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One of our most outstanding devotees was honoured today at his cremation at St. John’s Crematorium.  Vaishnava Das, AKA Willy Pillay, passed away on the 11th due to heart and other complications.  His life was full, complete, rich.  If you live life deeply as he did, you don’t die.  And Thoreau once said that if you see death as law, then that’s dignified and don’t see it as an accident.

I recall when he and his family, Janaki, wife, and three daughters first came to our temple to do whatever (their son, Sukavak was born later in Canada), I was in the temple kitchen helping in those days.  I gave them a crate of bindi (okra) and expressed that they could cut off the heads.  He and family did so with great pleasure.  He was a great leader, teacher, humourist, musician, charmer, human, devotee.  He has earned the position of freedom he now has achieved.  For those of us who knew him well, we can say that from loss we gain worth.

The ceremony conducted by our own priests from Brampton and mantras led by Bramptonites.  The hall was filled with admirers.  The mood carried was of the celebration of life.

Funeral homes and crematoriums are usually well maintained, clean, and tastefully decorated.  The managers are pleasant and accommodating.  The environment is so suited for ushering a person’s moving on.

 From here to the resident temple in Toronto, I managed to catch up on emails. Some of our residents pulled me away for another of those dips in the water at the Bluffs.  God is where devotees gather and also where they splatter.