Planet ISKCON

The post The Narayana-kavaca and its benefits are contained in the maha-mantra appeared first on SivaramaSwami.com.

Work, buy and consume week after week, month after month, year after year, is that what we're really here for? Devamrita Swami elaborates on this common mantra: work, buy, consume, die explaining that actually there is more to life than that. (Produced by Bhakti Lounge, Wellington, New Zealand.)

2014 04 12 Srimad Bhagavatam Canto 05 14 28 By HH Bhakti Pururshottam Swami ISKCON Mayapur

Celebrating 18th Anniversary of our beloved Sri Sri Radha Govinda Hari 14th April 2014, Monday. It had been 18 years of the deity installation @ ISKCON Nepal, Buddhanilkantha. With the Special Presence of His Holiness Mahavishnu Swami and 2000+ Devotees & Visitors. And In Nepal its a New Year too. So visitors also came to have darshan Everyone were gifted by a A4 sized Radha Govinda Hari Photo and a Back To Godhead Magazine.. everyone seems to be happy for getting those New Year Gifts. Read more ›

Giriraj Swami read and spoke from Sri Caitanya-caritamrta Madhya-lila 1.46–81.

“At the Ratha-yatra, Lord Chaitanya recited the following verse:

seita parana-natha painu
yaha lagi’ madana-dahane jhuri genu

‘I have gotten that Lord of My life, for whom I was burning in the fire of lusty desires.’ (Cc Madhya 1.55)

“All the scriptures proclaim that the gopis’ love for Krishna is completely pure and spotless, free from any material taint ofselfish desire. So, when Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu in the mood of the gopis says that he is burning in the fire of lusty desires, He really means that He is burning in the fire of separation—separation from pleasing Krishna. The gopis know that Krishna is pleased by their service more than anyone else’s. And because their only ambition is to see Krishna happy, they want to serve Him, not for their own happiness, but to give Krishna the highest transcendental pleasure. But they express their desire in terms of lust, or selfish desires—also to please Krishna.” —Giriraj Swami

Ratha-yatra Morning, Dallas, 2014

Lecture Podcast

Lecture Podcast

Manojavam maruta tulya vegam, jitendriyam buddhi mataam varishtham
vaataatmajam vaanara yooth mukhyam, shree raama dootam sharnam prapadye.
Let me pray to the one who is swift as thought (manojavam-), the one who is more powerful than the wind (marut.tulya.vegam-), the one who has conquered his senses (jitendriyam-), the one who is supreme among all intelligent beings, the son of the wind-god (vaataatmajam-), the commander of the army of forest creatures (vaanar.yooth.mukhyam-), Let me find refuge in Lord Rama's Messenger, the incomparable Lord Hanuman.

Special Day Meditation Podcast

It's simple, just hear the sound of the Lord's Holy names. Not always easy to do but with a few simple guidelines it can become easier. When you chant, just chant - do nothing else and think of nothing else.

1961 April 15: "I am proud to feel that Lord Buddha happened to be an Indian and we worship Him as incarnation of Godhead. His holy name is mentioned in the Bhagavata. We can take help from the Bhagavata, the cream and ripen fruit of the Vedic literature, and stop at once the quarrel and turmoil of the present world."
Prabhupada Letters :: 1947-64

1966 April 15:
"Ekadasi. Met Mr. Anderson, Assistant to Governor. He is little sympathetic. He says that I may expect some news from the Asia Society, New York. Yolanda will take me to Ashram tomorrow at 2 P.M. Books delivered to Elise. Two sets of books for sale in charge of Paul. Collection in the meeting -- $4.00 Expenditure Bus fare .60."
Prabhupada Journal :: 1966

1967 April 15: "Regarding my room in the temple, I can understand that you want to use it for many other purposes and you cannot agree to use it exclusively for my Bhagavatam Printing. I do not wish to disturb you. As you are very much anxious to get the room vacated, I have decided to vacate it without delay."
Prabhupada Letters :: 1967

1970 April 15: "I am enclosing herewith the Preface for Krsna Book. Regarding George's introduction to Krsna Book, as he is not settled up in his conclusion, he wants to change it, either we should wait for his final decision or it may not be added. For the time being I am holding its publication."
Prabhupada Letters :: 1970

1970 April 15: "God's killing and God's protection are the same. He is Absolute, but His mercy is shown to the atheist by killing and His mercy is shown to the theist by protecting; so both are seeing God but in different features."
Prabhupada Letters :: 1970

1972 April 15: "I am very pleased to hear that Latin America is ready for Krishna Consciousness movement. I am sending one of our new sannyasis, so you can make arrangements to meet for performing this great task of pioneer preachers on South American continent."
Prabhupada Letters :: 1972

1972 April 15: "So far your GBC duties are concerned, everything is going very nicely here in your absence, so there is no need for you to come here. So I shall be very much satisfied if you go on increasing the beauty and importance of our Back to Godhead magazine, and be happy."
Prabhupada Letters :: 1972

1973 April 15: "You are all working so hard and thus my Guru Maharaja will be so pleased upon you. Certainly He will bestow His blessings thousand times more than me and that is my satisfaction. N.B. Every one should go out with the Sankirtana Party as soon as possible."
Prabhupada Letters :: 1973

Most people have heard of the Oscar, the Tony and the Emmy Awards. But, who has ever heard of a Wilbur? The Wilbur Award is a highly sought after annual prize awarded to members of the secular media in North America. This year for the first time ever the event was hosted by an RCC member from outside the Christian or Jewish faiths, ISKCON’s own Governing Body Commission Chairman, Anuttama Dasa.

In the Bhagavad-gita (9.26) the Lord directly states that He accepts vegetarian food from the hands of a pure devotee. Therefore a human being should not only become a strict vegetarian but should also become a devotee of the Lord, offer the Lord all his food and then partake of such prasadam, or the mercy of God. Only those who act in this way can properly discharge the duties of human life. Those who do not offer their food to the Lord eat nothing but sin and subject themselves to various types of distress, which are the results of sin (Bg. 3.13).

- Srila Prabhupada, Sri Isopanishad Mantra 1

(As many readers liked the earlier article by the same title and wanted more analysis along similar lines, in this article I expand on the theme)

People with cursory knowledge of the Gita’s philosophy sometimes ask: “When the world offers both pleasures and pains, why does the Bhagavad-gita call the world a place of misery?”

Here's a short four-point answer:

• The Bhagavad-gita is not pessimistic, but realistic; the reality is that the pleasure-pain balance of the world is tilted heavily toward the pain side.

• Even if we still consider the Gita philosophy pessimistic, that pessimism is only initial, not final. In its conclusion, the Gita offers a supremely optimistic message.

• Even the best worldly optimism pales and fails in front of the longing of our heart, a longing fulfilled only by the vision of reality offered by the Gita.

• The Gita doesn’t teach us to reject this world for the spiritual world, but to harmonize this world with the spiritual world.

Let’s look at these points systematically.

DIVE into Misery

We can get insight into the pleasure-pain balance of the world by examining the pleasure-pain balance of our body, through which we primarily experience the world. For this discussion, I'll use the acronym DIVE.

Duration: The pleasures the body can give us, such as in eating or mating, last only for a few minutes. However, the pains the body can give us, such as chronic back problems or arthritis or cancer, can last for years.

Intensity: The body is far more pain-sensitive than pleasure-sensitive. If we are lying comfortably on a bed, being massaged by soothing, soft hands, one pinprick in one part of the body will bring an intensity of pain that exceeds the intensity of the pleasure experienced in all other parts of the body.

Variety: The ways in which the body can give us pleasure are few, whereas the ways in which it can give us pain are many, even innumerable. The eyes can give us pleasure primarily by seeing attractive objects, but they can give us pain by being hit, pierced, or gouged, or by becoming inflamed, infected, or blinded by a myriad variety of diseases.

Extent: A few bodily parts can give us pleasure, primarily the sensory organs like the eyes, ears, and skin, whereas many – nay, all – the bodily parts can give us pain. Except in a general way by contributing to a healthy body, none of the internal organs like the kidney or liver or spine can give us pleasure, yet all of them can give us excruciating pain by becoming diseased in numerous ways.

This analysis shows that the body’s pleasure-pain balance, and by extension the world’s pleasure-pain balance, is tilted heavily toward the pain side. That’s why, with unsentimental candor, the Srimad-Bhagavatam (7.9.25) declares the material body to be asesa-rujam virohah, the breeding place for unlimited diseases and miseries, and the Bhagavad-gita (8.15) declares the material world to be duhkhalayam asasvatam, a place of misery where the little happiness we may achieve by our most optimistic attitudes and actions is stripped away due to its inescapably temporary nature.

When the Worst Takes Us to the Best

The Bhagavad-gita’s essential message, though, is not pessimistic, but optimistic. It points us to the eternal spiritual world, where we as indestructible souls can reclaim our destiny of everlasting happiness. To ensure that we don’t miss out on that glorious destiny due to the futile hope for happiness in this world, it candidly proclaims the true nature of this world as a place of misery. Here’s an analogy to understand this strategy.

Consider a person diagnosed with a serious cancer that is curable, but only through rigorous chemotherapy. The patient may initially flinch when told about the severe treatment, but may become ready for the treatment when clearly told about the two choices: an excruciating, gradual, inevitable death, or a demanding treatment that leads to recovery. When faced with a grave problem, the way to the best-case result often begins by having a hard look at the worst-case scenario.

The Vedic texts apply this same principle to our current material existence. They explain that presently all of us are diseased; we are eternal souls afflicted with amnesia. Though we are entitled to a blissful, everlasting life in devotional service to God, due to misidentifying with our temporary material bodies we have to suffer unnecessarily the miseries of old age, disease, death, and rebirth – again and again. The “bright” side of life – the enjoyment of worldly pleasures – blinds us to these harsh facts of life and fills us with the hopeless hope that some temporary adjustments within our material existence will free us from suffering. Thus, the “bright” side of life perpetuates our dark, diseased existence.

Most of us get so caught up with pursuing the “bright” side of life that we forget or neglect its miseries and so lose the opportunity to cure ourselves. Curing ourselves requires a spiritual therapy wherein we expose ourselves to spiritual God-centered stimuli like the holy names, the saintly devotees, the sacred scriptures, the beautiful deities, and the sanctified remnants of food offered to God (prasada). Unlike chemotherapy, which is painful from beginning to end, this spiritual therapy seems to be painful in the beginning, but turns out to be joyful after a little practice (Gita 18.37). In fact, the therapy if practiced in the association of caring and competent devotee guides can be joyful right from the beginning. However, experiencing that joy requires committed and sustained practice, a price that most of us are highly reluctant to pay. Therefore, the Vedic texts offer us an unsentimental, uncompromising look at the two options before us: miseries throughout life that are repeated for many future lives, or a devotional therapy that requires commitment now but restores us to our eternal, blissful, natural life. When we're faced with these facts, our reluctance to take up the spiritual therapy evaporates, and thus the door to eternal life opens.

This profoundly wise Vedic strategy is evident in the progressive flow of the Bhagavad-gita: It initially declares this world to be an unchangeably miserable place and eventually reveals the potential within each one of us to attain divine happiness. Thus, the initial pessimism of Vedic philosophy is the essential beginning that leads to its ultimate optimism.

Don't Underestimate Reality

Talk of the spiritual world may invite the question “Isn’t this longing for another world filled with happiness an attempt to escape from reality?”

Yes, spiritual life is an attempt to escape – not from reality, but to reality.

Let us objectively examine what people consider real life. It is the life of perpetual struggle from the womb to the tomb. It is a struggle against backbreaking pressure – sometimes literally, such as under the weight of schoolbags, and always figuratively. We struggle against the pressure of others’ expectations, against cutthroat competition for employment, against family disharmony and hot and cold domestic wars, against the aging body, and ultimately against the death sentence inherent in our mortal bodies. Amidst all these struggles, we busy ourselves in complicated versions of the animalistic pursuits of eating, sleeping, mating, and defending. The uncertainty of success in these pursuits stresses us constantly, and the hope for getting some success is what we call optimism. But we can’t wish away the illnesses, aging, and death of our body. Even when distresses don’t overwhelm us, our life gets so boring that more patients visit psychiatrists because of boredom than because of distress. Even the most optimistic attitude can do little to change this unpalatable but undeniable ground reality: the miserable nature of material existence.

How have we defined as real life a life so inane, so pointless, so disappointing, so deadening? How have we been deceived into accepting as real such a pathetically low estimation of our human potential? Let’s understand with an analogy.

When people desire to play a virtual-reality video game, that desire divorces them from the reality of their identity and propels them into an illusory cyber-world where they experience artificial emotions by misidentifying with a video-game character. Similarly, the Bhagavad-gita (13.22) describes that when we desire to enjoy material things, that desire divorces us from the reality of our spiritual identity and propels us into the illusory material world, where we experience artificial emotions due to misidentifying with our material bodies. However, unlike a video game, our material misidentification is neither casual nor pleasant; it gives us insignificant pleasure and significant pain.

When, by good fortune, we somehow realize this flawed and doomed nature of our illusory pursuit, that realization awakens within us the desire to end our divorce from reality. And the more we give up illusory pleasure and the hyper-illusory optimism that keeps us glued to the pursuit of that illusory pleasure, the more we regain our rightful real happiness in spiritual love for God.

Our real life – our eternal life in the spiritual world – is far more dignified than the indignities our bodies subject us to, far more graceful than the disgraces the world buffets us with. Our real life is the life of spirit, the life of freedom, the life of joy, the life of eternity. The Bhagavad-gita proclaims that our real life is beyond the life of this miserable, material world. Our real life fulfills our innate longing for immortality. Therein, our intrinsic longing for love is eternally and completely fulfilled by reposing it in the all-attractive all-loving eternal Supreme Person, God, Krsna. That life of love is our real life, not our present ugly and unfortunate caricature of life we mistakenly label as real life.

The Harmony of the Here and the Hereafter

That’s why the Gita (8.15) urges us to return from the material world where we presently live to the spiritual world where we belong. Despite this apparent rejection of the here in favor of the hereafter, the Gita (18.78) concludes by an assurance of success in the here. This demonstrates the Gita’s message of connection, not rejection: the connection of the here with the hereafter, not the rejection of the here for the hereafter. Indeed, the Gita declares that the here is also the kingdom of God (5.29), which Krsna cares about so much that He descends here repeatedly (4.7) to reestablish the virtuous order (4.8) that will help people reach the spiritual world (4.9). The Gita (11.32–33) further indicates that by acting responsibly in service to God in the here, we can assist Him in preserving and promoting the order here.

If we care only for the here, we will become attached to the here and blinded to the hereafter, thus depriving ourselves of our right to eternal happiness. If we care only for the hereafter, we will become apathetic and irresponsible about the here, thus failing to play our part in Krsna’s plan to preserve order in the here.

By keeping in mind the beauty, the glory, and the eternality of the spiritual world, we can immunize ourselves against being enamored by the fleeting pleasures and the deluding promises of this world. By keeping in mind the role of the material world as the arena that shapes us for attaining the spiritual world, we can face the challenges of this world with determination and wisdom. That’s why the Gita (8.7) exhorts us to a dynamic balance between the here and the hereafter: Aspire wholeheartedly for the spiritual world and act responsibly in this one.

 

Special Day Meditation Podcast

Stories of preaching the glories of the TOVP usually conjure images of sannyasis speaking to crowds of devotees, or Ambarisha prabhu addressing rooms full of eager donors. How often does the audience think of Bengali laborers?

Interestingly, it is this section of the Mayapur community who are often overlooked. Beyond the glories of artistic creations, architectural marvels and engineering feats beat the hearts of a population of Indian workers who put together the pieces of this amazing puzzle.

To honor their contribution and to motivate continued success, Premavatar Gauranga Das organized a lecture for them. Brahma Samhita das gave a wonderful talk on the importance of this project. The meaning of fulfilling Srila Prabhupada’s vision was underscored by the impact this temple will have.

All participants relished in the kathaa….and the April heat went unnoticed!

The post April 15th, 2014 – Darshan appeared first on Mayapur.com.

Tonight’s preaching program.

The post The Purana’s and Itihasas are better source of ancient world history than what paleontologists dig up appeared first on SivaramaSwami.com.

The devotees had always done walking harinama's at the Bash, which attracts 100,000 people, but beginning last year we started reserving a pavilion on campus which happens to be the epicenter of all foot traffic for the event. Last years event our attention was misdirected. We'd made plans for all sorts of activities like t-shirt painting, sidewalk chalking, henna etc. to be going on in the pavillion. This over endeavor for mundane things (money) was a memorable failure. Thankfully the Holy Name prevailed that day and we had lots of chanting and dancing, but it was clear so much could have and should be done differently. This year, we focused on beautifully broadcasting the Holy Name, while providing plenty of opportunity for people to take a book, and prasadam. Whats more, we had a huge team of helpers with congregation families, lots of devotees from the Chicago and Detroit temples, even our GBC Malati Mataji was able to come which gave a huge boost of confidence to all the devotees assembled... Of course this program, Prabhupada's program, was a huge success. Read more ›

The post Vyasapuja of HH Jayapataka Swami appeared first on Mayapur.com.

My advice to you under the circumstances is that at least for one hour you must all go to have Sankirtana outside on the streets or in the park. That is your life and soul, first business. The next business is completing the chanting of 16 rounds every day. The next business is your editing, and if you find extra time, then you can attend the temple ceremonies. Otherwise you can stop these activities, but outdoor kirtana, your editing work and chanting of 16 rounds must be done. Outdoor kirtana must be done, even at the cost of suspending all editorial work. That is your first and foremost business. Temple worship is not so important. If need be, the whole temple can be locked, but the outdoor kirtana cannot be stopped. (Letter to Rayarama dasa / May 17, 1969) Read more ›

Regarding your questions about Sankirtana Party, I think you should try to always have Sankirtana going on. All other things are subsidiary. This chanting is our life and soul, so we must arrange our program now so that there will be as much chanting on the streets and at college engagements as possible. On May 12th, we had a very successful engagement at Ohio State University, and over one thousand boys and girls were chanting and dancing along with us. So this policy should be continued as far as possible. (Letter to Satsvarupa dasa / May 14, 1969) Read more ›

Sri Krishna-Balaram Mandir is a Gaudiya Vaishnava temple in the holy city of Vrindavan. It is one of the main ISKCON temples in India and internationally. Sri Krishna-Balaram Mandir was built in 1975 on the orders of Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, the founder-acharya of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON). Even today, it is regarded as one of the most popular temples in Vrindavan. Klaus Klostermaier in his book Hinduism: A Short History described it as, "a big and beautiful temple" and "one of the main sights of Vrindavan". Read more ›

“We are saying that this Hare Krishna maha-mantra can save everyone, and we are therefore distributing it publicly, free of charge… The devotees are preaching without charge, declaring in the streets, parks, and everywhere. “Here! Here is the Hare Krishna maha-mantra. Come on, take it!” (POP p. 72). Coolangatta is the southernmost suburb of Gold Coast City, Queensland, Australia. Read more ›

Jayapataka Swami at ISKCON Mayapur on 2014-04-11

Holy Name Meditation Podcast