Holy Name Retreat in Moldova

On my arrival in Kishiniev/Moldova on the 19th of May I was eagerly welcomed by devotees at the airport.

Moldova is one of the poorest countries in Europe, situated South of Ukraine and bordering onto Romania. It used to be part of the former Soviet Union and is now a separate country. Most people speak Russian, but they also have their Moldovan language, which is similar to Romanian and almost sounds a little like Italian or Spanish.

Being one of the poorest countries with little opportunities for sense enjoyment, people are proportionally more interested in religious life and spiritual practice than in Western parts of Europe, where people enjoy a higher standard of life. As long as the mind is flooded with plans and desires to enjoy life and advance materially, it is difficult to turn towards the Lord with sincere feeling.

We had scheduled a Holy Name Retreat - an event which has become an annual tradition over the past three years. This year was the fourth time that we rented the same holiday camp outside the capital city of Kishiniev, for the period of four days. Around one hundred devotees participated in this nourishing event, and as every year the temple was closed for this weekend - there was no Sunday program. The majority of the regularly practicing devotees had decided to set all responsibilities and distractions aside for four days and deepen their relationship with the holy name - in japa aswell as in kirtan.
Some devotees from other yatras within Moldova and neigboring Ukraine had  decided to also join the retreat. The managerial aspects of covering all the services almost manifested by itself, without much endeavor. Everybody knew what to expect and what to do, and within a few hours the seminar room was transformed into an uplifting abode. And the usual kitchen crew was eager to serve in order to feed the devotees with nice prasadam.

As usual, on the day of arrival I spent time picking wildflowers and greenery and composed the flower arrangements for the vases decorating the altar and Srila Prabhupada's Vyasasana - my favorite service and meditation.
Nice vases with naturally grown forest flowers and arranged with care and devotion create a very auspicious and devotional atmosphere. It almost seems like they are living entities who are also eagerly participating in the auspicious gathering, serving the Lord and His devotees by giving pleasure through their distinct aromas, unique colors and individual shapes and forms. It surely must be the perfection of their existence....!

We remembered Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur's statement, that unless the holy name is chanted with the motivation and longing to serve, our chanting is useless. He does not say 'not so effective', or any other more mild words, but 'useless'. Very uncompromising.
How much useless chanting I have done during my almost thirty years of Krsna conscious practice....!
Somehow or another it took me so many years to come to know these deep secrets of chanting the holy name.....!
It all depends on our feeling deep within our heart while chanting - whether our heart will be cleansed or not.

Sri Kevalastakam describes how the holy name is the most purifying of all purifying things - the Domestos of the heart so to speak (or in India and Bangladesh: the Harpic of the heart). But we have to know how to use this most purifying agent. Only when the chanting is performed with the deep longing to serve will it free us from all unwanted desires and attachement. This will cleanse away all other designations and establish us firmly in our eternal position of being servant. It is very practical and simple: if we meditate every day for at least two hours on desiring to serve, surely sooner or later we will understand that being servant is indeed our eternal position.

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After the Holy Name Retreat we conducted an evening program for the ladies at the temple, which was very well attended. Our topic was the highly valued position of a mother within spiritual culture - a universal principle which is becoming more and more forgotten nowadays. In materialistic culture where sense enjoyment is the goal of life, to be a mother is considered to be a pitiful condition, since she has to be at home and serve, and can't go out to enjoy life. Mothers are considered to be losers in the race for sense gratification, and they are reduced to being the cook and cleaner within the family - not a very respected and valued position. In spiritual culture however, mothers are the most important personalities within human society: they are the first Gurus, and they are the ones who create the spiritual atmosphere in the homes, and thus within society at large. This is their most valuable contribution to human society. The mother is the actual servant-leader and backbone of the family: she is the one who creates the caring and harmonious atmosphere in the homes - the relationship manager and selfless care giver.

The quickest and surest way to destroy spiritual practice and religious values in human society is by sending the women out into the working world to develop a professional career. Then they will not have the time and energy any longer to create the spiritual atmosphere in the homes, and spirituality will thus gradually diminish - by the women becoming more and more worldy. We can observe that in all spiritual cultures women were very carefully protected from this worldliness - something which is entirely lost in the modern days....

Also as preacher or manager we can have the mood of serving as a selfless mother - keeping ourselves in the background, and assisting the men to become good leaders. Being in a woman's body it is the main way to dissolve our false ego - by becoming the auspicious source of energy to men.
It actually requires deep humility....
Once a very senior and educated brahmacari in Bangladesh shared the following with me, saying: "Mataji, my Guru Maharaja is our father, and you are our mother." And with an affectionate smile he added: "And mother is more important than father - yes, mother is more important...!"
We women are meant to play such an important role.....

In the Manu Samhita it says: "The teacher (akarya) is ten times more venerable than a sub-teacher (upadhyaya), the father a hundred times more than the teacher, but the mother a thousand times more than the father."
ISKCON needs more mothers and grand-mothers....

On the 29th of May the devotees drove me across the border to Odessa/Ukraine....

Your servant, Devaki dd