I am happy to know that in Guyana the hunting and killing of jaguars is unlawful. The jaguar is the national animal of the country and so it is with pride that conservationists keep a vigilant watch over this beautiful creature. Now, in all my visits to Guyana, I've never come fact to face with this wild cat in the wilderness, and I certainly hope to keep it that way. Even when I walked Guyana's coastline, I never really found myself in the thickets of the interior for the opportunity. The closest thing I had to an unfortunate animal encounter was to unintentionally step onto the horn of a dead catfish.
Wildest of all are humans, hands down. But the kind of people I've been sharing time with, in this South American nation, are the soft, shy and gentle. Today, I gave two classes from the Gita on Chapters 7 and 18, both on topics of duty, or the human obligation which runs on two tracks. The first track of duty is the line of responsibility bestowed upon us to self, family, community (including jaguars), nature and nation. The second track is duty to the real self, the atma, the soul.
I was in Georgetown, which is located at the busy juncture near the University of Guyana, and the second spot was at our ISKCON Centre in Crane, which is beyond that interesting floating bridge over the Demerara River.
Everyone's so nice, at least they usually are in front of this monk. When I leave, I'm not sure what happen, but I assume the best.
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