From June 10-14, 2016 the Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa Hare Krishna communities will be jointly hosting a “Holy Name Retreat” at a Buddhist Retreat Centre, located two hours away from Montreal. This very special retreat will be facilitated by Devaki devi dasi, a senior devotee in our international Hare Krishna movement.
Some features of the Holy Name Retreat:
- Deepen your relationship with the Holy Name.
- Spend these days in seclusion, away from all usual distractions.
- Hear about the glories of the Holy Name in the association of like-minded devotees and practically apply what you have heard in kirtan and japa.
- Experience a different reality – associate with Krishna in person, through His Holy Name.
- Open your heart and allow the Holy Name to do His mysterious work on it.
- Qualification: This seminar is for seriously practicing devotees, since it is aimed to bring us to deeper levels of chanting. Therefore the participating devotees should be chanting some rounds regularly for at least one year.
- Accommodation: In the Guest House of the Buddhist Retreat. These facilities will be offered on donation basis.
About Devaki devi dasi:
This will be Mother Devaki’s first time visiting Canada. She was born in Germany in 1958 and, after a long search and journey, joined ISKCON in Sydney, Australia in 1985.
She is a disciple of HH Niranjana Swami. During her ten years as a grhastha (1989-1999) she preached in Riga, Latvia and spent adventurous years in helping to pioneer the first more organised temple in the former Soviet Union. In 1999, she became a renounced traveling preacher.
For the last sixteen years she has been regularly visiting Ukraine, Moldova, Sweden, Germany, Nepal, India and Bangladesh. She is now very actively involved in the IYF Student Preaching in Bangladesh, conducting seminars and IYF festivals under the expert guidance of HH Bhakti Purusottama Swami. She cultivates the mood of a “Bengali mother” and in so doing tries to create an atmosphere conducive for devotees to be happy in their services by encouraging them to develop their bhakti to their hearts content and by encouraging the men to become good leaders.
During her years of service in Bangladesh she developed deep insights into Vaisnava culture that have enriched her spiritual practice and inspired her preaching. She is sharing this wisdom in the course “Exploring the Roots of Spiritual Culture”.
In Ukraine she has served under the expert guidance of HH Niranjana Swami, spreading the culture of care for the past fifteen years: on a personal level by serving as a spiritual guide and mentor to many devotees, by assisting devotees to become a spiritual guide themselves, and by lecturing and conducting seminars.
She helped establish Bhakti Sangam Festivals in Bangladesh, Nepal and Sweden and is regularly conducting Holy Name Retreats in Ukraine, Moldova, Sweden, Germany, Bangladesh and Ekachakra. She was serving for several years as a member of the GBC Committee for Devotee Care and promotes spiritual care of every ISKCON devotee to the highest level of priority in our movement. In March 2014 she established the Institute for Spiritual Culture.
Video from Holy Name Retreat in Moldova (2014):