Today was a great day. The whole day and the whole night, around the clock thousands of people were doing the Parikrama of Vrindavan which is a walk of 9 kilometers. Local people, pilgrims from elsewhere, young, old, men, women, children, some alone, some in groups with family and friends, all without shoes. There was chanting going on and some were dancing. It was a great atmosphere.
Our Ashram is on the Parikrama road, so we prepared potatoes in a special way to distribute them to the pilgrims who were all coming by. Today is a very special Ekadashi of the whole year. Ekadashi is the eleventh day of the moon so it is twice a month. Many people keep a fast on this day. In this fasting potatoes and some green vegetables are allowed to be eaten so we boiled potatoes and prepared them with cumin, coriander, black pepper and crystal salt. We started in the morning and until six o’clock in the evening we distributed these potatoes to thousands of people. Everybody in the Ashram had fun in preparing, cooking and distributing and the people of course enjoyed the potatoes very much. We had the live cam on, too, and many people were watching what was going on. In this way I like technology. Only with that our friends around the globe were able to be with us.
It is also a special day in Hinduism. According to the Hindu belief Tulsi, who is considered a holy plant and Goddess, got married to Shaligram, a form of Vishnu on this day. With this day a time started which people consider as very good for starting something new. This is also a day on which many couples get married and everybody does a pooja in their home. My parents also got married on this day and this year we are celebrating their 45th wedding anniversary.
Click here to see pictures of today's distribution of food and the pilgrims
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Where does the tradition of walking without shoes come from? What is it rooted in? Just curious if anyone knows. This sounds like such a lovely time.
so cool that you have such old traditions. In the US we don’t realize it but- we are so new. Our culture is still forming and somewhat blank. We don’t have old practices like this to celebrate, it almost seems like we are still finding our identity.
Feed the pilgrims! Great.