The Vyasa-puja festival is behind us and the muscles still hurt from the jumping and dancing during the Crazy Queensday celebration in Amsterdam. It was a Super Duper Deep Spiritual Party enjoyed by everyone. The day before
On the 28th of April the most of the devotees arrived from Czech, Sweden, South Africa, Australia, Holland, Germany, Switzerland and others. The afternoon was spend with a short disciple meeting to plan the next vyasapuja day.
Later that evening we enjoyed a the cultural program with theater, drama, dance, music and a real fire show. The theater was a play with a theme from the movie Matrix, where a devotee could choose between the blue pill (not offered food) or the red pill (offered food). Another drama was about the "old style" book distribution that was practised in the past. It was an enlivening program and everybody like it a lot. Here is the play on video.
The big day
The next day, 29 april, the Vyasa-puja festival began with the traditional morning program in the temple. After the morning program maharaja gave a class on the Srimad Bhagavatam 4.27.25. It was a wonderful class dealing with our position to serve the vaisnava's and how we should be thankful to those who served us in our lives. Later on the theme of the class would be mentioned again during the reading of the offerings from the devotees.
Listen to the class :
At 10:30 the festival started with devotees expressing their relationship and dealings with Kadamba Kanana Swami and read their offerings. Sutapa and Aatish made a wonderful vyasa-puja book that included at least 100 offerings and they presented it to Maharaja. Afterwards the devotees offered flowers and gifts to maharaja and performed the gaura arati ceremony. After the program a big huge prasadam feast was served to all visitors.The prasadam feast had 15 courses and every dish was superbly prepared by the super cooks Parama Karuna, Pradyumna and Madhu kanta.
Initiations
But there was no time to rest after the feast because the next program already was started at 17:30. The temple room was packed with devotees who came to witness the initiation ceremony. 16 devotees would receive their 1st and 2nd initiation by Kadamba Kanana Swami. All 16 devotees got a new spiritual name during the ceremony. Here are some that i remember : Hari Bhakti devi dasi, Champakalata devi dasi, Keli Lalita, Gaura Karuna, Madhu Pandit, and lots more. See a short video from the initations. Go there
After this busy day we got some well needed rest because of......
CRAZY QUEENSDAY
Yes also this year it happened again. The MEGA HUGE SUPER DUPER HARINAM. The well famous Harinam planned by Kadamba Kanana Swami to give some spiritual vibrations to the people and visitors in the city of Amsterdam during the birthday / holiday of the Queen of Holland. Every year the city is packed with people that want to party. And we were there also with almost 200 !!! devotees. Two big buses plus lots of other vans and cars came from Radhadesh to join the fun and commence the spiritual harinam procession.
Amsterdam was already trying to enjoy the material pleasures early in the morning as we moved through amsterdam in our big procession. We visited all the main streets of amsterdam and danced and sang like crazies. We were THE attraction of the Amsterdam Queensday. Nobody was having such a big group that performed so well and choreographed. Sacinandana Swami also graced the procession with his presence and he was struck with awe from the party sight of Amsterdam. He said that by doing Harinam you cannot go wrong. It was a lovely thought. After the first part of the procession that began at 10:00 and lasted till 16:00, we took a break at the temple campsite that was set up in the middle of the party centre of Amsterdam. Everybody was thirsty and hungry from the 6 hours dancing. At the campsite the very professional and really funny music group from the UK leaded by Parasurama prabhu was stealing the show. Can you image a "bakfiets" (dutch word for a bike with an attached hatchet" with a whole drumkit on it PLUS a huge guy playing the drums? And on the bike was Parasurama playing his little guitar with a big amplifier on his back? And jumping around was a bass player strumming the chords on his bass? I could also not picture it, but they were there. It was amazing. They really fitted in the party atmosphere of Amsterdam. I sincerely hope they will join us again next year.
After 17 o clock the second part of the harinam began. Parasurama and his crazy bakfiets was tagging along and with his huge soundsystem we were heard everywhere. We dove into the well known Vondelpark and entertained the park visitors. Every year the park is reserved to children activities during Queensday and after that was finished we arrived there and gave all our last energy that we had. We had to hurry a bit because the buses back to Radhadesh were about the leave and we still were quite some distance from the temple. So Maharaja walked in front and guided us quickly back home, back to bushead. ;-)Around 19:15 the buses arrived at the temple and the visiting devotees disappeared again in the bus and back to Radhadesh. Saying goodbye was a struggle because, how do you say personally goodbye to at least 150 devotees ??? When the buses left for Radhadesh we all chilled out and let our feet get a well deserved rest. Amsterdam plummeted itself in the late hours party when i biked home again. All was well, we saved at least some people with our spiritual vibrations.
So what is your plan for 30 april 2011 ????
See a nice slideshow of this event
