NIOS on Tour 2019 (Half Way Round the Circle)

Hanumatpresaka Swami, Prof. Huber Hutchin Robinson, left our NIOS offices in beautiful Murfreesboro, Tennessee on 5th June 2019. With him, he took Tom Brown, Buck White (Monkey and Piggy), and other alter-egos.

HOUSTON

The first stop was the ISKCON Nila-Madhava Dhama project in Houston, Texas. NIOS has been working in close cooperation with the project for decades as it represents one of the finest manifestations of classical culture in North America, the Bengali Vaisnavism of Rupa Goswami and Sri Caitanya of the 16^th century.

He lectured on the ISKCON Bhakti-Vaibhav curriculum and met with the local project Director Hiralal Patel and also lunched and sang songs with the students and faculty of the Goswami Academy primary school. There was also a lecture at the Bhakti Urban Farm ISKCON on Vedic and Western Cosmology which attracted a predominantly Western audience and showed the Bh. Vai. students how their studies are essential for developing a healthy worldview.

PERU-BOLIVIA

Then a long flight into the depths of the deep, dark continent under the belt of the equator, to Lima, Peru. Here it is Winter. There is none of the central heating as in the North and in many ways, the mind of the traveling teacher, researcher, can only survive if he adopts the attitude of being on one long Safari.

Every day, every night, was filled with programs. There were continuous daily studies of Srimad Bhagavatam with the ISKCON members in the Lima regions of Callao, Central Lima, and Chosica (35km East of Lima). Also symposia on Education in ISKCON with National and International leaders every weekend in Chosica, and Bolivia. The trip to Bolivia was extreme stress being hours in transit at 13,333 feet etc.

Besides the work with the ISKCON Ministry of Education, there were meetings with the leaders of the Waldorf, Montessori, and Jesuit schools in Peru.

All of these were very stimulating in terms of the organization of the next NIOS symposium in Peru: Education and the Sacred.

NIOS officials such as Alejandro Salazaar are giving their life to refining the final details for a three-year co-sponsorship of the symposium between NIOS and San Marcos University, the oldest university in the Western Hemisphere.

With the help of our great mentor, Prof. Miguel Polo, from San Marcos, we hope to have a formal inauguration ceremony with the Rector of San Marcos, the Ambassador of India, and others when we return to Peru for the last week in July.

We had two colloquia at the San Marcos Department of Philosophy on the symposium and a very, very, very big event at Bellas Artes, the National Fine Arts Academy. Along with the publication work we had to do for ISKCON etc. this event at BA almost killed us. It was titled, Art, Psyche and Spirituality – A Contrast and Comparison of The Red Book of Carl Jung and the Bhakti-rasamrta-Sindhu of Rupa Goswami.

The hand-outs, cultural aspects, refreshments, and especially the dialog and questions by the Rector, Dean, Faculty, and Students were electrifying. We expect to be working closely with BA as well as San Marcos in our event in October which dates have been set for the 24^th-27^th of October.

Squeezing into the airplane we made it to Buenos Aires where our host, ISKCON Temple in Colegios, has rescued our 99% exhausted body. This Yoga of Rupa and Caitanya is wonderful, however, because it has allowed us to use up all the energy in the gas tank but not damage the motor.

Regular symposia continue on the Bhagavata literature here in Buenos Aires, ISKCON to packed houses, and we have started to meet local academics which will include the chief editor from the team that translated The Red Book into Spanish.

Our next report should be from the USA if we survive the next few weeks, and please bless us that this NIOS work can go on making a significant contribution to the growth of the cultivation of the human spirit.