Author Archives: Akrura das

"PLEASE SAVE ME"
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You create war and pray to the church. Why you create war? Precaution is better than… Unless you Krsna conscious, then you will… Tena tyaktena bhunjitha [Iso mantra 1]. You will encroach upon other’s property. That papa-bija has to be killed. Now, after creating war… What is the use? After creating war by your own fault, if you go to the church and pray God, "Please save me," so who wanted

THE FOUR PRESCRIPTIONS
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Arthur Gordon shares a wonderful, intimate story of his own spiritual renewal in a little story called “The Turn of the Tide.” It tells of a time in his life when he began to feel that everything was stale and flat. His enthusiasm waned; his writing efforts were fruitless. And the situation was growing worse day by day.
Finally, he determined to get help from a medical doctor. Observing nothing physically wrong, the doctor asked him if he would be able to follow his instructions for one day.

When Gordon replied that he could, the doctor told him to spend the following day in the place where he was happiest as a child. He could take food, but he was not to talk to anyone or to read or write or listen to the radio. He then wrote out four prescriptions and told him to open one at nine, twelve, three, and six o’clock.

“Are you serious?” Gordon asked him.

“You won’t think I’m joking when you get my bill!” was the reply.

So the next morning, Gordon went to the beach. As he opened the first prescription, he read “Listen carefully.” He thought the doctor was insane. How could he listen for three hours? But he had agreed to follow the doctor’s orders, so he listened.

He heard the usual sounds of the sea and the birds. After a while, he could hear the other sounds that weren’t so apparent at first. As he listened, he began to think of lessons the sea had taught him as a child—patience, respect, an awareness of the interdependence of things. He began to listen to the sounds—and the silence—and to feel a growing peace.

At noon, he opened the second slip of paper and read “Try reaching back.” “Reaching back to what?” he wondered. Perhaps to childhood, perhaps to memories of happy times. He thought about his past, about the many little moments of joy. He tried to remember them with exactness. And in remembering, he found a growing warmth inside.

At three o’clock, he opened the third piece of paper. Until now, the prescriptions had been easy to take. But this one was different; it said “Examine your motives.”

At first he was defensive. He thought about what he wanted—success, recognition, security, and he justified them all. But then the thought occurred to him that those motives weren’t good enough, and that perhaps therein was the answer to his stagnant situation.

He considered his motives deeply. He thought about past happiness. And at last, the answer came to him.

“In a flash of certainty,” he wrote, “I saw that if one’s motives are wrong, nothing can be right. It makes no difference whether you are a mailman, a hairdresser, an insurance salesman, a housewife—whatever. As long as you feel you are serving others, you do the job well. When you are concerned only with helping yourself, you do it less well—a law as inexorable as gravity.”

When six o’clock came, the final prescription didn’t take long to fill. “Write your worries on the sand,” it said. He knelt and wrote several words with a piece of broken shell; then he turned and walked away. He didn’t look back; he knew the tide would come in.

YOU HAVE TO REPEAT
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If you simply hear and hear in the class of Krsna consciousness, and go outside and forget, oh, that is not nice. That will not make you improve. Then what is? Kirtitavyas ca: “Whatever you are hearing, you should say to others.” That is perfection.

Therefore we have established Back to Godhead. The students are allowed, whatever they are hearing, they must be thoughtful and write. Kirtitavyas ca. Not only simply hearing. “Oh, I am hearing for millions of years; still, I cannot understand”—because you do not chant, you do not repeat what you have heard. You have to repeat.

Srila Prabhupada
Srimad-Bhagavatam Lecture in San Francisco, USA on March 23, 1967

The Mongoose and the Brahmin’s Wife
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Once upon a time, there lived a Brahman by the name of Deva Sharma with his wife. His wife delivered a son and they were happy to have their first child. The Brahmin wanted to have a pet animal to protect the child which would also be a companion to the child. The Brahmin kept his proposal before the Brahmani. She found the proposal acceptable and the Brahmin went to bring a pet.

Deva Sharma went round the village and after much toil, got a mongoose as an escort to his child. Brahmani didn’t like the idea to keep a mongoose for her child. But as the pet was already brought, so she accepted it. Now, both of them started loving the mongoose as their own child. Yet, the Brahmani never left her son alone because she did not trust the mongoose, fearing that it could harm her son.

One day, the farmer and his wife had to go out of the house leaving the child at home. The farmer confirmed that the mongoose would take care of the child while they would be away. So, they left the mongoose and the child at home and went out. Soon after they left, a cobra entered the home. Finding danger to the son of the Brahmin, the mongoose attacked the cobra. They had a bloody combat and the mongoose succeeded in killing the cobra.

After this, mongoose heard the footfalls of Brahmin’s wife and went at the door to greet her. Brahmani was trembled to see the blood stained mouth of the mongoose. She inferred that the mongoose had killed the child. Without a second thought, she threw a heavy box on mongoose and the mongoose died at the spot. Brahmani quickly entered the house to see her child and to her great surprise, she found her child sleeping quietly in the cradle.

As soon as, she saw a snake bitten into pieces lying near the cradle, she realized that the mongoose had saved her child. The Brahmani was struck by grief that she had killed the mongoose that was like a sibling to her son. She cried loud at her hasty action.

Lesson: Don’t pre-judge. Think before you act.

– Pancatantra

LIGHTHOUSE
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An idea of the reality—and the impact—of the timeless principles that govern all life can be captured in a paradigm-shifting experience as told by Frank Kock in Proceedings, the magazine of the Naval Institute.

Two battleships assigned to the training squadron had been at sea on maneuvers in heavy weather for several days. I was serving on the lead battleship and was on watch on the bridge as night fell. The visibility was poor with patchy fog, so the captain remained on the bridge keeping an eye on all activities.

Shortly after dark, the lookout on the wing of the bridge reported, “Light, bearing on the starboard bow.”

“Is it steady or moving astern?” the captain called out.

Lookout replied, “Steady, captain,” which meant we were on a dangerous collision course with that ship.

The captain then called to the signal man, “Signal that ship: We are on a collision course, advise you change course 20 degrees.”

Back came a signal, “Advisable for you to change course 20 degrees.”

The captain said, “Send, I’m a captain, change course 20 degrees.”

“I’m a seaman second class,” came the reply. “You had better change course 20 degrees.”

By that time, the captain was furious. He spat out, “Send, I’m a battleship. Change course 20 degrees.”

Back came the flashing light, “I’m a lighthouse.”

We changed course.

The Paradigm Shift experienced by the captain—and by us as we read this account—puts the situation in a totally different light. We can see a reality that is superseded by his limited perceptions—a reality that is as critical for us to understand in our daily lives as it was for the captain in the fog.

Principles are like lighthouses. They are natural laws that cannot be broken. As Cecil B. deMille observed of the principles contained in his monumental movie, The Ten Commandments, “It is impossible for us to break the law. We can only break ourselves against the law.”

Building Trust Within ISKCON
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By Akrura Dasa on 17 Jun 2008
ISKCON NEWS

Srila Prabhupada wanted us to serve together based on love and trust. Here are some reflections on building trust and some ideas that may be helpful to our temples and projects.



Most organizations are not aware of the enormous cost of low trust, and because they have no means of measuring its impact, they have little motivation to seriously address it. To compound the problem, many people feel like helpless victims of the problems in their organizations and see no clear way to influence their leaders.



In this article, we offer specific, powerful things we can do that can profoundly impact the level of trust in our relationships, our teams, our families, and our movement in general.



Is trust really necessary in life, work or service today? Can we succeed without it?



I believe that we cannot succeed without trust. It is not only important, it is absolutely vital. For instance, even when we are buying gasoline, we trust that we are getting quality fuel; we trust that the prices are within the market; and we trust that our money will be accepted by that person. There are so many elements to the simplest transaction that require trust. But we are sometimes unaware of those implicit elements. Trust is the lifeblood of all relationships, of all transactions, and is fundamental to everything in life.



What are evidences of a low-trust environment?



Low-trust environments are filled with hidden agendas, a lot of political games, interpersonal conflict, interdepartmental rivalries, and people bad-mouthing each other behind their backs while sweet-talking them to their faces.



With low trust, we get a lot of rules and regulations that take the place of human judgment and creativity; we also see that people are disempowered. They will not be on the same page about what’s important. Ultimately, the culture will become driven by urgency rather than importance because everyone is in it only or mostly for themselves and for their own agenda.



What is low trust costing organizations?



Low trust has a huge tax associated with it. It creates a culture of toxicity, just like we have toxins in our body. Imagine what it costs a body to be full of poison. That is what a low-trust culture is – it’s full of poison. We see people embracing and promulgating what can be called the six metastasizing emotional cancers. Metastasize means they send their cancer cells through the body, mind, and spirit of a person. They also spread through relationships.



These cancers are criticizing, complaining, comparing, competing, contending, and cynicism. (By competing, I don’t mean the healthy competition where we are competing to do more service to Krsna or please devotees but competition based on envy and false pride.) These emotional cancers are the forces that literally undermine and eventually destroy relationships. On the other hand, trust helps to make things possible.



If we want to overcome these six cancers, it seems we need a lot of work, in order to build and maintain trust. We may rightly ask, is it worth the effort?



I think it’s absolutely worth it. It’s the most supremely important thing we can do to get the confidence of another person by being true to our commitments, by clarifying expectations, by treating people with kindness and respect, and by learning to be transparent about the information we have so that people trust it and we can almost speak to them in verbal shorthand. We hardly even have to finish sentences when there’s high trust.



Trust speeds up achievement. Without it, everything gets bogged down, slows down; people protect themselves, they think defensively, and they gather other people around them to form cliques. These cliques then judge other cliques, which only compounds the low-trust situation, slows down everything, and levies a huge tax on all human interactions and transactions.



So what behaviours increase trust and is it a skill we can learn?



The metaphor that can be helpful is a Trust Bank Account. It’s like a financial bank account into which we can make deposits and take withdrawals. And if we get into a situation where we are constantly making withdrawals – the kinds that we mentioned above – we get an overdrawn Trust Bank Account. And we all know what happens with a bank relationship when we have an overdrawn account. It kills our freedom, our flexibility, and our credit capacity.



Building trust is not just a skill we can learn, it is a character trait that we have to develop. It is not a technique we can just pick up. We have to be trustworthy in our heart and sincere about what our real intentions are so that we can be transparent. We’re not fearful of being “found out” doing something in the dark when we’re proclaiming something else in the light.



The most important of all deposits into the Trust Bank Account of trust is empathy, because empathy, or listening to another within his or her frame of reference, tells us what the important deposits are to that person. Every person is different. So we have to figure out what is important to them – how do they interpret kindness, consideration, and respect? How do they interpret making and keeping promises? How do they interpret any other positive deposit in the Trust Bank Account?



This is all a function of empathy, and it is the same with our family members, our associates in the service or business, or our customers. The key is to always develop a relationship that produces mutual benefit. In order to do that, we have to deeply listen to other people to find out what the benefit is for them.



If we lose someone’s trust, is it possible to regain it, and how?



It is possible to regain their trust, but to be able to do so, we have to right the wrongs we’ve done; we have to apologize; we have to seek forgiveness; we have to try to make reconciliation in every way we can. But if we are in a state of denial and don’t have the humility to admit that we’ve made a mistake, then we’ve just taken another withdrawal and people will come to not trust our apologies and our asking for forgiveness.



In conclusion, high trust will be possible between people who are trustworthy, who posses both high character traits and competence to get things done well. So, in order to increase trust within ISKCON, we need to start with ourselves, working on becoming a trustworthy person.

Serious devotees’ trust is important to us, because if they trust us, we can get more Krsna’s mercy and be empowered to preach Krsna consciousness more effectively.

To learn more how to apply the ideas from this article, please contact Gita Coaching on akrura@gmail.com 

Building Trust Within ISKCON
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By Akrura Dasa on 17 Jun 2008
ISKCON NEWS

Srila Prabhupada wanted us to serve together based on love and trust. Here are some reflections on building trust and some ideas that may be helpful to our temples and projects.



Most organizations are not aware of the enormous cost of low trust, and because they have no means of measuring its impact, they have little motivation to seriously address it. To compound the problem, many people feel like helpless victims of the problems in their organizations and see no clear way to influence their leaders.



In this article, we offer specific, powerful things we can do that can profoundly impact the level of trust in our relationships, our teams, our families, and our movement in general.



Is trust really necessary in life, work or service today? Can we succeed without it?



I believe that we cannot succeed without trust. It is not only important, it is absolutely vital. For instance, even when we are buying gasoline, we trust that we are getting quality fuel; we trust that the prices are within the market; and we trust that our money will be accepted by that person. There are so many elements to the simplest transaction that require trust. But we are sometimes unaware of those implicit elements. Trust is the lifeblood of all relationships, of all transactions, and is fundamental to everything in life.



What are evidences of a low-trust environment?



Low-trust environments are filled with hidden agendas, a lot of political games, interpersonal conflict, interdepartmental rivalries, and people bad-mouthing each other behind their backs while sweet-talking them to their faces.



With low trust, we get a lot of rules and regulations that take the place of human judgment and creativity; we also see that people are disempowered. They will not be on the same page about what’s important. Ultimately, the culture will become driven by urgency rather than importance because everyone is in it only or mostly for themselves and for their own agenda.



What is low trust costing organizations?



Low trust has a huge tax associated with it. It creates a culture of toxicity, just like we have toxins in our body. Imagine what it costs a body to be full of poison. That is what a low-trust culture is – it’s full of poison. We see people embracing and promulgating what can be called the six metastasizing emotional cancers. Metastasize means they send their cancer cells through the body, mind, and spirit of a person. They also spread through relationships.



These cancers are criticizing, complaining, comparing, competing, contending, and cynicism. (By competing, I don’t mean the healthy competition where we are competing to do more service to Krsna or please devotees but competition based on envy and false pride.) These emotional cancers are the forces that literally undermine and eventually destroy relationships. On the other hand, trust helps to make things possible.



If we want to overcome these six cancers, it seems we need a lot of work, in order to build and maintain trust. We may rightly ask, is it worth the effort?



I think it’s absolutely worth it. It’s the most supremely important thing we can do to get the confidence of another person by being true to our commitments, by clarifying expectations, by treating people with kindness and respect, and by learning to be transparent about the information we have so that people trust it and we can almost speak to them in verbal shorthand. We hardly even have to finish sentences when there’s high trust.



Trust speeds up achievement. Without it, everything gets bogged down, slows down; people protect themselves, they think defensively, and they gather other people around them to form cliques. These cliques then judge other cliques, which only compounds the low-trust situation, slows down everything, and levies a huge tax on all human interactions and transactions.



So what behaviours increase trust and is it a skill we can learn?



The metaphor that can be helpful is a Trust Bank Account. It’s like a financial bank account into which we can make deposits and take withdrawals. And if we get into a situation where we are constantly making withdrawals – the kinds that we mentioned above – we get an overdrawn Trust Bank Account. And we all know what happens with a bank relationship when we have an overdrawn account. It kills our freedom, our flexibility, and our credit capacity.



Building trust is not just a skill we can learn, it is a character trait that we have to develop. It is not a technique we can just pick up. We have to be trustworthy in our heart and sincere about what our real intentions are so that we can be transparent. We’re not fearful of being “found out” doing something in the dark when we’re proclaiming something else in the light.



The most important of all deposits into the Trust Bank Account of trust is empathy, because empathy, or listening to another within his or her frame of reference, tells us what the important deposits are to that person. Every person is different. So we have to figure out what is important to them – how do they interpret kindness, consideration, and respect? How do they interpret making and keeping promises? How do they interpret any other positive deposit in the Trust Bank Account?



This is all a function of empathy, and it is the same with our family members, our associates in the service or business, or our customers. The key is to always develop a relationship that produces mutual benefit. In order to do that, we have to deeply listen to other people to find out what the benefit is for them.



If we lose someone’s trust, is it possible to regain it, and how?



It is possible to regain their trust, but to be able to do so, we have to right the wrongs we’ve done; we have to apologize; we have to seek forgiveness; we have to try to make reconciliation in every way we can. But if we are in a state of denial and don’t have the humility to admit that we’ve made a mistake, then we’ve just taken another withdrawal and people will come to not trust our apologies and our asking for forgiveness.



In conclusion, high trust will be possible between people who are trustworthy, who posses both high character traits and competence to get things done well. So, in order to increase trust within ISKCON, we need to start with ourselves, working on becoming a trustworthy person.

Serious devotees’ trust is important to us, because if they trust us, we can get more Krsna’s mercy and be empowered to preach Krsna consciousness more effectively.

To learn more how to apply the ideas from this article, please contact Gita Coaching on akrura@gmail.com