It was about a 10 minute drive to Santa Monica. We were at this giantic out door mall. The trees surrounding the area had bluish white lights decorated all around. It was actually a beautiful spot to hold a harinam and there were hundreds of people walking the streets. There were other people however doing their little performances. I saw a sign being held up called Jokes For $1.00. Kind of silly if you ask me but this is Kali yuga and people will do anything to get their money in. Then I saw someone else holding up a sign that said "God Kills Repent." and on the back of it said "Jesus Loves and Hates." What is interesting about that sign is that it reminded me of Krishna because Krishna is God and He does kill, He kills the demons inside of us and around us. But He still loves us and wants us to return to Him. And the things that Krishna hates are envy and pride in His devotees and in other ordinary people.
Anyways we were out on Sankirtan for two hours so I put some more service in that way by chanting and then I gathered up enough courage to distribute our yellow cards that advertises our temple New Dwaraka that has the maha mantra on it. I distributed at least 40 of those cards. Then as the kirtan got even more ecstatic, I even dug through the boxes of books we brought with us and made an attempt to do some book distribution. I didn't distribute any last night but I came VERY close to distributing one book to this middle aged lady but she couldn't make a donation so I gave her one of the yellow cards about our temple on it instead. So how I gathered up courage to do a little book distribution was that I looked for people who looked friendly or that were just standing there watching us with interest. I managed to speak to a few people out there. They were polite at least. I know Krishna will eventually send someone to me who may be rude but I will just have to deal with that. There is always one bad apple in the crowd.
But the realization I had from the sankirtan is this: I felt Srila Prabhupada's presence alot more strongly than I have ever before. I never met Srila Prabhupada personally because he left this world before I was born. But I felt him standing near me, and before I went to grab some books to hand out I could almost hear him giving me a little push gently by saying "Go on and try it. Distribute my books." I hope he will forgive me as I did not distribute any that night but i at least made an attept to distribute and even came close to giving one out.
Anyways, here is a short video of the sankirtan party last night and some pictures.
click on the blue highlighted link to watch the video.
http://youtu.be/sGH4SCpCDlA
