This year my wife and I got the great mercy of staying in Sri Vrindavana Dhama for a prolonged time. It has been filled with great emotions. From one perspective it has been extremely challenging; with health issues, intolerable heat, and many external disturbances (Indian factor). From another perspective it has been extremely sweet with lots of spiritual emotions, reciprocations, and teachings. All of those at the same time! Despite the challenges, the heart moving sweetness of Sri Vrindavana Dhama allows one to go beyond one's poor ability to tolerate.

Sometime ago, we joined the Vraja Mandala Parikrama (30 days of walking in the Holy Dhama) and met one of our friends. She shared with us the intensity of the experience using words like intolerable (they stay under tents for one month in very austere situation). When we asked her why she is not stopping it, she answered: “It is so challenging but at the same time, it is so sweet and blissful!”

In the Holy Dhama, the sweetness and the spiritual atmosphere are overpowering all the challenges. It is so potent that even a non-believer will experience that sweetness. In nectar of devotion, Srila Prabhupada writes: “Çréla Rüpa Gosvämé has described Mathurä-maëòala: "I remember the Lord standing by the banks of the Yamunä River, so beautiful amid the kadamba trees, where many birds are chirping in the gardens. And these impressions are always giving me transcendental realization of beauty and bliss." This feeling about Mathurä-maëòala and Våndävana described by Rüpa Gosvämé can actually be felt even by non-devotees. The places in the eighty-four-square-mile district of Mathurä are so beautifully situated on the banks of the River Yamunä that anyone who goes there will never want to return to this material world. These statements by Rüpa Gosvämé are factually realized descriptions. All these qualities prove that Mathurä and Våndävana are situated transcendentally. Otherwise, there would be no possibility of invoking our transcendental sentiments in these places. Such transcendental feelings are aroused immediately and without fail after one arrives in Mathurä or Våndävana.

We hope that most of our readers will soon get the opportunity to visit or re-visit the Holy Dhama. If that would not be easily possible, one can also visit Holy places in the west (like Goloka Dhama) which are also filled with vibrant spiritual energy. For those of you well knowledgeable in the art of meditation, one can also visit such a place in one’s mind and derive a similar benefit. By the contact of this vibrant spiritual energy, one can easily overcome all challenges of life.  

Your servant, Gaurahari dasa
for and on behalf of Goloka Dhama.