It is still dark when I get up at seven and take a shower (it only starts to get light just before eight in Moscow — a little after eight-thirty in Saint Petersburg). I'm the first one up. I look out the large window on the second floor of my room at the new temple complex and see bundled up pedestrians puffing along briskly in the cold morning air.
All the devotees have been pretty busy this past week, hosting two Vyasa Puja programs for Srila Guru Maharaj, on two consecutive days, in two major cities, six hundred kilometers apart. Avadhut Maharaj has so much energy! There are very few people who can keep up with his hectic pace. Meeting, planning, encouraging, executing — he seems to be everywhere at once!
Bharati Maharaj, by contrast, is almost inconspicuous. Always keeping in the background, his utilizes his scholarly and renounced qualities and his command of English to translate and interpret our gurudevas' books and lectures, and to enliven the devotees locally and nationally (he just returned from a lecture tour of Siberia last week).
It must be tough living in the shadow of the dynamic Avadhut Maharaj, but he does not seem to mind at all...
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