Palace of Cold…

I hate the snow. I have had an aversion to the snow since childhood- due to the fact that it is mainly wet and cold. I decided that this year, I will no longer hate snow. Although I have considered moving to Tucson to avoid the winter months- I have decided to learn to appreciate winter. Positive attachment is called raga and negative attachment is called dvesa. On the path to self realization, we always focus on Raga- attachment, things that we are unconditionally attracted to. Everyone recognizes that “I am attached to this or I am attached to that”; but there is also the problem of hating things… like cold weather. I have decided to embrace the cold as to not harbor any unnecessary aversions. A very wise Goswami once said, “if I can justify my hatred or my bitterness because of the bad thing I experience then I can also justify my illicit attempts at enjoyment by praising the attractiveness of the objects that seduced me. In other words, justifying our attachments or justifying our aversions is not the kind of business you want to be in. We are not supposed to be justifying our impurities, we are supposed to be transcending them. To justify an impurity is basically to say “I think I’ll just keep it”, to say “this is a keeper”. So my mind has been made- I have been convinced- If I claim that it is OK to hate the winter because I dislike the cold weather, it is the same as being attached to some material desire because it makes me feel good… This year- I will learn to enjoy the winter months. All of these decisions were made before the first snow fall of the season. today was the first snow fall of another infamous New Vrindaban winter. It looked to me as though we got close to 6 inches of snow… terrible.