The Oz festival
Hare Krsna,
Please accept my humble obeisances. All glories to Srila Prabhupada!
I just attended from the biggest festival in Australia, the Woodford Festival. For those of you that have been on BDN for a while you'll remember this from my wrtiting about it last year. It keeps getting better. About 130,000 people go to this festival during the six days it goes on. We have a portable restaurant there distributing thousands of plates of prasada, and people generously donate for the prasada.
One customer said to me at my book table next to the restaurant, "This is the only place where I can go and get blessed food, and I feel it."
I was speaking to a middle-aged lady at the table who was interested in meditation and our philosophy.
I explained the Hare Krsna mantra to her and said, "There is no mantra as purifiying as the Hare Krsna maha-mantra."
I led her through the chanting.
Then she said, "Is this a prayer of the soul to God?"
I said, "Ma'am, you hit the nail on the head."
She was happy to receive the mantra along with the Bhagavad Gita.
One man at my table said, "I had to come over, because my son has pulled me over here saying, 'We have to go to that table,' so here we are."
I showed him and this special five-year-old boy the Bhagavad Gita, and they both happily got the mercy of the instructions of Lord Krsna.
One young man said, "I got the Bhagavad Gita from you yesterday, and now I'm on Chapter Three. Can I ask you a question? What is karma-yoga?"
I said, "It means action for the pleasure of God, or Krsna. Krsna spoke the Bhagavad Gita to Arjuna."
He asked more questions, and I was just appreciating the mercy of Srila Prabhupada. The young man knew nothing about Krsna just the day before, and now he was asking many nice questions about Krsna.
This Woodford festival was a special one, because every evening we had a Ratha-yatra through the festival grounds, and people loved it. After the parade, Lord Jaganatha, Balarama and Subhadra would stand where my book table was set up. So all day, every day, They would be right behind me showering their mercy on the people I distributed books to. Thus I broke my record of books distributed from a book table three times during the six-day festival. My biggest score for one day was sixty Bhagavad Gitas and ten big books, Lord Jaganaths mercy.
your servant,
Vijaya das
