Kadamba Kanana SwamiSo I thought let me go on, let me go to the Himalayas. The Himalayas! Everyone knows it, these are not ordinary mountains, right?! The highest mountains in the world! Very spiritual mountains, and it is quite amazing! You come to the Himalayas and there's so many temples so many rivers are cascading down hills, palm trees, it's quite amazing. Anyway, I had heard about the Tibetan Buddhists and I thought let me go there. So I went there and I visited the
Dalai Lama, and all the Tibetans up there.
But the thing about them, was that, it was hard to get through to them. They had these, prayer mills, in the middle of their town which are like, cylindrical things on an axle about this high, round like this and there's handles on and you can pull them and they spin around. And they had like ten in one direction and then ten on the other side and people were walking by pushing those things and they were all spinning. There they are they are spinning and it counts as a prayer.
Okay, so, it was interesting. Something else hey, you don't see that everyday! Not in Oslo or in Amsterdam so I thought 'Let me sit down and watch it for a while!' I did. I looked at it and 'You
know... interesting..' and then you see various lamas coming, you know, in red and yellow dressed up. Looking impressive.
So, I'm sitting there for a few days, and the first day I saw a lama the second day the same lama came, third day I saw him again. So I said 'Hi!'............. No response! Nothing! He was smiling, he was all the time having this smile on his face, but he didn't say anything. So he didn't acknowledge my existence, I didn't quite like it so I said it again, 'Hi!'
Well, before I left, you know, one friend of mine had somehow or other given me this book. Well I was having it with me: The Bhagavad Gita as it is, well what can you say. You carry some book when you travel right? So I had a book, I had this book and it was about India and it might be useful when I go to India and I might find out something more about India. So I
had this book with me and,I opened it. As I was sitting there just at that time like after the man didn't greet me I felt a little strange but anyway I thought, 'Ah well! Let's have a look at the book.’
So I had a look at the book and I opened it up at one page, and it described the impersonalists, right?! And it said that the impersonalists, they think that everything and everybody is just a projection of their own mind. That it's all illusion! I thought that's it! That's it! I got it! I got it! He thinks I'm an illusion!
Well I'm not! I'm not an illusion, I'm real!
So it turned me right off of the whole thing you know: 'This, Not for me!' “This swinging of mills etc... it's not my thing! So forget it, Nah, this impersonalism, it's not my process!”
So I decided to go, I thought I'm getting out of here, I'm getting out of town, no good.
So I went down the mountain, and then, I decided to go to Vrndavan!... (contd part7)
(Kadamba Kanana Swami, Oslo, Norway 06/06/1999)
