The inward life may be silent on the outside sometimes, but that does not mean nothing has happened. Currently my service at Audarya has shifted from mainly physical work to working on the new webstore. from being outside to sitting inside the yurt. I’m pretty excited about the features and usability of the new store and think it will be a relief for Swami’s students and also Gaudiyas in general. It will have a lot to offer. There are many aspects. The technical side was already done by another student of Swami, so I basically focus on the design and usability of the site, the architecture. Starting it all up cost quite some time as the program we are using was unknown to me, but I’ve figured out where to find everything (through forums and guides). Sometimes I have to do a little programming too, actually it is more copy and pasting, but it helps to have a basic understanding of the logic in programming. Moreover, it involves looking at other websites like amazon.com to see which model they are using. There is a lot to learn from this. And in the background I’m working on customer support and marketing. In other words, how we can keep track of bestsellers, sales report etc. The webstore is quite a big and extensive project. Yesterday I decided I wasn’t working very efficiently and set up a goplan.org account, which is a project management tool. I use it to create a tasks list of everything that needs to be done before we can launch the store. And since Gauravani and I are working on it together it is easier to communicate the status of the project and show who is working on which tasks. It also makes it easy to communicate the interim status of the project to Swami who so gets a better idea of where we are heading. (I had rather used activeCollab as it is more extensive and free, but it needs to be installed on a server and I didn’t want to take time for that. I recommend this for the sanga when people work independently together on a project.)
Besides this, I’ve started to do more deity worship. Ever since I received diksa, Gurunistha is training me more and more in the aspects of deity worship. I’m glad he does, because deity worship is very special. There is no chance for the mind to doze off because of all the aspects involved with it and as Swami says it is a different realm, one where eternity meets temporariness. I know some people will have no clue what I’m talking about, but an explanation of deity worship will come another time.
I’ve been at Audarya for almost 2 months now and have 2,5 months to go before my flight returns to Amsterdam. It is interesting to think about the difference in lifestyle here and “at home.” First of all, I do not move around as much as I do in Holland. I mostly hang out with the same people apart from the once in a while visiting guests. It is after all a monastery, where people turn inward and try to meditate on the self and its relation with the environment. I have been out of the monastery twice since I have arrived here and I have no desire to go out unless I have too. I mean generally we go out of our homes in search for excitement, but here you do not have to go out, because this is excitement. Seeing the temple being build, all the rooms being drywalled, seeing the roof on the altar tower. As Swami said this morning this is an exciting place.
Every night Swami is reading and giving short lectures from Caitanya Caritamrta where we just arrived at the section where Caitanya Mahaprabhu meets with Ramanda Roy. This is exciting as well. It sheds light on the inner life of the devotee as Sri Caitanya and his associates experienced it. There is a lot to learn and draw from what Swami teaches us. For those wanting to come here for some time, there is indeed no loss. You will never regret spending 1,2 or 3 months of your life here in service. Every conception you had before will be corrected. Change is a constant in the material world. So can it be in the inner world as long as we are willing to gradually give up attachments and to make genuine progress in service. Krishna says “Ma sucah” (BG 18.66) and there is no reason to fear.

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