Ugh, Dirty! Dangerous! Unpleasant! Dreadful! Horrible!

Kadamba Kanana Swami

There was the mother of one devotee and she was from England, and well, she didn't like it very much that her son was a devotee of Krishna. She was very sad that he didn't become a doctor and he instead joined the Hare Krishnas. So she never got over that. Still he was her son, so she decided after many years to pay a visit. And of course he had written her many letters about how nice it was in Vrndavan.
And when she came she said that: 'Is this your Vrndavan? It's dirty! Ugh! There is a pig walking in the street, there’s a big hairy pig! How horrible! Dreadful! Oh, this rickshaw, can we go on, it is dangerous, you know, Oh No! I can't sit on this! It smells here. Oh horrible! And so hot! Oh how unpleasant, and look at the people! ......the donkeys, just look at that poor animal....'
And like this she was just going on and on finding fault after fault after fault: “Is this your river Yamuna! Well I had thought it would be really something else. OH! And the people they don't use toilets they just sit outside like that. This is horrible”



Anyway, so like this she was criticising like anything, and then, yes, she came back to the temple. She went into the guest house and she went to her room and she was just going to fresh up for one moment in the bathroom. And this big rat, jumped right from the toilet right? She screamed of course, was very quick in getting out, very quick!
Within seconds she was outside, and a few hours later she was sitting in the airport, waiting for the next flight to London. Huh, yes. Srimati Radharani kicked her out. Because Vrndavan is never an ordinary place, and one who sees Vrndavan with ordinary eyes and who blasphemes Vrndavan, simply cannot stay!
So it's not so easy simply to enter into Vrndavan. Because Vrndavan is a state of consciousness.
In the tenth canto of the Srimad Bhagavatam there is a commentary of Madhavarcharya, and in that commentary of Madhavarcharya, he explains that Vrndavan is a state of consciousness, and once one enters into this state of consciousness then he can see Krishna everywhere!

(Kadamba Kanana Swami 06/06/1999)