My 5 year tourist visa is not enough to go to India but lockdown did not stop my friend who has an Overseas Indian Citizenship of India and so one September day I drove him and his wonderful 9 year old daughter to Heathrow and off they went to Vrindavan, the land of Krishna and Radha, resplendent with thousands of temples big and small, holy rivers and lakes, forests, white cows and bulls, peacocks and parrots buzzing in the air…..and no crowds! Yes no crowds as lockdown transforms one of the busiest places on the planet into its more natural and wonderful state of peace. No traffic and more birdsongs!
So he has been sending me reports and pictures and now it is late November and its dark at 4pm and how do we cope here in England? Well one way is by chanting and reading about all the wonderful pastimes that happen in Vrindavan, like Krishna dancing through the forests with His friends and cows and calves, sporting in the River Yamuna and dancing with the peacocks and playing His flute to please the trees, birds and to impress the young cowherd girls who are also wandering here and there in the forests and pasture lands.
Pure Incense is hand-rolled and has astounding scent that just easily lets you meditate on being in a far away place, in another realm, where trees and flowers and temples dictate a different lifestyle to the one we know. A lifestyle that means working the land, collecting water from rivers, bathing in lakes, tending to flower gardens and fruit orchards, taking water from wells, tending cows, churning yoghurt into butter, making ghee and cow patties for fire, and above all singing and dancing in the temples and hearing stories of Krishna and His incarnations. This is the natural village life of all of India but somehow or other modernity happened and now you need to make a grand effort to find and experience it. In Vrindavan it is possible.
In 1965 one 69 year old sadhu holy man got passage aboard a boat from India to New York and made a history that will one day be famous all over the world. He brought that life of devotion to the West and to the globe and throughout all that he still showed the perfection of life twelve years later by leaving the mortal world in the land of Vrindavan having travelled the globe 14 times establishing temples, farm communities and restaurants on every continent. His name was A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. We will normally be in Vrindavan every year in February or October and are always on hand to give tours for anyone of our Pure Incense customers wishing to visit. Meanwhile we are waiting for lockdown to end so we can go to our workshop and make you all some incense sticks to at least transport your consciousness to Vrindavan!
Quote Bhagavad-Gita 8.20: Yet there is another unmanifest nature, which is eternal and is transcendental to this manifested and unmanifested matter. It is supreme and is never annihilated. When all in this world is annihilated, that part remains as it is.
