Leisure Pleasure

lei·sure: : freedom provided by the cessation of activities; especially : time free from work or duties

I have been missing this little noun for eons now. Finally I've caught a hold of this elusive little thing today - today being a holiday for Eid. This is such an interesting definition of leisure. Are we ever free from activity? The very nature of the soul is to be active so where do you draw the line between activities that count as work and activities that count as pleasure? When we engage in activies of pleasure, it becomes leisure.

In yesterday's program, Yadav prabhu made such beautiful points. He mentioned that one of the Radha raman pujaris from Vrindavan once said that, "Krishna gives himself to us in our old age, if we give him our youth".

And then I realized how I'm slowly crossing this stage of 'youth'. After my wedding in December, my day is just going to get busier. I will have officially become an adult with so many responsibilities to juggle. How to juggle? How do I immerse myself in the Lord's name, pastimes, service with a household to take care of? How am I going to give my youth to Krishna, when I am struggling with paperwork, phonecalls etc from dawn to dusk?

Well, here is where I get lucky :) Even though the world seems to get too big to handle, my day seems filled with meangingless phonecalls and paperwork - offering all this to Krishna makes it seem so much lighter at the end of the day. Leisure? Well, who needs it when you are blissful in your busy day anyway. Trick is to link my meaningless paperwork to Krishna.......well not so successful sometimes, but I'm getting there. It's going to get easier to do this when I have a half hour of kirtan together with family to look forward to. Or 15 minutes of Bhagavatam reading. And really, the light at the end of the tunnel - Mayapur.

Thank you Nitai. For everything. :)