Author Archives: Chaitanya Charan das

Answer Podcast
http://www.thespiritualscientist.com/audio/CCD%20QA/2015%20QA/10-15%20QA/If%20some%20new%20devotees%20want%20to%20donate%20organs,%20what%20should%20we%20tell%20them.mp3
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Answer Podcast

http://www.thespiritualscientist.com/audio/CCD%20QA/2015%20QA/10-15%20QA/If%20different%20strategies%20work%20in%20outreach%20with%20different%20people%20how%20can%20we%20know%20in%20advance%20how%20best%20to%20share%20bhakti.mp3
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The post If different strategies work in outreach with different people, how can we know in advance how best to share bhakti? appeared first on The Spiritual Scientist.

Answer Podcast
http://www.thespiritualscientist.com/audio/CCD%20QA/2015%20QA/10-15%20QA/How%20can%20we%20resist%20temptations.mp3
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The post How can we resist temptations? appeared first on The Spiritual Scientist.

Answer Podcast
http://www.thespiritualscientist.com/audio/CCD%20QA/2015%20QA/10-15%20QA/How%20to%20preach%20to%20people%20who%20want%20to%20speak%20their%20own%20ideas%20and%20not%20hear.mp3
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The post How to preach to people who want to speak their own ideas and not hear? appeared first on The Spiritual Scientist.

Answer Podcast
http://www.thespiritualscientist.com/audio/CCD%20QA/2015%20QA/10-15%20QA/Why%20did%20Krishna%20manifest%20four%20arms%20while%20teasing%20Rukmini.mp3
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The post Why did Krishna manifest four arms while teasing Rukmini? appeared first on The Spiritual Scientist.

Answer Podcast:

http://www.thespiritualscientist.com/audio/CCD%20QA/2015%20QA/10-15%20QA/Why%20did%20Barbarikas%20mother%20tell%20him%20to%20fight%20on%20the%20weaker%20side%20insted%20of%20on%20the%20Pandavas%20side.mp3
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The post Why did Barbarika’s mother tell him to fight on the weaker side instead of on the Pandavas’ side? appeared first on The Spiritual Scientist.

Answer Podcast
http://www.thespiritualscientist.com/audio/CCD%20QA/2015%20QA/10-15%20QA/Was%20the%20solar%20eclipse%20a%20predicted%20event%20or%20created%20by%20the%20Lord%20to%20help%20Arjuna.mp3
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The post Was the solar eclipse a predicted event or created by the Lord to help Arjuna? appeared first on The Spiritual Scientist.

Lecture at ISKCON Seattle
Lecture Podcast
http://www.thespiritualscientist.com/audio/ccd%20classes/desiretree/2015%20classes/10-15%20classes/Kurukshetra%20-%20Arena%20of%20fratricide%20and%20reunion.mp3
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Answer Podcast:

http://www.thespiritualscientist.com/audio/CCD%20QA/2015%20QA/10-15%20QA/When%20our%20chanting%20is%20not%20good%20what%20can%20we%20do.mp3
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The post When our chanting is not good what can we do? appeared first on The Spiritual Scientist.

Answer Podcast

http://www.thespiritualscientist.com/audio/CCD%20QA/2015%20QA/10-15%20QA/How%20can%20we%20increase%20our%20concentration%20in%20chanting.mp3
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Answer Podcast
http://www.thespiritualscientist.com/audio/CCD%20QA/2015%20QA/10-15%20QA/How%20can%20we%20study%20scripture%20systematically.mp3
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Continued from part 1 here and part 2 here

Shelter amidst trouble

In the last leg of my trip, I was supposed to be in New York for 2-3 days and in Detroit for 2-3 days before returning, but somehow the New York stay didn’t work out and I also got too many other invitations. So during the last 5 days, I ended up visiting 6 cities in 6 different states. My last stop was at Detroit, where my brother Harshal has settled along with his wife Priyanka and where my father and my brother’s parents-in-law had come. During our subsequent family re-union, my brother’s father-in-law, who runs a travel agency among several other businesses and who along with his wife flew back to India with me, helped me navigate the many legal intricacies associated with international travel. My maternal uncle who has settled in Detroit, America, shared many photos of my infancy and childhood – even his and my mother’s childhood – thus taking us all down nostalgia lane. Seeing that world of loving relationships reminded me that I needed to recommit myself to my monkhood. After all, I had hurt so many of my relatives by my decision to become a monk, and the least I could do to mitigate that hurt was to become a committed devotee, thereby sharing with them whatever spiritual credits I might accrue by Krishna’s grace.

My father playfully reminded me that some ten years ago, I had said, “America was a terrible country filled with materialism and I would never go there.” And yet here I was in America. I acknowledged this change as another example of time tempering the judgmentality of a new convert. Harshal pointed out that during the last twenty days I had traveled through 12 American states: Florida (Alachua, Orlando, Jacksonville), Colorado (Denver), Arizona (Phoenix), California (Los Angeles, San Jose), Oregon (Portland, Corvallis), Washington (Seattle), New York (New York City), New Jersey (Plainfield), Ohio (Columbus), Massachusetts (Boston), Michigan (Detroit) and Illinois (Chicago).

Actually, I had had no intention of traveling so much during my US trip, but I don’t know how it happened – my dumb social reflexes coupled with my difficulty in saying no, I guess. Predictably, my body couldn’t maintain the pace and during the last 5 days, I had acute cough and cold during the day. Thankfully though, it would subside enough in the mornings and evenings for me to be able to speak as expected. Still, I have learnt my lesson and won’t be traveling at such a pace again.

In comparison, my US tour started sedately, with I being in Alachua for the first ten days, including two weekends. My trip had been arranged by Hari Parayana Prabhu who is a Chemistry Professor at Florida University and is conducting a vibrant Gita study program for University of Florida students. I stayed at his place and he and his family made me feel at home by their informal hospitality. And Hari Parayana Prabhu and I had many stimulating […]

The post The highest study in the land of higher studies (Reflections on my US trip 2015) – Part 3 appeared first on The Spiritual Scientist.

Continued from Part 1 here

Illuminating Association

During my visit to Denver, I had the association of Keshava Bharati Maharaja on the morning before and after I gave the Bhagavatam class. Maharaja heard my class from his room and when I returned to meet him, he appreciated the class and blessed me with a tight, long embrace. Our meeting of minds was instant – when Maharaja with endearing humility stated that he was just a fool living on a hill, referring to his staying at the Govardhan ashrama, I felt inspired to play on the word “fool” which in Hindi means flower and replied, “Yes, Maharaja, you are a flower adorning Govardhana.” When I commented that many people reduce scriptural scholarship to the capacity for memorizing and quoting verses, he spontaneously moved forward and shook hands with me in agreement. When I asked Maharaja how he maintained warm relationships with devotees who held antipodal positions on various sensitive social issues, he quoted the Gita 6.9 about being equipoised towards all. In fact, he quoted it thrice during our hour-long talk. I consider the verses of the Gita to be among my best friends. And just as discovering a new facet of a friend thickens our bond with them, so too did the repeated and relevant usage of this verse by Maharaja thicken my friendship with it.

At the Bhakti Center in New York, I met Satyaraja Prabhu, one of our movement’s most prolific authors. He is one of my writing heroes and we are both Back to Godhead co-editors. While reviewing articles, we often have jovial and serious email exchanges. Appreciating my consistent writing, he had a couple of years ago lovingly deemed me “the Indian Satyaraja.” During our meeting, I reminded him of that and he joked, “Given how well you are writing now, maybe I should be called the American Chaitanya Charan.” When I protested that my writing was nowhere near his, he replied endearingly, “Ok, you be the Indian Satyaraja, I will be the American Chaitanya Charan. And we will be spiritual brothers.” He had attended my class at the Bhakti Center and he appreciated my quoting Woody Allen (“I am not afraid of death, I just don’t want to be there when it happens”). He told me that he is planning to imbibe Allen’s humorous style in his upcoming autobiographical book. We discussed various styles of writing and I marveled at his genius when he told me that he could envision in his mind a full article with its layout before he got down to writing it.

While in Los Angeles, I went to Santa Barbara to meet HH Giriraja Maharaja. As a disarmingly courteous host, Maharaja himself came out to receive us, then took me to his altar room and blessed me with his association for over 3 hours, 2 hours exclusively and 1 hour during a group lunch. I have served Maharaj as an editor for several years. During the course of the service, our candid and […]

The post The highest study in the land of higher studies (Reflections on my US trip 2015) – Part 2 appeared first on The Spiritual Scientist.

For the world, America is the land of Hollywood, Disneyland, Wall Street and the arena for fulfilling “the American dream.” For Americans, it’s the “Land for the free and the home for the brave.” However, for me, like many Indians, it had been for years the land of higher studies. Some twenty years ago, I had desired, as do many Indians, to go to the US for higher studies. And I had been well on course to going there, having done well in GRE (Graduate Record Examination), the exam for getting admissions in US colleges. But by Krishna’s merciful intervention, I had been introduced to the wisdom of the Bhagavad-gita. Being attracted by its bhakti-centered message, I had ended up staying back in India for “the highest studies,” as my spiritual master HH Radhanath Maharaja had referred to my decision to dedicate my life for studying the Gita.

And yet here I was on my way to America as my flight took off on 16 Sep, 2015, from Mumbai to Orlando, USA. Of course, I was going as a teacher of the Gita. Coincidentally, I happened to arrive in America on exactly the same day as Srila Prabhupada had arrived there fifty years ago. I prayed for his blessings so that I could do my small part for serving his mission.

Learning while teaching

During the next month, I found myself learning how the Gita was being lived in a culture distinct from its native culture and how its wisdom could be best communicated in such a culture. At the start of my trip, I had made a resolution to not repeat any class that I had spoken earlier. This resolution had two purposes: to ensure that I generated fresh content for my hearers on thespiriutalscientist.com and to mitigate the physical rigor of traveling by intensifying the intellectual adventure of speaking. For me, speaking becomes exciting when it doesn’t have to conform to predefined content. And speaking during my American tour did turn out to be an adventure: during the course of the talks and question-answers, I came up with over a hundred ideas for articles to add to the over five thousand ideas in my ideas file.

But sticking to the resolution of always speaking fresh content turned out to be much more difficult than what I had expected. I soon became aware that I didn’t know too many ways of making the Gita’s message intersect with the needs, interests and concerns of new people. So, I found myself repeating some, even many, points in my classes to new people, though I ensured that the content of my classes to devotees was mostly new.

Over the some forty classes I gave during my month long trip, I managed to stick to the resolution of not repeating a class. Even when I was scheduled to speak on a topic that I had spoken earlier, I managed to generate largely new content on that topic. While speaking at San Jose on rasa in Krishna-bhakti – […]

The post The highest study in the land of higher studies (Reflections on my US trip 2015) – Part 1 appeared first on The Spiritual Scientist.

Answer Podcast:

http://www.thespiritualscientist.com/audio/CCD%20QA/2015%20QA/10-15%20QA/How%20can%20a%20devotee%20coming%20from%20impersonalist%20background%20give%20up%20those%20leanings.mp3
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Answer Podcast:

http://www.thespiritualscientist.com/audio/CCD%20QA/2015%20QA/10-15%20QA/Should%20we%20hear%20Mayavadis%20submissively%20as%20Lord%20Chaitanya%20heard%20Sarvabhauma.mp3
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Answer Podcast:

http://www.thespiritualscientist.com/audio/CCD%20QA/2015%20QA/10-15%20QA/Can%20devotee-couples%20avoid%20having%20kids%20to%20avoid%20distraction%20in%20bhakti.mp3
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Answer Podcast:

http://www.thespiritualscientist.com/audio/CCD%20QA/2015%20QA/10-15%20QA/How%20can%20we%20reconcile%20being%20sensitive%20with%20Prabhupadas%20being%20rigid.mp3
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Answer Podcast:

http://www.thespiritualscientist.com/audio/CCD%20QA/2015%20QA/10-15%20QA/What%20is%20the%20difference%20between%20zonal%20division%20present%20in%20ISKCON%20and%20zonal%20acharya%20system.mp3
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The post What is the difference between zonal division present in ISKCON and zonal acharya system? appeared first on The Spiritual Scientist.

What is your comment about this?

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2014/12/the_world_is_not_falling_apart_the_trend_lines_reveal_an_increasingly_peaceful.single.html?__s=xg9dszphw5jyusbuez1n

Answer Podcast:

http://www.thespiritualscientist.com/audio/CCD%20QA/2015%20QA/10-15%20QA/How%20to%20understand%20statistics%20that%20indicate%20the%20world%20is%20more%20peaceful%20than%20the%20past.mp3
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Answer Summary:

1. Reality is not accurately reflected by highly publicised things, be they of violence and the world falling apart or of advancement and gadgets that promise to solve all problems. Seeing everything negatively and pessimistically is tamasic, whereas seeing everything with rose-tinted glasses is rajasic – neither are true. We need a sober, stattvika vision.

2. Past statistics about violence simply demonstrates that misery is a constant characteristic of the world.

3. Statistics about mental and social health indicate that many things are worse than before, as Bhagavatam  (1.1.10 upadrtah – disturbed) predicts

Consider some statistics from:

1. The American Paradox by David Myers and

2. The Loss of Happiness in Market Democracies by Robert Lane

http://www.georgescialabba.net/mtgs/2000/09/the-american-paradox-spiritual.html
The data on our current “social recession” (Myers’ term) are familiar, but it is useful to have them fully and clearly set out in the two books under review. Since 1960, the divorce rate has doubled. Cohabitation is seven times more frequent. Four out of 10 ninth-graders and 7 out of 10 high-school seniors report having had sexual intercourse. The average age of first marriage for men has increased from 23 to 27 and for women from 20 to 25. Births to unmarried teens have quadrupled; births to all unmarried parents have sextupled. The proportion of children not living with two parents has tripled. The number of children living with a never-married mother has increased by a factor of 13. Forty percent of all children do not live with their biological fathers.

Hours per week parents spend with children has decreased by nearly half (30 to 17). The teenage suicide rate has tripled. The rate of violent crime has quadrupled; the rate of juvenile violent crime has septupled. Twelve million people, including 3 million teenagers, contract sexually transmitted diseases each year. Average television-watching hours per household have increased 40 percent; average SAT scores have declined 50 points. The proportion of survey respondents agreeing that “most people can be trusted” dropped 40%, while the number of those asserting that “you can’t be too careful in dealing with people” rose 50%. And although personal income has more than doubled, the proportion of Americans calling themselves “pretty well off financially” has dropped 40% and “very happy” has dropped 15%, while the incidence of depression is, depending on the estimate, three to ten times greater.

So far, just trends. But there are correlations in the data, too. Married people are happier and healthier than divorced or unmarried people. People are more likely to stay married if they are religious, well educated, grew up in a two-parent home, married after age 20, and married as virgins. Compared with married couples, cohabiting couples enjoy sex less, are more often unfaithful, and (if they eventually marry) are more likely to divorce.

And then there’s the root of (not all, but much) developmental evil: father-absence. Seven out of ten delinquents are from father-absent homes. Teenage boys from such homes are three times as likely to be incarcerated by age 30; for each […]

The post How to understand statistics that indicate the world is more peaceful than in the past? appeared first on The Spiritual Scientist.

Questioner: Madhavi Gauri Mataji

Answer Podcast:

http://www.thespiritualscientist.com/audio/CCD%20QA/2015%20QA/10-15%20QA/When%20the%20mind%20becomes%20our%20friend%20does%20it%20become%20the%20same%20as%20the%20intelligence.mp3
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Lecture Podcast:

http://www.thespiritualscientist.com/audio/ccd%20classes/desiretree/2015%20classes/10-15%20classes/Sensitively%20transforming%20others%20hearts%20-%20Analysis%20of%20Lord%20Chaitanyas%20delivering%20Sarvabhauma.mp3
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The post Sensitively transforming others’ hearts – Analysis of Lord Chaitanya’s delivering Sarvabhauma appeared first on The Spiritual Scientist.

Answer Podcast:

http://www.thespiritualscientist.com/audio/CCD%20QA/2015%20QA/10-15%20QA/When%20Buddha%20and%20Kalki%20appear%20in%20Kali-yuga%20why%20is%20Vishnu%20called%20Tri-yugi.mp3
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Answer Podcast:

http://www.thespiritualscientist.com/audio/CCD%20QA/2015%20QA/10-15%20QA/All%20our%20problems%20arent%20mental%20-%20how%20to%20deal%20with%20real%20problems.mp3
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The post When Sarvabhauma was an impersonalist how could he appreciate symptoms of love of God in Lord Chaitanya? appeared first on The Spiritual Scientist.

Answer Podcast:

http://www.thespiritualscientist.com/audio/CCD%20QA/2015%20QA/10-15%20QA/If%20I%20dont%20have%20enough%20sattva%20to%20study%20sabda%20constantly%20should%20I%20not%20become%20a%20brahmachari.mp3
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Answer Podcast:

http://www.thespiritualscientist.com/audio/CCD%20QA/2015%20QA/10-15%20QA/When%20staying%20silent%20amidst%20injustice%20is%20wrong%20why%20did%20Yudhishthira%20passively%20accept%20the%20Kauravas%20atrocities.mp3
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Answer Podcast:

http://www.thespiritualscientist.com/audio/CCD%20QA/2015%20QA/10-15%20QA/Is%20dissatisfaction%20because%20of%20not%20being%20able%20to%20read%20scripture%20regularly%20good.mp3
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Keynote address during panel discussion organized by Artha Forum at Sacramento, USA
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Answer Podcast:

http://www.thespiritualscientist.com/audio/CCD%20QA/2015%20QA/10-15%20QA/What%20does%20worshiping%20the%20Lord%20through%20our%20work%20mean.mp3
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Answer Podcast:

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Answer Podcast:

http://www.thespiritualscientist.com/audio/CCD%20QA/2015%20QA/10-15%20QA/All%20our%20problems%20arent%20mental%20-%20how%20to%20deal%20with%20real%20problems.mp3
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Seminar to employees of Microsoft at Seattle, USA
Lecture Podcast:

http://www.thespiritualscientist.com/audio/ccd%20classes/desiretree/2015%20classes/10-15%20classes/LOAD%20acronym%20-%20How%20work%20becomes%20workload.mp3
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Lecture ppt

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Answer Podcast:

http://www.thespiritualscientist.com/audio/CCD%20QA/2015%20QA/10-15%20QA/Is%20it%20necessary%20to%20research%20our%20nature.mp3
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Answer Podcast:

http://www.thespiritualscientist.com/audio/CCD%20QA/2015%20QA/10-15%20QA/Is%20resentment%20caused%20by%20outer%20events%20or%20inner%20mentality.mp3
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Answer Podcast:

http://www.thespiritualscientist.com/audio/CCD%20QA/2015%20QA/10-15%20QA/How%20to%20cooperate%20joyfully%20with%20devotees%20of%20radically%20different%20natures.mp3
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Answer Podcast:

http://www.thespiritualscientist.com/audio/CCD%20QA/2015%20QA/10-15%20QA/Does%20demoniac%20goodness%20become%20divine%20goodness%20by%20bhakti.mp3
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Answer Podcast:

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Answer Podcast:

http://www.thespiritualscientist.com/audio/CCD%20QA/2015%20QA/10-15%20QA/Does%20our%20nature%20change%20as%20become%20purified.mp3
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Bhagavatam class at Radha Govinda temple, Kolkata
Lecture Podcast:

http://www.thespiritualscientist.com/audio/ccd%20classes/desiretree/2015%20classes/10-15%20classes/Chant%20and%20be%20happy%20is%20not%20just%20causal%20but%20also%20parallel.mp3
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Answer Podcast:

http://www.thespiritualscientist.com/audio/CCD%20QA/2015%20QA/10-15%20QA/How%20is%20consciousness%20carried%20through%20food.mp3
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