Author Archives: Chaitanya Charan das

CC M 21.136 – Savor the sweetness that supersedes superlatives
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Holy Name Meditation Podcast:

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Link to Sri Caitanya Caritamrta Madhya-lila Chapter 21 Verse 136

 

Should a devotee cardiac surgeon avoid doing angioplasty because it uses an animal product injection?
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Answer Podcast:

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Bhagavatam-daily 250 – 11.12.07 – Association of devotees is equivalent to the association of Krishna
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Prabhupada’s legacy lives on
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“It’s an astonishing story. If someone told you a story like this, you wouldn’t believe it. Here’s this person, he’s seventy years old, he’s going to a country where he’s never been before, he doesn’t know anybody there, he has no money, has no contacts. He has none of the things, you would say, that make for success. He’s going to recruit people not on any systematic basis, but just picking up whomever he comes across and he’s going to give them responsibility for organizing a worldwide movement. You’d say, ‘What kind of program is that?’ There are precedents perhaps. Jesus of Nazareth went around saying, ‘Come follow me. Drop your nets, or leave your tax collecting, and come with me and be my disciple.’ But in his case, he wasn’t an old man in a strange society dealing with people whose backgrounds were totally different from his own. He was dealing with his own community. Bhaktivedanta Swami’s achievement, then, must be seen as unique.”

– Historian of Religion Prof Thomas Hopkins in Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna: Five Distinguished Scholars on the Krishna Movement in the West

 

This astonishing story has continued for many decades even after Hopkins’ insightful observation, though of course not at the same dramatic scale or pace. In this article, I will try to document how the legacy of bhakti-yoga that Srila Prabhupada brought to the world is continuing and expanding even now.

Srila Prabhupada wanted to share his love for Krishna with the whole world and to fulfill that divine aspiration he urged his followers distribute more books, build more temples and make more devotees. Therefore, the movement he started, popularly known as the Hare Krishna movement, has often used success in these activities as its definition of success. And rightly so, because these activities have been and will continue to be pivotal in shaping the movement’s composition, outreach and trajectory. But the movement often gets reduced to these highly visible activities alone, and much has already been written on these activities. Therefore, I will dwell on other ways in which the bhakti legacy moves on. I will not attempt a comprehensive analysis of the entire movement – that is a task best left to a historian. Nor do I claim that the examples of ongoing legacy I talk about are the most important or the most representative; these are just the examples that strike me from my limited perspective as a second-generational Indian member.

Emergence of a vibrant congregation

Perhaps the single most striking feature of the Hare Krishna movement’s history is its shift from a temple-based movement to a congregation-based one. The word ‘congregation’ is used conventionally to refer to any group of people who come together, often for religious purposes. However, within ISKCON lexicon, it refers more specifically to the householder devotees, in contradistinction with the renunciates.

ISKCON started in America and spread to other places in the Western world. In those parts, its devotional culture was so utterly different from mainstream Western culture that devotees felt the […]

CC daily 147 – M 6.211 – Our achievements are due to not our greatness but devotees’ desires and Krishna’s mercy
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CC daily Podcast:

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Bhagavatam-daily 249 – 11.12.06 – Association benedicts not just the elevated but also the degraded
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Bhagavatam-daily Podcast:

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Bhagavatam-daily 248 – 11.12.05 – Association’s potency is not just declared but also demonstrated
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Bhagavatam-daily Podcast:

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Bhagavatam-daily 247 – 11.12.04 – Social division is not to be eternalized because social designation itself is not eternal
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Bhagavatam-daily Podcast:

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Bhagavatam-daily 246 – 11.12.03 – Association makes bhakti accessible to all humans – and nonhumans too.mp3
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Bhagavatam-daily Podcast:

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Bhagavatam-daily 245 – 11.12.02 – Association gives access to Krishna’s omnipotence internally and externally
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Bhagavatam-daily Podcast:

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Bhagavatam-daily 244 – 11.12.01 – The primacy of bhakti is not exclusive but is inclusive
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Bhagavatam-daily Podcast:

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Bhagavatam-daily 243 – 11.11.49 – Krishna teaches not as a pedant but as a friend
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Bhagavatam-daily Podcast:

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Do the modes come from Krishna or from prakriti?
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BG 7.12 says that modes of nature comes from Lord, but 13.20 says that modes comes from Prakriti, how to reconcile such contradiction?
Answer Podcast:

http://www.thespiritualscientist.com/audio/CCD%20QA/2015%20QA/06-15%20QA/Do%20the%20modes%20come%20from%20Krishna%20or%20from%20prakriti.mp3
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CC daily 146 – M 6.210 – Lord Chaitanya’s mercy makes the defeated delighted, not devastated
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CC-daily Podcast:

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CC daily 144 – M 6.208 – Lord Chaitanya shares supremely the supreme ecstasy of the supreme devotee
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CC-daily Podcast:

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CC daily 142 – M 6.206 – Sarvabhauma’s scholarship supersedes that of Keshava Kashmiri in disposition and content
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CC-daily Podcast:

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CC daily 140 – M 6.204 – Sarvabhauma’s transformation is not just intellectual but all-encompassing
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CC-daily Podcast:

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World Yoga Day – Let’s Go Beyond Political and Physical Posturing
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The United Nations General Assembly in accordance with the call of the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, is celebrating World Yoga Day on June 21. This is the day of the Summer Solstice, the longest day in the Northern Hemisphere and a day considered significant in many traditions. The fact that scores of countries all over the world, including many Islamic countries, are observing the day is testimony to yoga’s universality.

Unfortunately, in India, this occasion has got caught in an unnecessary controversy. Some groups have alleged that the promotion of yoga is an attempt to covertly impose a Hindu practice on India, thereby threatening the country’s secular fabric. This allegation originates from an inability to separate the specific origin of a thing from its universal purpose. Consider a scientific thought-system such as classical physics. It began in Britain with an English scientist Isaac Newton, but has now become a part of the common human intellectual heritage whereby its insights and applications are accessible for everyone everywhere. Acknowledging that classical physics originated in Britain doesn’t amount to promoting Anglican colonialist nationalism.

Similarly, yoga originated in India, but it has now become a part of the common human wisdom-heritage. Acknowledging that yoga originated in India in the traditions from which Hinduism originated doesn’t amount to promoting right-wing Indian nationalism. To misrepresent yoga for scoring political brownie points is to distressingly devalue yoga.

While yoga is devalued by political posturing in India, in the West it is devalued by physical posturing–it is reduced to an exercise for treating and shaping the body. However, at its core, yoga is a time-tested process for experiencing our universal spiritual essence and harmonizing with it–a harmonization that can bring physical improvement as a side-benefit. Within the spiritual process of yoga, as outlined in Patanjali’s classic treatise, the Yoga-Sutra, physical postures, called asanas, are the third among the eight limbs of yoga. For a cricketer, standing in a posture is not an end in itself; it is a means for hitting the ball well. Similarly, the asanas in yoga are not ends in themselves; they are launching pads for catapulting human consciousness on a spiritual journey.

This deeper purpose of yoga is conveyed by ancient yoga texts through the various definitions they give of yoga: for example, “sense control” (Katha Upanishad), “mental control” (Yoga-sutra), “skill in action” (Bhagavad Gita), “union between the individual self and the Supreme Self ” (Yoga Yajñavalkya). Significantly, none of them equate yoga with postures alone–to the contrary, the Hatha Yoga Pradipika (4.79) categorically declares that practicing asanas without striving for mind control is not yoga practice at all. The semantic and conceptual alienation of yoga from its original meaning is similar to the straying of the meaning of the English word ‘lady.’ It stems from the Middle English lavedi, which comes from the Old English hlaefdige “kneader of dough.” In contemporary Western usage, kneading dough is the work of servants, not ladies.

Perhaps the meaning of “yoga” that best reflects its universality is its standard dictionary meaning: […]

Bhagavatam-daily 241 – 11.11.47 – Absorption comes from both attraction and determination
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Bhagavatam daily Podcast:

http://www.thespiritualscientist.com/audio/ccd%20classes/desiretree/2015%20classes/06-15%20classes/Bhagavatam-daily%20240%20–%2011.11.46%20–%20Specific%20details%20of%20Krishnas%20forms%20are%20not%20to%20be%20transcended%20but%20to%20be%20treasured.mp3
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