Hello, nice to read about your life jerney. Hindi is not a difficult
language, and by mingling with the local people, you will learn working
Hindi. However, you have not made it clear whether you and your wife are
visually impaired or you are simply serving the vidually impaired.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Yamuna Jivana dasa (Yogan)" <ykhan...@gmail.com>
To: <accessindia@accessindia.org.in>
Sent: Wednesday, March 08, 2023 6:35 AM
Subject: [AI] My gender clarification
Dear Access India list members,
On a few occasions on this list, people have been conjecturing whether I
am male or female, because the name Yamuna appears in my Vaishnava diksha
name.
I thought I might as well take the time to clarify. <smile>
At my birth, my parents named me Yoganathan. My family surname is Khandoo,
(originally in India it would have been Kandu as per the name as found in
the Srimad Bhagavatam,), but when my paternal Great-grandfather arrived
from South India in the 1800s, the british slave-owners did little in
spelling our names as they should be. After all we were captured slaves so
why should they care?
At this point I could go into the sad and painful history of how our
ancestors eventually liberated themselves from slavery and established a
thriving Indian community in South Africa, but I will resist the
temptation.
Over time and as generations passed, they were indoctrinated into speaking
the English language of the colonizers. Still, our family kept away from
cross-race inter marriages despite 4 generations in South Africa. Little
remnants remained of the Tamil language of our ancestry, but we kept
whatever we could by way of prayers and rituals coming down from previous
generations.
No wonder then when I was born, a South Indian priest was consulted by my
parents and he offered the name Yoganathan. So that's my birth name in my
official documents: passport, South African ID card Etc.
When I grew up, my Grandfather always told me that I reminded him of his
own father. You see, I had developed a yearning to understand the purpose
of life, God, our purpose on earth and such existential concerns. I always
found myself disturbed to see the suffering of others, both man and
animal.
So in 1997 when I first came across a Hare Krishna preacher of Vedic
wisdom, I took to the study like a hungry man takes to water in a dry
desert. My Grandfather noticed the transformation in my life, and as he
watched me perform aratis and bhoga offerings to the deity, chanting of
Japa Etc, he always remarked how I reminded him of his father who was a
Brahmana captured into slavery but who kept performing his worship and
sadhana in South Africa.
So, when I eventually was ready for it, in 2005 my spiritual master whose
name is Partha Sarathi Dasa Goswami, gave me Diksha initiation into the
Brahma Madhva Gaudiya Vaishnava Sampradaya. By this time we had learnt how
the body we live in is really insignificant because we are spirit souls
temporarily inhabiting different bodies, and although my spiritual master
was an English man born in England, I was impressed so much by his own
dedication to the Vaishnava life despite him being a typical English man
born from the land of our cruel colonizers, still I accepted him as my
Guru because he was a disciple of the founder of the Hare Krishna movement
A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Srila Prabhupada. He had transcended his white
English male body and was now a pure Vaishnava dedicated to serving and
loving the supreme personality of Godhead Sri Krishna.
So on that faithful day of 23 November 2005, I received Diksha initiation.
My Guru gave me the spiritual name Yamuna Jivana Dasa.
Yamuna refers to the holy river Yamuna in Vrindavana Dhama. The word
Jivana literally means the life of. So that person who is the life of the
Yamuna is Sri Krishna. So this name Yamuna Jivana refers to Sri Krishna
who is the life of the Yamuna river. Therefore this is a masculine name
referring to Lord Krishna himself. At the end of a Vaishnava name, we
always add the word Dasa. Dasa means servant. So the full Sanskrit to
English translation of my name is that I am a servant of that person who
is the life of, or very dear to the Yamuna, namely Lord Krishna.
Interestingly in 2008, I met my wife who has a very similar history to
share. She was born of Indian parents in South America, Guyana, but whose
ancestory are North-Indian, particularly of Bengali origin.
She too came from a family who very closely kept their Indian culture and
traditions, but remained in search of Vedic truths. When she took
initiation also into the Hare Krishna society there in Guyana, she
received the name Kalindi Dasi. This name is interesting because even
before we met on-line across the seas, her name was linked to mine. The
name Kalindi refers to the Yamuna river, but specifically to the
personality which embodies that river. In Vedic understanding, even the
holy rivers are embodied by living personality. Like me, she too was
attracted to Sri Vrindavana Dhama where this Yamuna river resides and
personifies as Kalindi. She made me promise that if we got married, some
day I would bring her to Vrindavana to live.
We built up some finances by me working in various sectors: Internet
Technical Support, banking Back-office support, and finally as an
accessibility traner for the blind, and on that faithful day of 11
November 2022, we finally arrived in Sri Vrindavana Dhama which is where
we now are starting our lives.
While both our ancestors were forced to forget their native languages, she
Bengali and I Tamil, now we are both trying to learn Hindi, which is a
dialect of the original Brajabasa language spoken by Lord Krishna here in
Sri Vraja Dhama.
If anyone here will bless me with prayers from your heart that somehow
despite getting older, we will still manage to learn Hindi and so begin to
integrate into the local community here, this is my sincere hope and
desire.
So to conclude after all that spicy history, yes, I am certainly living in
a male body in this lifetime. <smile>
With kind regards,
Yamuna Jivana dasa (Yoganathan Khandoo)
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Disclaimer:
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through this mailing list..
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