such a thing happen? Does Krsna protect His devotees or not? And is it true that He doesn't give a test that is so severe that the devotee can't pass it? And if it is true, it seems the Lord messed it up, because the devotee didn't pass the test and gave up the strict practices of Krsna Consciousness.

Then, standing by a white board with some erasable markers, I field comments from the audience who offer various theories about why such things sometimes might happen to devotees. This is how I conduct the first half of the seminar.

The second half of the seminar consists of asking the audience what can we learn or what qualities can we develop when there is tragedy or hardship in our own lives. Then I write all of those ideas down.

Finally, we look at the list on the board, and usually discover, as we did yesterday, that you can develop desirable qualities through times of personal suffering and hardship, such as humility, tolerance, forbearance, dependence on Krsna, etc. And then the audience realizes these are actually desirable things, and therefore it may be sometimes beneficial for us to go through a period of personal hardship and suffering.

Finally I conclude the seminar, as I did yesterday, by reading and discussing the prayer by Queen Kunti from the Srimad-Bhagavatam, First Canto, Chapter 8, text 25. In the previous verse, Queen Kunti summarizes the many sufferings that she and the Pandavas had to endure. Then she says, "I wish that all those calamities would happen again and again so that we could see You again and again, for seeing You means that we will no longer see repeated births and deaths."

So although most people pray to God to become free from distress and misery, Queen Kunti, most extraordinarily, prays that the hardships they experienced could happen again and again, as if those hardships were something relishable.

So we discussed these points at the program yesterday, and afterwards everyone was very appreciative, and thanked me. This is the second time I did this seminar in Australia. I also did it at a home program in Melbourne.

29 January, 2002: Adelaide, South Australia

Dayasara Prabhu is the temple president of this wonderful place. I first met Dayasara when I was the head pujari of the Krishna Balaram Mandir in Vrindavan in 1976. Dayasara remembers coming to Vrindavan to do pujari service back in '76, and says that I took him under my wing. (It is a little known fact that I served as the head pujari of the Krishna Balarama Mandir in that year.)

ISKCON Adelaide is a big building with a small population of devotees. The deities, Sri-Sri Radha-Syamasundara, are extraordinarily beautiful, medium sized marble. There is a nice mood in the temple and a spirit to look after guests and new devotees. I have been giving my own private room where I am keeping my deities and my things. My disciple, Devahotra, is in a room directly across from me, in our own wing, separate from the rest of the brahmacaris.

The temple building is a large brick structure with a spacious yard on both sides and the back, and a big garden and driveway on the front. Inside it is incredibly spacious. It used to be a covenant for nuns. There are lots of rooms, verandas, bathrooms, etc.

Yesterday a congregational devotee, Shiva Prabhu, suggested we could all take a trip out to see Victor Harbor to see some penguins. Apparently there are a lot of penguins that hang out along the coast of South Australia. So Shiva Prabhu rented a very nice mini-van and our small group of devotees headed out for sightseeing. Our group consisted of Dayasara and his wife, Shiva and his wife, and Devahotra and myself.

Victor Harbor was originally called Victor Harbour, but the spelling was changed along the way about a hundred years ago. It was discovered by explorers in 1805 and later became a great whaling seaport. Off the shore is an island known as Granite Island, which was once a granite quarry, and there is a long causeway that crosses the harbor water out to the island. The causeway is basically a wide boardwalk, but there is also a railway track on the causeway. Along this railway track a horse drawn trolley is still pulled (a big hit with tourists). We didn’t ride the trolley, but preferred to walk.

It was windy on the causeway. About halfway we stopped to watch a young man who had caught something large while fishing. It turned out to be something that looked like a stingray, but someone else told me it was something else. You can see the photo attached to this article. After hauling the poor thing up to the walkway, they weight it, held it for photos, and then threw it back in the water.

Granite Island, where the causeway terminates, is an extremely picturesque place with pathways crisscrossing around the perimeter and offering spectacular views of the ocean, including the Southern Ocean. The Southern Ocean is one of the great oceans of the world, like the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Ocean. The Southern Ocean surrounds Antarctica. In this ocean there are many sharks, and although the risk of a shark bite is still relatively small, when they happen in Australia, it’s usually along the south coast.

Interestingly enough, Dayasara mentioned that in the northern part of the country, where the ocean is much warmer, people aren’t able to swim in the ocean because of salt-water crocodiles. So it’s mainly on the east coast around Syndey, and the west coast around Perth where people swim in the ocean. The water is a little cool in the south.

Australian Penguins live on Granite Island, and we did see some. At this time of year the penguins are shedding their feathers, and they don’t have the traditional black and white coats that we are used to seeing, although their shape is always distinct. We saw a couple of penguins taking shelter under a large boulder (see photo) and another penguin was burrowed deep in a hole in the ground.

After taking some great photos, we headed back toward Adelaide, stopping briefly on top of Lofty Mountain, where there is a good view of the city of Adelaide in the distance.

Today Devahotra and I are going to fly back to Melbourne, in preparation for my trip back to the United States which begins tomorrow.