Experiencing A Higher Taste
After I spent ten days fixing up my motor home for travel, I was able to go out on sankirtana at a nearby university. Just a couple of weeks before there had been a terrible shooting at a university in Virginia. I was a little nervous, thinking that the security at universities might be increased, which would make book distribution more difficult. On the contrary, everything went very well. I even met one student who has many of Srila Prabhupada's books. He already owned the books that I had with me, except for one. He said that he had previously done research on Krishna, and had become attracted to Him. He found Krishna.com and ordered all his books online. He told me that he was waiting for an order of japa beads, but they had not yet arrived.
He was really eager to start chanting. I gave him the Bhakti book as a gift, since he didn't have any money. He inquired whether there is a temple in Eau Claire, the city I was in. Unfortunately, there is no temple, but since I go through there once in a while, I told him we could get together and chant. I got his email and phone number and he said that he has many friends that are also interested in chanting. I told him that when I come next time, we can have a program at someone's house. He was very excited, and I'm going to keep in touch with him.
After a nice day at the campus, I drove south a few hours to Madison which is the capitol city of the state of Wisconsin. Madison is one of the most liberal cities in America. The Dalai Lama was there, so after his lecture ended, thousands of people streamed out of The Kohl center onto the main street where I was distributing, and many people took books. Today there was a big street fair. Thousands of University students were throwing a huge party. It was mainly a drunken bash, but Kali didn't consider the fact that when people get intoxicated they have a tendency to buy Srila Prabhupada's books. Many books went out. I met some people that had gotten books from some devotees who had passed through a couple of weeks ago, and they got more books after seeing the differen't titles.
Sankirtana is unlimited and is unlimitedly ecstatic. I'm traveling in a motor home, going from town to town distributing books. Sometimes it's difficult, but the higher taste one experiences from sankirtana is so sweet, that any austerities one performs becomes a source of bliss. Sometimes it's so ecstatic that I don't even want to stop at the end of the day. If it wasn't for the material body, devotees could go on doing sankirtana unceasingly– that is what we are in training for.
