Join The Marathon – Make A Vedic Village!

A Hand written letter of H.H Bhakti Raghava Swami!
OM Surabhyai Namah ! OM Sri Gurave Namah!
We are in the first month of our marathon which will cover the next two years. The plan is to lay the foundation of a mini village that will highlight the basics of what a traditional vedic village looks like. By Krishna’s mercy we have found an “organic architect” who specializes in building with local materials and who fully supports the principles of a varnasrama dharma based living community. We have a team of 20 devotees dedicated to the project and we wish to give an opportunity to interested devotees to take advantage of this unique learning experience by sharing your skills and talents to make it all happen.

Our proposed vedic village is located within the Udupi district of south Karnataka also known among the Vaisnavas at dakshin Vrindavan. At present we have 15 acres of land with good possibility of expanding to 25 or 30 acres. Devotees have been maintaining the land since the last 7 years growing their own paddy and vegetables. There are already varieties of mature fruit trees yielding mangoes, jack fruit, guava, bananas of other seasonal fruits .This year the devotees cultivated 9 fields of paddy with plans to increase that to 14 next season. From two local breeds of cows, Subhadra and her brother Balaram, we now maintain 20 cows and daily provide milk to the presiding deities of Sri Sri Krishna Balaram. This coming January-2012 marks 4th year of the SAYADRI VARNASRAMA COLLEGE where 3 month courses are given to select students on the theme “Land, cows and Krishna”.

Within one month construction plans will be underway. Although the MARTHON is earmarked for two years we expect additional development to continue for another 3 years bringing to 5 years the time needed to fully manifest in detail the propose vaisnava village.

Some of the salient futures of the project will include the Sri Sri Krishna Balaram Mandir, the SAYADRI Varnasrama college and the Sri NARAD PARASURAM GURUKULAM. These two form the basis and will give shape, direction and inspiration to the rest of the project. In his essay conceptions of Gita Nagari, Srila Prabhupada has emphasized these two infrastructures as being the two main pillars for a community . The Sri Sri Krishna Balaram mandir will bring together the two brothers, Krishna and Balaram in their udupi bala features. Nine arches will prelude the entrance to the temple, reminiscent of the 7 gates leading to vaikuntha with appointed guards at each arch the last being JAYA & VIJAYA. The staircase leading up to the temple will have 108 steps allowing each pilgrim who so chooses to chant one round of japa before reaching the darshan of Krishna Balaram. From the elevated temple one will behold the same view shared by Krishna & Balaram, the pictorisyne & Panasonic SAHYADRI Mountain range upon which the sun sheds it’s golden rays in the early hours of the day.

The Sri NARADA PARASURAM GURUKULAM will give an opportunity to some 20 students who will be exposed mainly to brahminical & Ksatriya training and education. Kalari Yoga training which is prominent is the Neighorins STATE of Kerala will form the basis for the Ksatriya training. Both levels of training will cover respectively periods of 8 and 12 years in total.
In addition to the temple complex and educational facilities, the project will also setup the SAYADRI Yogashala and Ayurvedic Nature Cure Institute providing both training & treatment to those in need. Guest house facilities will also be provided for those wishers to learn and participate in the daily activities at SAYADRI SRI KRISHNA BALARAM KSETRA.

One of the main areas of focus will be traditional agriculture totally organic and using ox power to til the land and to generate various water lifting devices traditionally in use such as MOTHE and persion wheel. These village technologies including oil ghani , pottery and others have already been installed at Krishna Balaram Ksetra with good results. One entire section of the village will be dedicated to depicting the 12 standard village ARTS & CRAFTS.
One the special feature of the complex will be the use of traditional lighting systems avoiding all forms of modern machine powered instruments. The main ingredient will be the traditional castor oil which will light up in the evening & early morning the major street lamps in the complex.

Except for the temple which will be constructed using stone all other structures will be mud blocks & wood. The entire layout of the village will follow rules of Vastu.
This is but giving a brief insight in some of the features of the proposed project at SSKBK. To find out more about how you could be part of these developments, please write to project coordinator Sri Ram das, at sriramadasa.brs@gmail.com .

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