Angkor Wat Resources

The goal of this personal pilgrimage is to reach Angkor Wat and document some of its wonders.: Here are some photos of Angkor and links to interesting pages.

We'll be visiting Angkor with a film crew and a group of scientific experts, sanskritists, anthropologists and guides to answer a few questions. Angkor Wat is a miniature replica of the universe in stone and represents an earthly model of the cosmic world. The central tower rises from the center of the monument symbolizing the mythical mountain, Meru, situated at the center of the universe. Its five towers correspond to the peaks of Meru. The outer wall corresponds to the mountains at the edge of the world, and the surrounding moat the oceans beyond.

Was the holy ground at Angkor part of Greater India from the time of the Mahabharata War? How did the people live and what was their peculiar view of Cosmology? How did the Vedic observatories erected there function? What happened to the Angkor civilization, and why did it disappear? Is it possible that strange visitors from other planets established these highly advanced observatories?  So these and many other questions will be probed in our journey and later developed in a film documentary we're putting together.  Discovery Channel here I come.

Here are some links to the must see temples of Angkor.

 (Let me know if there is a broken link and I will try to fix it later)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/asia/cambodia/11252340/Angkor-Wat-an-interactive-guide-to-the-must-see-temples.html

General Information.

http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/668

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angkor_Wat

 http://www.tourismcambodia.com/attractions/angkor/angkor-wat.htm

Nice Video on Angkor from National Geographic

http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/ancient-mysteries/angkor-wat-temples

New discoveries of lost city with laser technology.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/18/lasers-lost-city-angkor-wat-cambodia

General Info

http://www.livescience.com/23841-angkor-wat.html

Prabhupada

I've been asked by some of you to write a bit about my guru, Srila Prabhupada, how I knew him, what he taught, what was he like. Well, the temperature here in Mexico is below zero right now and I have a terrible cold, so I'm just posting a few photos. A picture tells a thousand words.  As I continue writing I'll have more.

Srila Prabhupada was a great scholar of The Bahgavata Purana, the summum bonum of Vedic shastra, and knew Sanskrit deeply. He began publishing his translation of Bhagavatam in India in the late 1950s. Here he is in Chippiwada, India. He felt that it was becoming difficult to preach in India, since post-independence India wanted to copy the West. Reform and modernization led the people of India to reject their past and embrace Western modes and fashions. Prabhupada decided that spiritual transformation would only come by preaching in English in the United States and other Western countries.

After arriving in the West, practically penniless, armed only with the message of Krishna, a few books and a pair of hand cymbals, Prabhupada began to preach with fierce determination to the rebels and hippies in New York who were interested in a new current of thought.

As people began to pay attention, he traveled to the West Coast and preached in San Francisco California. Apart from being a mesmerizing speaker, he was a humble man who loved kirtan and bhajans and was an accomplished mrdanga player. Here's Prabhupada leading a kirtan at "Hippie Hilll" in San Francisco, when there were very few serious followers.

I haven't space enough here to properly appreciate Srila Prabhupada, but will write more later. That's it for now. I'll write some more tomorrow. Thanks for checking in. Gaura Hari Bol!

Another School Year Finished.

End of Semester at the University of Guanajuato.

Here we are rehearsing for  the Christmas Program at our school in Mexico. Now that school is out, I'm ready to pack my bags for Mexico City, Cancun, Frankfurt, Saint Petersburg, Moscow, Kiev, Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Phomn Penh and Angkor Wat. But first a tip of the hat to Santa Claus. 

Updated Poster for Kyiv

http://testlpgenerator.ru/mahayogi/

Here's an updated link to the new poster for Kiev, December 13, 2014.
In the photo below, we're at a Ukrainian Coffee House and Reading Center in Kyiv. I'm reading from the Ukrainian poet Shevchenko, with friend Asutosh Krishna.

Dragon master

As I was leaving Thailand, it was decided that I should meet Avadhuta Maharaja, leader of the Russian section. We met up in the Suvarnabhumi airport in Bangkok. I offered him a dragon-master robe that I had bought for him as a present. 

Avadhuta Maharaja tries on dragon-master robe

"Sorry, this doesn't fit me. You keep it."

"Fits me better."

Elephants and Mystics

There in Chiang Mai, Thailand, Goswami Maharaja has his headquarters: a yoga ashram in the jungle near a park where elephants roam freely. We walked among these proud and noble beasts, discussing their place in the ancient Vedic mythology and wisdom teachings of India.

New Life

As a teacher you need new ideas all the time. It occurred to me to use the technology more. I put up this ukulele video on youtube on a whim.
This is me doing "Across the sea."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTTd0pI3JHo


Last year, like a bolt out of the blue, my old friend and spiritual guide Goswami Maharaja invited me to visit Chiang Mai, Thailand to collaborate on some new book projects for Guardian of Devotion Press.

Here we are undercover at the "Bamboo Palace" discussing Bhaktivinod Thakur's Tattva-Viveka and Hegelian Dialectics.

I was  more than happy to visit Chiang Mai, and felt spiritually uplifted. apart from being a natural philosopher, Goswami Maharaja has a great sense of humor. We kidded around and talked about the old days and some new ideas. It amazed me how close our friendship is, even after so many years.

Check out dueling umbrellas.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mb9j_nNjVh4