BETTER THAN CHOCOLATE

Wednesday, May 7th, 2026

Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

I circled Sparta Lake one last time on this trip for four circumambulations, observing birds in pairs - the red-winged black bird, red cardinals, gold finches, ducks, geese. One single bird stood out alone - the heron, who is often like a hermit. There it was, single-pointed in thought, patient for a fish to appear. Well, I wasn’t patient enough to wait for a poisson to come as bait.

I was in a hurry with that last revolution of the lake. Haripad whisked me away for a drive to Pennsylvania and to the world headquarters of Hershey Chocolate, Harrisburg. Now I have no interest in chocolate. The closest thing to that is my cell phone, which is somewhat shaped as a chocolate bar.

After a long three and a half hour uninterrupted speedy drive we came to Harrisburg and the home of Annasuya and Pariksit. It was eleven years ago that I came through this town on my cross-US walk. Pariksit is great on the piano and he played for us a number on his keyboard, “Georgia On My Mind” only he substituted the Georgia for Krishna. It was beautiful and was a treat for our Thursday Gita Chat zoom call just at the tail end of our discussion from the Bhagavad-gita 2.22.

It was at this time that one of our regulars, Vasey from Nunavat recited from memory 2.20 in the Sanskrit and English. What impressed me the most about this evening was that after a lively program at the Hare Krishna Harrisburg Temple, we met two brothers, Pranav and Rohin, who both can recite from memory the entire 700 verses of the Gita which they recently succeeded to do at an event in Texas. Heroes!

MAY THE SOURCE BE WITH YOU

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