Recently I went with my family to Florida to visit the famed Walt Disney World, Universal Studios and the Kennedy Space Center. We have not gone on vacation in the past several years and wanted to take a break. What is a vacation anyway? It is taking time off from routine work to do something else – see places, visit friends, do gardening, visit Mayapur and so on.

But is the life of a devotee routine for one to get away from it? Of course, many devotees nowadays work at regular jobs and are not full time temple devotees. So they may wish to take a break from their work and go out with family. But where do they go? Usually to Japa workshops, Festivals of Inspiration, Mayapur and Vrndavana Festivals and so on. And some do go to places like Disney world, Grand Canyon, Taj Mahal etc.

Now the break or the vacation is from the routine work of going to office daily. But for a devotee his devotional service to Krishna in the form of chanting, hearing, reading, associating with devotees and so on should never become a dreaded routine. We do lots of things repeatedly – like chanting certain number of rounds, offering arati to the Deity and other things, which when not careful have a tendency to become ritualistic. Devotional service is the yoga of love – connecting to the Supreme in love. And love should never become ritual like. Of course, at the beginning of bhakti yoga we are on the platform of sädhana bhakti – bhakti in practice. So it could tend to become mundane at times but being conscious of the goal of loving Krsna, we should always fight that tendency.

So how to take a vacation without taking a vacation from bhakti? Of course, visiting Mayapur or japa workshops are to increase and improve our practices of bhakti. But visiting other places, we have the simple method given to us by Srila Prabhupada and Lord Caitanya – to chant the holy names. We can always stay connected to Krsna by chanting anywhere and everywhere. This is what I did early in the mornings before we left for the theme parks. And once inside, when waiting in lines for many of the attractions, I chanted verses from the scriptures in my mind. I also thought about what it means to see Krsna as He explains in Bhagavad gita 10th chapter: Anything glorious or beautiful existence arises from a spark of His splendor.