Travelling Sankirtana
Please Accept my humble obeisances. All glories To Srila Prabhupada.
After I left Madison, Wisconsin I went to Chicago for the Ratha Yatra. That was an ecstatic enlivening event. A day later I went out to the Taste of Chicago. It's a huge week long event where over 3 million people attend. It's a giant food festival. On the last day I distributed there I met 3 people with the Name Krishna. I took that as an auspicious sign. I also kept seeing people that worked in a food booth called, Eli's Cheesecake. None of them took books, except one. I asked him,"Are You Eli" and he said Yes! Out of the 30 or so workers he had working for him only Eli got a book. But since he's the boss if he takes to Krishna Consciousness then watch out Chicago.
The next day I went to Downtown Chicago. It's a very busy place. Chicago is the 3rd largest city in America with over 7 million people so the streets are quite passionate and busy. But there are a lot of nice people so the Sankirtan is usually good. This day was quite tough so I was forced to pray extra hard to Krishna. I prayed to Lord Nityananda to please engage me in pure devotional service so I can help these poor conditioned souls who are suffering so much. All in all the results weren't very big as far as number of books distributed and laxmi collected but that evening when I got back to the temple there was a guy I preached to at the temple taking prasadam and talking with devotees. He didnt' get a book, but said that he'd like to investigate our process and try it out at least to see what it is all about. I had given him a Sunday Feast card and invited him to the temple. I was pleasantly surprised to see him there. His name is Dan and we had a nice talk and when it was time to go he folded his palms in Pranams, said Hare Krishna and got some books to take home. He is out of work now so he said he is reading the books to see what's there and if he likes it he said he will try the process. He wants to come to the Sunday feast and even wants to try distributing books and come to Mangala Arati. It's quite amazing that even when I met him on the street earlier that day he said that he wants to try book distribution. Actually the first thing he said to me was that he wanted to try book distribution. Haribol! I'm in touch with him and since today is my day off he said he wants to come to the temple. Only Krishna knows his destiny, but we are going to try to help him get to the Lotus feet of Sri Sri Gaura Nitai as fast as possible.
Last night a devotee and I drove about 45 minutes to the South side of Chicago to distribute at a Snoop Dogg-311 concert. We didn't know what to expect, since many venues change as far as security goes. Sometimes there is heavy security and they arrest or remove devotees from the site. Last year this Ampitheatre we went to was fine, but this year things had changed. We got out to distribute in this huge parking lot. We did about ten books then it started to rain. It poured for 30 minutes then stopped and cleared up. we went for about an hour and a half when a white security truck pulled up and told us to leave. I went along with them then just found a new spot and kept distributing. I just avoided the white security truck. One tip for better concert Sankirtana is to avoid the security cars by keeping up with the incoming cars and then to keep just far enough from the incoming cars to avoid being seen by the people who are in charge of parking the cars. It's quite a task and doesn't always work. It's so unfortunate that the best places for Sankirtana are sometimes the most heavily patrolled by security guards and police and other Lording it over types. I'm going to try to get a permit to distribute there, but that usually means being forced to stand in the worst spots with the least amount of people or you have to pay a lot of money for the permit on top of that. That's why we usually don't waste time with permits because they are usually useless. It seems to be getting tougher all the time with the advancing Kali Yuga to preach Krishna consciousness in some aspects. At least as far as the demons trying to Lord it over their so called Lair. We managed to distribute until most of the cars got in but just at the last person we were talking to the security got us and told us to leave. At least we didn't get arrested. This is why I like Sankirtana so much though, because it forces you to depend on Krishna. You don't know if you will be arrested or kicked out or what will happen. All together we managed to distribute about 120 books and then just as we finished and drove off a huge storm came up and it rained like anything. We took that as another auspicious sign.
We took some risk for Krishna and felt some great reciprocation. Your Servant, Devaki Nandana Dasa-RDTSKP "The servants of God come to propagate God consciousness, and intelligent people should cooperate with them in every respect. By serving the servant of God, one can please God more than by directly serving the Lord. The Lord is more pleased when He sees that His servants are properly respected because such servants risk everything for the service of the Lord and so are very dear to the Lord. The Lord declares in the Bhagavad-gitä (18.69) that no one is dearer to Him than one who risks everything to preach His glory.Srimad-Bhägavatam 1.2.16
