Books, More Books

Hare Krishna,

It s thirty-one degrees in my room and I am poring over a new book that is meant to be printed in time for our visit to the Ukraine festival—August 25th. The book is called The Awakening of Spontaneous Devotional Service. 

It started off as an appendix to a chapter in the damodara-lila book, but as fate would have it the contents exceeded one hundred pages and so we at Lal decided to make a separate book of it. No more hundred page appendices…

That means I need to have it to Braja Sevaki by tomorrow, she will edit it, try out a new proofreader, then send it for Manjari’s Sanskrit editing, again a quick proof, then layout by Sundarupa and off to the printers. Whew! I am in marathon mode the last few days. That means I have switched off from GBC duties, but can only do that for so long: there are other pressing issues. But here is an excerpt to give you an idea:

In the way that regulated devotees think of themselves in a very general way, “I am Krishna’s eternal servant,” spontaneous devotees should similarly think of themselves, “I am the servant of a Vraja-vasi.” In Jiva Gosvami’s words, “I am different from Subala but yearn for service like his.” In other words, apart from wanting to be a cowherd boy, a young gopi, or an elder of Vraja, one should not attempt to progress further by imagining personality traits.

In art news, we mentioned in the first newsletter that all the original Nava-vraja-mahima drawings—all 400—would be auctioned to raise funds for publishing the Hungarian translation of NVM. That was meant to be held in June, but has been delayed. We’ll let you know when that will take place, but it will be an e-auction so that everyone can attend. 

Last point: some devotees are of the misunderstanding that Sadhavo Hrdayam Mayam is an extract from Nava-vraja-mahima and so if they have NVM, they don’t need to buy Sadhavo. The fact is that Sadhavo is a different book and thus entirely separate from NVM.

Happy readings…

Yours in Krishna s service,
Sivarama Swami