Once again we woke up quite early and chanted our rounds in the peacefulness of Vrindavan mornings (before 5:00 a.m that is). Vrindavan is such a wonderful place, it just feels so good to chant and read there! It really feels like there is nothing else that you should be doing except chanting, and it is so easy and wonderful. I wish I could feel like that everywhere all the time.
After chanting and reading, and taking care of breakfast, we went over to the MVT entrance to meet up with our group for our next Saranagati session. This time we were all going to go to Madan Mohan temple and Sanatan Goswami's samadhi! There was about 15 of us, I think, and we all had our instruments; mrdanga, harmonium, kartals, tamboura, whompers, etc. We were quite the procession through Vrindavan with all of our rikshas following each other in a long line. I was so excited to be doing bhajans there! When you visit these wonderful places all you feel like doing is singing and praying to those Vaisnavas, and when you sing the wonderful prayers of Bhaktivinode all you want is to be in the association of those Vaisnavas, singing to them, and today we were finally going to be doing it! Singing the beautiful prayers of Bhaktivinode Thakur at the feet of Sanatan Goswami, what greater fortune is there?!
We left our rikshas outside and came into the serene atmosphere of the samadhi. The pujari had the doors opened and we all took charinamrta and offered obsciences before we started. Then we began and each bhajan was so sweet, each one felt better then the last, and you never wanted any of them to stop. We sat on the sides so that pilgrims could come and have darshan without any problems. We soon had a whole audience of Indians staring at us from the outside, it didn't matter though, because we were in a whole other world. There is something so special about Sanatan Goswami's samadhi, you can feel his presence there so strongly. It really feels like you are sitting there right beside him, and he is so compassionate, so humble, that even though we are so ignorant and insignificant, he is still willing to be there and sit with us, and you can feel that he cares about you so deeply, like a great-grandfather or something. Whenever I go there I feel like I can just start babbling about my life and all my ridiculous problems, and he will listen and care, so compassionate, so gentle and kind. It is hard to leave his company. We finished the bhajans around 11:30, and after saying a few more prayers, and a couple group photos, we headed back towards the ISKCON temple. It is quite the buzz when you go and visit such wonderful places, even more so when you do bhajans there. You leave feeling completely satisfied and happy, like your life is now complete.
We ate lunch and then me and Kar headed down to Loi Bazaar again. We would always get an instant stomach on the way there, because it was the worst ride ever! Always so bumpy, and lurching, and crowded. Without fail, either Kar or I would bang our ears on the bars by our head, and it would hurt so badly, and then later on we would wonder why we had these bruises on the sides of our heads. Now that I think of it, its kind of funny, kind of like Thompson and Thomson. By the time we got to the shops, we were already all grouchy and annoyed, so it didn't help. Anyway, I don't really want to talk about the shopping because it just fries me out. I could sit in one shop for hours and sometimes the shop keeper wouldn't even look at me. Or I could just be walking by and they would practically grab my arm and drag me in! I think if I were to go again I would only go with an experienced shopper, and someone who could speak hindi! But it was fun to come back with all kinds of fun things for the deities and family.
We had evening kirtans at Yamuna's and Dina's again as well. The most amazing thing about those kirtans is that we had about 15-20 people there each night, and each night it was almost a completely new set of people! We don't know where they came from, or how they heard about it, they would just show up for one night, and then we wouldn't see them again. It was quite an interesting thing, and quiet an interesting variety of people. Still the kirtans were always so sweet and wonderful.
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