Planet ISKCON

1972 February 13: "Unless one is perfectly behaved, he cannot teach others. All the GBC should be strictly to the standard, and see that others are also following them. Then our centers will be well-managed."
Prabhupada Letters :: 1972

1972 February 13 : "Impressive but not repressive - that is the system. Please institute these most important principles but do it so that people will not go away."
Prabhupada Letters :: 1972

New Vrindaban’s Transcendental “Throwback Thursday” – 02/13/14.

Each week we highlight an earlier era of ISKCON New Vrindaban.

This week’s challenge: These two devotees look like they are happily engaged in their service. Who are they and what do you think they are working on?

Post your guesses on the “who, what, when & where” in the comment section at the New Vrindaban Facebook Page.

Technical stuff: We share the photo Thursday and confirm known details Sunday. Let’s keep it light and have a bit of fun!

Special request: If you have a photo showing New Vrindaban devotees in action, share it with us and we’ll use it in a future posting.

The post February 13th, 2014 – Darshan appeared first on Mayapur.com.

Parasuram das: The following video clip was taken from last Friday's Feast at Matchless Gifts,UK. The singer's name is "Youth" from one of my favourite bands "Killing Joke" Read more ›

Parasuram das: HG Saksi Gopal lights up Leicester Square with the Holy Name. There is nothing like an old fashion Hari Nam. There are about eight direct disciples of Srila Prabhupada going out regularly on this Hari Nam, in the old days these devotees would perform this sacrifice daily for eight hours. That was the norm. Please come out on the streets as it's "susukham kartum avyayam", great fun. Read more ›

Holy Name Meditation Podcast

Today is the most auspicious day of the appearance of Lord Nityananda Rama. He is none other than Lord Balarama who is the self same Supreme Being.

We live in a world where service and love is strongly reposed to the things and people of this world. In this condition of spiritual aridity, it is next to impossible to understand God and the eternal dharma of love of God despite the presence of many religions, places of worship and godmen.

Lord Nityananda prabhu appeared 500 years ago as the spiritual oasis to spread the sanatana dharma of prema pumartha mahan: to achieve love of Supreme Godhead Krishna as the topmost perfection of life.  There is no truth superior to this. Without the mercy and blessing of Lord Nityananda one cannot gain access into the eternal lila of Radha and Krishna. In fact, one cannot even understand in theory the position, greatness and sweetness of Krishna and His eternal consort Radha.

So on this day, we must aspire in a humble way to be the servant of the servant of Lord Nitynanda - to desire to be free from false prestige that arises from our attachment to our body and mind. We must take our Krishna conscious life seriously, sincerely and without any self motivations. When we struggle hard for this simple position of servant of servant free from false pride & prestige, then surely Lord Nityananda will be pleased with our endeavor and will grant entrance into the eternal lila of Radha and Krishna.

I pray to that Supreme Lord Nityananda prabhu to give me the desire, faith and determination to remain humble and chant the Hare Krishna Mahamantra in a way that attracts Sri Sri Radha and Krishna.

Lord Nityananda Prabhu ki jay!

Hare Krishna

Lord Nityananda is considered to be the most merciful manifestation of the most merciful incarnation of the Lord. The most merciful incarnation is Lord Chaitanya and he manifested his mercy most exuberantly through Lord Nityananda. Though these two transcendental brothers are non-different, still one takes on the mood of the servant of the other – Lord Nityananda considers service to Lord Chaitanya the supreme treasure of his life, indeed, the very purpose of his life.

In his service to Lord Chaitanya, Lord Nityananda manifested his mercy through many extraordinary incidents. The most celebrated among them is his deliverance of Jagai and Madhai.

To understand the distinctiveness, in fact, the uniqueness, of this merciful accomplishment, let’s analyze it on three counts:

1.     Magnitude: The sheer magnitude of the mercy was mind-boggling, even for Yamaraja. To have two people whose sins were so numerous, even mountainous, as to be impossible to even keep track of, being freed from all their sins in one moment of mercy was so astonishing, so historical, so utterly unprecedented that, as the Chaitanya Bhagavata mentions, Yamaraja on coming to know about it fainted in sheer ecstasy.

2.     Motivation: At one level, the motivation of the Lord was obvious: compassion for the fallen souls. It is for this purpose that the Lord descends millennia after millennia, as the Bhagavad-gita (04.07-09) informs. But along with that standard purpose, the Chaitanya Bhagavata gives us special insight into the transcendental psychology of Nityananda Prabhu. When he heard about the fallen condition of Jagai-Madhai, his eyes lit up with not just compassion but also ambition – the ambition to glorify Lord Chaitanya in a way that would be remembered for all time to come: “These two people are so contaminated that on seeing them pious people feel impelled to bathe in the Ganges to purify themselves. If these sinners can become so pure that people on seeing them feel that they have become purified, as if having bathed in the Ganges, then the fame of all Lord Chaitanya will spread in all the three worlds.” With this desire to glorify Lord Chaitanya, Lord Nityananda tolerated even the brutal assault on his head and uttered the incredible words of compassion that have become etched forever in the collective memory of Gaudiya Vaishanvas: "merechhish kolshir kana, tai bole ki prem debona" (Shall I stop giving you love because you have hit me with an earthen pot?).

It was this endearing blend of compassion and ambition that motivated our beloved Srila Prabhupada to attempt something similarly outrageous: to deliver people from the Western world, who were so fallen that their only regulative principle was to break all the regulative principles.

This blend of compassion and ambition of the Lord and his manifestations is our supreme hope for being delivered from our fallen condition. 

3.     Magic: The magic of Lord Nityananda’s mercy was not just that Jagai and Madhai became free from all their sinful reactions, or even that they became free from their sinful desires – though both of these transformations are no doubt incredible. But the ultimate magic of the mercy was that these two brothers became utterly free from the most subtle of all impurities – the impurity that so easily and frequently contaminates the pure, the impurity of pride.  

Perhaps nothing demonstrates this heart-rending humility of Madhai better than his constructing a ghat as an expression of atonement, begging for forgiveness from all the people who came there and, most significantly, allowing himself to be hit with stones by some of those people who were still angry with them for his past offenses and even picking up those stones and handing them back to his assaulters, saying, “I deserve worse – please hit me again.” That a person who would without the slightest pinch of consciousness assault people ruthlessly in the past was now equipping and encouraging people to assault him due to a feeling of remorse demonstrates the magical depth of his transformation.

Madhai demonstrated poignantly the consciousness of trinad api sunicena. And through him, the Lord demonstrated that by the power of his mercy this exalted consciousness that seems so impossible for us to achieve can indeed one day become achievable, thereby enabling us to relish the supreme sweetness of the holy name constantly.

Shri Nityananda Prabhu ki jaya!

 

Instead of filling our minds with all the thoughts of our daily activities and our problems etc.
It's nice to just clear out the mind and fill it again with the sound of the Holy names.
Like a room full of people all talking at once about different things. Our thoughts are like people and when we clear the room and fill it again with the Maha mantra, then all these internal voices will disappear and we can relish and deepen our relationship with Krsna by attentive Japa.

Holy Name Meditation Podcast

(Kadamba Kanana Swami, Radhadesh, Belgium, 10 April 2003, Q&A Session)

Question: What happens to an aspiring devotee who may have read Srila Prabhupada’s books, heard his lectures, loves serving and associating with devotees but cannot find a spiritual master on the level of Srila Prabhupada? Srila Prabhupada has said that a disciple should accept a spiritual master as good as God and be ready to sacrifice his life to him. If such an aspiring devotee feels this way towards Srila Prabhupada but cannot find anyone who satisfy the “as good as God” requirement, is he then forced to take initiation from someone for whom he does not have full respect?

I can say that I appreciate the search for the spiritual master who is like Srila Prabhupada. At the same time, I think that Srila Prabhupada was not the “ordinary” spiritual master, as there are no ordinary spiritual masters, but Srila Prabhupada certainly was more than a spiritual master; he was more than a sannyasi.

Srila Prabhupada was such a wonderful, pure devotee of the Lord, that such a spiritual master may not always be here. We must take it that Krsna has a plan. So, we are in this predicament that we find ourselves in spiritual life and we need to make advancement. So we can wait, and wait and wait, and say, “This one is too light; this one is not heavy enough – I have heard that guru means heavy.”

So, we are waiting and each spiritual master is not heavy enough! Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur says that guru is heavy but not in the sense that he speaks heavy – he may speak very sweet or he may speak heavy – but he is heavy because he never changes his position.

So, every time we may find that no one compares to Srila Prabhupada. That may be, but we are always looking for the qualifications of spiritual master. We may think, “Well, is he powerful enough?” But are we looking at our own qualifications as a disciple? We should also look at our own situation and we are probably worst off than all these spiritual masters that we are looking at. We may look at these spiritual masters and find that maybe they are really not up to the level, but where are we? We are in a position where we need all the help we can get, and for us we can find only Srila Prabhupada suitable to give us guidance, but the only problem is that now we cannot directly ask him a question or now he will not directly turn to us and correct us as we need it.

If we find a vaisnava who is truly a dedicated servant of Srila Prabhupada and mature in that service to Srila Prabhupada, then we will find that this vaisnava can help us very much to increase our relationship with Srila Prabhupada. As Srila Prabhupada had a relationship with his spiritual master, his spiritual master had a relationship with his and that is how the entire sampradaya works…

In our movement, Srila Prabhupada is the founder-acarya and in that way, always the guru of all members of this movement. Some may have that relation with Srila Prabhupada by serving the servant of Srila Prabhupada, not to the exclusion of Srila Prabhupada but rather to enhance their relationship with Srila Prabhupada. So, we can spend a whole lifetime thinking, “I cannot find anyone as qualified as Srila Prabhupada,” and meanwhile we don’t accept any guru and in that way we actually become our own guru. There is a statement, “One who is his own guru accepts a fool for a disciple.”

 

 

On our last day in Gujarat we participated in Ratha Yatra in Surat and held a final festival program downtown in the evening. We are now on our way to Mumbai for yet another Ratha Yatra and our final two festivals of the tour.

International group of devotees perform Sankirtana in the Surat city of Gujarat Read more ›

Basu Ghosh Das: Pictures taken at the inauguration of the Sri Sri Radha Govinda temple by myself, Natavara Krishna Das, Premabhakti Das, Haridas Iskcon Coventry, and others with the Canon E0S 6D camera and the Canon 28-300 lens Read more ›

1968 February 12: "The train, on two tracks, moves forward. The bona fide Spiritual Master and Krishna are like these two tracks, they must be served simultaneously. You cannot serve Krishna without Spiritual Master, or serve Spiritual Master without serving Krishna. They must be served simultaneously."
Prabhupada Letters :: 1968

1968 February 12: "Our process of Krishna Consciousness and Sankirtana movement is counteracting the spell of Maya. We cannot cheat people. We must say the truth. We must present the genuine thing before the public and if they are intelligent enough they will take it up and realize it."
Prabhupada Letters :: 1968

1968 February 12: "The matter is little more risky but if you take the risk for Krishna's sake, Krishna will supply you the required money undoubtedly. So far I am concerned I always take risk for Krishna."
Prabhupada Letters :: 1968

1970 February 12: "Yes introduce Krishna Consciousness in these two universities. This is the real course of study for human beings and we should use such opportunities. I am glad to learn you are also holding successful Kirtana in the high schools. These young people are our future in Krishna Consciousness so try your best to convince them."
Prabhupada Letters :: 1970

The Bhaktivedanta Book Trust, which publishes the spiritual literature of ISKCON founder Srila Prabhupada, has reached a new watermark of success. Thanks to the efforts of book distributors around the world, it has sold over half a billion books -- 503,385,383 to be exact -- since Srila Prabhupada began ISKCON in 1965. 

1971 February 12: "You are now Sankirtana leader. This is very good news. The spreading of this Sankirtana Movement is the best service to humanity and to all living entities. So your activities should now be on the pure spiritual platform and by your spiritual blissful strength, influence those who come in your contact."
Prabhupada Letters :: 1971

1972 February 12: "When I come make extensive preparations for my speaking, etc., by advertising and propaganda, even more than this Swami. My work is to preach, so you can prepare many very nice speaking engagements, especially to the intelligent class of men."
Prabhupada Letters :: 1972

1972 February 12: "Doctors speak surety, but there is no surety. I don't think there is guarantee of surety by taking this medicine with animal products. But if there is surety, you can take. But it is very doubtful. When I come there I shall see what is wrong."
Prabhupada Letters :: 1972

1972 February 12: "I am very sorry to hear about your demoniac neighbor cutting down many tulasi plants, but do not worry, he shall get his due punishment in time, rest assured. If he is caught trespassing on our property again he may be severely punished by us."
Prabhupada Letters :: 1972

A new year offers new opportunities to take our campaign against fur to the country that buys more of it than any other in the world: Russia.

Love, we are told, is all we need. Yet despite our ability today to acquire many things, love—or loving relationships with our friends, spouses, children, parents—often eludes us. Why?

Invitation video for Sri Jagannath Ratha Yatra to be held in Vasai, Mumbai, February 16th, 2014.

Does the growth in yoga's popularity, particularly in the West, mean that its spiritual content and religious roots are being neglected?

A historic film from Bengal, produced in 1957.

The post February 12th, 2014 – Nityananda’s Appearance Darshan appeared first on Mayapur.com.

With Jayapataka Swami Read more ›

During the 1970s, Srila Prabhupada regularly visited ISKCON Melbourne to give lectures and inspire his many followers who would eagerly await his arrival. On very special occasions he came to install the Deity forms of Lord Krishna so that his devoted students could learn to worship the Lord in His archa-vigraha (Deity form). In 1973, when the temple was still located in Burnett Street, St Kilda (our first location), Srila Prabhupada installed Melbourne’s presiding Deities, Sri Sri Radha Ballabha. Much to everyone’s delight, in May 1975 Srila Prabhupada attended the opening of our current temple at 197 Danks Street, Albert Park, simultaneously installing Deities of Lord Chaitanya and Lord Nityananda, Sri-Sri Gaura Nitai. Read more ›

The post Remembering Nitai and Eka-cakra from Mayapura appeared first on SivaramaSwami.com.

Yudhisthira inquired, "What produces the highest merit?" Bhisma replied, "Self-restraint surpasses all other activities in this regard and is therefore considered to be the highest virtue. Because self-restraint purifies and controls every aspect of one's life, it is more important than giving in charity and the study of the Vedas. By self-restraint alone one can achieve liberation from the material world. Self-restraint comprises sense-control, freedom from anger, non-enviousness, impartiality, truthfulness, steadiness and contentment. However, the essential quality of self-restraint is austerity. Thus no good can be achieved without austerity." Read more ›

Amala Harinam Kirtan

The Gopinath's Kids Camp has been a one-day annual summer event since 2006. This year, Krishna's Funskool is very happy to announce their first ever March-Break kids camp! We promise three full days of interactive spiritual learning, yummy prasadam meals and lots of fun. See attached poster for details.

You can register your child via this preliminary form

For further information, please contact kids@torontokrishna.com 

A video of Inddradyumna Swami's festival tour in Gujarat.

Biotechnology giant Monsanto is scrapping plans to win approval to grow new types of genetically modified crops in the European Union.