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EDITORIAL  Going Home BY BHAKTA WALLACE (VAIKUNTHA) EDITORIAL, Jan 7 (VNN) — After writing several articles about Krsna consciousness and the Vedas, I would like to take a departure and share some realizations with fellow devotees and get somewhat intimate. Therefore, one might find this article poignant. Forgive me if I seem sentimental and nostalgic. There is nothing that I wrote about in my previous articles that Srila Prabhupada didn't say better and that is why I try to quote from his incredible writings as much as possible. The reasons are obvious. REMINISCING I never met Srila Prabhupada personally as I came to Krsna consciousness in 1978 while researching various world religions. I was 32 years old and had been dabbling in meditation and was very curious about the religions of the east. I decided to visit the old Hare Krishna temple on W. 55th Street in NYC that no longer exists now and began eating prasadam and the rest is history. The books Srila Prabhupada wrote and his illuminating purports in fact are one of the primary reasons I took to Krsna consciousness and that pretty much holds true to this day. Srila Prabhupada does live in his books and I have had some very profound dreams about him over the course of the last 22 years. Books are the basis as he said and I'm a living example of this. I was never formally initiated but given the name "Bhakta Vaikuntha" one day by a traveling sannyasa after doing him a favor and so I liked the name and kept it in remembrance of that moment. To make a long story short as I'm sure every devotee has their own personal story, I got married and fathered two children but had the good fortune of living near the Krishna temple on Watseka Avenue in Los Angeles for 13 years 1981-1994. Thus, because of that and the fact that I found the Vedas the most exciting thing in the world I was blessed with the association of devotees and performed devotional service. Needless to say, those years were the high point in my life and I met some very advanced souls, or "Prabhupada disciples." In a sense I guess, one could say that I had the best of both worlds as I wasn't living in a temple ashram but at the same time while I was in household life, it was as though I were "in" the movement. I weathered all the gossip, saw devotees come and go and pretty much remained an objective observer of ISKCON's ups and downs. I would have to say that the devotees I knew during those years whether they were in or out of the movement are today, my very dear friends even though time and distance may separate us. THE PLAY I always had a love for theatre and film and began writing screenplays and plays. In 1982 I wrote a play called, "Nectar Road" about a devotee who is taking a brief sabbatical from the movement and decides to go home to visit his dying mother and his younger sister. The play was never done and is now gathering dust somewhere in the attic. I suppose the play was a bit sentimental and of course, it was very dramatic. After all, how many plays do you see with Hare Krishna devotees? In fact, the play was very much in the vein of Tennessee Williams "The Glass Menagerie." Basically, the play dealt with the lead male coming to grips with his Krsna consciousness, his mother's death and the fact that his sister does not accept her brother's being a member of what she sees as a "cult" and so there's this idea of sibling rivalry. The play takes place in the mid-70s during the deprogramming craze. Anyway, this is leading me up to a realization. DEATH No one wants to talk about it. Better to bury our head in the sand or look the other way even though we are bombarded with death in movies, novels and the 6 O'clock news. After all, this is a morbid subject. I mean, I know I have to die someday but I don't want to think about it. I know everyone is dying around me every day but it's never going to happen to me. When I bring up the subject of death I'm deemed, negative. I should just eat, drink and be merry. My mother died of cancer when she was 54 years old. I was only 21 at the time. It was a great shock to me and I went into a very deep depression for several years. I had no real spiritual inclinations at that time and one could say that I was an agnostic in terms of believing in God. It was not that I was very close to my mother but she was the typical mother, very loving and gentle and I wondered why God saw fit to take her untimely, if indeed there was a God. I had left home when I was 17 and joined the Navy and then moved to New York and it was there, while on the job that my father called me with the bad news of my mother's passing even though she had been hospitalized for several weeks due to complications. For me, it was sudden. Fast forward. My father died in 1998 at the age of 82. We were never very close and I would have liked to have gotten closer to him, but he never let me. I did not hear about his death until 2 weeks later as I had moved and my sister did not know my new address. My only regret is that I wanted to be near him and whisper "Krsna" in his ear in his last moments, but that never happened. When one loses their parents there's this strange sensation of being all alone. That the two persons who brought you into this world have passed on and that you're the only living proof of their existence. This is especially true for an only child. MOVING AROUND I'm a product of the 60's I suppose although I was not a radical or a "hippie" and never went to college. In fact, I never finished high school. The 60's seemed to be a time when most young people were "crashing" here and there or seeing strange new lands and traveling on the road. There was an explosion of color, music and ideas. Many families, like military families, did not stay in one place very long and so for some people, going back to where they lived as a child was almost non-existent. 5 years here, 10 years there, always searching for a home. But some families, like my only remaining aunt and uncle who live in Massachusetts have been in the same home for over 50 years. My cousin in fact, who is 56 years old this year has been living at his parents house and can actually boast of being in the same room and sleeping in the same bed since he was 3 or 4 years old when the house was built. BEING KRSNA CONSCIOUS For someone who is Krsna conscious, going back to a familiar environment where one played as a child that is rife with many memories is a very sobering experience. Especially when one has been gone for over 30 years like I have. It's like returning as a ghost or entering a time machine except the body has gotten older, years have passed like falling leaves and of course, loved ones have died. Yet, the same table is there, the same rug, the same furniture and it's as though everything were preserved in aspic or a museum. I look at the tree out in the backyard I used to climb when I was a kid with my friends and realize that that same tree will probably be there after I die and also knowing that it too will be gone one day. Such is the nature of "kalasya," the time factor. I look at my aunt whom I had not seen for almost 35 years and I can see where this time factor has engraved itself upon her once youthful face. Her hair is totally white now and the years have taken their toll but her voice is just the same as I remembered when I was younger. MEMORIES My father was an amateur photographer and he always used to say that photographs were a "bastard thing" in that they preserved the moment of a bygone era where one's youth is imprisoned or a moment in time which has long past. I suppose there is truth to that. Photographs preserve history and to that extent it is like we are all living in a newsreel that moves relentlessly forward until the film breaks and the screen goes white, Death. My cousin took me back to a house where I grew up from age 5 to 13 in the small rural town of Beverly, Massachusetts. Seeing the same house where I had so many memories was startling. The same front steps where I sat when I was 5 years old and hearing my mother's voice calling me in for lunch made me somber. I remembered a crisp September morning as I left that very house on my way to my first day at school, turning and seeing my mother wave back at me from the front stoop. It was like entering a dream. I had not laid eyes on that house for 43 years and even though so much had changed, I began to see my whole life rush before me like a kaleidoscope of "moments." It was like being pushed back into the womb, I was going too far back. My next thoughts were, what if I had done this and that in my life differently? That little boy who sat on the steps was me and he does not exist anymore. Little did that small boy know all the trials and tribulations he would have to endure but more importantly, how could that same little boy know that one day he would meet Hare Krishna devotees and gain knowledge of God, Krsna? KRSNA and SRILA PRABHUPADA As my cousin was driving me back to his house for dinner the only thoughts that went through my mind were the statements Lord Krsna said to Arjuna on the battlefield of Kuruksetra and the words of Srila Prabhupada's lectures and all the things he said in his purports regarding the temporary nature of this material world, birth and death, the nature of the soul and the nature of God. I wanted to express all this to my cousin but he would not understand. There was a silent moment as I looked out at the rolling countryside, the trees stripped of their leaves as it was winter and the stark realization that just as the seasons change, I too, will have to change my body soon. I also thought how lucky I was to have imbibed Srila Prabhupada's teaching and blessed with the realization of being Krsna conscious. I imagined that on my death bed it would be just like this, that the totality of my life would rush before my eyes like the countryside on that cold winter day and that I would have to leave my body and take another birth according to my karma. Life is short. Will I be fortunate enough to remember Krsna as I take my last breath? Will there be Vaisnavas standing around me chanting "Hare Krsna, Hare Rama?" I suddenly realized because of this journey into the past Srila Prabhupada's real position and real mission and how lucky I and other devotees were to have met His Divine Grace after so many, many births. It's as though we were all gradually taking birth after birth to meet our eternal father who would help us, guide us to remember our original father and mother who will never die, Lord Sri Krsna. I suddenly realized that materially speaking I never had a home because my REAL ETERNAL home was with krsna in Goloka, Vrndavna in the spiritual sky. How could I ever explain that to my cousin? I then remembered something Krsna said to Arjuna: Bg. 18.55 "One can understand Me as I am, as the Supreme Personality of Godhead, only by devotional service. And when one is in full consciousness of Me by such devotion, he can enter into the kingdom of God." Bhakta Wallace (Vaikuntha) has been a devotee since 1979. vaikuntha@hotmail.com  Comment on this storyContact VNN about this storySend this story to a friend
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