Los Angeles SD Newsletter; VOL. 3, ISSUE 10
ON MY WAY TO JOIN THE TEMPLE
Narrated by Sarabha das, written by Mahat-tattva das
Until the age of 18 or 19 I was like everyone else – occupied with attempts to turn my materialistic dreams into reality: good job, big car, house, another house, apartment, beautiful wife, even more beautiful mistress, and lots of reddish-cheeked children. Everything was like that until one day, even now I don’t know why and how, I suddenly got a completely different vision of that dream—the realistic one. Family fights I didn’t see any more as accidental disagreements, but rather as reality—the true face of the relationships between man and woman, father and son, friend and friend. Complete misunderstandings, deep-rooted selfishness and non-tolerance I saw clearly manifested in others as well as in me. Each day’s senselessness became more and more obvious, and the idea of committing suicide as a solution was becoming more and more prominent. Happiness, joy and satisfaction for me became only a memory.
Being aware of the blind alley I was in, I was becoming desperate to find some solution, some shelter. Totally hopeless and lonely, wandering in darkness, somehow or other I was going on. I was thinking that I would try to forget all the miseries and problems of life by absorbing myself in drinking, smoking, sleeping, sports, sex, and similar activities. In other words I didn’t know how to get out of the deep mud I was in, so I tried to go even deeper into it, deep enough to hide from both the mud and myself. “Let there be nothing, darkness, unconsciousness”, I was thinking. After finishing high school I had to go to the army where even deeper realizations of this materialistic life were revealed to me. After the army I went to college, but that was just another year of emptiness and pointlessness. After that, the first sign of hope appeared. One student I met at college started telling me about yoga, particularly about “Transcendental Meditation”. While believing that I had finally found the “real thing”, two more years of my life passed. Then, although somewhat satisfied, I was feeling a need for real purification and more concrete answers to life’s questions. I knew about the Hare Krishna movement, and had even been attracted by the maha mantra and Bhagavad Gita As It Is. However, due to the advice from my roommate not to go too close to the “sect”, I never looked into the Hare Krishnas. On one occasion, I was at my friend’s house in a nearby city searching through his books, looking for something “interesting”, checking titles like Jing-jang, Tantricism, Freud, Yogananda, and Yoga until I found Bhagavad Gita As It Is. An unfamiliar voice in me immediately surfaced and told me so many things like: “This is what you are looking for. This is the real truth. Here you will find all the answers. Take this book and read it, study it. Surrender to it completely, to each and every word in it. Worship each page of it.” But when I opened the book and read the words “Hare Krishna”, my roommate’s advice came to my mind, and I put it aside as if it were dangerous. The voice inside me reappeared when I saw Krishna’s picture for the first time. The voice said: “Decorate the picture with flowers, worship it, watch and meditate on that person.” Unfortunately when I found out that person was Krishna, I again remembered my roommate’s advice and took the voice to be a hallucination. The breakdown of my resistance was nearing. Apparently by chance I ended up at a concert of the band “Nityananda” (a devotee rock band from Serbia). The special guest that night was one of the initiating spiritual masters in the Hare Krishna movement, His Holiness Sacinandana Swami. That concert was the final turning point for me. After that night I could no longer practice Transcendental Meditation. Instead of the Transcendental Meditation mantra the Hare Krishna maha mantra kept playing in my mind without my control. I couldn’t help myself. Very soon the maha mantra became everything in my life, giving me a feeling of satisfaction and inner fullness. I was chanting it almost constantly and simultaneously performing my daily duties. I would cook and chant Hare Krishna. All anxiety, heaviness and misery from my heart disappeared, and I was thinking that in the whole world no one was more fortunate than I was. In due course of time, all the members of my family started reading Srila Prabhupada’s books and chanting Hare Krishna so that my home was slowly transforming into the spiritual world.
By reading Srila Prabhupada’s books I understood the importance of accepting a bonafide spiritual master and initiation. To accomplish that goal, one had to live in association with devotees. But I didn’t know how to meet devotees because at that time I lived in Travnik (a town in Bosnia) where there were no Hare Krishna temples, the war was going on, and military forces and barricades were surrounding the city. Fights between Serbs, Croatians and Muslims were blasting in all possible combinations: Serbs against Croatians, Muslims against Serbs, Croatians against Muslims etc., and to get out of Travnik I had to go through all those fronts. Feeling a little discouraged, I started gathering information on how to get from Travnik to Croatia, specifically to Zagreb or Rijeka (cities where the temples were). I did not find good news. It seemed that in Gornji Vakuf (a town just outside of Travnik) soldiers were shooting at everyone without discrimination, even at UNPROFOR (United Nations Peace Forces) and Red Cross volunteers. I waited about 20 more days, hoping the situation would get better, but it only got worse.
After one more month of studying Srimad-Bhagavatam and Bhagavad Gita As It Is, I prayed: “Krishna I beg you to help me get to a temple and You do as You like.” Verses like “If Krishna wants to protect you no one can kill you; if Krishna wants to kill you no one can protect you” were a great inspiration to me. I decided to go to Croatia by foot. Before I started on my journey, a few soldiers told me not to go because in Gornji Vakuf they were killing people, cutting their throats, ears, and pulling out their eyes. But they couldn’t stop me. Feeling Krishna’s protection, on February 11th 1993 at 1:00 PM with just a few personal belongings, I started on the journey to Croatia over Gornji Vakuf. The whole time I was chanting the Hare Krishna maha mantra on my japa beads.
After about 10 hours of walking and chanting, I came to the entrance of Gornji Vakuf. I was surprised at how easily I have goten that far. It was night, and very dark. From one mile outside the city, I could see and hear shooting, explosions, bullets, and bombs flying from one side of the city to another. I decided to take the side road that wound around the city. After about 10 minutes of walking, I entered a small village where literally all the houses had been burned.
IT IS TO BE CONTINUED
IN THE NEXT ISSUE
