My journey to Angkor Wat
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| Heads of Brahma at Angkor. |
really began really last year. I want to explain a little about my life, before we take the journey together. So please be patient. What you read here may shock and surprise you.
My name is Michael Dolan. Long ago, in the 1970s, 80s, and early 90s, I was deeply involved in yoga studies. In Los Angeles I studied at the Bhakti Center of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. I was accepted as a disciple of His Divine Grace, A.C. Bhaktivdenta Swami in 1976.
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| Srila Prabhupada, Bhaktivenda Swami |
After his passing from this world, my path led me to India, to the Caitanya Saraswat Math.
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| Sri Caitanya Saraswat Math, Koler Danga, Nabadwip, West Bengal, India |
Sridhara Maharaja and Prabhupada were old friends: they had a close, affectionate relationship. As an advanced Mahabhagavata Vaishnava, Shridhar Maharaja was considered to have the deepest understanding of Gaudiya Vaishnava philosophy, where Prabhupada was a prodigy of entrepeneurial prowess. Prabhupada was responsible for bringing Krishna Consciousness to the Western world. Shridhar Maharaja maintained the purity of vision.
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| From left to right: Bhakti Sundar Govinda Maharaja, Bhakti Rakshak Shridhar Maharaja, Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada |
Pay attention and you will note Govinda Maharaja in the lower left hand corner. After consulting with Govinda Maharaja and quite humbly begging him for admission, I was granted sacred thread initiation from Bhakti Rakshak Shridhar Dev Goswami, who gave me the name "Mukunda Mala Vilasa."
After spending a good while in India, I traveled to the London Center, Bhaktivedanta Manor in the winter of 1982. While my friends assured me that it never snowed in London, it turned into the coldest winter since Napoleon invaded Russia back in 1812.
Bhaktivedanta Manor had been donated to the Hare Krishna movement by George Harrison of the Beatles. I had the opportunity to play guitar in his basement studio, where some of the devotees recorded transcendental music.
I wasn't able to stay long: It was invited to Johannesburg, South Africa, to participate in some educational yoga programs that had been organized, and I was happy to escape the freezing climate.
After three months in Johannesburg, I received a phone call that would change my life. I was invited to San Jose, California, where Bhakti Sudhir Goswami had organized an ashram.
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| Bhakti Sudhir Goswami |
He planned to started a publishing house dedicated to the teachings of Shridhar Maharja, to be called Guardian of Devotion Press. Ours was an intense collaboration. Over the years we went from one IBM selectric typewriter and a transcribing machine to owning our own Heidelberg KORD offset press with all the latest technology of the 1970s. We produced a number of titles on transcendental life according to the school of Gaudiya Vaishnavism. We even printed a full-color national magazine, called the Harmonist, which was well-received by authors and intellectuals such as Tom Robbins. In this time, we published "The Search for Sri Krsna, Reality the Beautiful, Sri Guru and his Grace, The Loving Search for the Lost Servant, The Golden Volcano of Divine Love, and Subjective Evolution of Consciousness.
Our books have since been translated into Spanish, French, Russian, German, Chinese, Turkish and many other languages and reprinted many times over from California to London to Australia.
We were gratified to think that both Prabhupada and Shridhar Maharaja would be pleased.
I was inspired to take sannyasa, the austere renounced order of absolute dedication.
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| That's me on the right with the glasses and goatee. |
That's me on the left with the glasses.
Later I traveled and taught in different places.
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| Captain Panic |
That's me, disguised as Captain Panic on my way to Sweden. I taught in Stockholm, Budapest, Frankfurt, Sydney, Calcutta and wherever I was invited.
Somewhere at the beginning of the 90s, the mission in San Jose ran out of gas. I preached in Berlin when the wall came down, and tried my hand in Quito, Guayaquil, Bogota and other South American cities with Paradmadvaiti, but it didn't really work out. I was told that the last good place for starting something new would be Costa Rica.
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| Costa Rican rainforest where I lost my mojo. |
It wasn't to be. The friends and contacts I had been given turned out to be useless. I was alone, out of cash, and out of gas. Northern California, my nominal home was saturated with missions from Tripurari Maharaja, Ashrama and Janardana Maharaja, Goswami Maharaja and many other important Vaishnavas. I had no place to call home, no money, nothing.
And so it was that I lost my Hare Krishna Mojo. From Costa Rica I hitched a ride on a jet-plane with some Canadian hippes who were convinced that I was Prince Myshkin out of Dostoyevsky. They paid my air-fair to Guatemala city. I took the bus to Antigua and Chichicastenango, then to La Mesilla where I got my Mexican visa in a pharmacy on the border.
My life in Mexico is a different story. I did my best to maintain my high ideals and found work as a teacher in a little elementary school. Time passed. I married.
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| Govinda Maharaja with my wife Aurora |
I worked as a teacher of English Languages and when the Universidad del Valle de Mexico opened its doors I began teaching as a full professor. Since then I've worked at different Tech Universities and am now affiliated with the Universidad de Guanajuato. I've been working there for about 10 years now, helping the people of Mexico acquire linguistic skills in English. I also teach Spanish, Guitar, Ukulele, and Eastern Philosophy.
My old friend and spiritual guide Goswami Maharaja invited to visit Chiang Mai, Thailand to collaborate on some new book projects for Guardian of Devotion Press. There in Chiang Mai, Goswami Maharaja has his headquarters: a yoga ashram in the jungle near a park where elephants roam freely.
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