In just a few hours the Hare Krishna temple in Dallas will be having what they call "Lord Krishna's Mountain Festival," which is three hours of celebrat... well, let me just show you the invite:
Govardhana Puja, also known as the "Lord Krishna's Mountain Festival" commemorates Lord Krishna protecting the inhabitants of his village from a torrential thunderstorm by holding a mountain named Govardhana over them for 7 days. The centerpiece of the festival is a 12 foot replica of Govardhana mountain made entirely of chocolate cake accompanied by ornately decorated dolls of the villagers. Surrounding the hill will be 1,008 other food preparations made by the Hare Krishna devotees. Later that night the temple room will be illuminated completely by candlelight for "The Festival of Lights" or Diwali. It's a stunning sight that only happens once a year! The celebration will also include kirtan or interactive musical meditation, dance, a free vegetarian feast, and more!
- 5p Kirtan
- 6p Class by Giriraj Swami
- 7p Mountain Kirtan Tour
- 8p Feast
[youtube=http://youtu.be/Yt4OemO_Qhk]
This is most awesome. Since I learned more about Diwali, I've looked forward to it every year. It adds some new meaning to the season, or maybe it's just a different meaning?
Every morning the devotees "wake up" the avatars in the temple. I've been present for this ritual and it's a pretty cool thing. I promised I would come back repeatedly but, it was too difficult to commit to. But anyway, they've already been preparing for this festival since four this morning and they didn't waste anytime to put one of the recordings up on their podcast. This goes more into the details of the story, what this celebration is all about:
[soundcloud url="https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/173933011" params="auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true" width="100%" height="450" iframe="true" /]
Unfortunately I can't go to this thing and I unfortunately cannot find the write up I did about a Diwali Celebration some two years ago for the Ekta Mandir up the street, but here are a few videos I thought were pretty cool, about this whole thing.
[youtube=http://youtu.be/TP5ECWdVqag?t=16s]