In padayatra you learn the meaning of simple living and high thinking. Every day you have new conditions, and when moving place to place, you always find yourself dependent on Lord Krishna to get through difficulties. Krishna always gives you the strength, the ability, or the external circumstances to get through every difficulty, and makes all the arrangement for your day-to-day facility.
We never want for anything. It is like in the temple, only that external situation is different every day. Every thing is new and changing every day.
In holy places you get extra mercy. Especially in Padayatra India you realize that all of Bharata is Lord Krishna’s playground either directly or through the pastimes of His devotees. It is ever easy to increase your attachment to Lord Krishna on this padayatra. With that inspiration I try to share that with the local people who have forgotten the real glories of Bharata. In today’s world this appreciation is vanishing. With the sankirtana movement especially distributing Srila Prabhupada’s books, encouraging people to take shelter of Lord Krishna’s holy names and appreciate the nectar of prasada, people can give up the desires to go to the US and appreciate the great fortune they have of taking birth in this holy land. In this way I make many friends every day, and I find my family increasing without limit. Lord Krishna gives me more and more happiness.
Before I came to Krishna consciousness in 1975 in Amsterdam, Holland, I had no faith in anyone except the supreme Lord. Lord Krishna has given me Srila Prabhupada and his followers as my most important friends and guides. Because of Srila Prabhupada I can realize my eternal relationship with Lord Krishna and all the living beings. Padayatra is a wonderful way to do this all over Bharat, in Lord Krishna’s land, to revive that consciousness in the hearts of people in every town and village.
This way I feel my life has some purpose: living and dying for in my journey back home, back to Godhead with Srila Prabhupada and his loving devotees in the eternal sankirtan army of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu. My strong desire is to spend the rest of my life in this Padayatra India party. Every day I pray to Lord Krishna and His different expansions, different demigods, and other devotees who can give strength to continue on. It is an ongoing struggle. But that struggle becomes a very intimate relationship with Lord Krishna. How He preserves what I have, provides what I need, to keep going internally and externally. In this way my attachment to Him deepens everyday in a very intense, dynamic exchange and simultaneously my relationship with devotees in padayatra deepens more and more wonderfully. The relationships with Lord Krishna and His sold-out devotees are essential nectar of my life. Of course that is there with devotees all over the world, and with people you meet on the road. But when you are on the frontline of a battlefield with the special forces team, you come to appreciate and depend on each other very deeply.
All of India is a holy place everywhere you go there are pastimes of devotees or personal pastimes of Lord Krishna. This is Bharata and through Padayatra India I have come to understand this very deeply. I have come to feel that all Bharata is my home.
As told to Murari Gupta Dasa