It was the hottest day in Toronto in recent history and there was an extreme heat alert with emergency cooling centers setup through the city. With humid-ex it was supposed to be feeling like late 40s. I spent the evening thinking whether to step out or not and even if I do perhaps everyone else will be inside and streets will be empty. So I debated all night but finally next morning by the grace of Lord Chaitanya I did step out. As I walked I was negotiating with my mind 1 hour – 2 hour no more than that – ok 3 hours, perhaps not. While I engaged in this haggling business I reached Ryerson University campus and started to show books to people. Then gradually it started to dawn upon me that the workers were still doing their construction business, cops still going out, men and women still engaged in enticing one another, clenching hands even on a sweaty day, layers of make up even through the sweat, people running to their jobs- sense gratification and the efforts to maximize it were going on uninterrupted. I noticed the zealous endeavors of people to serve their senses are not deterred by anything but my desire to serve Krishna’s senses was so easily swayed by a little news flash – having got a reality check I started to talk more to people.
BG 16.9: ugra-karmÄṇaḥ — engaged in painful activities
Purport excerpt: They try to enjoy this material world to the utmost limit and therefore always engage in inventing something for sense gratification. Such materialistic inventions are considered to be advancement of human civilization, but the result is that people grow more and more violent and more and more cruel, cruel to animals and cruel to other human beings. They have no idea how to behave toward one another.
Nobody really wanted to talk to me and I didn’t know what to do to try and help the situation. This is when I met a young engineer (just graduated) and he was standing with his girlfriend (language student at Ryerson) and I started to show him Srila Prabhupada books. That’s when I noticed he looked familiar and I asked if I knew him and to my greatest surprise he said ‘you are Arti, I met you at Finch in the winter’ and I remembered he got a Bhagavad gita. He had tried to read it a little but he remembered the conversation so this time I showed a book to his girlfriend. She remembered having looked at the book he had got months ago and browsing through it.She appreciated the content and gave a small donation for Bhakti yoga. Thanks to prior association to Srila Prabhupada’s books these people were receptive to transcendental knowledge in such times.
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