Nanda Falva, 14th of December 2003

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Haribol! This chat takes place in the temple of Nanda Falfa with the presence of the entire mela and community. I am showing to them what our chats are all about. This unique forum allows a world istagosthi once a week. Our Istadeva is Sri Sri Guru Gouranga Radha Vrajesvara and our guides are the pure devotees headed by Srila Prabhupada.

Nanda Falva is a beautiful Vaisnava village in the Southern part of Hungary. Since the time of the communist in Hungary the devotees of Srila Prabhupada have established this beautiful community. This is called the pushta. There are planes and forests and fields; a little bit dry is the area and over the years more and more devotees have acquired farms, renovated them and finally in the middle they constructed a beautiful temple of Radha Gopivalabha. This community was started by Bhakti Abhay Narayan Maharaj. The beginning of Hungarian yatra was very interesting. In 1975 I was living at Sweden with my godbrother whose name at that time was Dvarakesh prabhu. He was originally from Hungary, but had escaped with his mother from the communist system, and they received political assignment in Sweden. Here in Sweden he met Prabhupada. I also met him first time when Srila Prabhupada went to Stockholm and all the German devotees were there to meet Srila Prabhupada. Later I was sent to the Stockholm temple as a president and he became my most close friend and vice president. We made most of the preaching programs together and used to live together in the basement in the office.

One day we went to a harinam in the middle of Stockholm, and one of the people in the crowd who was listening the harinam asked for the address of our temple. He was working with the Hungarian government, organizing sport events and was a yoga teacher. When we heard that the Hungarian yoga teacher was there, we called Dvarakesh prabhu, and then this friendship began. And because he was a man with government connections, he invited us to Hungary to teach students Bhakti yoga. At that time no preaching was going on behind the iron curtain. A few years earlier when I was in Berlin, I used to go many days on a one day visa to visit East Berlin, and in this way we started to take some book s and preach to East Berlin, but all the other countries of the communist countries had no connection with the Vaisnava world.

In the same year, Srila Prabhupada had visited Moscow with an invitation from a professor. Srila Prabhupada has said that he wanted to have the message of Caitanya Mahaprabhu sent to all places in the world. He was not discouraged by the heavy restrictions they had from all points of view. When we had the opportunity to go to Hungary, Davarakesh prabhu and myself started to make all the plans. Unfortunately he could not go himself, because he was a refugee from Hungary and he had no permission to enter the country. We decided that I should go and we set together what kind of preaching we had to do with the invitation to a Hatha yoga group. He wrote down several classes in order to prepare myself mentally. How do you preach the glories in country where is officially prohibited to believe in God? How do you speak about the sweet Absolute in a place where the government is against all religions? How can you do the service to Srila Prabhupada and not go into trouble? For weeks we were planning this visit to Hungary. We also wrote a letter to Srila Prabhupada to say where this first going to the communist countries would take place.

Finally the day came and I was going by car. We used to have very nice small sized vans and they all had the arrangement like double flour to keep many books inside and also so you could sleep there. And I kept a truck with books, they were in English and German, all these books I hide under the floor - it was at least 800 books. We had an official letter from the Hungarian government, so we went on this first sankirtan tour. It was the winter of 1976, January, when we got to the border between Austria and Hungary. We had to pass through the checkpoint. Right in front of us, the car in front of us was being searched so badly that they were even checking what he had had inside the tooth paste. I was looking and thinking that they would take these books, and instead of preaching we would go to prison. I was thinking to turn around and go back but I couldn't because we were staying in the car and it was already our turn. The custom man asked me to come out and open all the doors of the car. Of course we were not in devotional clothes. When I was standing in the front of the car, nothing was visible of the double floor. I pulled out the invitation to the yoga school and the custom man read the letter and He asked: 'Yoga?'' And I said: Yes, yoga'. And he said 'GO'. Our knees were shaking.

Then we went to Budapest and met our yoga teacher. In the winter we had to sleep in the garden house; no heating, the water we had to get from the garden (there was a little tank). We had to break the ice to have water for shower. The yoga teacher was afraid about having us there, therefore he put us into his garden house. Everyday we went to have preaching in different programs. We did kirtan and gave classes and the Hungarians were so happy. when I started to send the books, everybody wanted to have them. In the few days we had our pockets full of forints. One of the last program was very big; over 300 people were there. They were demonstrating hatha yoga exercise and we started our kirtan, and 300 people were dancing. One of them was Krsnananda prabhu, who is now also helping me to direct the Hungarean yatra. He became one of the first Hungarian Vaisnavas, and that day was the first meeting.

But the yoga teacher became more afraid, seeing how so many people were taking Krishna consciousness with such joy. When the kirtan really became ecstatic he stopped it, asking 'Please, give the class'. This was the beginning of the mission of Lord Caitanya in Hungary. When Bhakti Abhay Narayan Maharaj heard the details, he became so excited. He continued translating books into Hungarian and we could send books in their own language. He was the real pioneer of Krishna consciousness in his country. Later he came here to Hungary many times; he also started mission in Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Bulgaria. He left this world in 1993, but his spirit, his samadhi mandir, his temple, his deities and his devotees are still here.

And today in this chat, from the temple room of Radha Gopivallabha, I'd like to introduce you many wonderful devotees, because you are also taking darshan here today through the Internet. Today we have devotees here from many other places; we have 44 PCs now connected, and we have devotees from Chile, Peru, temple presidents and many sannyasis. We have representatives from Sweden, Ecuador, Austria, Switzerland, Argentina, Colombia from many different places, Costa Rica, Germany, Bolivia and we have Gurudeva Atulananda here also, Spain, USA and many others. Some of them I don't know even myself. Here in Hungary we have many devotees from many cities. Here is Krsnananda prabhu, Govindanandan prabhu, Bhakti Sakti from our Sofia yatra, Tamal Krsna prabhu, the devotees from Szolnok, Balaram Prakash from Debrezen, Svarup prabhu, Premavardhana prabhu from the Vrindavan farm and of course Premkumar, our internet genius, and many other devotees here also doing some seva, because we have a big festival today.

The spiritual process begins with sravanam and continues with kirtanam - the chat is both sravanam and kirtanam. It is very important to discuss how to become better servant. when I first came to Hungary by the grace of Srila Prabhupada, I did not dream that one day from Hungary I would be chatting with all of you; so many devotees from so many parts of the world visiting this place by Internet. Actually, it would be so nice to have a mela where all the members of our family could come together, but that is impossible. But while we are talking, the devotees are watching pictures from all South America and seeing your temples and the devotees. Since it is very difficult for all of us to come together physically, at least we can meet sometimes in Vrinda Kunja in the holly dham of Radha and Krishna or the European summer Mela, which is conducting in this beautiful community. All the devotees are coming from Europe and every house is full and lot of tents put in the near forest. This is practically repeating every year, but our chat is repeating every week.

All we have to do is to learn how to appreciate the beautiful company of all the other Vaisnavas. To admire other Vaisnavas is the happiness of Vaisnavas. Real Vaisnavas do not envy each other, they don't like those feelings. They just feel happy seeing other devotees becoming successful. All the deities in all the temples have also one and different simultaneously. Madavendrapuri brought from South India sandalwood for his deity Gopal, but Gopal told him in a dream that he can offer this sandalwood to Gopinath in Remuna and that would be the same, because Gopal and Gopinath are the same Supreme Lord.

Srila Sridhar Maharaja told us another story that shows to us that all the deities of Krishna are one and simultaneously different. Once when Sridhar Maharaja was going to collect donations for his spiritual master in Calcutta, he went to a street where there were many jewellery shops. He spoke to an owner: "Can you please give a donation for our temple". The owner said: "I have to ask my wife, come tomorrow". Sridhar Maharaja came back and the man was waiting at the door and he asked: "Are you from Bagh bazar Gaudiya Math?" Sridhar Maharaja said "Yes, why?" He said then: "I have to call my wife". His wife told Sridhar Maharaja: "Last time I was dreaming, a girl came to me crying. She said: Someone stole my necklace. Can you help me? I asked the girl: "Who are you?" and the replied: "I am Radharani from Bagh bazar Gaudiya Math". Sridhar Maharaja was very pleased, thinking, "What is this devotee to whom Radharani is coming?" She gave a good necklace and other donations. When Sridhar Maharaja came to the temple, it was true: some of the jewelleries in the temple has disappeared. Just see, Radharani knows everything, and in every temple she is special. And at the same time they are the same Radha and Krishna in every temple. When we worship our deities, we should be very grateful that Krishna has come in this particular form to allow us to serve him.

In the same way, we are so happy to serve Sri Sri Guru Gouranga Radha-Vrajesvara, by constructing yoga planetarium for them. This effort will take time, but we have another big plan. When the temple is finished in Bogotá, we will have a Vaisnava Mela there in Varsana. There will be a very big festival, and I can see many of you will be there. The festival of my great joy… because to make a beautiful temple for our isthadev is a great joy. It is also a great joy to organize great projects, which all of you are currently running.