Planet ISKCON

by Jai Sita Rani Devi Dasi Kirtan Mela Malaysia 2014

Book your tickets to Kuala Lumpur now!!

Get all your friends and relatives to come. Get soaked in the Yuga Dharma.

by Jai Sita Rani Devi Dasi Kirtan Mela Malaysia 2014

by Jai Sita Rani Devi Dasi Kirtan Mela Malaysia 2014

by Jai Sita Rani Devi Dasi Kirtan Mela Malaysia 2014

by Jai Sita Rani Devi Dasi Kirtan Mela Malaysia 2014

by Jai Sita Rani Devi Dasi Kirtan Mela Malaysia 2014

by Jai Sita Rani Devi Dasi Kirtan Mela Malaysia 2014

by Jai Sita Rani Devi Dasi Kirtan Mela Malaysia 2014

by Jai Sita Rani Devi Dasi Kirtan Mela Malaysia 2014

by Jai Sita Rani Devi Dasi Kirtan Mela Malaysia 2014

BY SJMKL YOUTH

LIVE BROADCAST

on

29 Nov 2014 and 30 Nov 2014

from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.

Kirtan Mela Live From Kuala Lumpur

"The relationship between sound and form is particularly relevant to chanting japa. Just as material sound vibrations produce visible forms, similarly, the transcendental vibration of Krsna’s name produces the visible form of Krsna in the heart of a devotee."

From Art Of Chanting Hare Krsna
by Mahanidhi Swami

Although this isn't a personal realisation it's something I have tried and it works. Every time your mind tries to drag you away, just keep hearing the next mantra and keep hearing the next mantra then the next and you'll soon be back into the shelter of the Holy names.

Bhagavatam-daily Podcast

Holy Name Meditation Podcast

By Kadamba Kanana Swami

 

Krsna Matir Astu – May Krsna be on your Mind

Yesterday, Yamuna from South Africa brought Visnujana’s ashes to Mayapur. Today (24 November), we placed them in the Ganga. Many little particles of dust mixed with the sacred waters. I asked Mahaprabhu to be merciful on Visnujana.

Youth Program 

Last night, we had a little program with the youth. Just some kirtan and some stories about Lord Caitanya. It is easy to be Krsna conscious – just some kirtan, some katha and some prasad.

Parikrama

The day before (22 November), we went on a parikrama with all the devotees from the Mayapur Institute and some others. First, we went to Suvarna Vihar. In Satya Yuga, King Suvarna Sena ruled from here. Just nearby, the Sarasvati (Jalangi) enters into the Ganga. This place was described in the Navadvipa Dham Mahatmya‎, but no one knew where it was, until Srila Bhaktisiddhanta discovered it. Later, Maharaja Suvarna Sen appeared in Gaura Lila as Buddhimanta Khan. By hearing about these devotees, we hoped that some desire for pure devotional service might awaken in our heart.

Next, we went to Harihara Ksetra. The Deity is half Visnu and half Siva. That means Sadasiva is an expansion of Mahavisnu‎ and actually visnu tattva. Advaita Acarya is none other than Mahavisnu and Sadasiva. So we prayed to Advaita Acarya. You see, Advaita Acarya is very powerful, when he prayed for the Lord to appear, his prayers worked. Whether our prayers work or not is not so certain, but Advaita Acarya’s prayers definitely work. We asked Him to pray to Lord Caitanya to give us love of God. Then we had an ecstatic kirtan. It was hard to stop.

However, we did stop because we still wanted to go to Nrsimha Palli and we were afraid that we might miss the darshan. Once we got there, the kirtan exploded for a long time. Then we recalled how Bhaktivinode Thakur prayed to Nrsimhadeva, vigna vinasana, the remover of obstacles, to take away all anarthas and make him suitable for the pastimes of Radha and Krsna.

Yes, we also prayed like that, after praying in Suvarna Vihar for a desire for pure devotional service, in Harihara Ksetra for pure love of God and here we realized that we were still conditioned souls, “Oh Lord, please first remove the obstacles from our hearts and then give us love of God.”

We felt purified by the mercy of these places and the Deities and by hearing and chanting in the association of the vaisnavas.

‎vancha-kalpatarubhyash cha

kripa-sindhubhya eva cha

The vaisnavas are oceans of mercy and wish fulfilling desire trees.

It was a nice day!

 

 

Los Angeles Harinam Party - Venice Beach (Album 38 photos)
Narada Muni is very expert in delivering all the conditioned souls back home, back to Godhead. Therefore the materialistic experts do not agree with the spiritual expert Narada Muni, but this does not mean that Narada Muni will give up his engagement of chanting the Hare Krishna mantra.
(Srimad-Bhagavatam, 6.5.24 Purport)
http://goo.gl/IFlWwn

Talk Podcast

Science prides itself of objectivity and empiricism. When I was in school I always questioned how science made some base assumptions. However, at that time I could not quite articulate my doubts in words. I knew something did not sit very well with me whenever some ideas were taught in the name of science.

For example, when I was introduced to the concept of evolution in middle school, it stated that species evolved to complex organisms over time due to natural selection and only the fittest survive the onslaughts of nature. I thought that if we all evolved in that way, then how come our ancestors still exist in their primitive forms? Because if they survived the struggles of nature, then there is no need to evolve and i wont be sitting here typing on a computer? So did only few our ancestors struggle to evolve through natural selection while others remained without evolution? Perhaps there is an answer, i do not know?

Another glaring thought that bothered me in physics class in high school was the understanding of outer space? I wondered how light, sound etc behaved the same way across the entire cosmos? Scientists assumed that the red and violet frequencies in the light spectrum behaved the same way in outer space millions of light years away as it did on the earth paradigm. Something I could not easily accept from science!

Anyways, i am not a scientist but reading these ten dogmas written by a thoroughbred scientist helped me articulate my own doubts and also shed light onto other assumptions science makes.

Below are the ten core beliefs (or dogmas) that most scientists take for granted. Together, these beliefs make up the philosophy or ideology of scientific materialism.

1. Everything is essentially mechanical. Dogs, for example, are complex mechanisms, rather than living organisms with goals of their own. Even people are machines, ‘lumbering robots’, in Richard Dawkins’s vivid phrase, with brains that are like genetically programmed computers.
2. All matter is unconscious. It has no inner life or subjectivity or point of view. Even human consciousness is an illusion produced by the material activities of brains.
3. The total amount of matter and energy is always the same (with the exception of the Big Bang, when all the matter and energy of the universe suddenly appeared).
4. The laws of nature are fixed. They are the same today as they were at the beginning, and they will stay the same for ever.
5. Nature is purposeless, and evolution has no goal or direction.
6. All biological inheritance is material, carried in the genetic material, DNA, and in other material structures.
7. Minds are inside heads and are nothing but the activities of brains. When you look at a tree, the image of the tree you are seeing is not ‘out there’, where it seems to be, but inside your brain.
8. Memories are stored as material traces in brains and are wiped out at death.
9. Unexplained phenomena like telepathy are illusory.
10. Mechanistic medicine is the only kind that really works.

I write a journal daily (well, almost daily) and sometimes when I can’t think of anything to write, I just type “Thank you, Krishna …” and let my fingers move on the keyboard. I thank Krishna for whatever good things have happened in my life. I thank him for whatever good ideas I have got for my writing, because writing is my main service and I can’t write without ideas. And I thank him for whatever good service I was able to do, being grateful that whatever needed to go right for doing that service did in fact turn out right and the many things that could have gone wrong didn’t go wrong.

As my fingers move thus, I am often surprised at how easily I meet my daily journal quota (I try to write at least 500 words daily). More importantly, by writing about my thankfulness, I start feeling thankful. Even more importantly, I notice many things to be thankful for – things that I had overlooked while being caught in the rush of life. I find it revealing how just the attempt to thank, more specifically the attempt to express that thanks through verbalization, nourishes the attitude of gratitude. Such nourishment inspires me to cherish journaling as a daily devotional ritual.

Rituals provide a stimulus and structure for expressing and thereby experiencing refined emotions.

Nourishing our higher side is, in fact, the purpose of rituals. They provide a stimulus and structure for expressing and thereby experiencing refined emotions. Rituals may be private such as journaling or public such as the festival of Thanksgiving being celebrated in America and elsewhere this week.

From form to substance

Being born and brought up in India where Thanksgiving is hardly celebrated, I hadn’t even heard about it before I was introduced to bhakti-yoga. The Christian festivals I knew from my convent education were Christmas and Easter. After my initiation into the bhakti tradition, when I studied other traditions, I read about Thanksgiving for the first time. My initial impression was negative as the celebration included killing and eating of turkeys. Killing a creature to thank the Creator struck me as bizarre and counter-devotional.

Nonetheless, putting aside that initial impression, I read more about the festival. And I found that its essential spirit was good – the spirit of expressing gratitude. No doubt, Thanksgiving is often reduced to just an occasion for having a good time. But such degeneration of meaningful festivals to mere fun can happen to any festival, even widely celebrated ones such as Christmas and Diwali, whose celebrants hardly ponder its spiritual significance. Still, many people do celebrate Thanksgiving as a heartfelt expression of their gratitude to God, the ultimate giver of everything, for the many gifts they have been blessed with. Thankfully, we live in times of increasing awareness of animal rights. And we are also more scientifically aware of the feasibility, even the preferability, of vegetarianism as a dietary choice. So we can hope that progressive celebrants of Thanksgiving will find non-violent alternatives to turkeys for expressing their gratitude. Instead of eating the turkey, they need to talk turkey. That is, they need to discuss seriously the principle and the practice of Thanksgiving.

We can hope that progressive celebrants of Thanksgiving will find non-violent alternatives to turkeys for expressing their gratitude. Instead of eating the turkey, they need to talk turkey.

Nothing to thank for?

The principle of gratitude to God is a universally enshrined in the world’s religious traditions. Sadly however, the gratitude that is universally endorsed is becoming universally elusive, thanks to today’s materialistic culture.

Materialism makes us believe we can find happiness only in material things – the more things we have, the happier we will be. So, we become obsessed with getting more and more things. What aggravates our obsession is the aggressive advertising industry, which parades before us the many things we don’t have, thereby inflaming our desires for them. When we are thus obsessed with what we don’t have, we often don’t even notice what we have, leave alone feel grateful for it.

Gratitude is much easier to cultivate with a more spiritual vision of life, wherein we recognize that real happiness comes not through outer acquisition but through inner realization. The Bhagavad-gita is an ancient yoga text that shares such a spiritual vision. Its central message is that we are at our core souls, who can find supreme fulfillment in spiritual love for God, Krishna.

The most thankworthy blessing

With such a spiritual vision of life, what all can we be thankful for?

Amidst the death and disaster and destruction prevalent in the world today, that we are alive is itself thankworthy. Beyond that we can be thankful for having life’s necessities, which so many people don’t have. The most important thing to be thankful for, however, is having a purpose for living. I refer not to the material purpose that we may adopt but to the spiritual purpose of living – the reason we exist.

Gita wisdom reveals that purpose to be love – love for God and for all living beings in relationship with him. Such spiritual love brings the supreme value to our life. It provides not just real meaning and deep fulfillment in this life but also makes this life into a launching pad to immorality. How? By raising our consciousness from the material level, where we suffer death due to the mortality of our bodily shell, to the spiritual level, where we realize the indestructibility of our spiritual core.

The opportunity to perceive and pursue this paramount purpose of life is supremely thankworthy. God offers us this opportunity through scripture and through the living traditions that strive to live according to scripture. The Bhagavad-gita (07.03) indicates that those who grab this opportunity for spiritual enlightenment are special souls, being one among thousands.

Being thankful amidst adversity

Those who embrace life’s spiritual purpose are thankful to God not just for good things, but also for bad things. A prominent bhakti text, Srimad Bhagavatam (10.14.08), features a celebrated prayer that responds to adversity by thanking God with folded hands and bowed head. Significantly, the prayer concludes with the bold, confident declaration that those who can be thus thankful become rightful inheritors of life eternal. The rationale for this declaration is understandable – to be grateful amidst material losses, we need to fix our heart on our spiritual gifts. And such spiritual redirection of the heart is the pathway for attaining a life of eternal love with our eternal Lord.

Amidst the complexity of life and even of religion in a multi-cultural world, Thanksgiving can remind us of the striking simplicity with which we can go closer to God: by saying a heartfelt “Thank you.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

College of Vedic Studies, Bhaktivedanta Manor
The College of Vedic Studies got off to a flying start last September with more courses and more attendees than ever before. The array and quality of the sessions have attracted hundreds to cram into rooms on Sunday mornings to learn about life’s important questions in the ‘Explore’ course and a summary of the Bhagavad-gita in the ‘Gita Life’ course. For those a little more experienced, the ‘Bhakti Shastri’ course (lasting 1 year) proves more of a challenge, taking students through a more in-depth study of the Bhagavad-gita and other related texts.
http://goo.gl/Hw3GRt

German Mayor joins ISKCON farmers
The last ISKCON European Farm Conference took place in Simhacalam, an ISKCON temple and farm project in Germany. It was organised by Syamasundara das, who is now the ISKCON Global Minister of Cow Protection and Agriculture. During the Conference the local Mayor made a special visit and after explained that farms were close to his heart and he felt part of the ISKCON community there.
He particularly appreciated the participation from devotees from across Europe. The Conference is open to those who have an interest in or are actually practiced in rural development, agriculture, handicrafts, horticulture, protected dairying, ox draft and other similar topics.
The European Conferences are open to those who have in interest in or are actually practicing in rural development, agriculture, handicrafts, horticulture, dairy and ox-power

Bhagavatam for Toddlers
You can never be too young to get a taste of Krishna consciousness! Groups of mothers and their children aged from anything from 4 months to 4 years are gathering on a weekly basis at the Manor for story-telling, fun activities, creativity, music and song workshops.
Devyani dasi from UK has been developing the project over the last few years, has invited special guests along and brought the age groups together for festival events. Sucirani dasi and Vrnda Kishori dasi have also been running groups which have grown very popular!
Basic Session Format:
http://goo.gl/AYa3gn

Many Faiths, One Family!
An interfaith presentation evening was held at Watford’s Church, UK, of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints on the topic of “ways to strengthen families.” Speakers participated from a number of local faiths, including Bhagavati dasi and Radha Mohan das from the Manor. Bhagavati spoke of how faith strengthens and unites families, and Radha Mohan das added that faith communities themselves are also our families.
http://goo.gl/gACZTv

The post November 24th, 2014 – Darshan appeared first on Mayapur.com.

The post All blessings to the book distributors appeared first on SivaramaSwami.com.

Krishna conscious program in Lenin’s birth place,
Ulyanvsk, Russia (Album 62 photos)
Even if in the beginning one chants the Hare Krishna mantra with offenses, one will become free from such offenses by chanting again and again. Papa-ksayas ca bhavati smaratam tam ahar-nisam: one becomes free from all sinful reactions if one chants day and night, following the recommendation of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu. (Srimad-Bhagavatam, 6.3.24 Purport)
http://goo.gl/mKSfs0

Preaching Program in Samara, Russia, 23 Nov. 2014 (Album 40 photos)
By chanting the Hare Krishna mantra without offenses, one increases his love for Krishna. As stated by Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu, preme pum-artho mahan: one’s main concern should be to increase one’s attachment to the Supreme Personality of Godhead and to increase one’s love for Him.
(Srimad-Bhagavatam, 6.3.24 Purport)
http://goo.gl/dZ0fc9

Preaching program and Harinama in Banyuwangi East Java, November 2014 (Album 50 photos)
In the sastras it is said that if a person only once chants the holy name and completely surrenders unto the lotus feet of the Lord, the Lord immediately considers him His ward and is always inclined to give him protection. (Srimad-Bhagavatam, 6.2.49 Purport)
http://goo.gl/Ximq8T

Yoga of the Bhagavad Gita workshop by Cyril Wohrer (video)
Cyril Wohrer, aka Chandrasekhara Acharya dasa gives a very concise presentation about Yoga & Bhagavad Gita
http://goo.gl/8A6T3O

Pictures from a Bhagavad-gita reading event held in Bali, Indonesia on Sunday, the 23rd of November 2014. Hindu religious organisations, such as ISKCON, participated in the reading of all 700 slokas of the Gita with another 8,000 people, breaking a national record. The event was organised by the Tabanan Regency government, the Bhagavad-Gita Movement of Indonesia and the Hindu Youth Association of Bali. (Pictures by Guru Gauranga dasa)
http://goo.gl/GW781O

Answer Podcast

Answer Podcast