WWCD?: What would Conan Do?

Tri-yuga and I are engaged in a fierce competition. When he visited me a month ago we were discussing health, the internet, online businesses, and a number of other things. At the time I was doing a 30-day challenge at Bikram, and Tri-yuga joined me for the nine days he was here. One thing that came up was the number of websites that show you how to get "six-pack abs". After some discussion we came up with a challenge - who could get the most "ripped" by the time I come over to New Zealand to visit my family and attend the Vyasa puja festival of our spiritual master (mid-October)?

I'm into modelling successful people. I spend time studying them and extracting their patterns and practices. For leadership I model John Maxwell. For yoga I model Bikram. For bass playing I model Larry Graham. It's all about following the mahajanas - it's a universally applicable principle, not a religious doctrine.

Now for getting ripped, who else would I model other than Conan the Barbarian? I mean, if you're going to do it, go all the way.

So I've been studying "Conan the Destroyer" (a mate at work had it - he didn't have "Conan the Barbarian").

I'm modelling my program on the movie, so now I start my day "the Conan way". The movie begins with Conan praying to his God, Crom, at a shrine. Quickly he gets into a fight.

So now I'm going to mangal-arati, to pray to my God before a shrine, then racing across town to a Bikram class for a workout. Tri-yuga, watch out - I'm comin' for ya!

Conan's deep devotion and faith in his personal God is a source of enhanced strength and increased physical performance. A recent study conducted at Oxford University has shown that religious belief can increase pain tolerance by up to 12% - that gives me the edge in the hot room.

Conan worships Crom, who is a demigod, according to the Vedic understanding. The demigod culture of the Aryans (similar to the Nordic, Roman and Greek pantheons) mixed with the Upanishadic culture of the forest-dwelling sages of India. The Upanishads present an understanding of the all-pervading Force, as presented in Star Wars.

The modern Vedic devotional tradition takes the best of the "Thor and Odin" pantheon of gods, mashes it up with the Force, and presents the uber-Gott, the personification, or personal source of the unmanifest, all-pervading energy: Krishna.

Actually, the supreme force has unlimited personal manifestations (ete camsa kala pumsah) - (s)he's a complex personality (including being the source of femininity). All contradictions are resolved in the Absolute Truth. But for some very esoteric reasons, which are explained by the sage Rupa Goswami in his book Bhaktirasamrita-sindhu, the Radha / Krishna aspect is the Supreme (krsnas tu bhagavan svayam).

So in addition to my google-fu - to get the inside scoop on supplements and workout plans - I have the secret weapon of living 15 minutes drive from the local shrine to the combined manifestation of Radha and Krishna - sri krishna caitanya radha krishna nahe anya...

Thanks for the inspiration Conan - you rock!

Postscript: That's a rocking presentation right there. You play the Conan segment, then you talk about the Oxford research, then about the demigods, throw in some Star Wars, including the segment from Episode Three where Obi-wan describes the force (or Yoda from Episode Four), and then describe Krishna and Radha on that basis, with the Bhagavatam verse, and then end with Lord Caitanya and the sankirtan movement, then - KIRTAN! I'll do it at Atma when I get back in November.