Author Archives: Madhava Smullen

The group traveled a total of 1,000 kilometers by bus, starting in Kedainiai in the middle of the country, and ending in the resort city of Palanga on the West Coast. Along the way, they stopped in eleven cities, putting on two events each da…

This year, on June 30th, ISKCON devotees celebrated the Lord of the Universe in the capital city, Jakarta, as part of the “Jakarnaval” cultural parade, a major tourist attraction.

Twenty-six current and future leaders recently took the ISKCON Leadership and Management Course in New Jersey, which focused on sixteen principles of servant leadership espoused by Srila Prabhupada.

2019 marks the 50t hanniversary of cow protection in ISKCON, so it’s an excellent time to look at and celebrate that progress. And this year’s North American Farm Conference will take place where it all started – New Vrindab…

A fire has caused major damage to Govinda’s restaurant at ISKCON of Tucson, Arizona, depriving the community of its income. The temple has also lost power; however no devotees or Deities were harmed.

After decades of communism, civil war, and bans on all religion in Albania, ISKCON was finally officially registered in the Southeast European country on May 31st, 2019 for the first time.

On June 5th– World Environment Day – ISKCON India partnered with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) for the first time, for a nationwide effort. “The Indian office of the UNEP realized the potential of engaging …

Born Paul Dossick, he joined ISKCON in October 1970 in Gainesville, Florida. Leaving college as a premed student in his last quarter, he immediately set off with Gargamuni Swami to assist the preaching in Dhaka, East Pakistan, in March 1971. …

In an inspiring show of cooperation, six ISKCON-affiliated organizations in the New York area collaborated to put on a hugely successful Rathayatra festival this summer – Brooklyn’s Sri Sri Radha Govinda Mandir, the Bhakti Center …

It’s a mobile “studio” with the words “Ananta Mobile Wellness Solutions” inscribed on the side, next to a logo combining the heart and the brain. Inside is a surprising oasis of peace: bamboo floors and benches, …

The historic Harinama Sankirtana event drew some 200 devotees, and was used to promote New York Rathayatra and the accompanying Hare Krishna Festival from June 7th to 9th.

Tulsi Gabbard took time out of her busy schedule of events in New York to visit the main kirtan tent at the Rathayatra’s post-parade festival in Washington Square Park.

With his Bangalore-based agency, Shabdahari Das has run social media campaigns for world-famous personal development gurus like Tony Robbins, T. Harv Ecker, and Bryan Tracy. He’s also trained over 20,000 entrepreneurs in how to use soci…

Initiates hailed from Houston, Washington D.C., New York, and London, and included prominent kirtaniyas such as Gaura Vani, Jahnavi, Tulasi, Ananta Govinda, and Janaki Priya. All others in the group are also dedicated to regular ISKCON servic…

Baladeva Das was appointed CPO Director in October 2018 by ISKCON’s Latin Regional Governing Body (RGB). Since joining ISKCON in 1991 in Argentina, he has done preaching, communications and educational services, lead the Nava Gundica Dh…

Cow Care in Hindu Animal Ethics, a new book by ISKCON guru and scholar Krishna Kshetra Swami, will be published by Palgrave Macmillan in early 2020.  The work is set to make caring for cows, in the spirit of devotion, a serious topi…

“There are many vegan and vegetarian places on the Gold Coast – but the most successful ones are the Hare Krishnas,” says Nitai Chandra.

As ISKCON UK anniversaries come thick and fast, Govinda’s Pure Vegetarian Restaurant in London is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, snapping up a steady flow of awards and celebrity endorsements and changing more than a f…

“We’d like devotees in all the city temples in North America and beyond to consider New Vrindaban their country home, a place where they can recuperate and regenerate physically and spiritually,” says ISKCON New Vrindaban co…

A lifetime dream is finally being fulfilled as Prabhupada disciple Mahendranath Das captains his Sailing Temple, “The Jai Nimai Nitai,” 16,000 nautical miles from Mississippi, USA to Mayapur, India. 

Food For Life London, which has been feeding hot vegetarian meals to the homeless since 1994, is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year with its first ever “Walk Against Hunger.”

Two to three thousand devotees are expected to pack out the Art of Living Retreat Center in Boone, North Carolina this weekend for Sadhu Sanga, ISKCON North America’s biggest kirtan retreat.

ISKCON-London’s Radha-Krishna Temple is celebrating the 50th installation anniversary of its presiding Deities Sri Sri Radha-Londonisvara this year with a series of events and creative projects.

“The opening of the Radha-Krishna Temple was a historic occasion for the bhakti-yoga tradition – a long-standing order of the previous spiritual teachers had been fulfilled.”

Chanting japa is one of the activities most central to Krishna consciousness. So every year for the past seven years, devotees from Kemerovo in Siberia, Russia, have put on a special Japa Retreat for both local Vaishnavas and those from surro…

Over 1,000 attended the service in Washington, DC,, including religious dignitaries representing Buddhist, Hindu, Islamic, Jewish and Christian faiths, members of Congress, U.S. government representatives, Ambassadors, members of the dip…

1,500 to 2,000 people are expected at the festival over the two days, when the largely devotee-owned Watseka Ave alongside the temple will be turned into a sort of block party, with colorful tents and stalls, and lanterns strung everywhere.&n…

This year over 4,000 people attended the event, also dubbed Festival of Colors, on Saturday May 4th. So many turned up, in fact, that offsite parking had to be arranged with buses to shuttle them back and forth.

The sacred city of Jagannath Puri was one of the worst hit, with 25 deaths. According to ISKCON devotee Madhavananda Das, who runs Gopal Jiu Publications from Puri, no ISKCON devotees were killed or seriously injured.

Kamlesh Krishna Das will be serving within the Magistrate Court, which handles 95% of all legal cases in the UK. He was officially appointed and sworn in on Srila Prabhupada’s Bhagavad-gita As It Is on April 1st, and will be based …

On the show, Balaram Nityananda Das, who also runs Bhaktivedanta Manor’s outreach department in the UK, interviews a variety of ISKCON devotees about the challenges they face, what their spiritual perspectives are, and how those perspec…

Twelve hundred devotees from all over India and the rest of the world, as well as thousands of locals, gathered to celebrate the opening of a gorgeous new ISKCON temple in Rajkot, Gujarat. The festival was centered around Rama Navami and ran …

“One day on my way there, I saw an old lady eating out of a garbage can,” Jagai says. “That really disturbed me, and I could not stop thinking about her. The next weekend on Harinama, a devotee family showed up with leftover…

Many ISKCON devotees around the world are now aware of the conflict and court cases that took place over the past few years regarding managerial authority of the Sri Sri Radha Govinda Mandir in Brooklyn, New York City.

A group of forty devotees have completed the first one-year GBC College Course in Latin America, which included online classes and two residential courses, preparing them to become ISKCON’s future leaders.

At each meeting over the past decade, volunteers from each tradition have presented a paper on a chosen topic, one sharing the Vaishnava perspective, and the other the Muslim perspective; followed by an open discussion. 

Krishna Days, a new Facebook page launched this Gaura Purnima (March 2019), keeps followers up-to-date and informed on all Vaishnava sacred days.

Essence magazine, a lifestyle monthly for African American women, has featured husband and wife Krsnanandini Devi Dasi, a disciple of Srila Prabhupada, and her husband Tariq Saleem Ziyad, an Orthodox Muslim, in their April 2019 issue. The mag…

“Sadly, our ISKCON society is not immune to domestic abuse. Sometimes devotees believe that domestic abuse is tolerated within our society. Thus, the NA GBC determined it necessary to make a clear, strong statem…

The ISKCON temple in Nyali in Mombasa, Kenya has recently completed the second phase of its construction – an apartment building to help care for the congregation and cultivate their spiritual lives.