Answer Podcast:

%20Hari%20is%20the%20Absolute%20Truth%20concealed%20and%20revealed%20in%20the%20Vedas.mp3″>Download by “right-click and save”

The post Why is there the conservative-liberal divide everywhere, including even in spiritual organizations? appeared first on The Spiritual Scientist.

Hare Krishna dear Jayapataka Swami,

Please accept our obeisances in the dust of your lotus feet.

All glories to Srila Prabhupada!

It is a letter from the Russian team of the Temple of the Vedic Planetarium construction project.

We are grateful to you for engaging us in fulfilling Srila Prabhupada’s personal desire – construction of the magnificent Temple of the Golden Age! Please accept our efforts as an offering.

For 2015, we collected and transferred to a bank account in Mayapur over USD 160,000. This money was collected by many different ways. Particularly, we invited donors to pay for square feet and bricks. They paid for 300 square feet, 37 Nrisimhadeva bricks, 54 Mahaprabhu bricks, 12 Radha-Madhava bricks and one silver coin. We hold talks about the New Temple at many big festivals, did promotions on the Internet, as well as presentations in different cities.

We are asking for your blessings to be able to collect at least double the amount we did this year, in 2016 for Srila Prabhupada’s pleasure.

Thank you for bestowing upon us such a mercy to participate in this way in the New Temple construction.

Your servants from ToVP Russian Team

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Podcast:

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The post Dasha Mula Tattva 4 – Hari is the Absolute Truth concealed and revealed in the Vedas appeared first on The Spiritual Scientist.

Podcast:

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The post Dasha Mula Tattva 3 – Understanding the necessity and focus of Vedic knowledge appeared first on The Spiritual Scientist.

Substance & Shadow https://youtu.be/47SwKs6rm_M

The post Recent debate in the UK appeared first on SivaramaSwami.com.

Meet Bhrigupati Prabhu!
H.G. Bhrigupati Prabhu spent over 40 years in ISKCON distributing Srila Prabhupada’s books. He has distributed 2,000,000 books and has been the top distributor in North America for numerous years. In 2005 at the Gaura Purnima Festival in Mayapur, he was awarded the Global Excellence Award for book distribution. He is currently the Sankirtan leader for Los Angeles, California. He regularly gives classes on the philosophy of Srimad Bhagavatam and Bhagavad Gita.

“Best Ever” ISKCON North American Leaders Meetings Highlight ISKCON 50!
Many of the more than sixty temple presidents and GBCs attending this year’s ISKCON North American Leaders Meetings called the event “the best ever.” This was largely owing to the upbeat mood brought about by ISKCON’s 50th anniversary, increasing book distribution successes, and the inspiring association at the meetings. “It was very, very positive and full of proactive presentations,” says GBC and ISKCON Communications Director Anuttama Das. “The focus was on how so many wonderful things have been accomplished over the past fifty years, and yet there’s so much more to do to try to expand Prabhupada’s movement and fulfill his vision.” The meetings, which were held from January 14th to 16th and were the first to take place at the newly opened mandir in Houston, Texas, began with a keynote address by academic and author Yogesvara Das (Joshua M. Greene).
Read more: http://goo.gl/qPGCxK

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Kadamba Kanana Swami visited Cape Town from 18-30 December. Below are recordings of lectures and kirtans from the various programs.

Download ALL the files by clicking here.

KKS_CPT_20Dec2015_CC_Madhya_1.47

KKS_CPT_20Dec2015_SnanaYatra_Kirtan_Abhisek

KKS_CPT_20Dec2015_SnanaYatra_JayaRadhaMadhava

KKS_CPT_20Dec2015_SnanaYatra_Lecture

KKS_CPT_20Dec2015_SnanaYatra_Kirtan

KKS_CPT_22Dec2015_SB_1.5.32

KKS_CPT_22Dec2015_Evening_Kirtan

KKS_CPT_22Dec2015_EveningLecture_The_Glories_of_Lord_Jagannatha

KKS_CPT_24Dec2015_SB_1.5.34

KKS_CPT_24Dec2015_EveningLecture_CC_Madhya_Ch12

KKS_CPT_24Dec2015_Evening_Kirtan

KKS_CPT_25Dec2015_HouseProgram_Kirtan

KKS_CPT_25Dec2015_HouseProgram_Lecture

KKS_CPT_27Dec2015_Inititation_Lecture

KKS_CPT_27Dec2015_SundayFeast_Lecture

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A video by the "Vedic Way".

Bhakti Raghava Swami talks bout the importance of the Varnashrama College. 

A statuette of Lord Hanuman is among few items that US President Barack Obama always carries in his pocket and seeks inspiration.

Take it Outside

by Jennifer Scheper Hughes, James Kyung-Jin Lee, Amanda Lucia, and S. Romi Mukherjee

Practicing religion in public

This is an excerpt of an article from Boom Winter 2015, Vol 5, No 4. The full article is available here for subscribers only. Not a subscriber? Click here to change that.

California is experiencing a proliferation of public religious celebrations like never before. Processions spill onto city streets. Altars summoning the spirits of the dead are erected at busy intersections. Bands of pilgrims crisscross the state as they make their sacred journeys to holy lands within our very borders. Images of gods and saints, raised aloft by devotees, now claim the urban skyline as their most natural and obvious backdrop. Mantras, chants, and songs of praise, in a cacophony of languages, summon the sacred into our public space and into our life in common. At these festivals, we pray together after a fashion—an unlikely collection of Californians from different places, different faiths—different backgrounds joined for a fleeting moment by the unity of purpose of a shared ritual. The so-called secular cities and towns of California are made sacred by these multiethnic and multifaith public performances.

The authors of this essay are part of an eclectic group of researchers, students and professors, artists, filmmakers, and journalists. We have spent the better part of three years participating in these public events; we have attended dozens of religious festivals. We have thrown colors at Holi with those who have inherited Hindu traditions and those who have adopted them in the United States. We have processed in the streets of downtown Los Angeles with Peruvian immigrants as they sway to and fro under the heavy weight of their penitential andas. We have wept at altars for the dead on Día de los Muertos. We have joined aging internees on their annual pilgrimage to Manzanar, the Japanese internment camp, where we braced against the harsh winds and dust to chant, dance, and pray for forgiveness for us all.

It’s not just that the spirits cannot be contained in buildings—from tent revivals to solemn masses celebrated in sports stadiums, religious practice has brought the faithful out of doors—but that they prefer to encounter us in town centers, in public parks, open-air settings, and city streets. Across the state, Californians participate in all kinds of public rituals under the sun: rituals of re-enchantment and blessing, rituals of repair, rituals of sober ecstasy. Due in part to their public nature, almost every one of these open-air celebrations is a cross-cultural encounter as we look to each other’s cultures, each other’s religions, especially each other’s gods and spirits to discover our shared identity and our shared future as Californians. Perhaps it is through these experiences that the fears and anxieties generated by the inevitability of a truly multiethnic state are confronted and resolved.

Even as these and many other similar festivals simultaneously represent the irruption and interruption of the sacred in the public sphere, these festivals reflect the multireligious character of immigration. What propels us to put ourselves into these shared religious experiences, to throw ourselves into these festivals of spirits, especially when so often we join to celebrate religious cultures other than our own? The public religious festival has become the central nexus for the celebration of ethnic, cultural, and collective identity—identities that demand representation even in so-called secular public spaces. The festival requires that the participants step outside of their day-to-day lives, and venture into the fields of Radha and Krishna’s love play, the realm of the dead, the remembrance of the past, penance for historical sin, and the ecstasies of devotional singing. When the festival is in the open, in public, the shared act of devotion is what binds, not necessarily the shared belief.

These public rituals say something about the pursuit of belonging in California, and in the United States, within an increasingly diverse and multicultural landscape. Those who participate together as intimate strangers are often seeking only a temporary affiliation, perhaps a place for a moment to engage one another beyond the context of the marketplace. In sharing in these religious and cross-cultural experiences, we become enmeshed in the complicated and vibrant diversity of California, up close and personal, as physical as the bodies we encounter there. These collective public celebrations imagine a new kind of citizenship in a way that can assuage our multiculturalist anxieties. By participating in other religious and cultural realities, we break from the mundane and open up the possibility of enchantment. It is the unknown of the festival that beckons to outsiders—the potential for the experience of the ephemeral, the surreal, the transcendent.

Children throw colors at Holi. Photograph by Mario L. Iñiguez.

 

The Hindu Festival of Colors: Throwing Colors with Hare Krishnas in Los Angeles

Tens of thousands of young adults, mostly in their teens and twenties, clamor toward the stage at the spring Festival of Colors in Los Angeles. From a panoply of backgrounds and cultures and beliefs (or no belief at all), they gather to celebrate Holi, to reenact the colorful play of Radha and Krishna, the supreme Hindu expressions of divinity and the enchanters of the world. Radha and Krishna’s love play is relived and remembered in the crowd’s joyful “playing of colors.” As they throw brilliant, chalky handfuls of the multicolored Holi powder at each other, attendees become disguised in vibrant colors—differences of age, race, and ethnicity, their previous identities, erased. Play that begins in streaks of rainbow effervescence soon turns everyone a purplish brown blend of the colored powders.

The Festival of Colors in Southern California attracts only small numbers of Indian Hindus. The organizers of the event are Hare Krishnas, affiliated with the various temples of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, or ISKCON. The Hare Krishnas have had a long and fraught history in the American countercultural movement. Once the poster children for 1960s white hippie sojourns into Indian mysticism, the group became enmeshed in scandal in the 1970s and 1980s, and then became a major source of religious engagement for Indian Hindus living in diaspora.

The Festival of Colors is the brainchild of the guru Caru Das, a Hare Krishna devotee and the founder of a large Krishna community in Spanish Fork, Utah. As the organizer and producer of the festival, his purpose is to change the trend—to reach beyond the traditional Indian community and try something new among new audiences. Caru Das has created an event that is popular with teens and promoted as “good clean fun,” but he never forgets that its primary purpose is to introduce new souls to Krishna consciousness.

When asked, the majority of attendees at the Festival of Colors say that they are there for the fun of throwing colors. But there are many ways to enjoy a Saturday afternoon, and sweating colored powder in the hot LA sun is only one of them. In the murky, colored mist of the orchestrated hourly color throws, the audience of largely non-Hindu teens have their first experience of Hindu ritual and belief. In simple terms that a young California audience will understand, the festival introduces Hindu and Buddhist ideas, practices, and worldviews—all laced with universalistic ideals of peace, love, and unity. The Festival of Colors motions to Hindu religious practices as emblematic of indigenous roots and ancient wisdom. These sentiments echo those of Swami Vivekananda, who famously preached to American audiences in 1896: “When the Occident wants to learn about the spirit, about God, about the soul, about the meaning and the mystery of this universe, he must sit at the feet of the Orient to learn.”

Photograph by Mario L. Iñiguez.

 

Traditional temple Hinduism is not what these eager and open young people are experiencing. The Festival of Colors in Los Angeles is more like an ISKCON-inspired evangelical tent revival than any mainstream Hindu practice. Amidst color throws and playful revelry, the guru Caru Das takes the stage to focus the frenetic and playful energy of the crowd with the mahamantra, the central devotional chant of the Hare Krishnas: “Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare, Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare!” Caru Das actively proselytizes while playing directly to the desires and social proclivities of teens and young adults.

With music, yoga, food, and a playful atmosphere, the Festival of Colors is a brilliant marketing venture that attempts to erase the fraught political history of the Hare Krishnas and bring them back into the mainstream. There, they hope to vie for a position as the representatives par excellence of modern global Hinduism. Under the clever disguise of colored powders, the Festival of Colors represents the new proselytizing successes of ISKCON.

From the stage, Caru Das bellows to the excited crowd:

The Absolute is non-different from His name! So if you spend this day by singing and dancing the various names of the Absolute, you will be associating with the most wise, the most determined power in the universe. And that power will rub off on you and you will make better decisions and you will be in a better place in the future than you would have had you not tapped into this extra power.. . .

To reinforce his point, the guru jubilantly exhorts the crowd to repeat once again: “Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare.. . . ” Many in the throng are chanting along exuberantly, but others are socializing with their friends and taking selfies of their wildly colorful bodies to post on social media. But to Caru Das, the spiritual impact of the mantra works like fire—it burns whether you believe it will or not.

Many of the more than sixty temple presidents and GBCs attending this year’s ISKCON North American Leaders Meetings called the event “the best ever.” This was largely owing to the upbeat mood brought about by ISKCON’s 50^th anniversary, increasing book distribution successes, and the inspiring association at the meetings.

The post Daily Darshan : January 21st, 2016 appeared first on Mayapur.com.

Krishna! (3 min video)
A short video filmed at the Hare Krishna (ISKCON) Temple in Murwillumbah, NSW while i was up in Queensland, Australia a while ago on my way to Coolangatta airport. Lovely place, and even though i only got a chance to spend a short time there, it was calming and great.
Video filmed and edited by JD Lakhiani.
Narration by HH Devamitra Swami during his speech captured at Hare krishna Temple, Melbourne initiation Ceremony in November 2015.
Watch it here: https://goo.gl/XBtVGY

Mantras and Yantras from Bygone Ages (Album with photos)
Indradyumna Swami: Mesmerized by the old houses of the brahmans we visited outside of Udupi the other day, we returned to learn more. In one home we were fascinated to find Vedic mantras, in the form of colorful yantras, painted on walls throughout the house. The beautiful designs, with their ancient inscriptions, bring prosperity, protection and blessings of the Lord. In other homes we saw articles of all descriptions from bygone ages. It was a day spent walking back through time
Find them here: https://goo.gl/bVjCdP

Question:What is the purpose of marriage as viewed by ISKCON? Answer by Romapada Swami: The purpose of marriage is to provide an opportunity for all the members in the family to properly support one another to peacefully practice and grow in their Krishna Consciousness. In Vedic scriptures, the institution of marriage is referred to as an “ashram” or a sacred place of purification. Marriage provides much opportunity for this as it involves rising above one’s own personal attachments/issues and serving the other members of the family with devotion and detachment. This is not easy (many married devotees will attest for this) but it is so by design to help devotees grow and become more pure in their Krsna Consciousness. Thus, marriage, if properly approached, is an amazing opportunity offered to the conditioned soul to shed its false ego and become more advanced in Krsna Consciousness and cultivate devotional qualities like patience, determination, chastity, faith etc. The key to making this all happen is a strong relationship of service and inquiry with a bonafide spiritual master, as well as those who closely guide one’s spiritual life.

TOVP e-Newsletter #7 January – March 2016

2015 TOVP Highlights – A Message from Ambarisa Prabhu

Dear Donors and Friends of the TOVP Project in Sridham Mayapur, 2015 has been another banner year for the TOVP both for construction under the leadership of Sadbhuja prabhu, and fundraising under the leadership of Radha Jivan and Braja Vilas prabhus. Some of the construction highlights are as follows …

News/Announcements

Jananivas Prabhu Speaks About the 2015 North American Tour HG Jananivas Das describes his experiences during the TOVP North American fundraising tour. Please watch and feel inspired to donate for the wonderful project …

TOVP Facebook Page Reaches 250,000 Likes The TOVP Facebook Page recently achieved a landmark 250,000 Likes! All glories to Lord Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu and all glories to His devotees …

Nursery Update (November 2015) Our nursery is now three years old. Over 2,000 different items were planted on this plot of land three years ago. All these trees and plants will be used in the gardens surrounding …

Construction

Main Dome Superstructure Completed The main dome stainless steel superstructure is now completed! This was a major undertaking and is a milestone in the progress of the TOVP …

Custom Routing Tool Now Being Manufactured In yet another remarkable innovative step forward, the TOVP engineering team has embarked on the development of a custom-made tool to be used for engraving …

Electrical Work Begins The first phase of the electrical work has started. This phase consists in applying the conduits ( a tube for protecting electric wires) in the 8 stair cases …

Art, Architecture and Design

Main Dome Kalash Under Preparation We are now at the final stage of the main dome and are undergoing preparations to complete the Kalash and the Chakra! …

Kalash Support Structure As the main dome structure is now almost complete, a lot of preparation has been underway to commence the next step, the Kalash …

Kalash Mock-up View This past week Vilasini, Head Architect for the TOVP, and Parvata Muni visited the fabrication plant of McCoy Industries. A full size mock-up of a section of the Kalash was to be shown.

Inspiration

Scenic Winter Views of the TOVP Winter has finally arrived in Mayapur. Along with the change of seasons the month of Kartika has begun, bringing the blessings and mercy of Lord Damodar …

New View from Mother Ganges We have a new beautiful photo of the TOVP which were taken from Ganges right across Prabhupada Ghat …

TOVP Photo for Your Altar Recently an announcement by Pragosha das, the new GBC Chairman, celebrating 2015, the 50th anniversary of Srila Prabhupada’s arrival in the Western world, as The Year of the TOVP was posted.

Fundraising

TOVP Campaign Making Wonderful Progress Results are coming in from the TOVP tour that carried His Grace Jananivas Prabhu & Lord Nityananda’s holy paduka all over North America for four months earlier this year …

The TOVP UK Tour The ToVP International team will be touring the UK from the 18th to the 30th of November 2015. You will be able to receive the moonlike benedictions of Lord Nityananda …

A Story of Humble Success in the Ukraine In spite of the difficult political and economic situation in Ukraine as well as the financial difficulties in Zaporozhye Yatra, the president of our temple, Badrinath Prabhu, was enthusiastic

His Holiness Gopal Krishna Maharaja’s Vyasa Puja Raises $2.5 Million for TOVP On September 8th, in New Delhi, HH Gopal Krishna Maharaj’s disciples held his Vyasapuja celebration. This years celebrations were held with a special message …

Leaders Speak Out

His Holiness Indradyumna Swami Maharaja stresses that the TOVP Project is not only one of the most wonderful projects of all time, but will be ISKCON’s most significant offering to the world in Kali Yuga …

His Grace Sesa Das Sesa prabhu expalins that, as the Minister of Education in ISKCON he sees the TOVP as an educational project and an integral part of our missionary work to educate …

TOVP Universal Chandelier Video Presentation

The Temple of the Vedic Planetarium is named as such because within its main dome it will house a 3-dimensional, moving model of the universe according to the Vedic scriptures. This explanation describes the planetary systems and all the universal contents to be in the shape of an incredible chandelier.

Media Gallery

Photo and Video Archives

By Purushottam Nitai Das

Imagine if a message suddenly flashes on the sky: “Due to a technical fault the supply of oxygen will remain unavailable for some time all over the world. Next update about the issue in another hour”. What would happen to us? There won’t be just utter chaos but soon the earth will become a graveyard. Not even vultures and jackals would be alive to feast on the dead bodies. But has it ever happened? Never. Can it happen in future? Sceptics and agnostics may say, “Yes”. But it has never happened in millions of years and so will never happen ever because Lord’s creation is flawless and his day to day management is perfect. Continue reading "Krishna’s service temporarily unavailable!
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Glimpses to the past of Krishna conscious India (Album with photos)
Indradyumna Swami: Yesterday we visited several ancient temples near Udupi. We also took the opportunity to visit centuries old houses of Brahmans who serve in such temples. We were amazed by many of the artifacts and paintings we saw in those homes.
Find them here: https://goo.gl/ELjYwL

January 21. ISKCON 50 – S.Prabhupada Daily Meditations.
Satsvarupa dasa Goswami: Correspondence with Bon Maharaja. January 21, 1966 Srila Prabhupada received Bon Maharaja’s reply. Two weeks before, Prabhupada had written to his godbrother, the Director of the Institute of Oriental Philosophy in Vrindavana, that he had found a place for a temple in New York and that he wanted to install deities of Radha and Krishna. In his reply, Bon Maharaja quoted price estimates for fourteen-inch brass deities of Radha-Krishna, but he also warned that to begin deity worship would be a heavy responsibility. Srila Prabhupada responded: I think that after the temple has started, some men, even from America, may be available, as I have seen they have at the Ramakrishna Mission, as well as in so many Yoga societies. So I am trying to open a temple here because Srila Prabhupada (Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati) wanted it. Prabhupada also requested Bon Maharaja’s assistance in getting the Government to sanction release of the money he felt Padampat Singhania would donate. He mentioned that he had carried on an extensive personal correspondence with the Vice-President of India, Dr. Radhakrishnan, who was also known to Bon Maharaja. Tell him that it is not an ordinary temple of worship, but an international institution for God consciousness based on the Srimad-Bhagavatam.
To read the entire article click here: http://www.dandavats.com/?p=20490&page=4

Correspondence with Bon Maharaja

Gita verse-by-verse study Podcast

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The post Gita 08.27 – Devotional consistency is more important than chronological accuracy appeared first on The Spiritual Scientist.

Mesmerized by the old houses of the brahmans we visited outside of Udupi the other day, we returned to learn more. In one home we were fascinated to find Vedic mantras, in the form of colorful yantras, painted on walls throughout the house. The beautiful designs, with their ancient inscriptions, brought prosperity, protection and blessings [...]

Yesterday we visited several ancient temples near Udupi. We also took the opportunity to visit centuries old houses of Brahmans who serve in such temples. We were amazed by many of the artifacts and paintings we saw in those homes.

I always had an attraction towards individuals who live a principled life - principles of growth and well-being. This attraction I think is because I wanted to be like them with principles. I have had this tendency of attraction since I was very young. Growing up, during my adolescent years, I did not have anybody personal I knew to whom I can look up to. I believe every young adult requires a mentor. Typically it is one's own father or uncle or some senior family member. Unfortunately, we live in a world of economic necessities that families by and large live apart from one another. As a result, there is little to no knowledge transference from generation to the next and this negatively impacts young children since they lack mentors rooted from their culture.

In my own life, this was true as I constantly was moving from one location to the next rarely could I find a mentor who was willing to spend quality time with me. Regardless, I sought inspiration from individuals in the public domain such as gurus, teachers, politicians, sport stars, movie celebrities etc Unfortunately, that did not last long as it was not a personal relationship.

When I got introduced to the idea of Krishna Consciousness, the first thing that struck me was of course the clarity of the message of the Gita but more was the persona called Prabhupada. His character, compassion, and principles he imbued was such a powerful example I simply could not stay away from him. I felt like I found the "best" human being in the world. What more could an aspiring young individual ask for - getting guidance from the "best" person on the planet...at least this was my impression. While the philosophy was appealing at many levels, it was Srila Prabhupada's personal character that motivated me to commit to practicing. Prabhupada has said several times that he lives in his books. For me, this cannot be any truer because I always felt his connection in a personal way through his instructions and books. This feeling of being connected to him had such profound impact that I decided to change my ways even though it was difficult.

Young children need such quality interactions with adult mentors whom they can rely and trust. They need to be taught on dealing with challenges of this world but with the principle of connecting back to their spiritual identities - as servants of God and not servants of their minds.

Bhagavad Gita is not a belief system but a quality of life based on values beyond the here and now. If we want our children to be successful materially and spiritually, we need to be there when they need our help. We need to teach by example that challenges in life are actually opportunities to become closer to Krishna - learning to convert challenges into blessings. Such optimism in the face of adversity can only raise the desire to live life to the fullest - that is - to be connected to Krishna at all times, in life and in death!

Hare Krishna

The essential principle of progressive, civilised human life is to restrain negative emotions within oneself and to limit their discharge towards others; and to cultivate positive emotions such as tolerance, compassion and non-violence. Lust, greed and anger are the three gates leading to Hell, reads the ancient Bhagavad-gita.

Perpetuating negative emotions leads to a permanent negative state within a person, and negativity throughout a society when it is made up predominantly of such persons. “So the single rice grain, so the pot of rice.”

We radiate an emotional state when we don’t make efforts to control it; we can’t help it. All others who contact us are affected by our unchecked emotions. And we do a great disservice to our children if we force them to imbibe our negativity.

So imagine the consequences when an entire society cultivates these very negative qualities within its children – through the educational system itself. Peace in the Middle East? Not when the emotions of the children are being systematically slaughtered.

By Murari Gupta Dasa

“Can you please speak to my relatives,” a doctor friend requested me after a Sunday feast program in our temple. “Their youngest son died in an accident recently, and they are much traumatized.” I agreed and went to meet the family in a corridor outside the temple hall. The father told me how the son had gone to a picnic with his friends and had drowned in a river. He was just eighteen. I listened sympathetically, and when they asked questions I offered answers I thought would give them hope in their painful situation. After half an hour, some of the family members seemed consoled, though the mother had been silently shedding incessant tears. As we parted, my thoughts veered to another story I had heard. It, too, took place near a lake and was a sudden catastrophe that struck a family, but the attitude of the victim turned a life-threatening crisis upside-down. Continue reading "Finding Shelter in Times of Suffering
→ Dandavats"

By His Divine Grace Srila A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada

Krishna is so kind: We wanted to enjoy the material world; therefore He has given us full opportunity: "Yes, enjoy." But Krishna does not want us to enjoy the material world. Sometimes foolish people say, "Krishna has given us this facility for sense enjoyment. Why shall we not take it?" Sometimes the so-called rishis and yogis also say, "Yes, we have senses, and they are meant for enjoyment. Why should it be stopped?" But if you want the real life of eternal enjoyment, then you have to stop sensual enjoyment. If you don't stop, then you remain here. You have to be born according to your desire, either as Brahma or an ant, a cat, a dog, a demigod. And according to your capacity, Krishna will provide for you. If you want sense enjoyment from Krishna, He will give you all facilities. But Krishna does not want to do this. His opinion is "You will never be happy in this process of pravritti-marga." Continue reading "Harmful Inclinations
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By Chaitanya Charana Dasa

A search for intellectual satisfaction takes a young man from academics to devotion.

I was born with a congenital heart deformity that doctors said would probably not allow me to see my fifth birthday. My parents gave me the name Chandrahas, “one whose laugh is like the moon,” but sadly they found few reasons to smile in my childhood. When I was around one, learning to walk in our middle-class house, I suddenly collapsed to the floor, never to walk naturally again. My parents, Ramachandra and Sunanda Pujari, had already had me vaccinated against the dreaded polio infection rampant in India in the 1970s, but the doctor had unknowingly given me a defective vaccine.

With my left leg diseased, I had to walk with either a limp or a brace. When I was around two, I was enjoying the spectacle of the popular Diwali firecrackers with the neighborhood children when a rocket-firecracker went off course and headed toward me. I couldn’t run away like the other children, and the rocket hit my right arm, fusing my shirt with my skin and, racing upwards, burning my face, missing my right eye by millimeters. The rocket then fell to the ground, leaving lifelong scars on my right arm and the right side of my face.

When I was three, I fell from a wall near my house and cracked my skull. An astrologer told my despairing parents that I was plagued by Saturn, which would cause repeated trouble for the first seven and a half years of my life.

Shelter in the Intellect

My parents did everything in their power to help me have a normal childhood. They decided not to have another child for a decade so that they could give their full attention to caring for me. They admitted me into an expensive Christian convent school so that I could have the best education. My good grades mitigated their sorrows somewhat. They would tell visiting relatives that God had compensated for my physical inabilities by giving me intellectual abilities. I would wonder about this mysterious being, God, who had the enormous power over my life to decide what to give and what to take.

For my parents, who were brahmanas by caste, religious rituals were an important part of the family culture. My father told me the significance of our surname, Pujari, which means a priest who performs the worship (puja) of the deity. About a century ago, his grandfather, while bathing in a river one early morning in our native village, had found floating a five-headed Hanuman deity, which he had subsequently installed and served as pujari.

My daily life with its pursuit of academic excellence had little in common with my religious ancestry. At school, as my grades kept getting better, it seemed Saturn had left me. One year I was among the top scorers on the statewide exams. The district collector (the top government officer of the district) visited our house to congratulate my parents, and the local newspaper carried an article and a photo of the visit. For my parents, life seemed to have turned a full circle. They had shed so many sad tears over their son. Now at last they had occasion to shed tears of pride and joy.

Unfortunately, the joy was short-lived. The very day our family photo appeared in the newspaper, my mother, while getting a medical checkup, was diagnosed with advanced leukemia. She fought gallantly against the cancer with chemotherapy, but within one painfully long month, it was all over.

As the world around me collapsed, I sought shelter in my studies and academic performance.

From Summit Into Quicksand and Out

While studying for an engineering degree at a leading college in Pune, in 1996, I took the GRE exam for pursuing post-graduate studies in the USA. I came in first in the state, securing the highest score in the history of my college. As I exulted in my greatest achievement, I experienced something perturbing. Till then, society had led me to believe that for a student, academic accomplishment was the ultimate standard of success and happiness. I had feverishly sought that standard and had finally achieved it. Yet as I stood on the summit of success, I found that the grades brought no joy. Only when others congratulated me did I feel satisfaction. I felt dependent for my happiness on others’ appreciation-more dependent than ever before. As I pondered this disturbing experience, it struck me that I had been chasing a mirage: academic achievement-or any other achievement for that matter-would never satisfy me, but would only increase my hunger for appreciation and thus perpetuate my dissatisfaction. The summit had turned into quicksand.

A friend extended a helping hand to rescue me from the quicksand-by giving me Srila Prabhupada’s Bhagavad-gita As It Is. The Gita answered many of my questions about life and its purpose that had been left unanswered by the numerous books I’d read, spiritual and secular. Radhesyama Dasa, the temple president of ISKCON Pune, and Gaurasundara Dasa, a dynamic youth mentor there, answered whatever questions remained. Understanding the profound philosophy of Krishna consciousness illuminated my life’s journey with hope and joy. I understood that my lame leg, which had always interfered with my playing cricket, was a result of my own past bad karma. But it couldn’t interfere with my spiritual life, because I am not my body and my spiritual advancement is independent of my body.

The Hare Krishna maha-mantra was my next discovery. Since my teens I had been fighting a losing battle against the passions of youth, which would often sabotage my intellectual pursuits. In the chanting of the holy names, I discovered the technology to sabotage those passions.

The Highest Education

But the best was yet to come. As I studied the books of Srila Prabhupada and his followers, especially their writings based on the Bhagavad-gita, I found myself relishing the study itself. This was in marked contrast to my earlier academic career, where my joy came primarily from the grades. Then I read in the Srimad-Bhagavatam about the super-intellectual sage Vyasadeva. His phenomenal literary achievement in writing scores of Vedic books failed to fully satisfy him until he wrote exclusive glorification of the Lord. As I read the story, I felt my life story was being replayed in front of me, with the future included. I recognized the principle that intelligence can bring real happiness and good to oneself and others only when used to glorify Krishna. By understanding that principle, my future became clear.

I started using my intelligence to share the philosophy and practices of Krishna consciousness with my college friends. To my amazement, several of became remarkably transformed, shedding off bad habits and leading balanced, healthy, happy lives. After my graduation in 1998, I found myself at a crossroad that I had already crossed internally. Though I had both a lucrative job as a software engineer in a multinational company and an opportunity for education in a prestigious American university, an overpowering inner conviction told me that I could serve society best by sharing the spiritual wisdom that had enriched my life. There was no shortage of software engineers in India or of Indian students in America, but there was an acute shortage of educated spiritualists everywhere.

But another crossroad still remained. Far more difficult than sacrificing a promising career was enduring the disappointment in the eyes of my father. In traditional Indian culture, aging parents are often taken care of by their grown-up children, but I knew that the loss of such care was not my father’s concern. By his expertise at managing his finances, he had attained reasonable financial security, and he also had my brilliant eleven-year-old younger brother, Harshal, to count on. His heartbreak was to see his older son, for whose materially illustrious future he had dreamt and toiled, become the antithesis of his dreams: a shaven-headed, robe-wearing monk with no bank account. His distress agonized me, but my heart’s calling left me with no alternative. I prayed fervently to Krishna to heal my father’s heart and to somehow, sometime, help him understand my decision.

So in 1999 I decided to make sharing Gita wisdom my fulltime engagement by joining ISKCON Pune as a brahmachari, a single and celibate member of the ashram. In 2000 I received initiation from my spiritual master, His Holiness Radhanatha Maharaja, who told me that because I had given up the chance for higher education in the USA for Krishna’s sake, Krishna was giving me the chance to receive and share the highest education: Krishna consciousness, celebrated in the Bhagavad-gita as raja-vidya, the king of all education. In accordance with his instruction, I started giving talks to young people first in Pune and then all over India. Somehow, by Krishna’s mercy, my lame leg has not been a hindrance.

Intellectual Samadhi

In 2002 I discovered writing. Since childhood I had wanted to write but had not been able to: I was never short of words (my favorite hobby was memorizing words from dictionaries), but I always seemed short of ideas. The rich philosophy of Krishna consciousness more than made up for that. Over the last seven years, some 150 articles and 6 books have emerged from my computer. Many of these articles have appeared in leading Indian newspapers and some in Back to Godhead. When my first article appeared in the reputed Times of India newspaper, my overjoyed father sent a hundred photocopies of that article to his relatives, colleagues, and acquaintances. When I see the joy in my father’s eyes on seeing every new book I write, I thank Krishna for answering my prayers.

Nagaraja Dasa, the editor of BTG, invited me to serve as an associate editor. The service of reviewing articles with the other editors, who are all learned and seasoned devotee-scholars, has broadened the horizons of my spiritual understanding more than anything else I have done before. In editing the writings of veteran devotees, including my beloved spiritual master, I have found a way to integrate my intellection passion with the devotional principle of selfless service, thus experiencing a higher spiritual joy.

The process of writing has brought me meaning, purpose, passion, and fulfillment. Although I am still a neophyte in my spiritual life and struggle against selfish desires, writing gives me glimpses of samadhi, blissful absorption in thoughts of Krishna and His message.

Having experienced both the emptiness of material intellectual pursuits and the richness of spiritual intellectual engagements, I feel saddened that most modern intellectuals are deprived of this supreme fruit of their intellects. Especially many Indian intellectuals, despite earning laurels at a global level, are still missing the intellectual feast that their scripturally learned ancestors relished for millennia. My writings are humble attempts to help them rediscover their lost legacy. I look forward to using the remainder of my life to relish and share the intellectual-devotional nectar with which I have been blessed.

Sri Arjuna Das, New Biharvan Dham

Patience
Kindness
Determination
Courage

     The Goal of Life is to remember our Relationship with Krishna. 

     A preacher must be kind, gentle, and patient in his dealings.
 
     Kindness means we look deep in everyone’s heart and see, “Here is a living entity desperately longing for love, and I am going to find a way to give him this love.”

     Gentle means we treat everyone in such a way that we genuinely gain appreciation for, and admire, every small service this jiva offers to Krishna. “Oh, you pronounce Krishna’s names so nicely,” “I love hearing you say Hare Krishna,” “The way you clean Krishna’s floor touches my heart.” Remember, genuiness is essential in all relationships. Genuiness comes when we sincerely chant Hare Krishna. We will see the beauty of everyone. Just like Krishna. Krishna sees the hidden beauty within all of us, and He wants us to come home. 

    If we are sincere devotees we will become like Bumblebees, finding the love, gold, and honey in everyone, and bringing it into vision. We all want honey and love, let’s be Bumblebees. 

    Krishna Consciousness is simple, we all naturally love Krishna, and He loves us. Sooo much. Krishna Consciousness is simply awakening our natural love for Him, and serving Him, by chanting His Holy Names. We chant “Hare Krishna” once and He comes running towards us. So Krishna Consciousness is sweet and simple, and the preacher must be gentle kind and loving. Gentleness and Kindness are the two hands we use to nourish other’s spiritual creepers. 

     Determination and Courage. These are the two qualities the preacher must apply to himself. The preacher is effective because he makes himself a channel for others to shower them with a minute fraction of Krishna’s love and kindness for us. For himself, the preacher quietly holds himself to the highest standard, to gain his shakti. Determination means chanting our rounds when we are tired, preaching in the cold, and walking on sankirtana when our feet hurt. We must be determined to give love. And we find love, in the pages of the Bhagavatam, Bhagavad Gita, and Krishna book. 

    Courage, comes when we are scared, and goes hand in hand with determination. If we are scared to oppose someone, but are determined to spread love, we have the opportunity to be courageous. If we see someone fishing, and Supersoul tells us to tell them to stop, courage means we act, in spite of the knot in our stomach. And we preach to them, about kindness to the weaker entities. Even if they do not listen, we will have planted the seed of love. 

     Hare Krishna. 
8:53 AM, December 11th, 2015. 

As of late last month, the farms of Sikkim in northwest India have been certified 100 percent free of synthetic fertilizer and pesticides, making it the country's first fully organic state.

A short video by "Fortunate People" about people appreciating London harinama.

600 selected, beautiful photos of His Divine Grace Srila A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada all in one album.
Srila Prabhupada: Because human society is poverty-stricken and men are devoid of Vedic knowledge and the power to chant the Vedic mantras, the Hare Krishna maha-mantra is the only shelter. People should be intelligent enough to chant it. Those whose brains are dull cannot understand this chanting, nor can they take to it. (Srimad-Bhagavatam, 9.1.17 Purport)
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