Written by Nimai
After a month in India, Kadamba Kanana Swami returned to Europe. He spent two nights in Amsterdam and then travelled to Radhadesh where he also stayed for a month and dedicated most of his time to writing. He was still recovering from the Ayurvedic treatment he had recently undergone in Coimbatore. Nevertheless, he decided to give a class every Sunday. Every week, Maharaj read from the Caitanya Caritamrta, each time continuing from where he stopped the previous week.
In the first class (05 June), Maharaj started reading about Sankaracharya and how he defeated many Buddhists in India during Caitanya Mahaprabhu’s time. In another class, Maharaj especially made the point that “the eyes are never satisfied”, meaning that our material desires can never truly bring us happiness and we will always want more. Maharaj said that the soul goes unconscious when the mind steals the soul’s features of thinking, feeling and willing. However, once we take to Krsna Consciousness, these features will be controlled again by the soul. Impersonalism was a strong theme throughout Maharaj’s lectures. Maharaj pointed out that impersonalism does not exist only in India but is in fact very present in Europe as well for example.
Apart from giving classes and writing, Maharaj kept his daily walk going. Every day we went up the hill, most of the time carrying our umbrellas. One day, while going up the steepest part of the hill, Maharaj commented, “This is like in our spiritual life, you fix yourself and then you just just keep going!”
On another day while walking, Maharaj told me a story that he had just thought about: how Satadanva killed Satyabhama’s father in order to steal the Syamantaka jewel which was famous for producing a mountain of gold every day! During another walk, Maharaj told me the story of Hridaya Caitanya.
HG Kurma Prabhu was in Radhadesh for about one week. He shared some of his memories of Prabhupada in the lectures he gave. He described the first Ratha Yatra in Melbourne where they had a very big Caitanya Mahaprabhu murti in front of the chariots. He also described how they had to stay at the site overnight so nobody would burn the chariots!
During our stay in Radhadesh, a senior devotee named Janaki Mataji passed away. Before her departure, Maharaj visited her at the hospital and did some kirtan for her.
Ananda Vrindavan Dasi who cooked for Maharaj while we were in Radhadesh organized a Bhakti Tirtha Swami memorial program to celebrate his disappearance day on 27 June. Special guests like HH Sacinandana Swami and HG Mahatma Prabhu and of course Kadamba Kanana Swami attended. A video of Bhakti Tirtha Swami was shown, where he was dancing and we listened to his famous “dying before dying” lecture. Devotees who knew Bhakti Tirtha Swami personally spoke a few words. They glorified him not only for his dancing skills but also for his amazing preaching in Africa, his ability to involve everyone in dancing and the personal relationships and deep love he had for devotees. Some of Bhakti Tirtha Swami’s favourite dishes, calzone and cake, were served afterwards.
Along with Sacinandana Swami, lots of devotees arrived in Radhadesh. Many of them came for the kirtan course which was about to begin.
During our last week in Radhadesh, many disciples came to see Kadamba Kanana Swami. From Radhadesh, we travelled to the Summer Camp in Czech (01-04 July) and after that, we will travel via Berlin to Italy and spend a week there.
Visit Flickr to see all the photos.