Laguna Beach

[Guest guest]

youtube{dot}com/watch?v=zZEuVagMmK4

[Admin5]

here is direct link:

 

[krishnadasa]

 

here is direct link:

 

 

everypart of the world when the Kirthana is sung its in different tunes, I wonder it was differnt in Germany, and in the UK its different and then in the Laguna beach its entirely different, though sounds sweet in all tunes....

 

Thanks for sharing .........

 

Hari Hari bol

[Guest guest]

Especially when I think that this room used to be four rooms. I was just a ganja surfer who liked prasadam, and the two devotees who first inhabited this building when Laguna moved from woodland drive to PCH needed help, Prabhupada was coming. So, we got out the crowbars and wiped out four rooms and made them into this room seen here.

 

And it was just a rental then. We worried about that later.

 

Thanks for the memories, and thanks, Gangaram and Srivanivas, for needing help, and thanks Sri Siddhaswarupananda, for giving me Srila Prabhupada thru this service. If I had a hammer.......

 

Hare Krsna, ys, mahaksadasa

[Guest guest]

I would like to point out that the very first Laguna Beach Temple, if I am not mistaken, was donated by Suruchi devi dasi, a very beautiful person both externally and internally.

 

From what I understand, after having given her beautiful home today worth millions of dollars in prime real estate near the ocean to the HK devotees, she was then essentially homeless, as a despised lower in status "woman" within the KC movement.

 

We all know by now how "nicely" women were treated within the KC movement back in the day. So Suruchi devi dasi went from one crazy-making situation to another after having given up the most valuable thing to Krsna, her safe and beautiful home in a very nice neighborhood of prime real estate.

 

 

 

Suruchi was a sensitive and very beautiful spirit soul. In great anguish observing the many apasiddhanta, non-brahmnincal things asked of women in the KC movement back in the day, Suruchi was in the humiliating position of always trying to find a safe place to raise her child after giving up what no beautiful, young, respectable Hindu woman should have to give up: her home.

 

 

 

Hearing of places where the devotees were "mellow", Suruchi would head there, only to be told to "leave the island" by one of the people praised on this thread. She tried one spiritual community after another, going from Temple to Temple trying to find a place where she could just engage in bhajan without compromising her brahminical values.

 

After a few years of constantly moving Suruchi was so poor that she had no choice but to send her son to live in the Gurukula, where he was the victim of some of the most extreme forms of sad things that happened there. From what I understand, he is so traumatized to this day what happened to him there, he wants nothing to do with KC.

 

 

 

Today Suruchi lives in a little cottage on her married son's property, after a lifetime of suffering psychological and emotional abuse in KC at the hands of one selfish megalomaniac "God's pure representative" after another.

 

So when we praise people or things, let us not forget the many children and women who made the ultimate sacrifice so you can have one bona-fried pure "representative of God" to praise and a place to worship the Deities.

 

"Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it." -- Carlos Santayana

[Guest guest]

Haribol. When I praise folks, I praise them in terms of time and place, this makes things much easier personally. The time factor eats us all up, gives us insanity as well, past reactions getting burned up also may burn all those around as well. I do not disavow things that happen later on, but nothing changes the effect of whaqt happened then and how it affected my life. In fact I still refer to one who died of aids because of returning to perverted lifestyle as siksa guru, I still call him swami, because he wasnt perverted then, and was a consummate swami, very favored by Srila Prabhupada, often filmed at His side, both smiling affectionately.

 

Many of us were burned. I remember suruchi, and how badly she was treated, not on the islands, but in her very home, by another devotee gone bad who turned into a drug trafficer who ruined the lives of many. He was TP of Laguna for many years while he was doing these things, too, unlike those whom I spoke of, who at the time were very fixed up.

 

I also have been treated badly, rejected, not welcome, even in the islands. I live in exile, but none of this has anything to do with anything. I dont hate those who banished me, and I think of how Arjuna never hated Bhisma who ultimately banished the Pandavas from their homes as well. Being a devotee means, first and foremost, that one has to accept that which is unacceptable, and must reject that which is held dear. This is a cleansing process. Why bother?

 

The one I mentioned above, who does not accept me as his own, gave me good instruction, nevertheless. "When we see that, ultimately, Krsna is the cause of all causes, we can then focus our troubles and our joys as coming from Him. Blame and praise goes to him, and when we become equal, and quit blaming him and praising him for these material considerations, then we can be in transcendence". Krsna kicked me out of Hawaii, but He is also going to kick me out of this world as well, and soon. So, I have the choice, to hate him or love him. Does not Lord Chaitanya give us the key here? Embrace me or push me away, does not matter, I am yours unconditionally? This is how it works.

 

Also, as mentioned, the PCH temple was not the first Laguna Beach temple. Sriman Visnujnana Swami presided over the first Laguna Beach temple, a rental on wodland drive in Laguna Canyon. It was next door to Tim Leary's commune, The brotherhod of eternal Light. Very interesting sunday feasts in those times. There was a festival in sycamore canyon on christmas that closed the whole town, shortly before the devotees moved. The devotees fed everyone there.

 

Haribol, I hope the aging process mellows the bitterness we may have toward Hare Krsna Movement. When we die, I hope we wil see how Krsna Consciousness, including all the devotees we knew in better days, makes us understand how sucessful this life was, indeed.

 

Ys in cooperation, mahaksadasa