Power, peace, bliss, love
or Shakti, Shanti, Ananda, and Prema

I was thinking of these, Shakti, Ananda and Prema and for some reason I couldn't remember the word for peace. But it's shanti, of course.

Shakti is force, as in mainly life force. It's within us all, but for some reason sometimes we feel down. Maybe this is a central question for our day, how to deal with this. They say, our happiness is more dependent on our mind and actions than external environment.

Buddhists, and Buddha's teachings, say that one should be dedicated to meditation. In fact Buddha said that one who is dedicated to meditation is not far from enlightenment.

So Shakti is force. Actually Shakti is the active principle of God. Shiva is the absolute - the Sat-Chit-Ananda, Existence-Consciousness-Bliss. But it is passive in a sense. Shakti is the other half, the active part. At least this is as I understand it.

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I have been doing very well. I had an unpleasant conversation tonight with someone from my past, unfortunately. But I'm feeling better, I am not worried about it. Om Shanti! I am working on staying in the present.

In my life recently there's been mainly Garga - my best friend, who's 24, from Bengal, a twice-initiated brahmana. He's the head pujari at the temple here. I asked him tonight if he ever had a girlfriend and he told me no, he and his brothers did not, they worked on studying and so forth; and also, it's different in India than here in America. I just thought about that. Garga is an amazingly sweet devotee and often I am just very happy to be around him.

Besides him there's another devotee family living here, but they're leaving next week. They are very good people, vegetarian of course, as are all devotees - their daughter is named Radhika, she is 3. She seemed shy at first when I met her, and then for no reason when I saw here one time she said Alex! really loudly with a huge smile and ran up, and since then this has been the norm, and she usually or often hugs me when she sees me. She reminds me of my sister, whom I haven't seen since she was about Radhika's age.

And besides that, what else is new - on Saturday we went to the devotee farm community nearby. I've been there several times, but not for a long time. There's several houses and families, and they are all such beautiful homes, and some of the best people I've known. They have four cows - the cow is sacred, and cow-protection is actually really important! Every Saturday they have a house program, which consists mainly of several kirtans and then a feast of vegetarian prasadam. The prasadam is almost always opulent and incredibly good.

This Saturday they had a special guest, Kratu Das, whom I've met before there; he gave the class on Bhagavad-Gita, and led the kirtan. He told me he lives in Vrindavan and preaches in Delhi. How wonderful is that!

They have four cows at the farm - two bulls and two cows.

On Tuesday they had some special guests, and we went again - different group, it was Haridas and Richard and I - to see two bands. Two bands called the Mayapuris and As Kindred Spirits were playing for the kirtan. They are traveling around the country together right now, also with a traveling group called the Gurukulis, I don't know too much about them. When I got out of the car at the farm, actually I garlanded Visvambar, the lead singer of the Mayapuris, with a maha-garland from Chaitanya-Nitai. And I got to meet Gaura Vani, the lead singer of As Kindred Spirits.

I wasn't a big fan of them, but I was still shocked to learn, at the end of the program, who the bands were. I do have a friend who's a big fan and I've heard some of their songs and they are quite good.

The first song they performed was a traditional kirtan, and then a different singer led the band in Sita-Ram, which was so great. And then later toward the end the kirtan picked up and became ecstatic. It was really great, they are really good kirtan leaders. The whole program felt like there was so much love there.