the tiny mound in between the big chortens is the Ratna Samadhi of Bimal Mahasaya…
Dear Friends, Well Wishers and Followers of Sriman Bimala Prasad Prabhu Mahasaya, here is a short account on how we built a tiny, but very special samadhi for our beloved Bimala Mahasaya.
For you to understand the following account, allow me introduce ourselves.
We are a tiny little community in Hungary called Bhakti Kutir. We are just couple of hundreds and we are mostly between the ages of 30 and 50. So we are all comfortable, slow paced and easy going spiritual seekers who meet regularly, who eat together, do yoga together, attend spiritual teachings together and who travel together on pilgrimage.
And we are hugely inspired by Sriman Bimala Mahasaya, who is a wonderful devotee and at the same time a very kind, full of love person, with an amazing sense of humor. So we were greatly saddened by his passing onto the spiritual world. Not for Him, but for us, as the loss is all ours as by now He is surely with His beloved Gopal cracking jokes and having a merry time.
Because of Mahasaya’s unique personality and the intensity of inspiration that He was to all of us, we planned to do something special to remember His amazing personality. We thought of a Ratna Samadhi, or a precious stone Samadhi. We could not find any material on this concept, so we thought, this way we could do something truly special, for a truly special soul.
So we made an announcement in our community that we are collecting small semiprecious stones and crystals, and we are taking them up the Gandaki river, where we will build a little Ratna Samadhi to pay our respects to Sriman Bimala Prabhu.
I think some of you would know, but not many of you, that Bimal Prabhu was an expert in crystal healing and of course He was real Mahant in taking people up the Gandaki and showing them around, in fact I had the great fortune to be taken up the sacred river by Mahasaya in the year 2000. Actually it was there and then when we found the huge Sri Narasimha Shalagram, with crystals set in His mouth as teeth, Whom was later taken to Kazaksthan for worship in the main temple there.
Anyhow, we planned a little shrine up at Muktinath and we gathered 137 different crystals from our community members. After we heard that Sripad Indradyumna Swami is going up the Gandaki and will be releasing the ashes of Sriman Bimala Prasad Prabhu into the river, we wrote to Maharaja for some guidance.
Maharaja wrote to us and said that for Bimal going through the river bed and looking for Shalagramas was more the aim of His trips than a pilgrimage going up to Muktinath, so we should do something in the riverbed to commemorate Mahasaya’s passing on.
So we walked for days and days in the riverbed looking for a suitable place and figured that whatever we build in the riverbed would be washed away by the first monsoon, so as greedy Hungarians we decided to build two little samadhis:
- one in the riverbed to heed to the advice of a saintly person such as Sripad Indradyumna Swami,
- one in Muktinath, which will be there forever and ever and where devotees can pay their respects to a truely saintly sadhu Sriman Bimala Mahasaya.
So to abide by the rules of constructing a tiny little Samadhi Mandir we had one sparkling green Dioptase quartz crystal that was given to me by Bimal Mahasaya and which of course was used by Him before hand. Just as when establishing a Pushpa Samadhi, where the place of remembrance is built over a garland, that was worn by the person him or herself.
We split the Dioptaze stone into two, one half for the riverbed and the other piece for the permanent shrine in Muktinath. We also carried up the other 137 stones all to Muktinath.
The stones and crystals we had were a potpourri of all sorts of colors and shapes, and we had a few really special ones. We had a spatik stone donated by an archeologist, who found that crystal in Egypt. In the tomb of a King, in a mausoleum where no one has sat foot for 2500 years in the Valley of Kings. We also had a meteorite stone donated by an elderly member of our community, a beautiful moldavite which she had on her altar for 50 plus years.
But not only the stones were special, we had a pretty good crew up there as well. We had two engineers, father and son, with us for this tour and they were doing the building. They are really amazing, and they also worked on The Channel project, the huge tunnel connecting England and France. Mind you they were there as a partner company and not as employees, in fact they had British employees.
Than we had a 5 time Kungfu world champion with us as well, a Hungarian bloke, who teaches Kungfu to Chinese in China, on their invitation. We also had a world championship silver medalist swimmer with us, and another great sportsman, whose achievement was purely befitting the mood and sense of humor, of our dear Bimal Mahasaya.
He is a cameraman for one the biggest Hungarian TV broadcasting enterprises, who at one time when filming in Finland entered into a contest, a typical Finnish sport, namely Wellington Boot throwing. Now he is the holder of the amateur World Champion title of Wellington Boot throwing in the age bracket between 45-55.
Plus we had lawyers and bankers, yoga teachers and computer buffs, so the typical Bhakti Kutir scene, all sorts of spiritual seekers banded together in remembering our Bimala Mahasaya.
I can not tell how well the readers know the setting of Muktinath and the temple compound so let me give you a quick tour. Once you enter the main gate go left and pay your respects in the Samba Gompa, to the son of Our beloved Lord, Sri Krishna, Who came here on pilgrimage. He was the One, who rediscovered Muktinath.
Then as you continue up along the main path you will pass a few tiny temples to your left and after that one can reach the main temple are by climbing up a few stairs on the left side of the path. The main temple compound is surrounded by a stone wall, from which tiny springs of water are pouring out from little brass cowhead reliefs. On the altar you will see Lord Muktinath standing along with His consorts Bhu and Nila Devis. Lord Muktinath is made of a giant Shalagram Shila, and is the oldest form of the Lord in this present creation.
Once you get back down to the main path and you have the main temple behind you go left towards a tiny little shrine where after the first artik was performed by Lord Brahma to please and respect Sri Muktinath. After offering the lamp, Brahma flicked out the ghee wicks from the lamp, and they fell right into a little spring, so to this very day you still see flames shooting out of the water.
While approaching this shrine you will see little stones piled onto each other like what pilgrims do around Govardhan hill. Than you go behind the shrine and a pretty big area is all covered with stacks of little rocks. While lokng down hill you will see three huge ones in a row, that are built and a few meters below them 2 more big ones right next to each other.
We built Bimal Prasad Mahasaya’s Ratna Samadhi between the 2 bigger ones, to shield it from storms, loose rocks plus it is easier to find it this way.
It is small, because we did not want to build something really big, to avoid the chance of other pilgrims wanting to look into the “newly” built shrine. So it is tiny, but it was built well. We did not just stack stones, we used cement for the construction. It should be easy to identify the little samadhi given the location, and the picture above.
We are planning to have a continuous opportunity for others to still offer crystals for Bimal Prabhu and His Ratna Samadhi and then as we go there anyway once a year we would build the new stones into the Samadhi as well.
We are still thinking about setting up a way on how this could be done, so we would be grateful for good ideas. At the moment the easiest way to get this going is to leave stones at the Iskcon temple in Kathmandu from where we could easily collect them and carry them up to Muktinath. But let us see how it will take place.
But anyhow you should let us know who you are, what sort of crystal you are willing to offer and from which part of the world you are. We are keeping account of all the stones and crystals offered.
Thank you for your kind attention,
Yours in the service of Sriman Bimala Prasad Prabhu,
Gaura-Narayana dasa, on behalf of the Bhakti Kutir community
