At the temple, finally back home!

It had been more than 30 years since the alumni of the Italian Gurukula had met together in Villa Vrindavana. By our great fortune, thirty years later, the mysterious plans orchestrated by Their Lordships Sri Sri Radha Vrajasundara, brought us back home on a journey of healing, love and forgiveness.

It was an overwhelming experience! We finally had the opportunity to return to our childhood home with our new families. Smiling devotees, our old teachers, and parents greeted us. There were so many brothers and sisters to hug, memories to share, and smells and tastes that brought our childhood back to life. It was as if we had never left! We returned to be a part of the Villa Vrindavana community. We met devotees we had known most of our lives and many new ones.

Thanks to the official invitation of the temple president, Parabhakti Das, the Italian Gurukula alumni returned to Villa Vrindavana for a three-day program that alternated moments of play, reflection, and spirituality, from bathing in the pond to an outdoor treasure hunt, from the circle of forgiveness to shifts in the kitchen, cleaning and serving prasada, the idea was to create an opportunity to reflect on our past.

The most beautiful moment was the fire ceremony. As we did when we were little ones, we intoned the Brahma Samhita and sang out loud the 108 names of Nrsimhadeva. Time seemed to dissolve, three decades rewound in a few minutes: the voices were those of the children we were, the bodies those of the adults we have become.

The reunion of the Gurukuli at Villa Vrindavana was the final celebration of a group therapeutic journey that lasted more than two years. For some of us, the traumas we suffered while growing up were a burden carried over for many years, for others, however, the Gurukula has always been an exceptional experience and they have only fond memories. Between the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, the Italian Gurukula welcomed almost 80 boys and girls. It is expected that we didn’t have all the same experience: some have moved away, some attend the temple only a few times a year, and others have never abandoned their spiritual life. But the comparison between the different positions is what allowed the whole group, already gathered in a chat, to face their emotions by going deep, trying to understand if the wounded child in the heart of each of us wanted to continue to remember the pain as a warning for the future, or perhaps choose to lighten himself of some burden.

We reached out to the authorities to ask for clarifications about some of their past choices. In the responses of the movement’s leaders, the Gurukulis found what they were looking for: an invitation to return, each according to their own inclination, and to participate in the temple life.

Hence the idea of naming this reunion “for-give” with the intent of forgiving the wrongs we suffered, the sense of abandonment, inexperience, abuse. Forgiveness as a gift to oneself and to others: children that forgive themselves and their parents, their teachers, the authorities of the temple…Because forgiving is the only way to heal, and once healed, there is time to love. To love each other as brothers and sisters, as devotees. To love Krishna and His temple. Because love makes single individuals one big family, inspires the desire for new trust and allows a new beginning.