Author Archives: Madhava Smullen

The independent film 10,000 Saints, which includes scenes shot in the Manhattan Hare Krishna Temple “The Bhakti Center” and features ISKCON devotees, was released on Blu-Ray, DVD and streaming services on October 6th. Based on the…

World Holy Name Week (WHNW), first established in 2008, is increasing in popularity with forty-three ISKCON Centers worldwide in 2013 and over fifty last year putting on events designed to share, spread and become absorbed in the Holy Name of…

Born in New York City, Amala-bhakta Swami worked in motion pictures in California before beginning a search for the true purpose of life. Moving back to New York in 1957, he studied and then began teaching ashtanga yoga, establishing his own …

That weekend, on Saturday September 19th, nearly 500 of his disciples and grand-disciples from all over the U.S. and Canada as well as from Russia, Ukraine, England and India gathered at Commonwealth Pier – the same place he had arrived…

Dubbed “The Land of the Eternal Blue Sky,” Mongolia is a large and rather wild country divided between deserts, steppes, and mountains. About fifty-three per cent of the population are Buddhist, and about forty per cent continue t…

A Sarasota, Florida family have opened up their home to provide a Krishna conscious oasis for devotees and newcomers in their city, which is three hours’ drive from the nearest ISKCON temples in Alachua and Miami. “People can make…

After several internal events celebrating its progress so far, the Museum of Sacred Art (MOSA) is set to officially open in Villa Vrindavana, Italy, at the end of this month. The museum is MOSA’s second branch, with the first running in…

On Thursday September 17th, at 10:00am, Boston City Hall raised the Indian flag in honor of ISKCON Founder-Acharya Srila Prabhupada. It was on the same day fifty years ago in 1965, that Prabhupada arrived in Boston’s Commonwealth Pier o…

With the 50th anniversary of Srila Prabhupada’s arrival in North America being observed on September 17th, and the 50th of ISKCON’s incorporation coming up in July next year, Houston’s Hare Krishna Dham temple held…

Noticias.iskcon.org, ISKCON News’ Spanish language website, is back in action after beating off a hacker attack which targeted the site back on April 26th. “I received an email from an unknown sender asking for money in exchange f…

This month, the ISKCON Disciple Course – a program introduced in 2012 to help devotees better understand the guru-disciple relationship – became a requirement for initiation into ISKCON. And now, the straightforwardly-named T…

Construction is set to begin on a new dayschool gurukula near Sochi, Southern Russia sometime this spring, with plans to open in September 2017. With no other gurukulas currently in operation in Russia, it may be under high demand as the only…

Just one week after the grand opening of an 18,000-square-foot temple in Plainfield, New Jersey, comes the news that a Bhumi Puja ceremony will be held to break the ground for another new ISKCON temple in Parsippany on September 26th. Brahman…

Kaulini Devi Dasi, a much-loved disciple of Srila Prabhupada known for her simplicity, surrender and purity, and for her many years of dedicated service at Gita Nagari, passed away on September 3rd. She was 69. Born and raised in Northern Cal…

Bhadra Rupa, alias Luis De La Calle, is signed to Sony World Music, has performed at theaters around the world, and is a member of the US, British, and Japanese national flute associations. At his music academy in Geneva, Switzerland, he teac…

A small yet growing crew of dedicated devotees have been doing Harinama Sankirtana in downtown Vancouver, Canada, for over 200 days in a row now, chanting the Holy Names of God for two hours every week day after work and for three hours on we…

ISKCON Communications Director Anuttama Das and Bhumi Project Director Gopal-Lila Das presented a proposal for a new ISKCON Environmental Initiative at the North American GBC meetings in Chicago this August. The proposal was unanimously accep…

The Hare Krishna Festival tour that drew many Irish people to Krishna consciousness in the 1990s returned to the Emerald Isle this summer, and once again got Irish feet dancing. Between 1990 and 1995, the late inspirational preacher and Prabh…

Back in 1995, a young Manorama Das launched a two-week bus tour with his gurukuli friends, covering 1,500 miles and visiting Rathayatras and temples along the way. This year’s 20th anniversary bus tour ran for six weeks from J…

With the help of a European Union grant for building youth relations, about 175 European youth received an immersive experience of Krishna consciousness on the Senagataway retreat at ISKCON’s beautiful Radhadesh community in Belgium fro…

From August 13th to 16th a massive event in Kolkata – celebrating the 50th anniversary of Srila Prabhupada’s journey to the U.S. – drew 35,000 people, including representatives of 125 countries and many promin…

ISKCON of Central New Jersey will celebrate the grand opening of its new 18,000 square foot temple in Plainfield – a converted church — with a three-day weekend festival from August 28th to 30th. Close to 10,000 people, including …

We’re in a golden age of kirtan albums. The offerings are diverse: In May, Ananda Monet’s Inevitable Time told us the story of the Mahabharat in theatrical, epic style; and Madi’s Bhakti Without Borders s…

Srila Prabhupada disciple Surabhir Abhipalayantam Das, who was the design coordinator for ISKCON’s flagship Indian temples in Vrindavana, U.P. and Juhu, Mumbai in the 1970s, has passed away. He left due to liver cancer on July 30th&nbsp…

“People go to Vrindavan and their lives change… for the better,” says Shyam Gopal Das (Maksim Varfolomeev), who wrote and directed the 40-minute film Reconnection with his wife Vijaya Radhika Dasi (Olga Avramenko)…

ISKCON yoga teachers will gather at the Simhachalam farm in Germany August 13th to 17th to develop an ISKCON-wide system for presenting Mantra Yoga through their professional yoga studios. Fifteen teachers will attend the “Str…

In his new book Vanity Karma: Ecclesiastes, the Bhagavad-gita, and the Search for the Meaning of Life, ISKCON guru and BBT trustee Jayadvaita Swami explores the works that set him on his spiritual path in the hopes that they may hel…

A permanent art gallery entitled “Walking with Srila Prabhupada – The Path of Perfection” is set to open on August 30th in Malaysia in honor of the 50th anniversary of the ISKCON Founder’s  arrival in th…

In the 16th century, Sri Chaitanya brought about social reform in India by propounding the joyful public chanting of Krishna’s holy names – Harinama Sankirtana — which inspired love of God and brought about peace. Today, tra…

Gundas (thugs) attacked a temple at the sacred birthplace of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu’s associates Vasudeva Datta and Mukunda Datta in Chittagong, Bangladesh in the middle of the night on July 8th, brutally injuring the ISKCON devo…

Interest in Bhakti-Yoga is rising in Turkey, an Islamic country with few devotees and no official ISKCON presence. With the increasing popularity of yoga in general in Istanbul, and yoga studios popping up everywhere, Nrismha Krishna Das and …

The Indian media is exploding with the story of Maryam Siddiqui, a 12-year-old Muslim girl from Mumbai who came first place in her class in the Gita Champions’ League, an annual contest organized by ISKCON Chowpatty, but gave away her w…

Young religious environmental leaders from around the world, including four ISKCON devotees, attended an environmental “convergence” and march in Rome at the end of June. The event was put on by Our Voices, a New Jersey based inte…

June 21st, 1976 was a normal day at the Pittsburgh International airport until a group of Krishna devotees from New Vrindaban, dressed in an odd combination of dhotis or saris with large rubber farm boots, appeared. Commuters stared open-mout…

Kurma Rupa was born to Mexican parents and grew up in New York. At 21, he was drafted for the Vietnam War. “While I was in the army, I prayed for the first time in my life,” he recalls in the recent short film ‘My Part of th…

While it may be turning up a little late, the BBT Africa’s recently released 2014 report shows encouraging growth in outreach – especially for a branch of the Bhaktivedanta Book Trust established just five years ago to better deli…

For at least the past two decades, ISKCON Baltimore has been a small center, and the congregation remains at only around 150 people today. But it has been growing, with more young Indians and Westerners becoming regular visitors due to severa…

The School is affiliated with ISKCON’s Bhaktivedanta College in Radhadesh, Belgium. Administrators of that College began working with Alfred Ford (Ambarisa Das) back in 2009, after the 2008 financial crisis showed that there was a need …

ISKCON and the spiritual leaders and members of the four bona fide Vaishnava Sampradayas are set to unite to chant the Holy Names during the international kirtan festival. The aim of the event is to bring together people from various rac…

Over the five days of the fifth annual Holy Name Festival in Ljubljana, from May 28th to June 1st, approximately 600 devotees from all over Slovenia, Croatia, Hungary, Serbia and other Eastern European countries chanted the Hare Krishna …