As I am not a great scribe
nor storyteller this post will be in pictures and captions, and the
captions will contain my story. I may append text to the captions
of things that are not visible in the pictures. Anyway, lets get
started.
Many buildings in central
Lima that are important (like police houses, government) are built in
Roman style. Similar buildings can be found in italian towns. I went
to visit the large temple in Lima which also contained a Vrinda
restaurant.
The large room (aula) of the
Vrinda restaurant in central Lima. I also visited the temple upstairs
and took some pictures of the deities.
No idea what this deity's
name is...
Painting of Paramadvaiti
Maharaj, my spiritual master, jay gurudeva ki jay!
From left: Balaram,
Subhadra and Jagannath, my favourite deities. One of the mela days
these followed the gurus (Gurumaharaj plus Atulananda, a dear friend
of Paramadvaiti) on a large Harinam Sankirtan. Another fun thing
about this image is that beneath these three deities you find Srila
Prabhupada (the guy in pink who is not a photo) plus important gurus
for Krsna-consciousness beside him.
Eco Truly Park ki jay! In
this farm (finca in spanish) I lived until the mela started and my
main seva (service to God) was to assist in the kitchen and make
salads, clean dishes and many of the times even offer the food.
Of course when I chanted I
walked a lot and took pictures of random places, then on a hill I
faced this tower (no full image of that tower unfortunately).
Now this is a reflection to
a personal opinion I have that I kept for myself a long time before I
discovered the Vrinda-mission with help by another devotee at the
spring 2013. To get back to topic, this tower is on a hill above the
finca and is made by the devotees living there (ashram).
Speaking of the hill above Eco Truly Park, the tower seen in the previous picture is behind my
back, and below the hill you see the playa (spanish for beach), the
finca to the right, and to the left if you go like two hours (which I
never did) you reach Chancay, a town I frequently visited as it was
the only way for me to communicate with the people in Sweden where I
originally am from.
This was my method of going
to Chancay, the vehicle is called Moto-taxi and then by car. It took
half an hour approximately. When travelling to small towns of
Peru you need to have a constant vigilance, and don't dress like you
have money if you want to be left alone.
La Revolucion de la Cuchara
(Skedrevolutionen or Spoon Revolution in english), the revolution
about vegetarianism. This revolution is very big in Peru and its
purpose is to increase the awareness about our meat consumption and
the animal cruelty that has manifested due to that (this won't be
described in this post however).
Sri Hanuman ki jay! This
monkey lord is a dear friend to Sri Ramacandra (an avatar of Krsna
who was on this planet 1.200.000 years ago) and a symbol for
Krsna-consciousness. Another fun thing is that the flag of Arjunas
side on Kuruksetras battlefield (read Bhagavad-Gita) portraits
Hanuman.
The altar of the fincas
temple, Krsna, Radha, Giriraj etc. plus the gurus.
Govinda the cowherd boy ki
jay! Of course cows are portraid in a major temple.
Oceano Pacifico ki jay!
Somewhere along the water you can find the Nrsinghadeva cave (a cave
of the lion incarnation of Krsna), a cave belonging to the finca
where programs sometimes occur and with a great aucustic, unfortunately I
didn't bring my camera into this cave.
¡¡¡Mela time,
Paramadvaiti Maharaj ki jay!!! My beloved guru.
Atulananda ki jay! This guru
is a dear friend of Paramadvaiti and co-founder of the Vrinda mission,
I would like to get to know him more.
An ISKCON temple on the way
to the new finca of Vrinda, in here we had some kirtan.
Front gate of the ISKCON
temple
The new finca taken from
above, it was cozy, had nice views and I would like to visit it again
once the temple there is established. The place it's on lies 63 km east
of Lima along a railway, on 2300m altitude.
And finally, my friend
Nrsingha Stottram who got initiated on the mela of Peru. He is from
Washington DC and helped me through the stay in Peru. I hope one day
that he visits Sweden and Nimaihuset.
Text and photos by your
humble servant Caitanya das
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