Websites from the ISKCON Universe
Teak wood is a naturally grown wood from Myanmar (previously Burma). This wood is known for its superb stability, good strength, easy workability, resistance to bugs – and most of all, its outstanding resistance to decay. It basically will last forever. This wood will be used for all windows and doors in the Temple of the Vedic Planetarium.
So who says animals are not capable of remembering each other and have emotions? The amazing story of three horses reuniting after 4 years.
An angellic-looking choir, trained by the famous Italian Gregorian chanter, Fabrizio Mastroianni, sing Gregorian, Hebrew and Sanskrit (Govindam Adi Purusham) chants at the opening ceremony of the Bhaktivedanta Institute's international conference, Life And Its Origin, at the Protomoteca Hall, Rome. November 12th 2004.
Scientific materialism is essentially a philosophy of death. Its philosophical delusions literally block the mind of a scientist from being able to recognize that this human being is worth more than the collection of its parts.
Today, modern science is backing up what ancient Indians have known for centuries—that turmeric, and curcumin in particular, has many astounding uses.
Hare Krishna! Divine Darshan for Ganga Devi (Flood in Mayapur 2015)
Flood has been on everyone’s mind for awhile now, as we experienced record amount of rain throughout July. But most of us thought it’s too early, previous times it was at the end of September back in 2007 and 2000. It is a grand Mayapur ‘tradition’ that every 7-8 years Ganga Devi is coming to visit Sri Sri Radha Madhava and Ashta Sakhis, Sri Panca-Tattva and Sri Prahlad Nrsimhadev. So it’s official, Ganga Devi is in the temple room now getting a divine darshan. She also visited TOVP construction site to see the latest construction progress and we hope She is very happy by our humble efforts to please Lord Caitanya and Srila Prabhupada. If She would follow her regular schedule, next visit will be in 2022, the year of Grand Opening of the TOVP. Below we have pictures taken yesterday and today of the TOVP surrounding area and some shots of inside the Sri Mayapur Chandrodaya Temple. Be amazed!
Read the entire article here: http://www.dandavats.com/?p=18840
Never Stop Chanting video goes high on MusicBed Film Festival - need votes!
We have submitted our short doc video “Never Stop Chanting” to the MusicBed Film Festival and it’s doing very good. We’ve reached the top but then got overrun by another contender.
Currently it s an uphill battle for the #1 position in a People’s Choice category. Winning at the festival would be a nice chance to get Prabhupad’s message across!
Here is the link for our submission that we need help in voting up:
https://goo.gl/hJrGaj
Chant For Change Attracts 10,000 Plus At Puri Beach The first Mega kirtan festival at Jagannatha Puri ‘Chant for Change’ attracted more than 10,000 people on the idyllic and historic sea beach at Jagannatha Puri.Held very near Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhus beachside statue at Swargadwar,the festival had the crowds chanting ,dancing and drowning in the nectar of Harinam Sankirtana.It was held on July 17 th, a day before the first Navakalebar Rath Yatra festival to offer a prayer to Their Lordships to bestow Their mercy to fill everyone’s hearts with feelings of gratitude and selfless servitude,individually and globally. The stage for the event was a beautiful Pandal erected on the sands of the Oceanside beach against the backdrop of a beautiful deities of Jagannatha Baladev and Subhadra.There was an accompanying LED screen displaying appropriate Darshans and themes as per the Kirtana. Read the entire article here: http://www.dandavats.com/?p=18837
I sat next to Zack on the plane back to So Cal, counting money. I had sold about 200 zines for 2 bucks each, and Inside Out had sold some shirts and Shelter had paid us something from the tour, so altogether I made about $600. I put it all back in its envelope and put that envelope in the seat pocket in front of me. We were all pretty jazzed that we had made any money at all from doing something so fun.
I fell asleep.
We landed in LA. Mom and dad picked me up at the airport, and we drove Zack back to his mom’s apartment in Irvine. On the way, dad asked if we made any money.
“Yeah!” Zack and I said.
“He made a lot more than me,” Zack said, “Because he’s a ‘zinester. You should’ve seen him selling those zines. You would’ve been proud, he was really hustlin’ out there.”
Meanwhile, as everyone laughed, I checked every pocket and looked into my big shoulder bag from India (got it from the devotees on tour I guess) trying to remember where I had put the envelope with the cash in it.
You know that feeling when there is some possibility that something went wrong, and you slowly realize that its not just a “possibility”?
“Oh fuck.” I announced, attempting to eloquently sum up the entirety of the issue without having to actually say what happened.
“What happened?” dad asked.
I really didn’t want to say. So I just said, “…shit…”
“You lost the money?” dad asked rhetorically.
“I lost the damn money.”
“You left it on the plane?” he asked.
“I left it on the plane,” I groaned, “in the freaking seat pocket.”
Everyone groaned.
“How much was it?” dad asked.
“Six hundred.”
“Six hundred dollars?!”
“Six hundred dollars.”
“Wow. I’m impressed.” he said.
“You’re impressed that I lost six hundred dollars?”
“No,” he said, “I’m impressed that you made six hundred dollars.”
Zack started laughing.
“Four hundred from zines,” I explained. “Eight hundred from the tour and shirts, split four ways. So six hundred altogether.”
There was silence for a few moments.
Then Zack cracked a joke, “Hey, now I made more than you!”
Everyone was laughing. Me too. I didn’t give a damn that I lost six hundred dollars. I just felt embarrassed to be so obviously distracted and irresponsible. My head was still up in the clouds, flying in a holding pattern. There was no schedule for its landing, no gate for it to pull up to. I was becoming a Hare Krishna. It was just a matter of a few weeks ‘till Ray would show up in San Diego with a van and some people to play drums and bass, and then I would become one of them and exit the material world.
How could I possibly focus on anything else?
An excerpt from the first draft of
Train Wrecks and Transcendence:
A Collision of Hardcore and Hare Krishna
by Vraja Kishor
VrajaKishor.com
Hare Krishna! TOVP: 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. This mock-up is made from polished stainless steel coated with titanium nitride, and from this we will determine which fabrication methods will be used. This coating is a ceramic gold like substance that is very resistant to weathering. A skeletal structure behind the sheeting holds everything in the correct position and is connected to the tubular structure at the top of the dome. The overall height of the Kalash from this level is about 49 feet (15 meters), and at a height of 263 feet (80 meters) above the ground level, the engineering and structural integrity is of paramount importance.
Read the entire article here: http://www.dandavats.com/?p=18833
Hare Krishna! TOVP: New Materials – Burmese Teak Wood
Teak wood is a naturally grown wood from Myanmar (previously Burma). This wood is known for its superb stability, good strength, easy workability, resistance to bugs – and most of all, its outstanding resistance to decay. It basically will last forever. Burmese teak wood is exported all over the world for its quality. Sadbhuja Prabhu personally travelled to Myanmar to negotiate the best price and pick the best quality of wood. This wood will be used for all windows and doors in the Temple.
Read the entire article here: http://www.dandavats.com/?p=18826
23.07.2015 H.G.Uttama Sloka Prabhu_SB-5.26.30
One of the defining delusions of our society is the equalization of lust with love. People who feel physically attracted to each other assume that are in love. But often their attraction is nothing more than lust.
A kirtan led by Surya Nandini Dasi.
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 in the sacred land of Vrindavana, surrounded by devotees. All were chanting along to a recording of Srila Prabhupada’s kirtan.
One of the defining delusions of our society is the equalization of lust with love. People who feel physically attracted to each other assume that are in love. But often their attraction is nothing more than lust – this becomes apparent in due course of time when due to familiarity the hormones are no longer secreted and where one was irresistibly fascinated earlier, one starts feeling bored at best or even irritated if other incompatibilities are discovered.
While there are various ways in which love and lust can be differentiated, one prominent way is in terms of their effects on us. We all have a lower side – something within us that impels us to be selfish, shortsighted, and exploitative. And we also have a higher side – a part of us that wants to be selfless, far-sighted, and sensitive. Lust springs from our lower side and brings that side out further. It makes us want to control and dominate others for the sake of our enjoyment. Thus, lust objectifies others, reducing them to their bodies, and reducing their bodies to contours and crevices meant for our pleasure.
In contrast, love springs from our higher side and brings that side out further. When we love someone, we want to become the best that we can be for the pleasure of that person. Thus, love inspires us to combat and control our lower side.
Of course, lust too wants us to put on a better face for impressing the other person, but because the feeling itself is superficial, coming from our body-mind setup, it doesn’t inspire any positive change below the surface. Rather, it impels us to put on a good façade so that eventually our lower side can get a free hand to dominate and manipulate others for our pleasure. Gita wisdom explains that our higher side corresponds with our spiritual essence, our soul. The soul being a part of God is filled with godly virtues. However, it is presently covered by the body and the mind which are filled with negative impressions from past indulgences. These impressions are the source of our lower side. Prominent among these impressions is lust. While lust promises immense pleasure, it rarely lives up to its promise – despite the fantasy it may fan in our mind, it can do nothing to alter the body’s limited capacity for indulgence. Being thwarted thus, lust goads us into believing that the elusive pleasure will be ours if we just seek newer, baser forms of indulgence. Thus, lust pushes us down the slippery slope of degradation. No wonder the Bhagavad-gita (03.39) warns that lust is an enemy that deludes and degrades us.
Findings in brain research also point to the difference between lust and love. When people feel lust, MRI scans show that those areas of their brain light up that are usually lit when they feel emotions of possessing and controlling, as when they desire to get a new cellphone or a new car. In a contrast, when people feel love, those areas of the brain light up which are usually lit when they feel emotions of caring and sharing.
Gita wisdom explains that love in its purest form emerges from our soul, whose nature it is to love the supreme soul, Krishna, and to love everyone in relationship with him. The more we strive to manifest this love by practicing bhakti-yoga, the more the lust that covers and obscures it becomes purged. As we learn to love Krishna, we start relishing a profound non-material enrichment in his remembrance – an enrichment that frees us from the lust-driven need to dominate others for our gratification. Thus, by striving to develop a loving relationship with Krishna, the foundation of even our worldly relationships shifts from lust to love, thereby making those relationships more stable, more positively transformational and more fulfilling.
The post Love brings out our lower side; lust, our higher side appeared first on The Spiritual Scientist.
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In the village of Panihati, Raghunatha dasa obtained an interview with Nityananda Prabhu. Sitting on a rock under a tree on the bank of the Ganges, Lord Nityananda seemed as effulgent as hundreds and thousands of rising suns.
(Kadamba Kanana Swami, 06 April 2015, Durban, South Africa, Ratha Yatra Lecture: The secret of spiritual advancement)
It is said that the spiritual master is very pleased when the devotees chant the holy name and play musical instruments. The playing of musical instruments is our tradition; it is not about being a musician. Some of us may be more musically inclined than others; that is a fact but every member of the sankirtan movement is meant to learn a little bit of how to play a musical instrument, a little beat, and simply chant Hare Krsna. When we just chant like that, it does not matter what melody, it is just ultra-positive and it is a simple thing to do. So if you want to know one of my secrets, it is doing just that! It is not that I am such a great musician, in fact I am a terribly bad harmonium player compared to some others, there are many others who are much better than me, but I like to sing and I realize that this singing is giving me positive energy. These are inspirational things we have to look for!
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Aerial view of the flooded area around the Iskcon Mayapur Temple (5 min video)
Watch it here: https://goo.gl/YLl3bQ
India in Greece or Truth in mythology “The affinity between the Greek language and the old Parsee and Sanskrit is certain and essential. The use of cognate idioms prove that the nations who used them to have descended from the same stock. That the religion of the Greeks emanated from an Eastern shore no-one will deny. We must therefore suppose the religion, as well as the language of Greece to have been derived, in great part, largely from the east”. Dr Prichard - Physical History Of Man. “The whole of this state of society, civil and military, must strike anyone as eminently Asiatic; much of it specifically Indian. Such it undoubtedly is… these evidences were but the attendant tokens of an Indian colonization with its corresponding religion and language… the whole of Greece, from the era of the supposed godships of Poseidon and Zeus, down to the close of the Trojan war was Indian in language, sentiment and religion, as well as the arts of peace and war.” - Edward G Pococke. Read the entire article here: http://www.dandavats.com/?p=18818
The monsoon in West Bengal is midway and has brought tremendous rainfall already. The ISKCON Mayapur campus and the surrounding villages are fully flooded with three feet water. Devotees now are getting around in boats and still continue to attend temple functions and visit the Deities.
Pupils try tasty alternative to white bread
A healthy alternative to “nasty” cheap white bread is on the menu for hundreds of Northland schoolkids thanks to a $10,000 donation all the way from Singapore. Food for Life founder Buddhi Wilcox had been wanting to make chapati - a thin pancake of unleavened wholemeal bread - for the students for years. Founded in 2012, the organisation provides free, nutritious vegetarian meals weekly to more than 1000 Whangarei schoolchildren. Unfortunately making chapati is quite time consuming, with it likely taking a volunteer five or six hours to make the number required. “The whole idea for me was at the schools a lot of the kids are just used to having cheap nasty white bread,” Mr Wilcox said. “This (chapati) is a staple diet in India and it’s part of a good balanced meal.” Normally the commercial chapati making machines were very large, though Mr Wilcox managed to find a small one less than 2m long online from the United States.
Read the entire article here: http://goo.gl/KmGFGz
Hare Krishna! BBT Draft Editorial Policy
BBT Global Communications: During Srila Prabhupada’s physical presence, all of his books were edited before publication. For some of these books – Sri Isopanisad, Teachings of Lord Caitanya, and the First Canto of Srimad-Bhagavatam – his editors, with his approval, undertook a second, revised edition. Apart from this, during his lifetime his editors made various minor revisions. And Srila Prabhupada himself sometimes directed that some particular word or sentence be revised. Srila Prabhupada, however, many times expressed his disapproval of “needless change.” And on one notable occasion (in Vrindavana on June 22, 1977) Srila Prabhupada expressed strong disapproval of changes that “rascal editors” had made to his books, and he directed that these changes be reversed.
Read the entire article here: http://www.dandavats.com/?p=18813
Surprisingly, in our modern high-paced high-controlled life style the thing that is out of control is our own mind. Though there is a simple process that can help to bring the mind back under control. This 5 min documentary is about Awakening the Soul, an event lead by BB Govinda Swami, that delivers such an experience. May 31, 2014, Dubai.
Never Stop Chanting by Vrindavan Experience has a chance to get People's Choice Award at MusicBed Film Festival! Please support the film by voting it up! https://filmfest.musicbed.com/submi…/never-stop-chanting/681#
Evening arati with candle offering.
Hare Krishna! ISKCON 50 Festival in Houston
Celebrating the 50th anniversary of Srila Prabhupada’s arrival in America, fulfilling his Guru Maharaja’s instruction and the 50th anniversary next year of the incorporation of the International Society For Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON). Many wonderful presenters have committed to attend, including, Bhakti Caru Swami, Giriraja Swami, Romapada Swami, Mother Rambhoru Devi, Bhaktimarga Swami, Vaisesika Prabhu, Gunagrahi Goswami and Mother Radha Devi. Join us, for not-to-be-missed kirtans, sadhu sanga, classes and seminars, great prasadam feasts, international special presentations, product and service displays, outreach and sankirtana networking and much more celebrating the first 50 years of Srila Prabhupada’s mission. There will also be special programs for children.
Read the entire article here: http://www.dandavats.com/?p=18810
Bhakti Charu Swami’s program at Chickballapur on the evening of
July 28, 2015 (Album with photos)
Taken at a program at the ISKCON Namahatta center at Chickballapur, Karnataka, 70 kilometers North of Bangalore City
See them here: https://goo.gl/kSxZN9
Spiritual Retreat @ Gita Nagari 2015 with Radhanath Swami (Album with photos)
See them here: https://goo.gl/2j4xHo
Mayapur temple yesterday, 4th of August, 2015
Maddi Kat tells us all about her experience with the Hare Krishna parade in Venice Beach, Los Angeles (3 min video)
“… such wonderful, happy people! Why the christians were harassing them!”
Watch it here: http://goo.gl/wzuM0h