Final Completion

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Saturday, December 23, 2006 1:05:05 AM

This Friday was an important day for me. It was the day of completion of my long three year plan of construction to move my family from Riverside in the city to Rim Rock in the desert. This plan began with the total reconstruction of my “shack” building in Riverside and the building of the kitchen/shower/toilet building as part of the Shack complex. Then along with this there has been the design and construction of our desert home. Today we officially completed that by putting down of 2600 square feet of interlocking pavers underneath the patios and around the perimeter of the house.

Actually this desert project started in 1999 when I purchased the land and put the first road into the property. Since then, each year, I have been slowly upgrading this land by adding electricity, a well, a well shed, telephone, satellite internet and television, a building pad and finally the house itself which arrived in 2005. At various times I have celebrated the completion of different phases of the project, the arrival of the house, building patios, the roofs and now finally laying the patio pavers. Needless to say this has been a complicated, expensive, exhausting and most satisfying undertaking. At one point I even considered building the main part of the house itself instead of having it built for me. I am glad I never took on that project. At any rate, the work is now completed and I have survived. I am happy that I did it, but I would never undertake such a massive project again. My work is to write and not to build. I have paid my dues.

Easy Rider

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I have a Ukrainian aunt, who I went to visit when I was eighteen. This was my Aunt Nettie. At the time she lived in Winnipeg Manitoba, about 2500 kms west of Toronto. Aunt Nettie was married to my Uncle Bob, my father’s brother. As far as I can remember I never met him, he had passed away years before. No one wants to talk of it, but he died of a brain tumor. Aunt Nettie was one of the ladies of my family that included, of course, my mother, her sister Aunt Peg, my father’s sister, Aunty Kay, and my mother’s brother’s wife, Aunt Dorthy. Except for my Aunt Nettie they were all, more or less, cut from the same cloth. Aunty Nettie was different. She was “Eastern European.” She always wore a head scarf and went scrounging through all the thrift stores and swap meets of Winnipeg. She did this with a passion. She was never “cheap” with me, quite the contrary, but without question she was frugal to the extreme. In addition, she never wore makeup, nylons, jewelry or any of the other necessities of North American ladies. She was a “babushka” in the making. There was something else that impressed me about her. I was told that there came a time when it was known that my Uncle Bob would soon die from the brain tumor, but before this happened she knowingly became pregnant. She wanted a child from him before he left so that she could continue to look after him in the form of his son. She named her son, Bobby, the name of my Uncle. She also vowed never to remarry and she has kept that promise all these years. This was my Aunt Nettie.

Anna, you may be interested to know that Russia in the 1860s and America in the 1960s, even though there is a 100 years of separation, have a lot in common. They were both exciting periods of history the included great youth movements, challenges to established authority, experimentation with sex and drugs and even commune living. In American this was the hippie movement. By the 1970s, when I was coming of age, the momentum of the 1960s was still in full swing. It was the age of “Easy Rider.” There had been a movie entitled Easy Rider that depicted two rebellious youth who rode motorcycles across the United States on a spiritual journey to find the real America. Before they left there was a scene where one of them threw his watch to the ground and called out, “To hell with time, to hell with the establishment, we are free, Let’s ride.” Rrrrmm Rrrrmm, and off they went into the sunset. Well, this was also me, only instead of a motorcycle, I boarded a train to Vancouver British Columbia 5000 kms away on the other side of the country. I was 18 and I was off to on a spiritual journey, not to discover American, but to discover myself. My first stop was my Aunt Nettie in Winnipeg. If you recall a year before I had wanted to go to Winnipeg and ride a bicycle back to Toronto. This time I planned to hitch-hike home from Vancouver, but I did not tell my parents my plan. Instead I told them I was going to Winnipeg to visit Aunty Nettie. I figured that once I got away from them I could travel onto Vancouver and they would never know.

Aunt Nettie turned out to be an extremely interesting person, not at all like the other ladies of my world whom I considered “normal.” She was interested in spiritualism, which included ghosts, seances, auras and astral projection and many other things that were of great interest to me. I was completely taken aback. We had an immediate rapport. Since the time of my out-of-the-body experience, I had been reading Lobsang Rampa and had become deeply interested in Tibetan Lamaism. Lobsang Rampa was a Tibetan lama who apparently escaped the communist take over of Tibet by entering the body of an Englishman who had agreed to give up his body to the lama. Rampa wrote a series of books detailing life in a Tibetan monastery and the spiritual practices of lamaism including astral projection and a host of other paranormal activities. Aunt Nettie and I discussed these things in detail and many other personal issues of a spiritual nature, but I never mentioned my growing interest in Krishna Consciousness because I thought it may be too much for her traditional European ways. I could see that she was extremely religious. I did not know it at the time, but she was a member of the orthodox church. I just thought she was Roman Catholic. Aunt Nettie was also a member of the Theosophy Society. Later when I returned home I started receiving the journal of the Theosophy Society. Without telling me she had signed me up! I kept this subscription for many years afterwards. Before I met Aunt Nettie I had never heard of theosophy.

Image Source*: http://digilander.libero.it/gipp1/easy-rider/easy.htm

Image Source**: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theosophy

The Eyes of Man

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November 30, 2006

There is a window into space, the whole world knows.
This window is a mirror, it reflects our soul:
The fighting, the killing, the struggle of ages.
Time moves on, struggles never cease, but the rockets stand tall.

In the streets children play hide-n-seek.
A siren sounds, fear spreads all around,
Screaming, to their homes they run,
“Mummy, the Russians are coming.? “Go hide underground.”

This window shows a rocket soaring into space.
The world sees; the eyes of man move slowly towards the night.
Years go by and the eyes of man move farther into space,
A million stars, an island red, and the rings so bright we see.
The eyes of man move deeper towards the night.

Now the window, open wide, all the day and all the night,
Still the fighting never stops.
More and more we see, the fighting, the killing, the struggle of ages.
Time marches on, struggles never cease, but the rockets stand tall.

The last rock appears, the eyes of man are deep in the night,
A final glimpse, looking back upon the home:
The night is black, now the home appears:
A pale blue dot lost in the night.
The whole world knows, but still the fighting never stops.

Now this window, large and sharp, down upon us frowns.
“A new vision I have shown, why can’t you see”?
But still the fighting, the killing, the struggle of ages.
The eyes of man move deeper towards the night.

Walden Becomes Crowded

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One thing that all Hare Krishna devotees have in common is the Walden complex. We all have this idealism firmly installed in our heads from birth and it was reinforced from within the movement, “simple living and high thinking” are the operative words. Kama Nagari and I moved to our eastern Ontario Walden in the spring of 1977 and by 1980 Marvin and Tucker and the slipper business was going strong. So much for simple living and high thinking. During these three years our involvement with Krishna Consciousness was minimal. We were both practicing devotees, but we had dropped off the radar as far as ISKCON was concerned. Occasionally, I would visit the Toronto temple just to see the Deities, but I shyed away from dealing with devotees. Prabhupada, had passed away in November of 1977 and my emotional attachment to the movement had ended then and there. After Prabhupada things changed quickly. Sankirtana was replaced by the “pick,” and turf fighting had begun. Anna,sankirtana is a Sanskrit word that loosely translated means “public praise” and devotees had become famous in the late 1960s and for most of the 1970s for going into the streets chanting and preaching the glories of Krishna. This was sankirtana. The need to raise money involved devotees selling their books on the streets. This was also seen as a form of sankirtana, but after Prabhupada the selling of books was largely replaced by the selling of all kinds of promotional paraphernalia such as the photos of celebrities at sporting events and rock concerts, bumper stickers and even copyrighted material such as National Football League logos. Eventually this even degraded into just asking for money for any convenient cause, homeless children, drug abuse victims or even the legalization of marihuana! This was the pick. At its best the pick was unbecoming of people representing a spiritual cause and at worst it was fraud.

Related to this were the turf wars. Certain temples created “pick teams,” mostly made of female devotees who traveled all over the country following sporting events and rock concerts. The money this teams made was often seen to belong to the local temples. Guru wars, fighting over disciples and theological interpretation also developed, so between late 1977 and 1980 these and other important changes had taken place within the movement. ISKCON was on fire with politics.

One day in the spring of 1980 I arrived home from a day in the city delivering slippers to find two devotees sitting in my kitchen talking to Kama Nagari and waiting for me to arrive home. There were no cell phones in those days so I knew nothing of them waiting. In all our years in the country Kama Nagari and I had never seen devotees, but I was happy to see them so I welcomed them and we sat down to talk. This is when I learned about the subversion of sankirtana into the pick and about the fighting within the movement between temples over money and the guru wars. The politics of Krishna Consciousness had suddenly arrived at my door step. These devotees were asking for spiritual and material shelter. The politics of ISKCON had forced them out of the Toronto temple.

Anna, in order to understand the next few installments, you will need to know something about the internal working of ISKCON. In 1966 the founding spiritual teacher of ISKCON, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, came to American and started the Krishna Consciousness movement. As you know the movement quickly grew and temples were established in major cities throughout the world. Prabhupada remained alive until 1977 and during that time each temple had a senior devotee who was the temple president. He was responsible for the workings of his temple. The temples within a given geographic region were managed by an even more senior devotee called a GBC member, Governing Body Commissioner, who reported directly to Prabhupada. During the time that Prabhupada was alive there was only one initiating (disksha) guru, Prabhupada himself. After Prabhupada passed away many of these senior devotees, who were disciples of Prabhupada, became gurus and gave initiation themselves. I was one of the original initiates of Prabhupada and these two devotees who sat in my kitchen were younger devotees of one of these new gurus. In ISKCON a guru holds a lot of power over the lives of his disciples and these two disciples had been told by their guru to come to me for shelter. Their guru lived in the United States, so they could not legally live with him. These two men were refugees of the guru wars, and since their guru did not like that was happening in the Canadian temples he had told all of his Canadian disciples to come to me! I knew who their guru was; he was a God brother of mine (we had both been initiated by Prabhupada), but I had no idea that he knew anything about me. In those days I was just a quiet devotee living separately from the temple and making a living. Now suddenly I was being asked to assume a spiritual role. These devotees wanted to move to my Walden and they wanted me to start a temple and a rural community, and if I agreed a hundred more devotees were waiting to come. I was about to be thrust into the fire of ISKCON politics.

The New Walden: New Vrindavan

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In this country there is New York, New Jersey, New England, New Holland and many other places named after their original counterpart, mostly from Europe. So in 1969 Prabhupada started New Vrindavan named after its original place in India where Krishna grew up tending cows. The original Vrindavan is about 160 kms south of Delhi, India. To be more precise two America disciples of Prabhupada, Kirtanananda and Hayagriya, ran away from Prabhupada’s temple in New York City and started their own version of Walden in the remote hills of Appalachia. Later they returned to Prabhupada and offered their Walden as a gift. He accepted their gift and told them to build it into a spiritual farm community modeled after Krishna and cow protection. Prabhupada named this community New Vrindavan and it became the first Hare Krishna farm community in the West.

Situated in the American state of West Virginia about 750 kms south of Toronto, Canada, I

 indoor plumbing or central heating, and a lot of dirt roads and mud. Years later I would move to this commune and join a community of over 2500 devotees. I would even play a leading role in the community’s development. Had I known this at the time I would never have believed it. After the passing of Prabhupada in 1977, Kirtanananda became one of the new ISKCON gurus and the sole authority within New Vrindavan. Kirtanananda turned out to be an outspoken and independent guru within the ISKCON fold. He would never hesitate to innovate and break from tradition and for this reason New Vrindavan gained a representation for being a rogue community within the Hare Krishna movement. initially visited New Vrindavan in 1972 where I saw Prabhupada for the first time. In those days it was a remote commune built around a small Krishna temple and a lot of cows. At the time there were only 60 full time devotees and it was an austere place indeed, with no

 Kirtanananda himself became infamous. In fact amongst the American city temples New Vrindavan became a “dumping ground” for hard to handle devotees, and Kirtanananda was only too happy to receive all the dregs of ISKCON. He had an uncanny knack for inspiring loyalty and getting his followers to produce incredible results. In this way New Vrindavan was built on the rejects of ISKCON. It was a tough place and Kirtanananda ruled it with a strong hand, but amazingly the community prospered and grew leaps and bounds. New Vrindavan soon became the largest and most influential ISKCON community.

For many reasons Kirtanananda had many Canadian disciples, spread out from Montrealto Vancouver some 6000 kms across the whole of Canada, but since it was not easy for Canadians to live legally within the United States most of them had to stay in the Canadian city temples. In English there is a saying, birds of a feather flock together and there was little doubt that most of the disciples of Kirtanananda also had his outspoken and rebellious spirit. They also hungered for a walden which meant that they wanted to live in a rural community like New Vrindavan. Unfortunately, Canada had no rural spiritual community, and as ISKCON politics heated up after the passing of Prabhupada, these devotees and others became a source of trouble for the Canadian temples. Most temple presidents just wanted to get rid of them, but unlike the American temples, they had no dumping ground for hard to handle devotees. These two disciples who showed up at my kitchen table that evening in 1980 where disciples of Kirtanananda, who had been excised from the Toronto temple. Their names were Kanina and Gaudiya and they were the vanguard of Kirtanananda’s men in Canada looking for a new Walden.

The Nature of Religion

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Or is it the same faith under another mask?*


Hinduism is perhaps the oldest living religion. In fact, the origins of Hinduism can be traced back to at least 2500 BCE and today there are close to a billion followers. It behooves us, therefore, to ask, “What is Hinduism”? and then to understand how this ancient tradition has managed to survive and even thrive in modern times. Before we do this, however, there is an even more basic question to ask, namely, what is the nature of religion itself? The most common answers go something like: religion is the belief in God, the soul and an afterlife; religion is a set of rules to regulate how people should act in the world; religion is a series of rituals and symbols that address the psychology of human beings; or finally, religion is a way of life. While all such answers are surely true, they unfortunately limit our ability to understand the true nature of religion and what it means to be religious. Ultimately, such views even impede spiritual growth. Let me explain.

Most people view religion as if it was one set of things: a set of beliefs, rituals and behaviors that form a world-view, but instead of viewing religion as one set of things, I prefer to break religion into two constituent parts, namely, faith and a cumulative religious tradition. The first arises from the perception that life is a wondrous mystery, and the second is what results from this perception.

From the earliest times up to the present, human beings from all cultures have looked out at the world and felt deep amazement, a kind of wonder. From the flash of lightning in the sky and the crash of thunder that follows, from the eclipses of the sun and the moon that have caused primitive peoples to run and flee, to the exquisite views of DNA strands that regulate biological life and the amazing images of distant galaxies seen through a space telescope, human beings have constantly been confronted with the wonder and mystery of the world around them. Moreover, this wonder and mystery also confronts us from the negative aspects of life. We call it horror. Death and destruction are a great source of horror. The devastation caused by a powerful earthquake is a great horror to see. Anyone who has ever witnessed death, with the gradual fading of consciousness and the profound silence and coldness that follows, also knows this horror. These horrors indeed have a great impact on human consciousness. Perhaps the most universal response of the human heart toward this wondrous mystery and even the horror of physical reality, has been, and continues to be, a questioning into the nature of reality. Who are we? What is this world? Why is there suffering, and so forth? Implicit within such questioning comes a faith that there can be answers to such questions. This faith takes many forms, one of which is religious faith. In other words, the origins of religious faith lay within the experience of life itself; and so long as there continues to be life, with all its beauty and mystery, and even horror, there will always be faith. Even modern science, which has solved the mystery of lighting, thunder and eclipses, has shown even greater beauties and mysteries that continue to inspire the heart of man.

Faith, translated into physical reality, results in an almost infinite variety of religious expressions: architecture, music, dance, dietary laws, dress codes and even belief systems. Religious architecture, for example–churches, mosques, synagogues, and temples–can be looked upon as the translation or projections of faith into physical form. Each of these buildings have their particular architectural styles and they all arise from the collective faith of their worshippers. Similarly, in the realm of religious art there are unlimited religious expressions beginning from the ancient rock paintings of early man in the caves of France or the outstanding Islamic designs found in the mosques of Saudi Arabia, or the ancient Greek and Roman sculpture found in the ruins of Athens and Rome.

Music and dance are also expressions of religious faith. The requiems of Bach and Mozart, or the Indian dance styles of Kathak and Bharata Annaam are examples of faith projected into the world of music and dance. Even dietary laws, codes of conduct, and forms of dress are projections of this faith. The Jewish and Islamic laws of kosher and halal, the Hindu restrictions against meat and alcohol, or even the use of psychogenic drugs found in many indigenous tribes of North America and Australia are examples of faith translated in terms of dietary laws.

Projections of religious faith similarly includes many intangible manifestations. In the intellectual realm, religious beliefs, such as God as Father, God as Mother, the belief in a soul, an afterlife or in reincarnation, are also manifestations of religious faith. In terms of social organization, the Indian caste system or the Christian or Buddhist’s systems of monastic organization are examples of faith translated into the realm of social organization. Taken together, each of these categories of religious expression–architecture, music, dance, dress, dietary laws, belief and social systems–form the cumulative religious traditions of the world, which we commonly call Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, and so forth. Consequently, we can speak of Christian faith, Hindu faith, Islamic faith, etc. I use the word “cumulative” because these expressions of religious faith build up or accumulate over time. The older a religious tradition, the deeper its layers of accumulated tradition. In common terms, I sometimes think of the cumulative religious traditions as the “stuff” of religion.

Not only does religious faith inspire the religious traditions of the world, faith is also nurtured by these same traditions. Anyone who has ever sat in a cathedral like Chartres or Notre Dame in France or the massive Balaji temple in south India knows the powerful effect of architecture on the human heart. If you have visited the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican and contemplated Michelangelo’s hand of God reaching out to the hand of man on the ceiling that towers above, you may also know the powerful effect of religious art on human faith. Religious faith and religious traditions go hand and hand, and for this reason they seem inseparable, but at the same time, being able to distinguish between the “stuff” of religion and religious faith itself empowers a person and promotes spiritual growth. Failing to distinguish between the two leads to the mistake of confusing the stuff of religion with the essence of religion. It leads to attachment to the externals of religion instead of to the inner mystical and mysterious origins of religion. Unfortunately, the world is always full of people who miss the essence of religion in the name of being religious and who fight and argue over all aspects of the cumulative religious traditions. Consequently, they impede their own spiritual growth and the growth of those around them. Therefore, as you read this small work that describes the cumulative religious tradition called Hinduism, be aware of the deep and mysterious yearning of religious faith that underlies this tradition and inspires it.

* Graham Greene, British novelist.

Selling My Soul For Burt And Ernie

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Had Kama Nagari and I been content to live a simple life, which was our original purpose in moving to our Walden, we could have lived comfortably on my scholarship. Kama Nagari may have found a part time job in a library or store if she wanted personal money and I could have gone on easily with my studies, but no, the both of us moved into the fast lane. We decided to do business and make money, and so I took my $10,000 scholarship and invested it in the business, buying sewing machines, cutting knives and other equipment. Living simply is just not within my scope. Whatever I do I am compelled to push it to the limit. This, of course, has created a lot of good in my life, but it is also a great evil that haunts me even today.

Marvin and Tucker was about to enter the slipper manufacturing business, big time. We acquired a few sewing machines, put ads into the local newspapers asking for people to sew slippers in their homes and we would provide the machines. I do not recall how many workers we started with, but one way or another we assembled a handful of ladies, drove them into the city factory for training and got them setup in their machines in their homes. Each week I would drive into Toronto, pick up a lot of pre-cut sewing pieces and other supplies and deliver them to our workers. At that time I would pick up finished slippers and drive them into the city on the next run. I did this run twice a week for years. When I was in the city I would stay at my parents home and somehow find time to attend university classes amidst it all. Gradually we added new workers and in time we built up a trained labor force of textile workers. Eventually we needed a separate building for our supplies as it was just too much to continue operating out of our house and barn. I soon rented an old textile building on the banks of the Trent River in Campbellford, the local town. Years before, this area of eastern Ontario had been famous for textiles because the Trent River that flowed through the town could easily be harnessed to turn the large textile machines. Our rented building still had the machinery, turbines and water wheels that reached out into the river to catch the river flow. I wish I had photos to show our building, but in those days I never used a camera. In fact, I do not think I even owned one. We expanded by moving some of our workers into this building. We also set up the fabric cutting and the final packaging operations in this building. I purchased a larger truck so that I could move more slippers around at a time. I remember sitting in this building with over 60,000 pairs of Burt and Ernie, Big Bird and Cookie Monster slippers stacked in boxes all around me.

Eastern Ontario was an economically depressed area, so a new business moving into a small town was a big deal, and we soon caught the eye of the local press. Kama Nagari and I found our photos in the local newspaper along with a write up about our business describing how we were providing jobs and bringing money into the local economy. We were becoming well known members of the local business community. Eventually we had about 60 people working for us, 50 ladies and 10 men. Anna, you cannot imagine the stress of managing that many people. There was so much paper work to be done, government regulations to meet and every two weeks we had to come up with everyone’s wages. Our payroll was about $25,000 every two weeks. For us that was a huge cash flow to be responsible for and so I had to arrange loans and lines of credit with the local banks. Marvin and Tucker was becoming a major industry in this local community of 3,500 people and I was learning a lot about business, finance and management, skills that serve me well even today. We eventually reached a point in our business when representatives from the United Textile Workers of America came to our business and tried to unionize our workers. My God, I never dreamed that I would be faced with an international trade union. Fortunately, our workers rejected the attempts of these people to organize a division of the labor union in our factory.

All during this period I continued to struggle with my academic studies, but as you can imagine it was almost impossible to study properly. I simply could not give my academic studies the attention that they needed and so I suffered greatly. In spite of this, each week when I went to the city I would attend my classes at the university and continue to struggle, but progress was agonizing. When we had started Marvin and Tucker I thought I could do both business and my schooling, but now I was learning my limitations. My greatest fear was that I would spend the rest of my life as a slipper manufacturer and die with people remembering me as a businessman. I desperately wanted to get out of business and get back to my studies, but once the wheels of commerce had begun to turn there was no easy way to stop it. I dreamed day and night being a writer. I was making good money in business, but I was not happy and I knew that I had taken a wrong turn in my life. I was learning the consequences of my actions, and gradually I was becoming self realized.

Religious Maturity

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The Pope Under Attack

“An al Qaeda-linked extremist group warned Pope Benedict XVI on Monday that he and the West were “doomed,” as protesters raged across the Muslim world to demand more of an apology from the pontiff for his remarks about Islam and violence. The Mujahedeen Shura Council, an umbrella organization of Sunni Arab extremist groups that includes al Qaeda in Iraq, issued a statement on a Web forum vowing to continue its holy war against the West. The group said Muslims would be victorious and addressed the pope as “the worshipper of the cross” saying “you and the West are doomed as you can see from the defeat in Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya and elsewhere. … We will break up the cross, spill the liquor and impose head tax, then the only thing acceptable is a conversion (to Islam) or to be (killed by) the sword.”

A huge controversy is now brewing throughout the Muslim world over a statement made by Pope Benedict XVI. As you can see from the above news statement clipped from CNN, Muslim’s are asking for an apology and even for the death of the pope. As usual the rage has also expanded to a call for the death of the great satan (the United States). A few months ago a similar outrage occurred after a Danish Newspaper published a series of cartoons depicting Muhammad in a satirical way. Danish embassies throughout the Muslim world were attacked and burned. This time churches are being burned and riots are occurring in many places.

At the time, I looked at the cartoons and, yes, I could see a problem, but it was no worse than how Muslims have ridiculed Judaism in their press innumerable times. Why is it that Islam can ridicule other religions and yet cannot tolerate criticism against itself? Tonight I read the text of the pope’s statement and frankly, the level of his lecture is so far beyond what the average person is capable of understanding makes the matter laughable. One statement from the entire lecture has been picked up and taken out of context. His lecture was a theological discussion given at a university on the relationship between God and human violence in the name of religion. Of course, he made references to Islam and jihad, the world is full of terrorism and suicide bombings in the name of Islam, but he could have just as easily made reference to Hinduism and the Bhagavad-gita. There God speaks on a battlefield and tells a warrior to go to battle. Would this cause a 100 million Hindus to riot and burn churches if the pope mentioned this in a critical way? Not at all. The reaction of Islam is way out of proportion to the “crime.” When will the voices of moderation and tolerance be heard?

I have read the Qur’an. I have read the Bible. There is much in common between the Old Testament and the Qur’an. Both have strong elements of militarism, but of course, how you wish to interpret either text depends on what you wish to achieve, divine peace or holy war. Even today Christianity still has its extremists. One Christian leader recently called for the death of a certain South American leader, but was immediately silenced by his co-religionists and made to apologize. The voice of moderation and reason prevailed. In Islam, however, the level of extremism is inordinately high and we never seem to hear the voice of moderation, reason and dialogue. It is always the same old cliche, “Death to the infidels!” Where are the Muslim leaders who can balance and moderate this kind of talk? Are they in silent agreement or have they been intimidated into silence by extremism? I suspect the answer is a little of both. What does this say about the state of Islam today?

Compared to Christianity, Islam is still in its “pre reformation” phase. It is a young religion and it is now acting out like an adolescent. It is acting now as Roman Christianity acted in pre Lutheran times during the inquisition, killing and intimidating all those who would dissent against its world view. Five hundred years ago Christianity was no better, but over time it has matured and changed the interpretation of its sacred texts. Two thousand years ago even Hindu factions fought amongst themselves. Islam, however, has yet to have its reformation and so it has not come to terms with religious pluralism and the secular world. Islam still has no concept of separation of church and state. So I conclude that the Muslim world is in its adolescent phase and, like an adolescent child, it is going to cause its parents a lot more grief before it grows up and is ready to take its place at the table with rest of the adult world.

Image Source: http://sheikyermami.com/2011/01/12/egypt-today/comment-page-1/

Into the Shmatta Trade

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In those days Kama Nagari generally made the business decisions. I was there just to make things work, and so I lived in constant terror of what she might do next. Mostly I was in financial fear and consequently I hated what I was doing. I was not “cut out” for business. I was a student and I just wanted to study. Unfortunately, I had gotten married and now I had a wife and family to care for. In Sanskrit the word for woman is stri, what expands. My world was expanding leaps and bounds. Looking back on it now, however, I am deeply impressed with Kama Nagari’s creativity, drive and daring. I now realize that I missed a tremendous opportunity to have fun and build a business. In those days I was still in a student frame of mind; I was a fish out of water.

At first all the selling was done by Kama Nagari, but as she continued to be pregnant, it was increasingly difficult for her to travel into the city and make sales. This meant that I was forced to take on this side of the business as well. Selling is without a doubt the hardest part of business. I put it into the same category as public speaking and fund raising, both things that I spend most of my time doing nowadays. The first time I did sales was in our exotic plants company, Fancy Plants. I once took a sample set of plants to a major department store in Toronto, the Hudson Bay Company. This was my first approach to a retailer. To my utter amazement the buyer liked what I had to sell and I came away with a $3,000 purchase order. I had made a sale to the Hudson Bay Company! I was overjoyed. And this could not have come at a better time as we were falling apart financially, but not only did this contract infused us with much needed money, I got a tiny taste for business. There is nothing more depressing than a failing business and there is nothing more exhilarating than a succeeding one. It was my first taste at business success, but it was nothing compared to joy I received when I focused on my studies.

Later on I made another business success. This time it was a huge sale that totally changed the scope of our business. I can hardly believe it now, but some how Kama Nagari got the idea to manufacture bows, ribbon bows. Just think of where you see bows, on children’s and ladies slippers, on toys and even on bras and ladies panties. She had also learned how to make a bow just by tying a ribbon around two nails sticking out of a piece of wood. It was so simple. I found that I could get local farm ladies to make these bows as piece workers. Soon I showed our bows to a slipper manufacturer in Toronto. Toronto has a huge “schmatta” trade or “rag” trade. This is the Jewish garment industry and because I had been around Kama Nagari and her family I had learned the ways of the Jewish community. I started to make friends with the two Hasidic brothers who owned company that made slippers and eventually I sold them a large number of bows. More importantly, however, I began to build a relationship with them that eventually turned into an offer to manufacture slippers for them. I had the idea to use the local farm ladies as piece workers to sew slippers. Marvin and Tucker was about to expand into a huge business and with it all my dreams to study were about to be snuffed out. Business and scholarship are incompatible enterprises. I was learning this rule only too well.

During all this time, in spite of my successes, there was not a second when I was not struggling internally. Business was tearing me apart. I only wanted to study in peace, but my nature being what it was could never just let go of things. Kama Nagari kept pushing and I kept having to keep up with her to make the production work. Amazingly, in spite of the business that was sucking my energy, I still managed to make progress in my studies. In fact I completed my MA degree in Sanskrit grammar with honors, but it was terrible. I suffered because I could not get the focus and concentration and consequently the taste of my scholarship. I even managed to achieve a scholarship to continue Ph.D research. In fact I received the highest humanity awards in the country. I received $10,000 dollars a year for 3 years from the Canada Council. This was a huge amount of money in those days. Only about 40 of these awards where available each year in the whole country and I had one. Unfortunately I was about to squander this award.

Photograph taken from: http://marypopkens.wordpress.com/category/uncategorized/page/28/

Travel Stages

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I am getting a lot of questions regarding my wife, “Where is your wife? You came to Europe and you did not bring your wife”? She lets you do that? I tell people that my wife does not like to travel, but most people simply can not understand. People just assume that everyone should like to travel, but I know that my wife would hate me if I put her through this. Yes, to me it is exciting to enter an airport and be with the traveling crowds meeting people from all of the world, but traveling is not for everyone. Much of travel is plain hard work and at this time of the year the heat and humidity are especially hellish. I am having a great time, but I know my wife would not appreciate this at all. It would be torture for her. So I thank her for letting me travel to my heart’s content and not holding me back just because she does not enjoy travel.

My wife, Sukulina*

I have observed that every trip is unique and seems to have its own particular character, and yet, I see a common set of stages that affect every trip. About a month before a trip I find myself becoming less interested in my routine life more focused on being away. I am here, but I am not here. In fact, the closer I get to the actual trip the more I have already left in my mind. This is the stage of winding down, packing, and psyching up. Two weeks before the trip I create a “travel space” in my room and spread my luggage across the floor. I have a check list of items that I may need and I spend a little time every day preparing. My business and domestic schedules all must be arranged. I make a trip to the dentist and to the eye doctor. I buy clothes and other supplies. I make sure I have all my medical supplies and toiletries. What I have found, interestingly, is that I have created a live style that is “ready to go” at any time. I have arranged my business so it is sufficiently staffed. I can disappear at anytime. My personal computer is ideal for travel, small and powerful, a real man’s toy. My cell phone is international. My household finances are on auto pay, my passport is always up to date and credit cards are international ready. At any moment I could leave. I have designed the perfect mobile lifestyle. I also find that I do not like to tell people where I am going. It makes them envious, so I tend to downplay where I am going. “Oh, just a short trip to see my parents in Toronto,” when in fact I am leaving for Rome. I find it impossible to just tell people I am leaving on a vacation at the other end of the universe. For one, the envy factor disturbs me and second perhaps I do not think I am worthy of a travel lifestyle. Being a priest and dealing with perceived wealth factors is a problem. You take exotic vacations? You drive a luxury car? So a trip to Paris, for example, must always include a purpose, “I am doing a wedding in Normandy.” Rome is “research for a new book.”

Then there is the actual leaving home phase, which for me, involves driving to the airport and actually getting on a plane. I feel anxiety and all sorts of ideas go through my mind that involve personal safety. Will I crash driving to the airport, will there be a valet for my car, will there be an earthquake while I am gone and will the parking garage collapse on my car, will the plane leave on time, will it crash, is my destination going to be safe, will the hotel loose my booking? And, of course, the big daddy of all questions, will my plane be targeted for a mid atlantic terrorist’s explosion. I should have paid more attention during my red cross swimming classes. Finally, the planes leaves and I enter the “shake down” phase. This is the stage where I make the psychological adjustment from routine life to travel the travel adventure. On this last trip to Europe I had a particularly hard time because the plane was delayed leaving by two hours and once I boarded the plane it was further delayed on the ground for another two hours due to mechanical problems. And when we eventually did arrive in London I was so late that I had already missed two possible connecting flights. I found myself thinking, why am I doing this, I paid money for this? This lasted until I met a Australian traveller in line buying a donut in Heathrow. “Hey mate! I love English donuts and coffee. I’d fly around the world just to be here for these donuts. What a life! I love it.” Just a few words from this man was enough to kick me into my travel mode. He reminded my of my Gaur. Travel is about adventure and when all your doubts and problems just become part of the great adventure, you are ready to travel. Bon Voyage!

Anna, I never travel blind. Before I step onto the first plane to leave I have my journey “mapped out” in my head. I know how I will move through each stage of my journey. I know where I will stay each night and how I am going to return from the trip. This does not mean that I have the whole trip completely structured, but I do have a fairly fixed plan in my mind. Without having at least the basics of a plan, it is not possible for me to comfortably move through the various stages of the travel experience. Perhaps with greater experience I will be able to be more free flowing in my travels, but for now, the more planning and the more structure, the better I feel. Successful travel takes a lot of experience and with more experience I will soon be willing to let go.

Once I finish the shake down phase and enter the adventure phase things tend to run smoothly. In this stage my adventure unfolds “page by page” as I chart my way through each section. The adventure phase is divided into two phases, the going up phase and the coming down phase. The going up phase is where I am still moving farther away from home; it is the uphill part of the trip. In terms of time I am moving deeper into the journey. The coming down phase, on the other hand, is where I have crossed the midpoint and I am moving closer in time towards home again. On the coming down phase, the more I feel my time coming to an end the more I feel home rushing at me. This part of the trip always creates irritation and if I am with a travel companion fighting can develop. Gaur and I always used to get into fights during this phase of the trip. On one trip we even broke apart and went separate ways. By understanding the psychological stages of a trip I have learned that if I am with a companion there are times when both of us need to be separate from each other. So I plan for this by arranging times when my companion and I have private times. I do this without even mentioning it. I have learned to leave my travel companion to do things that they like while I go off to do what I like. And because I never like to travel blind I usually go off to get information about some upcoming part of the trip. In Paris, before I was to leave for Italy, I went the day before to explore the train station and to buy tickets. Most people would just show up at the station on the day of the travel, but I wanted to know as much as possible before the trip to Italy. For me this removes anxiety and even though it takes time I just include this time as part of my travel adventure. This is how I manage a trip, with a lot of planning.

Half way through the coming down phase, the journey begins to end in my mind. Psychologically I now begin to return home. I dislike this psychological shift because it interferes with what is going on, after-all, I am still on the journey. This stage is similar to its counter part at the beginning of the journey. I have a lot of security issues. In the last few years, now that I have begun to travel, planes crashes and terrorism have a major impact on my psychology. These things play hard to this stage of my travel. Perhaps I will address the issue of travel death in a future installment. One can die anywhere and at anytime, but somehow travel dying stands out as a particularly dangerous way to die even though it is not. As I become a more experience traveller I know this stage can be delayed until the last day. I think it would be a good idea to give myself a few days of grace when I return home just in case there are any delays and to give myself time to recover from the jet lag. This would help minimize this stage of the travel experience.

Anna, one of the great things about travel, and when I talk about travel I mean international travel, is the glimpse of the big picture that it affords. There is something remarkable about looking down at the world from 70,000 kms and then to arrive just a few hours later in a land where no one speaks your language or eats your food or wears your dress. I never ceased to be amazed by the range of human consciousness, how people who look just like me do not speak a word of my language or think in the way that I do. Travel gives me the opportunity to look down on my life from a great distance and to contemplate my existence. I enter a state of meditation when I travel. Suddenly all the little details of my life become less important. Travel expands the mind and gives me a fresh perspective on life. Oh, how I pity those who never leave the bounds of their town, city or country. But returning from the journey can be the hardest stage of all. You move from the big to the tiny. In an instant you are thrust into petty office disputes. You have just come from the salons of Paris or the pyramids of Egypt to the debates at the office water cooler. It takes about two weeks to come down to life on the ground. I look at my friends and relations and they look like strangers to me. They can not understand where I have just come from, but I have no choice other than to concede to their world. I am back on the ground now, but indeed I have much more than just my memories and photos, I have changed and my world is now just a bit bigger. I love to travel.

 

*Photograph by Malati Marvin