Wednesday 30 June 2010

Thursday, June 24th, 2010

Liking Your Shoes

Halifax, Nova Scotia

Our small cast of three for drama presentations this weekend made its way by flight to Halifax. People generally ask after you reach the airport, “How was the flight?”

That’s a hard one to respond to because flying is not so exciting. If someone asks, “How was your walk?” then you have something to report. Since walking was at a minimum there is little to say. My eyes did travel through pages of “What Is the Difficulty?” a book by author Sruti Kirti, assistant to our guru, Srila Prabhupada. I came upon one passage to do with shoes.

Sruta Kriti writes about Prabhupada, “While I was gently rubbing his body he said ‘One of my favourite things when I was young was my shoes. Once, my father bought me a pair of shoes. They were imported from England. They had soft leather uppers and hard leather souls. That was a fortune… I like my shoes very much. I remember wearing them to school.’

“At that point he stopped speaking for a few minutes. I was caught up in Srila Prabhupada’s mood. I tried to imagine him walking around in his shoes. Still massaging his beautiful form I smiled and said, ‘Prabhupada, when you walked to school, did you look at your shoes as you were walking?’

‘Yes, he said laughing. “I would look down at my shoes. I liked them so much, these shoes.’ “

3 KM

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