Websites from the ISKCON Universe
3 min vid: VEDA COURSE - 3 Month residential course at Bhaktivedanta Manor Read more › 
Tonight was our final harinam...We went to the town of Pula Read more › 
“Those who are actually advanced in knowledge are able to appreciate the essential value of this age of Kali. Such enlightened persons worship Kali Yuga because in this fallen age all perfections of life can easily be achieved by the performance of sankirtana.” [Srimad Bhagavatam 11.5.36] Read more › 
Guru, husband and father are all descriptions of a role an individual takes in a relationship with someone else. Guru is a role, not an organizational post Read more › New Vrindaban: The Spiritual Frontier
Back To Godhead Article – June 1974
By Vishaka devi dasi
By His inconceivable potency, the Supreme Lord Sri Krishna appeared 5,000 years ago as a cowherd boy in the village of Vrindavan, India. The devotees of the Hare Krishna movement, therefore, who have established a 1,000 acre Krishna conscious community in West Virginia, have called it New Vrindaban. In New Vrindaban, the devotees find that by following the Lord’s example of living with what the land and cows provide, they can easily be free of all economic problems. By pursuing Krishna consciousness in such an untroubled atmosphere, one can reestablish one’s eternal relationship with the Supreme Person and thus begin the joyful journey back home, back to Godhead.
Srila Prabhupada speaks to devotees at ISKCON New Vrindaban. 1974.
Their Lordships Sri Sri Radha Vrindaban Candra are the worshipable Deities who preside over New Vrindaban.
Top: A new barn raises in a New Vrindaban field.
Above: A devotee quietly chants the Lord’s holy names while observing the opulence of His creation.
One can start this journey back to Godhead here on earth, by developing an attraction to serving the Supreme Personality of Godhead. In the material world, we are not able to see Krishna everywhere. Therefore He appears in the form of the worshipable Deity in the temple to accept service from His devotees.
The devotees in New Vrindaban work hard at their different duties, but they all work on behalf of the Deity. Both the Lord and His devotees derive transcendental pleasure from such devotional service. Throughout the world, the disciples of His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada are following this authorized process of self-realization—bhakti-yoga, or devotional service to Krishna, the Supreme Lord.
Top: Devotees gather hay, pick tomatoes and till the soil. Farming in New Vrindaban is transcendental because it is performed not for any material motive, but as service to Krishna. Middle: In the morning, afternoon and evening the devotees come together in small groups to sing devotional songs and have classes in Bhagavad-gita and Srimad-Bhagavatam. Above: Picking flowers for Their Lordships Sri Sri Radha Vrindaban-candra.
In his purports to Srimad-Bhagavatam Srila Prabhupada writes: “The secret of success is to take refuge under the protection of the Supreme Lord. Without His sanction, nothing can be possible. The rivers, the hills, fruits, flowers, grains and so on are not creations of man. They are all creations of the Supreme Lord, and the living being is allowed to make use of the property of the Lord for the service of the Lord. By His will, there is enough of everything, and we can make proper use of things to live comfortably without any enmity between men, between men and animals, or between men and nature. The control of the Lord is everywhere, and if the Lord is pleased, every part of nature will be pleased.” It is this Krishna conscious understanding that has made New Vrindaban an exemplary community, worthy of being emulated throughout the world.
Visakha-devi dasi graduated from Rochester Institute of Technology in 1970 and then wrote a technical book on the art of close-up photography. She and Yaduvara dasa, her husband, also a professional photographer, joined ISKCON in 1971, while shooting assignments in India. They are now traveling around the world making documentary films about the Krishna consciousness movement.
The post August 11th, 2013 – Darshan appeared first on Mayapur.com.
Mahavishnu Swami Morning Class – Green Gathering Festival – 3 Aug 2013
Jacob and two new friends.
Manfrotto tripod we use for filming Krishna Lounge kirtanas and discussions. See my youtube channel: www.youtube.com/mahattattva
Miles
Rishi Avila
Avidya, a misconception about one's spiritual identity, provides the foundation for ahankara, or false ego within the heart.
Visiting the Radha Kunjabihari Mandira in Klung Kung is always a pleasure. This temple, which was designed by a local devotee architect, is very beautiful with an asrama, gardens, pond, kitchen and hall. The deity room and simhasam are made in an attractive Balinese style.
Giriraja Publishing, part of the BBT publishing group, has released the translation and commentary on Srila Jiva Gosvami’s Tattva-sandarbha done by Gopiparanadhana Dasa. You can purchase it at blservices.com
The post Giriraja Publishing releases Srila Jiva Gosvami’s Tattva-sandarbha appeared first on Jayadvaita Swami.
84 pics: Preaching and chanting on a Russian boat with Bhakti Vijnana Goswami, August 3, 2013 Read more › From Shyam P
From Shyam P
15 pics: Distribution of BBT Books in the United States of America Read more › 
Cameron, ever since he was just a toddler, talks about another family he used to live with. He knows the names of his previous family, where they lived, and can even describe the house and the landscape of his previous home on the island of Barra, some 200 miles away. Read more › 
In the Bhagavad-gita Krishna lists six qualities -- pride, arrogance, conceit, anger, harshness and ignorance -- which mark the demoniac nature." Read more › Conversation.
121 pics: Los Angeles Ratha Yatra 2013 Read more › The post August 10th, 2013 – Darshan appeared first on Mayapur.com.
57 pics: Iskcon Hare Krishna Land Guyana Read more › 
Srila Prabhupada meets Kaliya on the path to the New Vrindaban farmhouse.
Hari Sauri Recalls Srila Prabhupada Reuniting with Kaliya, New Vrindaban’s First Cow.
Hari Sauri’s diary: New Vrindaban, West Virginia 06-28-1976
This morning Kirtanananda Maharaja arrived in his pickup to drive Srila Prabhupada up to the original New Vrindaban farm where the community first started. Srila Prabhupada sat in the cab while devotees scrambled up into the back or ran up the trail after it. It was a long and bumpy drive up the dirt road, and afterward Srila Prabhupada complained about heart strain.
He had Kirtanananda stop some distance from the house and walked the rest of the way, accompanied by twenty or thirty devotees. The sun was just rising over the distant hills, its rays gently diffusing through the light morning mist. Prabhupada walked steadily up the track, preceeded by one of New Vrindaban’s four-legged residents, a large black cow.
At the house the rest of the devotees, including the gurukula children, lined up along the pathway to greet him. Prabhupada looked obviously content to return to the original house in which he had stayed in 1969 when he first came to New Vrindaban. Now it serves as the brahmacari asrama and the residence of the beautiful brass forms of Sri Sri Radha-Vrndavananatha. After his darsana of the Deities, Prabhupada gave class there at the house on Srimad-Bhagavatam 7.6.14.
Srila Prabhupada takes darshan of Sri Radha Vrindabannatha at the original New Vrindaban farmhouse, 1976.
His talk lasted only about fifteen minutes. The verse described how a man who is too attached to family life cannot understand that by such activities he is wasting his time. Indeed, he does not develop a distaste for material existence even though he undergoes three kinds of suffering.
Srila Prabhupada explained there are two classes of men, the bhogi, who is always trying to enjoy his mind and senses, and the yogi, who tries to give up his entanglement. Among the yogis, that person who engages in devotional service to Krsna is the best. He said that by yoga, one achieves siddhi, perfection.
As an example of yogic siddhi he cited something he had heard in his school days. “In my childhood there was my teacher. He said that he had his guru, a yogi. So he told me that his spiritual master, yogi, he inquired from his disciple, ‘What do you want to eat?’ So he said that ‘We want to eat some pomegranate from Kabul.’ So he said, ‘Yes, you can get it. Go into the room and you’ll find.’ So they found a bunch of pomegranate just fresh taken from the tree. This is called prapti-siddhi.” Of course, he told us, this kind of siddhi is material. It is not for the devotee, who alone can attain perfect satisfaction by surrender to Krsna.
At the conclusion of class Srila Prabhupada returned in the truck to the house for breakfast and a short rest.
The devotees of Ramana Reti have done this nice site and facebook group and may be it coud be helpful to do for our other large Iskcon communities too Read more › 20130805 HG Gaura Krishna das – Lessons from Pencil maker.
When a fire burns us, we immediately move away from it towards something cooling and healing.
Yet when the fire of lust burns us, we imagine that moving closer to that fire will cool and heal us.
That’s how lust covers and perverts our intelligence. The Bhagavad-gita (03.39) indicates that lust is like a fire that is insatiable (dushpurenanalena). Further, it obstructs and obscures our knowledge (avritam jnanam), leaving us to fend for ourselves in ignorance and illusion. And the way we fend for ourselves is by exposing ourselves more to the stimuli that provoked the lust within us, hoping to get relief.
If we get to indulge in lust, we do get some momentary relief, relief that we mistake to be life’s greatest pleasure. But soon the relief ends and the burning desire re-appears. And it comes back, bigger and wilder, scalding us with worse burns of craving that demand relief through more depraved forms of indulgence. Seeking relief from those burns, we rush into a wildfire of sensuality and debauchery. Thus lust keeps burning and tormenting us lifetime after lifetime, as the Gita’s sobering declaration of it as “eternal enemy” (nitya-vairi) underscores.
The only way out of this trap is through intelligence and grace.
When the burn of lusty craving starts tormenting our heart and we feel that the wildfire of immoral sexual indulgence will remove that torment, we need to use our intelligence to recognize that the wildfire of lust has started burning up our knowledge internally. If we seek the grace of Krishna by calling out his holy names, then his soothing remembrance will extinguish the fire of lusty desire and show us the way to lasting relief in his eternal love.
***
Thus the wise living entity’s pure consciousness becomes covered by his eternal enemy in the form of lust, which is never satisfied and which burns like fire.
(Kadamba Kanana Swami, 25 April 2013, Radhadesh, Belgium)
I remember, we had a book distribution technique where first we used to stand out in the rain, here in Barvaux and we used to knock on the windows of cars and then try and sell books. Then someone changed the technique and when it rained, we stayed in the car, we wound down our window, and we called people over as if we were lost, and it worked very well. At least we stayed dry and they got wet!
This world of maya is called durasraya, which means "false or bad shelter." One who puts his faith in durasraya becomes a candidate for hoping against hope. In the material world everyone is trying to become happy, and although their material attempts are baffled in every way, due to their nescience they cannot understand their mistakes. People try to rectify one mistake by making another mistake. This is the way of the struggle for existence in the material world.
