Not Always Rosy!
Bhaktimarga Swami: I had met Jaya Vijay at a festival in the Berkley area some years ago and had marvelled at his working efforts. He was a padayatra (pilgrim) leader for 10 years from 1986 to 1996. He is indeed inspiring. I wanted to include him in this blog about the purifying nature of walking. An article appeared in the recent issue of Padayatra Worldwide:
“When you watch a Padayatra India slideshow everything seems rosy, but in fact, it was very difficult. Walking the highways in India is no place for a lady or gentleman. Some of the truck drivers are very rough – sometimes they go off the road or hit the oxen. We got malaria and dysentery. When the devotees get ill, it’s difficult to recover and keep moving at the same time. They have to stay on the tractor. They don’t have a private room. Maybe once or twice a month we might get a private room. Usually we stayed in open schools, where there was no privacy at all. People watched you when you took your bath or passed stool. Sadhu means “open book” – it is another definition of a sadhu – there is nothing to hide. You have to learn to sit down on your mat and be in your own mental world and do your own thing. Sometimes it’s hard to do it because you’re tired and you have people looking at you, laughing at you, joking about you. It’s a place to learn tolerance; it is not a joke. I have seen many devotees blow it or hit each other, not out of contempt but because they’d just had enough. I have seen lots of sannyasis go crazy with the kids. It is very difficult. Some devotees got injured. There were broken wrists and ankles, one devotee was hit by a truck, and another from Finland died when he fell under the tractor in South India. Sometimes we present the rosy side of padayatra, but to pick the roses there are many thorns, and sometimes you get pricked. It’s not a piece of cake. In the long run it’s very purifying – the most purifying program in our whole ISKCON society.”
(The Most Purifying Programs, by Jaya Vijaya dasa, Padayatra Newsletter, 2016)