Petersburg: a little history

St Petersburg was established by the great Russian Tsar, Peter the Great. 

Peter the Great

He was determined to modernize and knew that Russia would never be an important power if it had no international reach. In those days that meant you needed a navy. So he went North and found an inhospitable piece of land on the Finnish Gulf, conquered it, and established Russia's first naval base: St. Petersburg.

Old St. Petersburg

Petersburg, with its western ambience became home to Russian elite and intelligentsia. It became known for its artists and poets like Alexander Pushkin...

Alexander Pushkin: Russia's greatest poet.

Fyodor Dostoevsky, brooding writer of dark existential novels

...Dostoevsky and others.

The city changed its name after the Russian revolution and became Leningrad. In the early years of the second world war, Hitler unleashed the most terrible siege ever known of a populated city: The Siege of Leningrad.

The terrible siege of St. Petersburg

The people of Leningrad held on against Hitler's armies, freezing cold, starvation and bombardment for 900 days, around two and a half years.  The cold war of the 50s and 60s followed the shooting war, but gradually things stabilized for the Soviet Union and Leningrad, and most of the city's population enjoyed relative prosperity. In 1991, after a city-wide referendum, the city of Leningrad returned to its original name - St. Petersburg.

Saint Petersbug today is a charming cosmopolitan city.

St. Petersburg Today

Since Petersburg has always been home for intellectuals, poets, and creative people,  it was only natural that Govinda Maharaja together with Avadhuta Maharaja and Vijaya Ramana would establish an important center here.

Govinda Maharaja with Vijaya Ramana, planning the construction.

Govinda Maharaja's vision would become the Veda Life center in Lahta, St. Petersburg: the next stop on my Journey to Surrender.

The Lahta temple in St. Petersburg, from a photo taken last week.

I never thought I'd be back so soon, but as of next week, I'm "Back in the USSR," as the Beatles used to say. So, Adios Mexico, привет, Petersburg.

I'm standing on a bridge in front of Pushkin's house. That's the River Neva at my back.

Countdown to Petersburg: Minus 4 Days and Counting.

That's me in Saint Petersburg, Russia, in August. I'm standing next to Vijay Raman on my right and translator Asutosh on my left. That's Prithu Das in the orange t-shirt next to Vijaya Raman. Prithu Das is a jack of all trades: Editor, Sanskritist, Travel Agent,Visa Negotiator, Accountant, Temple Maintenance, he does it all. He'll pick me up at the Petersburg airport on Thursday, Dec 4, if all goes according to plan. 

The church in the background is called the Church of the Holy Blood. It was there that Alexander II, tsar of all the Russias was assasinated when an insurgent rolled a bomb under his horse-carriage. The church sits on the River Neva, close to the house of famous Russian poet, Pushkin. They gave me the tour of the city.

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."