Help Simhachalam to overcome Energy Price Crisis
Dear friends and devotees of Sri Sri Prahlada Lakshmi Narasimhadeva and the community of Simhachalam in Germany,
We, as the community of Simhachalam, are a little bit in a dilemma. We give our best to keep this project dedicated to Sri Sri Prahlada Lakshmi Narasimhadeva stable and pure so that our Lord and his guests are satisfied and happily accept our humble attempt to serve them.
But the times, specially in Germany have changed a lot. As You who are also living in this region of the universe will have noticed, that life has become quite expensive. The devotees who are directly living in and around the project often dedicated their whole time to serving this project. Especially our monks (male and female), our managers, our gardening team, and our priests and cooks are living very simply and renounced. In this spirit, we even try to raise our families. According to the teachings of our founder Acarya His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Srila Prabhupada of „Simple living and high thinking“, we center our efforts to satisfy first of all our Lord and in this way keep a welcoming atmosphere for all of You, in which we can serve and inspire You and give You the feeling of home.
Although we run our little temple shop and the guesthouse and have suggested fees for homas and samskara’s or for prasadam (spiritual food that we serve), we always avoid asking You directly for money.
Nevertheless, the expenditures to maintain this large project are very extensive. The drop in income due to the Corona-related closures is still noticeable. A crisis we have been able to bear, but which consumed all our reserves. Now, with the current energy crisis and the ever-increasing cost of living, we are facing renewed financial challenges for the temple. Apart from that, our Simhachalam temple has developed into a “big project” that, like any other business, has to bear all the high costs of business taxes, social security, and other expenses required from the German government. In addition, there are the maintenance costs, and the sharply increased energy prices for sewage, hot water supply, electricity, and heating. But as the prices for those basic needs are more and more increasing – even simple life will be quite difficult. In fact, it pushes us to the border of maintaining this project with its inhabitants! The winter here it’s like Badrinath – Without heating, life for humans is not tolerable and it will be deadly for the sensitive souls we are hosting here, like Srimati Tulasi Devi in her many plant forms.
Our monthly fixed costs of ~ 20TEUR cannot currently be met with only ~70 members.
With this in mind, although it is for sure unusual that the Lord goes around “begging”, we need to think about how to deal with mentioned financial struggles and how we can all preserve this temple together. For this, we have revised our sustaining membership program, so that we can all be part of Simhachalam and serve together.
Regular contribution through a supporting membership is not only important for overcoming a crisis, but also enables us to plan and realize long-term expansions and projects in Simhachalam, which hides such great potential.
In addition, to support in the form of sustaining membership, there is also the option of contributing a donation, either by bank transfer (reference: “Donation”) or via GoFundMe action.
If this project is dear to You and You want us that we can continue to provide a spiritual home for You and Your family here in the German Bavarian Forrest, please come forward! Please help us to keep this project stable and alive.
We invite You therefore to kindly join our family of donors and become in this way an active servant of Sri Sri Prahlada Lakshmi Narasimhadeva!
your servants from Simhachalam
Govinda-Dev Das I Templepresident + Templeboard
