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Part 1: The Rāga of Life: Finding Harmony Through Sādhanā Śrī Dīp Nārāyaṇ Bhagavān Kī Jaya. Śrī Śrī Dev Puruṣa Mahādeva Kī Jaya. Dharm Samrāṭ Paramahaṁsa Śrī Svāmī Madhavānandapurījī Mahārāj Kī Jai. Viśva Guru Mahāmaṇḍaleśvara Paramahaṁsa Śrī Svāmī Maheśvarānandapurījī Satguru Deva Kī Jaya. Lighting an incense stick here feels almost amusing. As Swāmījī was saying yesterday, it is like sonā me sū gandha nahīṁ—there is no smell in gold. Everything here is already so beautiful; adding fragrance to this air seems somehow unnecessary. Yesterday, I was watching and later speaking with Fabrice about his music and his thoughts while sitting here. For me, it was very interesting. We also discussed his sādhanā of learning to play. I am always curious about Indian musicians and how long they practice. He said that during periods of intense practice, he would play for twenty hours a day. He even felt a sense of pity when he had to go to the toilet, considering it a waste of time. What a sādhanā. He mentioned that when he first sat here, he was not quite sure what to play. He was trying to feel the atmosphere, the trees, and the surroundings to find the rāga that suited and harmonized with this environment. That is something you can do when you practice twenty hours a day. When you begin to master something, you learn to play in harmony with your environment. We, too, cannot always change our surroundings; we can only try to come into harmony with where we are. To have that skill is our aim through practice. As we gain more experience practicing yoga and integrating it into daily life, as our sādhanā lengthens and we encounter different situations, we learn not to always try and shape the situation to our liking, but to be able to be in harmony with the situation that presents itself. If we can manage that, then our peace is no longer dependent on external circumstances. Our peace depends on how we play with that situation, how we act within it. Fabrice, through his mastery of the instrument and the sādhanā he has dedicated to it, finds a way to unite with the atmosphere. He lives in a city and surely also finds the appropriate rāga to play there. Last night we also discussed rāgas for different chakras. He said, "Yes, the best for me would be to sit in a room of the color corresponding to that chakra, play for twenty hours, and see what emerges." We are not all musicians in that way, but in our sādhanā, it is a similar process. The sādhanā we are doing this week here in Strylky will not be directly suited to where we will be next week in our daily life. Through awareness and practice, you can come to know which practices balance you in the different situations that arise. Consider tuning a guitar. When the strings are not in tune, there is a dissonant vibration between them. As you tune them, they come into harmony and the dissonant waves stop. For many people, when they are dissatisfied with their living or work situation, before making a major change, it may be that some fine-tuning of their attitude toward that situation could make it completely different. You can play your sādhanā and practice according to the rāga that suits your situation. If you practice that, and then practice it more in different situations, you become able to adjust your practice, to change it according to where you are. A sādhanā in India is very different from a sādhanā in Strelka. In India, the sādhanā you do in summer and winter is also different. What you do during intensive karma yoga is completely different from what you do on a retreat. When you move from one situation to another, you may not know what to do. But when you practice with awareness, you slowly learn. That is when you find balance within yourself, because you have had to do something unusual. You learn your own method to return to your balance, to bring yourself back to your harmony. When we go into the forest here, it feels so peaceful and beautiful. But it is actually noisy. There is noise in the trees, from the birds, from animals, from footsteps. Perhaps the decibel level is not so different from the village, but it feels completely different because everything is in harmony; it is all working together. We also bring ourselves into tune with that. So, the practice is to learn how to do that in every situation. When practicing karma yoga, we are also learning how to be balanced. From my perspective, what I learned doing karma yoga in Jadan... I came to Jadan very aware of one aspect of my personality but had no idea about the other extreme—the full limit of my capability, both physically and mentally. To know where the middle is, you have to know where both extremes are. My concept of how much work I could do in a day and how much rest I needed was what I would now call the middle. But as you all know, one of Swāmījī's teachings is to show you the extreme of how much you can manage. When you think you are already tired, and then suddenly there is a late-night karma yoga task, you discover that there was still something left in your petrol tank. We think the tank is empty, but there is a huge reserve. Perhaps, if it were our own choice, we would not use it. But through that karma yoga and Swāmījī's guidance, you come to know the extent of that reserve. That completely changes your perspective of where your balance is, where your middle is, where you should try to be normally. We do not aim to be at that extreme all the time. But when Swāmījī puts you there and you learn again how to balance yourself when you come back, you know you can go there. That is the beauty of doing karma yoga. For me, it was almost like losing a fear of overexertion. I used to think that if I did that much, I would surely get sick. That had nothing to do with the work; it was just my mind thinking I would get sick, so I would. But when you experience it, you know you can go there for a few days with no problem, and you know what to do in your practice to return to your normal balance. Thanks to your experience and exercises, you gain the awareness that you are able to bring the balance back. Take another example of a guitar player. When we start practicing, if we do not do our practice, we lose our balance. When someone first plays guitar, if it is in tune, they can play, but they do not really know how to tune it. Slowly, you gain experience and learn to tune it, but some limits remain. But a person who has made that their life's sādhanā—if they are on stage and a string breaks, nobody will notice in the music that a string is missing. They have so much experience with such things happening because they have practiced for so long. They know how to adjust, to change the chords so it will still sound the same. That is the beauty and essence of a long, long sādhanā over many years. It is so beautiful to see some people here who have been practicing with Swāmījī for forty years. Their constant practice and vast experience in different situations, and of how to practice in those situations—that is the treasure of constant practice. Regarding this balance, I wanted to say something briefly about breathing and prāṇāyāma. When we breathe slowly, we naturally feel more relaxed. But there can be a misconception if you breathe too deeply while breathing slowly. Physiologically, the effect of prāṇāyāma is that you get a little more carbon dioxide in your blood. The consequence is that your nervous system becomes slightly less sensitive. That is what you are aiming for in yoga to allow you to meditate better. However, if you take a completely full breath, even if you only breathe two or three times a minute, you will still have more air entering your lungs than before. So, when doing prāṇāyāma, it is important to slow the breath but also not to make the breath too large in volume, as it can have the opposite effect, making you more sensitive. For different prāṇāyāmas, like Nāḍī Śodhana practiced for calming down, this is a very small point, but do think about it when you practice. So, I just wanted to share these points. Practice, but try to focus not only on changing the situation, but also on how we can be in harmony with it. Constantly be aware that although you may fail on a given day, it is that practice, that failure, and learning from it that makes you the master of your own instrument. As you become its master, you can play the rāga in any situation. I wanted to add a little to continue on the point raised about karma yoga and how it changes us. He said he had practiced a lot of being lazy. My life is different now. For about thirty-five years, I had the concept that I was an intellectual. I was good in school in everything except sports. Every year, the teacher would say, "He tries, and he cannot. So what can we do?" I developed the concept that I could not do anything with my body, and that became my reality. Once, trying a handstand, I fell and hurt myself badly, requiring months of special training to overcome the problems. I remember when my parents tried to help by sending me to a sports club in my free time. It was meant to help, but for me it was so scary that I would cry every time I had to go, until they gave up after some weeks. My first real approach to my physical body was at about age thirty-five, through yoga. Then I realized it was a mental concept. After a few weeks or maybe three months, the yoga teacher would say, "If you want to see it well done, look at him, look at me." Yoga opened something in me. But still, I avoided any physical work. I felt like an intellectual who should not have to do such work, though I realized I was so stiff I had to do something. That is why I continued with yoga. Then I became a swami, and Swāmījī sent me to India. What kind of work was there? You have to work in the kitchen, clean rooms when people come, do painting, carry things from one place to another. Once, I remember planting thousands of trees in the monsoon mud. My inner commentary was, "I feel like a pig." Moving beds—for some time I was in charge of the storeroom, moving all the things around, including heavy wooden beds. Something interesting happened. To hold on to the concept "I cannot do that, I do not want to do that" takes so much energy. Every time, thinking, "Can I do that? Do I want to do that?" It is actually much easier just to accept it and do it. At least half of the energy goes into the inner resistance against the work. If you are in such a situation for a longer time, you come to a point where something inside says, "Let me just do it." When we say it is a mental concept, what is the concept of the mind? The mind is governed by certain principles, and it is important to learn from Swāmījī what these are. Basically, there are two key principles. One is called saṅkalpa and vikalpa. Saṅkalpa means I make up my mind, I want something, I go for it; that is my concrete aim. Later comes vikalpa: no, I give it up, I want something else. In a positive way, we use saṅkalpa, for example, in yoga nidrā. Swāmījī always says one achievement of mantra practice is a stronger saṅkalpa śakti. We must be careful, for if it is not combined with clear vivekā (discrimination), it can be dangerous. Saṅkalpa and vikalpa represent one game of opposites in which the mind engages. But more important is the other principle: Rāga and Dveṣa. Here we are directly at the core of yoga philosophy. At the beginning of the second chapter of the Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali, he speaks about this. He explains the five main obstacles on our spiritual path, the five kleśas: Avidyā (ignorance); Asmitā (or Ahaṅkāra, the ego, the sense of "I-am-ness"); then Rāga and Dveṣa (likes and dislikes); and finally, Abhiniveśa (the fear of death due to our identification with the body). For our practical purposes, Rāga and Dveṣa are the core points on which we can really work. When we go for something, we have all these good arguments. But these arguments are more for others. If we are honest with ourselves, we realize that ninety-nine percent of our daily decisions are made because of likes and dislikes. I like this, I do not like that. The problem in our life and in meditation is that we are slaves of our mind. Practically, this means we blindly go for what we like and avoid what we dislike. My mind had the concept: "I am an intellectual. I like everything related to the mind. I am not good for any other kind of work; I avoid that." Now, through karma yoga, this concept starts to be worked on. You realize how much energy it drains to constantly resist what you do not like. You realize how much easier and smoother life becomes when you just accept and do it. First, your inner resistance weakens. Then, you actually start discovering that it has a good effect; it helps balance your life. In my last years in Jadan, I was mainly in charge of the library, which is not heavy physical work—though sometimes moving books. But I also had work in the storeroom, a large space with many big boxes and about a hundred thousand books. Sometimes they had to be reorganized, which meant heavy physical work, moving thousands of books. When I had the bookshop, I received heavy parcels, up to fifty kilos, and had to carry them. Sometimes I had to quickly prepare boxes to send to an ashram. Originally, this did not fit my concept. But I realized it was good; it balanced me. I started to get a feeling that it is not good to do one type of work all the time. I have to balance myself by doing different types of work. So you start to, as I said about sādhanā, take the right sādhanā at the right moment, take the right type of work at the right moment to balance yourself, and simply stop choosing based on preference. You become open to what needs to be done now. For example, a group is coming, the rooms are dirty after a sandstorm. Who could do the work? They are in the kitchen, the office, the Oma Śram. Who is left? It is me, so let me do it. Some heavy beds need to be carried to prepare the rooms. Let me do it. You reach a point where you do not wait for someone to tell you, "Can you please do that?" You yourself see what needs to be done and do it. The only one who suffers is the mind, because it feels its concept is broken—Rāga and Dveṣa. In this way, you actually become the master of your mind. If we think practically about our lives, these two principles of Rāga and Dveṣa, likes and dislikes, you will realize how essential they are. Karma yoga is such a beautiful, practical way to work on that. It is a real sādhanā that helps us not only in life but even in meditation. What disturbs our meditation? I once went to Swāmījī and said, a little annoyed, "Swāmījī, I have real difficulties." His only commentary was: "Too many citta vṛttis." I did not find that so helpful at the time, but everything was in that one sentence. What creates these citta vṛttis, these disturbing mental activities? They are our desires—"I like" and "I do not like." Mostly, our mind gets busy during meditation thinking about something we could experience, have, or desire. But if we work on ourselves, in the end we stop desiring; we just accept what comes. Many years ago, I studied the Yoga Vāsiṣṭha. One statement is always in my mind: A wise person behaves like this—if something comes to enjoy, he enjoys it with a full heart. Part 2: The Training of the Mind: Stories from the Ashram We are all experts in that part, are we not? But the second part: if nothing comes to enjoy, then one doesn't even desire it. Accept life as it comes. Accept the situations as they present themselves and fit into them. Yesterday, Swāmījī made two statements. The children should enjoy ice cream. I guess they had no problem with that. And everyone should have been fasting until midnight. Later it was modified to Indian midnight, but still, it was something, and I guess it was not everyone's rāga. Honestly, I guess it's not by chance that Swāmījī made these two statements at the same time. He was very consciously playing on our jealousy. "If I were a child, I would not need to fast, and I would even get ice cream." That is Swāmījī's way, how he trains us just by giving clear instructions. Remember another situation. I think it was even when we had those night actions, about which I spoke two days ago. We were working at night, and it was something like three o'clock in the morning. Naturally, everyone was tired. Then came the order from Swāmījī: "So now the work is finished." Everyone was happy and started to prepare to go. A minute later came a second sentence from Swāmījī: "The work is finished for the women, and the men should continue." Why? You could say either everyone works half an hour more to get the same amount of work, or everyone can go, or everyone works longer. But that was an interesting way of putting it—another kind of jealousy. Just working on that. From that point of view, think about the many, many things Swāmījī tells us practically. It's all about working on our mind, on our mental concepts, and breaking them into pieces until we just become smooth and our vivekā takes over. "What has to be done, let me do it." Just like she said some days ago, that Swāmījī once said: "I would like that everyone behaves in an ashram like it would be his own. When you are at home and you see there is some dirt, you will naturally start, 'Let me clean it.' And you see some other work, let's say the dishes have to be washed, you will just say, 'OK, let me just do it.' Then you come to an ashram, and you suddenly behave like you're in a hotel. 'That's not my job. I have nothing to do with this.' That's a mental concept, and that is what we have to break." In the end, the result will be that our mind is under our control, our life will become more smooth, and our meditation will become more smooth. This is the tennis match: I serve, and then Gajānandjī gets the ball. And now it's coming back here. I want to take up Gajānandjī's point about joy. First, a tiny little story. There were two men traveling. Every day in the evening, as they were backpacking around Europe, they would discuss what the weather would be like tomorrow. Every day, one would say to the other, "I think it will be the weather that I will like." Sometimes the report would be that it would be sunny; sometimes it would be that it would be raining. And always, every evening, he was saying, "It will be the weather which I like." The second one was getting frustrated with that answer. "How can you give such a stupid answer all the time?" He said, "When we're traveling, I've decided to like all weather. Then I don't have any tension. So tomorrow is definitely going to be the weather that I like." About joy, I think there are two things which Gajānandjī said. This is about joy and also about not having. As long as you don't come to that point of equally appreciating both, you can't actually experience the real joy. Because when that thing is happening which you like, you're always worried about when it's going to end. So you're not present in that moment, and you're not actually fully 100% enjoying it. I'm going to tell a story here. I hope Gajānandjī won't mind it. It's a very old story from Jadan. At that time, when Gajānandjī was first—maybe you were there already two or three years—Swāmījī brought from Europe in his suitcase only things for a European breakfast. Do you remember this? Everything was there: bread and cheese and this and that. He invited us all onto his veranda. It was when he was still living in Gurujī's house. It was this complete breakfast. I remember at the end he said, "Gajānandjī, are you satisfied?" And Gajānandjī said, "Hmm, sort of, Swāmījī." Swāmījī looked—what? It was such a breakfast. You couldn't have such a big breakfast here. And Gajānandjī said, "Yes, Swāmījī, it's good, but tomorrow we'll again have Dalia, that I know." So that is that point. Do we enjoy the present, or do we think about what will not be later on? As you release, as Gajānandjī is saying, as you release those attachments to what you like and what you don't like, and what you do and what you don't do... and as Gajānandjī says, when you get rid of that attachment to what you like, what you don't like, what you want or don't want to do, then you can just appreciate the moment as it is. And when those things come which are joy to you, you can really enjoy the real essence of them because you're just there, you're with them. You don't care about when they end. If they keep going, it's excellent, but if they don't, then it will come again, and you just deal with what is next. When you're in karma yoga, and Swāmījī is coming—I would guess, also to Struhki and to India, to Jadan—it starts to go so fast that you become in a state of mind where you can't actually think about keeping what you have now because you have to do the next thing. You're forced just to keep going with what is present, what is now, in order to deal with all the things which are coming. And again, as Gajānandjī said, because you don't have time to think about it—about how many things are going on, how many things you are doing—it becomes very efficient. You don't have time to have tension about the fact that this is impossible to do all these things, and then somehow you manage to get it done because the energy which you used to waste on tension just has to go there as well. But I want to tell the story of Swāmījī working in the opposite direction. Most of you will know that sometime—I can't remember which year—the president of Croatia visited Jadan. It was an official event, so it was very big and a lot of organization was required. A lot of you also will have seen some old, beautiful pictures of Swāmījī sitting on the grass with the children from school and giving them a lecture. There are these beautiful pictures; they're in a circle around Swāmījī. It's on the old Bhakti Sāgara, on the grass there. These two things are linked together. It was the day before the president was coming. I was in the mood where I was no longer at the extreme of my tamas, but I was enjoying the extreme of running like crazy. It was actually a joy for me to do that. It was like being on the highway: "Let's go." But this was the day before the president was coming, and we still didn't get an answer out of Swāmījī about where the stage should be, where the function would be, and what the program would be. The program was to be the next day at 9 o'clock, and it was already 9 o'clock in the morning. Swāmījī said, "Yeah, I'm coming down now, and I'll show you everything that should be." So I was waiting for him, you know, sort of like the horse being held back, because we really had to start to run to make things ready, even in that time. Thinking, "Come on, Swāmījī, come down so we can get started." So Swāmījī came down and said, "Let's go now. I'll show you where the stage should be, and where the seating and the function should be." We came out and went towards the Bhakti Sāgara to discuss the first part of it. Then Swāmījī saw the children. And then you have the scene in that photo. Swāmījī picked that moment to give the children a beautiful lecture for two and a half hours. If you look very carefully in the corner of the picture, you'll see one very frustrated me, just looking and saying, "Come on, Swāmījī, let's go." Every once in a while, he'd look over, and then he'd tell another story. It was really a beautiful lecture, but I couldn't share in that joy at that moment. At the same time, I had people on the telephone, like from the Rajasthan government protocol department, saying, "Oh, we already left from Jodhpur." They came one day before with every single car that would be in the function to make a test run. So they're half an hour away, with 20 cars and all of these officials coming, in order that they can go around the ashram exactly on the route that will be in the function. And I have no idea what it is. So they came. We couldn't tell them, really. We sort of all put them somewhere and said, "Yeah, it will be somewhere over there, but it's not ready yet." Of course, after that beautiful lecture with the children, it was time for lunch. Swāmījī went for resting. About 4:30 in the afternoon, he actually told us where we should make the stage and where we should be setting up everything. Then, shortly afterwards, of course, Swāmījī went back to his room, and we started to run because, in order to make that happen by 9 o'clock in the morning, was quite tough. About half an hour later, Yogeśjī and Premānandjī and I were having a meeting in the small office, which is just next to the STD. We'd gone there because we just wanted to have 10 minutes where we could privately discuss everything and work it out. I didn't take my phone with me so as not to be disturbed. At that moment, Swāmījī was trying to call. Afterwards, he was so angry that it was not available. Then, you know, there were strict orders. There were strict orders that I should sit in the office, and I wasn't allowed out of the office until the function finished. Sleep there, eat there. I was allowed to go to the toilet, but I had to come straight back. And no showering, because that would take too long. So we had the meetings. We moved all the furniture out of the office so everyone could come for meetings. I was eating there, I was sleeping there. And that joy which I had of running and going and doing everything to prepare it—all of that energy was completely stuck. It was so frustrating to watch, to just watch and to have to do everything by telephone. It was like trying to eat lunch with your hands tied behind your back. By the morning of the function, the president was actually in the ashram, and the function was going on. I was sitting outside the office door, and I was actually falling asleep because there's nothing I could do but just watch it all happening outside. But he taught me something so important in that time. Because there are times when you have to do everything, and there are times when you should manage. I loved to run around at that stage and just enjoy, you know, going and doing this and going and doing that and so on. And that wasn't my job. My job was to coordinate what was going on, to make sure that everything got done. And the best place I could have been was exactly where Swāmījī had put me: in the office. Again, it's about acting according to the situation and in harmony with what you should be doing at that moment. There were plenty of people running that day, but one person needed to stay in the middle and make sure that everyone was running in the right direction. I learned a great lesson in that time. There's a little story from that day. It was such a chaotic day. In the evening, the bomb squad came for checking everywhere for bombs and explosives. Niranjan Purī may remember this story. At the time we were making the talāb, and they were doing the explosions in the talāb. As the bomb squad came through the gate, this contractor who was doing the explosions in the talāb came and said, "I've got a little bit of a problem." I said, "What is that?" He said, "Oh, all the explosives are stored in the workshop, but I don't actually have a license to store them here." He should have been storing them in his village and bringing them every day to the place where he had permission. And now the bomb squad was there with the dogs, sniffing for explosives. So we called some of the karma yogīs together. I sent the bomb squad first. I said the first place you should check is the Swastika. Somebody went with the dogs and the bomb squad to the Swastika for a very thorough checking of every single room. In the meantime, everybody else went to the workshop and started loading the car. As the dogs were coming back towards the workshop to check there, the car was going out the other gate and taking everything back to his village. So the day went completely on with things like that. They wanted to have hot water in the room where the president would spend time and rest. But they had already checked his room with the bomb squad and everything, and they put seals on the door so you couldn't go in. So Śokunanjī was climbing up onto the roof of the building, and then down the side wall, and then through a window at the back so he could break in to fix the hot water system. A very, very interesting day. So it goes. It's the beauty of karma yoga. To je krása karma yogī. Another time, a VIP came. Probably the most rushed day I ever experienced. In Rajasthan, politically, there is a head of the state, the chief minister, and then we have what is called a governor, who is like a symbolic head, like the president of a country. This was in the middle of summer. We had a call from Sojat, which is 20 kilometers away, completely out of nowhere. The call came: "Well, the governor of Rajasthan is in Sojat, and he wants to come and have Gurujī's darśan. He'll be there in 20 minutes." Okay. The ashram was in summer mode. It had just been a dust storm and nothing was swept, and there was hardly anything there, hardly any people there. But we started to run, and Gurujī said, "Yeah, just prepare here and there. I'll sit there. Get this ready quickly." After five minutes, another call came: "Yeah, the governor left from Sojat already. He's on the way, and he'd like to also eat in the ashram." We always had nothing in the kitchen—vegetables—but okay. We quickly discussed something, and they started to run to make food. Now, when the governor comes in Rajasthan, he comes with one head of the police and a lot of policemen, five doctors (one specialist for the heart and one for this and one for that), two ambulances, and this and that and so on. Another call came after five minutes: "Our governor is about ten minutes away. We hope that they'll also be eating for everybody who's with him." And they said there's about 120 people. Back to the kitchen. This time we were getting workers from the Om Āśram, everybody, anybody to come and help. Of course, another call came: "The governor would also like to rest for a few hours in the ashram." The only room in the ashram at that stage that had an air conditioner was Gurujī's room, and Swāmījī's room, which takes anyhow about three days to clean, and we wouldn't put him there anyway, so that wasn't an option. In the end, they turned up, all of them, 120 of them. They even come with this team of people who put everything the governor was eating into plastic bags to make testing in the lab to check it wasn't poison. If you can imagine that they are sitting in the middle of the kitchen with all of their equipment and very calmly putting things into plastic bags, and people are running around trying to prepare eating in 10 minutes for 120 people around them—that was the scene at that time in the kitchen. The governor ate, and then he ended up resting in Gurujī's room with Gurujī. We put another bed inside, and they were happily there together. We were still dealing with everybody downstairs and all of these VIPs who had come because of the governor being there and local people. There ended up being hundreds of people. Eventually, after a few hours, everybody packed up and left. Then I had one of those fatal thoughts. I thought, "Oh, thank God, that's over. I'm going to go and have a rest." Five minutes later, this storm came. It was huge. It just came out of nowhere, this black, black storm, and such a rain and wind. Just as I was thinking of going to my room to have a rest, a call came from the Āśram: "You better come quickly, the Gośālā has fallen down." Okay, I really didn't understand what that could mean. What does it mean, the gośālā is falling down? I can't describe how strong the wind was as I was trying to walk towards the gośālā. I was at an angle like this, holding on to my bike to try and go against the wind and not fall over. When we got to the gośālā, the gośālā had fallen down. It was quite terrible. The old gośālā had tiles on the roof, and it had fallen down on top of the cows. So it wasn't time for resting. At that point started one of the most beautiful experiences I had in Jadan, which comes to that point which Swāmījī said about just thinking about it as our āśram. Although it was after the working time by this stage, every single worker, who either was going home or lived in the ashram, they all just came and started helping with this, getting the cows out. Nobody was caring about their own personal injuries, cuts, or anything like that. It was just about helping these cows to get out of that mess. It took hours and hours to get all the cows out. By some grace of Mahāprabhujī, not a single cow was killed. A couple were injured; one was badly injured, we had to amputate one leg. Those same workers, because we're all helping with that... It was already one o'clock in the morning when they were actually doing the operation. After that, I just kind of quietly went to my room and went to bed, trying not to think that that was a long day. "I will now get some rest." Some rest. And that's how it works. Sometimes you run, sometimes you relax, and sometimes we go for lunch. Yes. Thank you.