Rain or Sun - Sankirtan is Fun

It was meant to be a UEY sankirtan outing but the weather reports said it was going to rain today and for the coming few days. I left home thinking it’s cloudy and rainy and sankirtan would be really hard but as soon as I called Shyama, she told me everyone is ready to go to Kensington. So I reached Kensington only to find Vrndavan, Radhamohan and Shyamamohini Prabhus standing right behind me. We split the cookies Gayatri had made and started to give out cards, books and cookies. It was cold and damp but Radha-mohan and Vrndavan struck the drums and kartals, and the kirtan roared louder than the clouds. As the kirtan influence expanded we saw Lake come around from the corner telling us he had just distributed his first ever Perfection of yoga. Indeed a moment of great jubilation in one's life is the first step in Sankirtan. Around the same time Rasmin came in followed quickly by William. It was his first time on Sankirtan so he had the service of taking pictures. People were also coming up wanting to get pictures with us and that’s around the same time we met a young musician from BC and she said she really appreciated the Bhagavad-Gita and enthusiastically took a copy. I asked her if she would like to join our Kirtan. A little hesitant in the beginning she quickly joined us and played guitar chanting the Maha mantra for about an hour. Half way through the kirtan Kathleen turned up with her tambourine and started swaying to the Kirtan for as long as we were there. Each one of the shining sankirtan stars surrounded the moon of Krishna’s name and had quickly wiped any dampening effects of the incessant rain.

Glory to the Sri Krishna Samkirtanam which cleanses the heart of all the dust accumulated for years together and thus the fire of conditional life of repeated birth and death is extinguished. Such Samkirtan movement is the prime benediction for the humanity at large because it spreads rays of the benediction—Moon. It is the life of transcendental knowledge, it increases the ocean of transcendental bliss and it helps to have a taste of the full nectarine for which always anxious we are.