Dear devotees, PAMHO! AGTSP! AGTGM!

Monday June 25. Today we are leaving for New Vraja Dham (Hungarian farm). The
arrangement for our journey is as follows: Murari Krsna P. drives us from
Timisoara thru the borders up to Szeged city in Hungary. There Paramesvara P.
is waiting for us with his car. We have to transfer all the luggage there, but
it's little difficult, because his back space is smaller. Somehow we have
managed to make it. Then we go to the farm, which is near the famous Balaton
Lake. The journey was about 7 hours long.

There the devotees were waiting for GM's arrival and making a small kirtan in
front of "Nrsimha Bhavan", a small hut built for HH Indradyumna Maharaj, where GM will stay.
Then Gaura Sakti Prabhu (TP here) welcomed GM in New Vraja Dham. Now it was
around 3 pm, so with the help of Antardhi and Gopicandra Prabhus I have
prepared prasadam for GM. Today was the first day when I was supposed to
elaborately massage GM's leg. Because I am not used to do it for such a long
time and not in such a style where you excercise your muscles, after the first
three minutes or so I was completely finished! I was sweating like anything,
not only because there was hot inside the room (Antardhi p."switched on"
classical heating working on wood), but mainly for this heavy work . I also
realised that GM left his walking stick in Timisoara, so I have asked him about it and
he replied: "Yes, I have left it there... but anyway, the doctor told me not to
use it."

Then Antardhi P. took me to the temple room to show me presiding Deities
here, Their Lordships Sri Sri Radha Syamasundara, Sri Govardhan Lal (Govardhana
sila) and Sri Goura Nataraj. Their altar is an replica of that in Krsna Balaram
Mandir. In smaller room attached to the temple room there are small Deities of
Lord Nrsimhadev, Sudarsan Cakra and some Salagrams. The temple room is like a
visit to the spiritual world, so beautiful !!! There are many paintings all
over the walls depicting the pastimes of Sri Krsna and Caitanya Mahaprabhu.
The walls, altar, everything is colorfully painted and everywhere there are
many carved ornaments etc. (Here one of the temple departments is an Art
Studio. And they have a lot of work to do...) The whole main building, which
includes restaurant, kitchens, pujari room and inner courtyard is very nicely
and practically done, because everything here was built by the devotees.
Actually this is to be said about the whole project, which has developed just
within the seven years under the expert guidance and inspiration of HH Sivarama
Maharaj. Now there are about 120 devotees living on the farm and some of them
already have built their own houses there. Some houses (as well as the gurukula
building) are still under construction. Those devotees who from various reasons
cannot have a house there now, are living in the nearby village. There are
maybe 10-15 devotees' houses, so some time it the future maybe the whole
village will be another Hare Krsna community.

However, the life here is very simple, according to the motto of SP: "simple
living and high thinking". No electricity - you have candles or torches. Some houses
have a solar panel for generating the electricity. No water from the pipes - you
must use a " lota system". No electrical or gas heating - you just have the wood
as a fuel. You don't need to use sapons for washing your plates - just try little
ashes and you will be surprised how good it is! I immediately liked it here.
And the weather was fortunately also very nice, with shining sun. Just few days
ago (at the time when GM was originally supposed to come here) there were big
rains here and then it is little tapasya, because immediatelly all ground turns
into mud. GM also likes it here, the only disturbance to him was that the
electricity in his house was not functioning properly (even after Bh. Lehel was
trying to fix it up), and therefore he couldn't use his computer.

Nrsimha Bhavan is a very small house with just two rooms and attached
bathroom. In the bigger one there is a built-in place for an altar in the wall,
which GM appreciated very much and immidiatelly put the Salagrams there. The
smaller one is GM's bedroom. Because there was no other place, I had to stay
in a tent, which was prepared in front of the house. From here it's maybe 200 m
to the main bldg. The devotees are growing all kinds of vegetables and fruits
here. It is a raspberry season right now, so the devotees have a marathon to
pick all of them on time. And all the products (especially these raspberries)
grown here are very delicious. Sivaram Maharaj once said that it is because
the dust from the lotus feet of Sri Sri Radha Syamasundara is always covering
them. So I was using all of this in cooking for GM.

Tuesday June 27. Today GM spoke on BG 2.49. He told us that there are three
things for study in this verse:

1/ reaction for our work is not the work itself, but the consciousness while
the activity is being done. He mentioned a story of a prostitute, who was a
devotee of Krsna and one brahmana, who was very proud and always was calling
bad names to this prostitute, because he was living in a house just opposite to
her's. The poor prostitute was always
praying to Krsna to forgive her sinful actions, because she was born into this
situation and couldn't change it. On the other hand the brahmana was not a
devotee and was feeling himself to be superior to anyone else. It so happened
that they both left their bodies at the same time. The brahmana was very
surprised to see that the Visnudutas came for the prostitute's soul, and he
was even more surprised to see that the Yamadutas came for him. So even that
from material point of view it should be reversed, it happened like this
because the person s consciousness at the time of death: the prostitute was
thinking of Krsna and the brahmana was thinking about the prostitute's sinful
activities.

2/ Krsna is always lovingly inviting us to join Him and He is very very happy
if we do join Him again. It is as if the father is very happy when he gets back
his rebellious child.

3/ the krpanas condemn themselves. He narrateed a story from Mahabharata
about how Pandavas got the half of Dhritarastra's kingdom, but it was the
half which was a desert only. No vegetation, no fields, no cities - nothing. On
the other hand the Kauravas had the most opulent facilities and kingdom one can
imagine. But due to their envy towards Pandavas they have lost everything. But
the Pandavas had Krsna with them. And He called for Visvakarma, the architect
of the demigods to build the most opulent city for the Pandavas. The city was
so much opulent, that it got the name Indraprastha, because it could match even
with the heavenly abode of Indra, the king of heaven. So then the envy of
Duryodhana was even greater when he saw how from a desert such a city came about.
And this caused his destruction.

I was thinking that similarly New Vraja Dham was built "from nothing"
in such a short time. And in the beggining it was quite easy for the devotes to
acquire some land, because it was not so much expansive. But when the
neighboors saw the rapid expansion of the farm, they increased the price for
their land many many times more when the devotees wanted to buy more land. Now
whole buses of tourists are coming to the farm to see it's real opulence,
which is in the cows, land, healthy lifestyle - and mainly KC.
And even the devotees in the beggining didn't like the austere life there. But
now so many of them (even from abroad) are living there and many more are
attracted to this project. So the Hungarian farm could also very nicely bear
the name "New Indraprastha".

(to be continued)
ys vgd