The Complete Person – The Sweet Krishna!
→ Servant of the Servant


Krishna is so sweet! That is His special quality apart from all other qualities He possesses! He has so many names but all of them actually are tied to His devotees in some form. This connection embodies sweetness or mellows or bhava or rasa. This is the reason Krishna is Swayam Bhagavan. He is a complete Person or Purusa. We all want to imitate that completeness.

We want to be complete and in that sense of completeness we want to become perfect and in perfection we derive happiness. However, we can never imitate that perfection or completeness of Krishna because He has all characteristics of glory in full. Does He also have the bad characteristics we see in this world such as envy, pride, one may ask? Just as there is darkness, or shadow as a result of light, similarly these negative attributes are shadow truths of Krishna's opulent glory. In other words, darkness is simply an absence of light and envy, pride et al is simply an absence of love, humility et al.

In our desire to become all complete and perfect we in a subtle sense aspire and compete with the All Complete Krishna. But by nature we are separated and particle emanations of Krishna. Materially speaking if the whole disintegrates into parts, the whole no longer will exist in time. But the spiritual nature is the opposite. The whole remains and the parts also remain holistically. So Krishna still remains in His full blown glory and we also are full within our sphere of existence.

The ideal fullness or completeness therefore, is to fulfill our separated and particle property by subordinating to the Whole Krishna for that is indeed our constitutional nature. This subordination of energy actually will complete us and make us perfect and it is in this perfection or completeness that we will be happy.

So yes Krishna is so sweet that only He can be considered as God because it is through this sweetness that He blows His Flute and attracts the minds of all those living beings who have voluntarily agreed to use their minute energies in enhancing the sweetness of the Lord.

No other forms of God possesses this quality of sweetness and in no other forms of God is the mood of service of the minute individual beings so complete/perfect and consequently in no other relationships (mundane or spiritual) will we be satisfied, happy and blissful to the fullest!

Hare Krishna

Scientists Sign Declaration That Animals Have Conscious Awareness; Just Like Humans
→ Dandavats.com

Reporter: How do you know that the animal has a soul? Srila Prabhupada: You can know, also. Here is the scientific proof... the animal is eating, you are eating; the animal is sleeping, you are sleeping; the animal is defending, you are defending; the animal is having sex, you are having sex; the animals have children, you have children; they have a living place, you have a living place. If the animal's body is cut, there is blood; if your body is cut, there is blood. So, all these similarities are there. Now, why do you deny this one similarity, the presence of the soul? Read more ›

Don’t let jugglery of names bewilder you
→ The Spiritual Scientist

The whole material creation is a jugglery of names only; in fact, it is nothing but a bewildering creation of matter like earth, water and fire. The buildings, furniture, cars, bungalows, mills, factories, industries, peace, war or even the highest perfection of material science, namely atomic energy and electronics, are all simply bewildering names of material elements with their concomitant reactions of the three modes.

- Srimad Bhagavatam 2.2.3 purport

Wednesday, November 20th, 2013
→ The Walking Monk

Good Letter

Toronto, Ontario

I was reluctant to read stacks of personal letters (you know, messages on paper) that were left on my desk, or rather, given to me by the person whom they were addressed to. His name is Steve Mann, otherwise known as Satyavrata. He had left these letters which were written over a period by a well wisher, Kirtanananda, who was the son of a minister and later took to the practice of bhakti yoga. He had become controversial and had written these letters when in prison. But, to his credit, he wrote some insightful literature much to do with the comparative thought between Christianity and spirituality from the east.

In an effort to reach out to one in need, Kirtanananda wrote the following letter to his friend. I thought it worth sharing and after reading it and after a walk through Rosedale:

“Thank you for your recent letter, 15th March, 1998.

So far as Lord Jesus is concerned, His mission is the same as all the other representatives of Godhead; namely, to remind us that we are all children of the one Almighty Father, and that He wants us to come Home, Back to Godhead! Again, don’t worry about some ‘final dissolution’ of the material world’. Material nature is also eternal, although any particular manifestation is temporary. The sacrifice Christ made is the same sacrifice demanded of all of us, ‘die before you die’, ‘die to live’. Unless we die to the ‘old man’, the false ego self, we cannot live to the ‘new man’, the real self that is part and parcel of the One, Krishna.

My instruction to you is the same instruction Prabhupada gave, ‘Chant and be happy’. Surrendering to Krishna means to stop worrying about your future and leave everything in His hands. Trust Him completely, He is your Father. He loves you perfectly and completely. He knows what is BEST for you. He is able to accomplish it and has the will to do it. Just trust Him!

Perhaps you should pray the serenity prayer, Lord, grant me the serenity (intelligence) to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference.

Also, the second part of Saint Francis’s prayer gives the secret of that sacrifice I mentioned, ‘Oh Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love, for it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we born to Eternal Life.’

May the Source be with you!

7 KM

Report from the front line — helping the victims of Typhoon Haiyan
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We are very thankful to Food for Life Global and their many donors and supporters for giving us this chance to be engaged in this noble service. Sometimes while distributing our prasadam, we also sing the holy names to the people here and that gladdens their hearts…Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare, Hare Rama Hare Rama, Rama Rama Hare Hare Read more ›