SMILE!

Driving home from work yesterday I got stuck in rush hour traffic, westbound 84. A 15 minute drive stretched to 50-plus! No worries, I had His Holiness Niranjana Swami on the sound system and an unexpected darshan of the Lord of the Universe.

Just as I was coming out of the tunnel that goes under the mess of exits and interchanges in downtown Hartford I noticed a familiar face riding not-quite-ratha-car-bumper-style on a saab in the left lane. It was one of those classic Jagannatha SMILE! stickers that devotees hand out on sankirtan and sometimes in rock-shew parking lots. For the next couple miles I was content not to switch lanes like a crazy-person, jockeying for position in whichever lane seemed to be moving most quickly at any given moment, as Lord Jaganatha's smiling face passed me by and fell behind, passed me by and fell behind.

It reminded me of something I like to think about from time to time...

We all tell stories about "how I came to Krishna consciousness" which usually involve a devotee distributing books, or a first trip to the temple, maybe a Govinda's restaurant. I like to think about the times I came in contact with Krishna even before it seemed like the wheels of spiritual life had really started moving.

In my first few months as a "practicing devotee" I took some small amount of pride in the fact that I had taken the initiative to become a vegetarian before taking up Krishna consciousness - as if this was somehow a sign of spiritual aptitude. Surely, being a vegetarian is no big deal. As Srila Prabhupada points out "even monkeys are vegetarian, and the monkey is the most nonsense animal." Nonetheless, I was puffed-up and then blissfully humbled when I realized it was actually by the mercy of the devotees that I had given up flesh-eating.

When I became determined to give up meat I decided that I would need to be reasonably well informed in order to be successful - and not die from malnutrition. One of the books that I read was a copy of "A Higher Taste" I stole from my sister's bookshelf. She had received it from devotees while on a trip to Washington D.C. in high school.

After this little epiphany another realization soon followed: my sister also had one of those SMILE! stickers. She had put it on the inside of her bookbag and I distinctly remember intently staring at Jagannatha's merciful visage and wishing I had one of those stickers, too.

Jagannatha Swami nayana patha gami bhavatu me!