Nityananda-trayodasi

Today is the Birthday of Nityananda Prabhu. Five hundred years ago, Caitanya Mahaprahu, a direct incarnation of Krishna was born in West Bengal. His brother Nityananda (literally means "eternal bliss"), is an incarnation of Krishna's brother Balaram....and today is his birthday. What? God has a brother? Actually Nityananda, or Balaram is an expansion of the Lord (which means that he is also God.) There is much philosophical reasoning as to why the Lord would expand himself into two...but to make it easy I will just say that he does it for fun.

How fun is it to create a really groovy looking place, with all kinds of creatures and interesting places, and have to enjoy it alone? Lord Caitanya had many normal "human" associates, but none understood him in the same way that Nityananda did.

To celebrate Nityananda's birthday today I cooked a big feast for him. Here is a picture of our altar with the feast being offered. I am only sorry that Radha Charan cut off some of the preparations on the photo so you can't see them all!

I made 9 subjis (vegetable preperations): peas,eggplant, milk curd in tomato sauce; Dudh lau (Indian squash cooked in milk); aloo postho (potatoes with a white poppy seed sauce); Palak paneer (spinach with milk curd); Cauliflower, potato, pumpkin, tomatoes and milk curd; barbari postho (beans in white poppy seed sauce); palak bora (spinach with fried mung bean fritters); chana tamatar (chickpea and tomatoes with ginger); methi aloo (fenugreek leaves with potato)
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pea kachoris (indian savory pastry) and dhaniya (fresh coriander) chutney
Rice
Buckwheat
Kheer (sweet rice pudding)
Gur Sandesh (a sweet made from milk curds and date sugar)
Chocolate cake (what's a birthday party without a cake?)

Today we fasted until noon (which wasn't a problem for me since I was busy in the kitchen untill 1pm!). Today we will not eat any grains (in honor of the holiday), and will consume the feast tomorrow.

It took five hours of cooking to produce this feast...wish you were here to try some of it!

Some old friends from Poland are in town, and in the evening we went together to Nityananda Vat, an old temple near the Yamuna river to have darshan (which literally means to "see with respect") the deities of Gaura Nitai (Lord Caitanya and Lord Nityananda) there. This is the place where Nityananda sat under a banyan tree when he visited Vrindavan around 500 years ago. There was a group of bengali Vaisnavas singing beautiful bengali songs about Lord Nityananda, and we were invited for a big Harinam (singing party) that will go through the old town of Vrindavan tomorrow, and then return to the temple for a feast. I love those big Harinams with Bengalis...it is always so wonderful to see so many Vaisnavas together who, using singing as their medium, dive so deeply into the worship of God with such love and emotion.