EXTRACT FROM NEW PADAYATRA STORYBOOK

Sankirtana Dasa: his unique one man Taiwan padayatra with a magic black cow

In 2008 Sankirtana Dasa was not new to padayatra. He had first heard of padayatra in 1987. After ending his career as a book distributor in Europe that year, where he found the mood no longer suited him, he traveled to India. He was introduced to padayatra in V?nd?vana in1987 when he attended an information session led by Bhadra Dasa, who was recruiting devotees to join the walk from Vrindavana to Dwaraka. It was then Sankirtana realized that padayatra was just what he'd been looking for.

He went on to walk for almost a year in India, doing book distribution all along the way. "People are much less defensive there, and they reciprocated with us more than they did in the West," he said. "In India you're not a sect member but a genuine representative of a tradition. You have every reason to feel your value. In India you even take pride in being Srila Prabhupada's representative, whereas in Europe you always have to fight that sect image they put on you."

Tamal Krishna Maharaja, who had come to padayatra for a short visit, invited Sankirtana to Southeast Asia, where he preached in Taiwan for about six years. In 1995 he returned to India to assist the team at the Centennial Office in Delhi, coordinating the Sahasra Tirtha Jala project until the end of 1996. One of the aims of the Centennial was to have a hundred padayatras in one hundred countries, so Sankirtana corresponded with a devotee from Taiwan to encourage him to do padayatra there, but the walk never happened.

Sankirtana Dasa: I always had the idea to do a padayatra in Taiwan. In the summer of 2008 I went to Bali, where the devotees are very artistic. They helped me build a little ratha - basically, a cow with an aluminum body. It was very light. It was one meter long, one meter high, 40 centimeters wide, with had two small wheels of about 20 centimeters in diameter. It has two long wooden sticks for a harness. We made the small cow body with bamboo and then covered it in black fabric. It had a nice Styrofoam head with beautiful horns. Then I shipped it to Taiwan. There are three small centers in Taiwan, but no full-time devotees. I tried to get some local devotees to walk with me, but all of them had full-time jobs and couldn't come during the day. But I wasn't discouraged. I had planned it as a one-man performance. My idea was to first find out how it would be before inviting other devotees from abroad to walk around the whole island.

Sankirtana walked from Taipei to the northern half of the country in the beginning of September 2008. He was alone with his magic black cow! On the side of the cow he had written the name of his website in large yellow letters: "www.walk4cows.net." Those who visited would have seen the several articles he had posted there related to cow care and the benefits bestowed by mother cow. His main message was that people should make an effort to break free from the oppressive industrial society, and that to accomplish this goal they needed to be educated in spiritual life.