Aisvarya and the Monks
Krsna's working in everyone's heart, including, dare I say it; Buddhist monks. Actually, these days Buddhism is so watered down that many of its adherents believe in God. Needless to say in their minds God is Buddha… and by a funny twist of fate they're right.
I keep getting this mental snapshot of showing a Bhagavad-Gita to a Tibetan Buddhist Monk. We were both shaved-up, standing at the edge of a parking lot; he in his traditional sleeveless kurta and dark red longi and I sporting a saffron dhoti with only a dark brown woolen chaddar on top; wrapped over one shoulder pujari style. He had told me how he had escaped Tibet 12 years earlier by illegally crossing the border into Nepal. The first time he tried to escape he had been caught but he told the authorities that he was going to Nepal to have a look – you know, tourist bhava. They just sent him back to Tibet for this slight transgression in formality. But if he had told them that he was leaving Tibet for religious purposes he'd have got locked up.
Now that he had escaped he was traveling the world (except China) doing the monk thing. He loved and was very respectful to the picture of Srila Prabhupada in the Gita. For any Buddhist, the guru is a big part of his life and he will respect any guru from any tradition. Even though as personalists we disagree on which rung of the back to Godhead ladder that process of merging into the absolute sits, we can still find some fundamental principals common to all of us. Therefore, respecting a pure devotee like Srila Prabhupada can only lead one in a positive direction.
Talking about monks; it's funny that most monks are in fact nuns in Taiwan. Nuns also shave their heads, wear a traditional gray color that's also worn by monks, and are treated with all respect by everyone in all orders of life, except, I hear, male monks. Apparently there is a lot of discrimination within the spiritual orders.
So when one nun reciprocated with me by buying a Science of Self Realization and offering me full obeisances, I reciprocated my shock back to her by offering obeisances too. She got up off the ground with a look of complete surprise and then respectfully clutched Srila Prabhupada's book even tighter. She was deeply moved by that gesture. The whole western monk thing seemed very strange for Taiwanese. Not only the monk thing but also the style and color of Vaisnava dress would throw them for a loop. They often commented in that endearing Chinese English, "You look very special". So even though Hinduism, let alone Vaisnavism, is very foreign in this part of Asia, I am sometimes surprised to see how far and wide the Hare Krsna movement has penetrated all parts of the globe by the sincere efforts of very special devotees.
For instance, in the course of one hour near the town of Hsinchu I met three different businessmen who were conversant with that Blue Boy we all know and try to love. The first gentleman rolled down his car window and instead of asking if I was some kind of Buddhist monk, fumbled around with his CD player, turned up the volume, and gave me a dose of Aindra Prabhus 24 hour kirtan. The second turned out to be a devotee who had lived for a year in the Taipei temple before deciding to try his luck with good old mahamaya again. But he did have a tear in his eye! The third told me about his collection of books on the adventures of the Supreme Lord Sri Krsna. (For those of you who are interested in cultivation… I always take name- cards for the local devotees.)
Your Servent
Aisvarya Das
