05-DEC-2010: Update from Guntur; heading to Tenali

05-DEC-2010: Guntur:

We all woke up by 5am, finished sadhana, breafast and headed to a Yoga Center of Ved Vignan Maha Vidya Peeth (VVMVP). We addressed about 70 volunteers about our activities, what we are doing in the village and how they can participate.


- Village: Peda Vadlapudi: There was an eye checkup camp organized by Rama krishna mission and the Art of Living. We were invited to address the gathering of more than 600 people from about 40 villages nearby. It was a beautiful talk about health, villages, hygiene, water, organic farming, pesticides, yoga, meditation. We mentioned to them that now-a-days, progress or development is also measured in terms of the number of hospital beds per number of people. We consider this as progress instead of focusing on not getting sick. Many people seem to want to get sick with lack of exercise, bad food habits, lack of discipline, etc., and then increase the number of beds in hospitals. Wonder if this is progress.

In olden days, villagers were very healthy and strong, .... those who worked hard, had good food, had good discipline, etc. Now-a-days, almost every single house spends lakhs of rupees for some serious ailment. Cancer has become very common. I have many more stories but keep them to myself for now.

People were thirty for wisdom, yoga and meditation.

A lady from the nearby village (Emani) who runs a Balaji temple and Bhajan group invited to visit her village and also conduct programs on yoga and meditation from our organization.

From there we went to Pedda Kakani, a VERY famous Shiva Temple. Today is the end of Kartika Masam and it was flooded with thousands of devotees. We were given a stage to sing bhajans and address the devotees from nearly 100 villages. It was awesome. People mesmerized to see so many foreigners singing bhajans and chanting shokas and encouraging them to dive deep into their culture and preserve it. Malleswara Swamy was installed by sage Agastya (typo).

We met several thousand people in a few hours.
Returned to Guntur for lunch.

We are now heading to village-1 (forgot the name) and then to Tenali at 7pm to Kanyaka Parameswari Temple for a satsang.

More later.
got to go.
-BTTR