May 3rd saw us drive down to a place of historical significance. Teluk Intan, formerly Tk. Anson, was blessed by the lotus feet of Srila Prabhupada in May 1971. I won’t narrate the history here, you can read the details in HH Janananda Swami’s book “Srila Prabhupada in Malaysia.”

Prabhupada came here with one of the leading preachers of the time, and the first devotee to bring Krsna consciousness to Australia, Sriman Bali Mardan prabhu.

Also traveling with Prabhupada was Sriman Vegavan prabhu (seen here on the right)

What was additionally interesting was that the two disciples were carrying Sri Sri Radha Gopinath on the onward journey to Sydney, to become the first Deities to be installed in Australia.

On May 20-22 2011 we will be celebrating Their Lordships 40th anniversary of Their appearance with a big festival and reunion of over 80 Prabhupada disciples who were initiated in Australia and about 100 more devotees in attendance (more about that in future postings).

We saw the house where Prabhupada stayed,

and the Tamil temple and meeting hall where he spoke

The Tamil temple has just been renovated and some additional structures installed since the time of Srila Prabhupada. One that caught my eye was this

The deity on the top is Surya, the Sun god, mounting his chariot on the wheel of time, and the deities underneath are the nava-grahas, the nine major planets. If one of them is giving a problem, the afflicted come here to placate the demigod in charge with some offerings.

What they apparently don’t know is that Krsna says “Kalo’smi” “I am time“. Instead of wasting their time they could be coming to our centers to spend their time in eternality.

Pilgrimage done, we moved on to our ISKCON temple, an impressive 2 story building constructed about 10 yrs. ago

and named

It stands on several acres of land in an open plain fringed with palms. A very pleasant spot for practicing Krsna consciousness

Inside the front entrance is a vestibule leading into a large, marble floored temple with an altar replete with Sri Sri Panca-tattva and Sri Gaura Nitai

And just to make me feel at home, and to emphasize the Mayapur connection I was delighted to see that various sections of the building were named after the main buildings in Mayapur Chandrodaya Mandir

I stayed for two days, still talking to a good crowd of about 80 devotees on the topic of Chanting, and I also showed the BRC  powerpoint slides

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