Devakīnandana das

देवकीनन्दन दास

Devakīnandana das BRS

servant of the son of Devakī

Devakīnandana das is the name I was given at initiation into the Hare Kṛṣṇa movement in 2019. Devakīnandana, the son of Devakī, is Kṛṣṇa; dāsa is a servant. The BRS after it follows the custom by which a disciple carries the initials of his spiritual master: mine is His Holiness Bhakti Raghava Swami, a disciple of A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda, the founder-ācārya of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness.

How it came about

It came about through Lisp. At the European Lisp Symposium in Brussels in 2017, on the campus of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, I noticed the tulasī neck beads on Vsevolod Dyomkin and we got to talking. He took a donation of mine, and with it my wish for a spiritual master, to Radhadesh, the community at Château de Petite Somme in the Belgian Ardennes.

Soon after, back home, Bhakta Avatar handed me an invitation to the opening of a yoga shala at New Vrindaban, where his spiritual master, Bhakti Raghava Swami, would be visiting and presiding over the building's initiation ceremonies, with Yogi Natraj, the yoga teacher on site at the time and a godbrother, as the expert pujārī. I had just finished a yoga teacher training, which I had taken at the behest of Yugal Kishore, the temple president at ISKCON Farmington Hills, so yoga was new to me and much on my mind. I went, had a wonderful time, and figured it was now or never: I worked up the courage to ask Mahārāja for shelter, and he gave it at once.

Romapada Swami, whom I love very dearly, had been guiding me on an extremely occasional basis until then, though we had not been in contact for decades. Soon after, I let him know my choice before proceeding, and he took it gracefully, if with some disappointment.

So Mahārāja graciously made the risky move of taking me on as an aspirant, with the usual waiting period of a year. I was thrilled. Then it took two years for our paths to cross and the stars to align, and that is how we get back to Brussels.

In 2019 Mahārāja and I both happened to be traveling in Europe. A godsister's initiation was already arranged in Brussels, and I was fortunate to be allowed to join hers; otherwise who knows when mine could have been arranged. So it took place there, on Rāma Navamī, 13 April 2019, a few blocks from the campus where I had met Vsevolod two years before.

My spiritual master

His Holiness Bhakti Raghava Swami is a disciple of Śrīla Prabhupāda who has given his life to daiva-varṇāśrama dharma: cow protection, natural farming, traditional education and self-sufficient villages centered on Kṛṣṇa. That work is gathered in his initiative Make Vrindavan Villages, and his books and courses are at hhbrs.com.

What I do with it

The Kṛṣṇa sites are congregation efforts that I support; they are the practical side of it.

I have not presented any of this to Mahārāja yet. He is skeptical of technology, and my own version of that skepticism is to avoid depending on any one fragile technology: the software underneath these sites I develop from scratch, in a stack of my own, rather than on platforms controlled by forces beyond my control. I am trying to get them into a shape fit to take up his time with a presentation, and I hope that sooner or later they benefit his mission, in ways that may be apparent or invisible.

Closer to home, I volunteer at the Goloka Cow and Ox Sanctuary in Maybee, Michigan. Associating with the cows there brings peace and grounding.

FAQ

Why do I wear yellow tilaka?

Tilaka is the clay mark a Vaiṣṇava wears. The body is marked in thirteen places, the forehead first, with a name of Viṣṇu chanted at each. The yellow is the color of the clay, gopī-candana, and the two lines on the forehead with the leaf at their base stand for the footprint of Viṣṇu with a tulasī leaf. It marks the body as a temple.

There is also a reason of my own. Yugal Kishore, the temple president at ISKCON Farmington Hills, has remarked that people feel intimidated by tilaka in either direction: the devotee shy of wearing it where it will be noticed, and the passer-by unsure what to make of it. On hearing that, I committed to wearing it every day and in public, to change, a little, the reality he is seeing.

हरे कृष्ण हरे कृष्ण कृष्ण कृष्ण हरे हरे

हरे राम हरे राम राम राम हरे हरे

hare kṛṣṇa hare kṛṣṇa kṛṣṇa kṛṣṇa hare hare

hare rāma hare rāma rāma rāma hare hare

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