Websites from the ISKCON Universe
74 pics: Meet the Mayapur.tv volunteers that brought you the Woodstock festival live into your homes! Read more › 
Krsna and His cows
Everyone is invited to a Dharma Sastra Seminar Aug.12-14 , 2013
On Varnasrama Dharma
with His Holiness Bhakti Raghava Swami
The schedule will be:
Fri. Aug. 9- Maharaja arrives
Sat. Aug. 10 – gives Srimad Bhagavatam class
Sun. Aug. 11 – gives Srimad Bhagavatam class
Sun. Aug. 11 – gives Sunday feast lecture
Monday Aug.12 5 – 7 PM: Dharma Sastra Seminar
Tuesday Aug. 13 5 – 7 PM: Dharma Sastra Seminar
Wed. Aug. 14 5 – 7 PM: Dharma Sastra Seminar
Bhagavatam class.
52 pics: Panihati Festival and Initiation Ceremony at Bhakti Vriksha Festival in Russia with Jayapataka Swami Read more › 
67 pics: Dear friends, harinam maddness never stops :) Last night we went to Rovinj and it was a full success! Rovinj is a city in Croatia situated on the north Adriatic Sea with a population of 14,294. Read more › 
26 pics: Kalachandji's Restaurant was started in Dallas, Texas in 1982 at the Hare Krishna Temple in East Dallas Read more › 
135 pics: August 4, 2013 - Taken at the Festival Of The Chariots, Venice Beach Read more › 
Indradyumna Swami: The final days of the Polish Woodstock were successful beyond our wildest imagination. Read more › Niranjana swami @ Vaishnava summer festival BALTIC 2013 kirtan
(Kadamba Kanana Swami, 24 June 2013, Czech Summer Camp, Srimad Bhagavatam 8.2.33)
Yes, we should get serious now. Our time is running out. We must increase our devotional life, and that is really necessary.
It is not so cheap, going back to godhead.
We get the chance but we have to work for it. Why else did we join the Hare Krsna movement if we did not want to go back to godhead? Did we really join for the halva?
This Krishna consciousness movement is a transcendental science, and there is no room for jealousy. This movement is meant for the paramahamsas who are completely free from all jealousy (paramam nirmatsaranam). One should not be jealous, whether he is born in a family of gosvamis or has the title of gosvami awarded to him.
118 pics: Rathayatra 2013 at Venice Beach Read more › We would like to invite you and your family personally to take part in this wonderful opportunity to bathe Their Lordships on the most auspicious day of Sri Krishna Janmastami. For the pleasure of Their Lordships, this year we will make available wonderful and unique Kalashes and Conches for the bathing ceremony. To take part in this event, please download and complete the attached form and return to the temple office or email us at info@harekrishna.org.nz
Srila Prabhupada meets Kaliya, New Vrindaban’s original cow, on the path to the New Vrindaban farmhouse, 1976.
An excerpt of an article, written by Madhava Smullen, titled “ECOV: A Dynamic Solution to a Modern Dilemma.”
The first cow protection program that Srila Prabhupada established in the Western World was in the rural community of ISKCON New Vrindaban—named after Krishna’s village and nestled in the hills of West Virginia. “Krishna by His practical example taught us to give all protection to the cows and that should be the main business of New Vrindaban,” Prabhupada wrote to his disciple Hayagriva in June 1968. He suggested a life close to the land: “So these duties are there in New Vrindaban, and we shall live there independently, simply by raising cows, grains, fruits, and flowers.”
In May 1969, Srila Prabhupada visited New Vrindaban, and met its very first cow—and only cow at the time—a black Jersey named Kaliya. Prabhupada would drink a little of her milk morning, noon, and night. “I haven’t tasted milk like this in sixty-five years,” he said. Looking around at his disciples, he told them that he wanted New Vrindaban to demonstrate to the world the social, moral, and economic advantages of protecting the cow and utilizing her milk, rather than killing her and eating her flesh.
When Prabhupada visited New Vrindaban for the fourth time in 1976, the cow protection program had grown to hold many more cows, including Kaliya.
“The cows would graze up on the hill,” recalls Kuladri Dasa, who has served at New Vrindaban since 1970. “One day, as Prabhupada was walking up the road with a group of devotees, Kaliya came ambling down the hill towards them, all by herself. Prabhupada immediately recognized her from his first visit, and addressed her, ‘Ah, my dear old friend Kaliya.’”
In those early days, devotees would milk the little herd twice a day, and the milk would be more than enough for the small, dozen-strong community. “We would have two devotees milking the cow by hand at once—one on each side,” says Kuladri. “Radhanath Swami, now a major spiritual leader in Mumbai, was one of the cowherd boys then, and I would milk with him. I remember he was a strong milker—our cow would always give the most! Altogether, four or five of us would team up and milk all the cows.”
Bhakti Bringa Govinda Swami @ Vaishnava summer festival BALTIC 2013
We tend to lead our life in pieces – a piece for our career, a piece for our family, maybe a piece for society. And if it makes us look good, we let God have a piece too, as a showpiece adorning a wall.
How all these pieces fit together is something that we don’t think much about.
Unless the various pieces start fighting with each other and falling apart.
That’s what happened to Arjuna at the start of the Bhagavad-gita (01.36). The imminent fratricidal war set one piece of his life, his professional duty (kshatriya-dharma), for a head-on collision with another piece, his dynastic duty (kula-dharma). As a warrior, he had to protect law and order by punishing wrongdoers, whereas as a member of the respectable Kuru dynasty, he had to protect his relatives. What to do when the wrongdoers were his relatives?
The conflict tore at his heart, threatening to throw the pieces of his life far apart.
In despair, he turned to Krishna for help and thus the Bhagavad-gita was spoken.
The Gita puts all the pieces of life together in a magnificent whole with the glue of enlightened love. All of us are indestructible souls meant for everlasting happiness in a life of pure spiritual love with Krishna. All our duties are ultimately meant to aid us in progressing towards attaining that love. When we keep our eyes and heart fixed on Krishna, we gradually get the intelligence, by his grace, to integrate all our roles with that goal.
Before an unexpected perplexity puts our life’s pieces into conflict, we can proactively elevate Krishna from a showpiece to the centerpiece of our life and let him show us how to put the pieces together through Gita wisdom.
***
Sin will overcome us if we slay such aggressors. Therefore it is not proper for us to kill the sons of Dhrtarastra and our friends. What should we gain, O Krishna, husband of the goddess of fortune, and how could we be happy by killing our own kinsmen?
From: Mukund
If ultimate aim of the human life is to get liberation from cycle of birth and death then why do scriptures recommend women to perform "Vat Savitri" puja to get same husband for Seven lifes (Saat Janam)? Is this practice at all mentioned in scriptures?
From GaneshPandian
Is the soul aware of time period in between death and the next birth or is he just in the Susupti(deep sleep) stage?
This was done in an ISKCON temple in Europe.
From: Muralidhara dasas
What is the difference between desire and free will?
The capacity to desire is a property of the soul; Desire (iccha sakti) is an energy of the soul which gets transformed to lust (kama) when it comes in contact with the mode of passion.
The nature of this lust depends on the dominant mode of the subtle body.
Is free will a distinct property of the soul different from desire or is free will a focused desire directed by the intelligence?
We have established the International Society for Krishna Consciousness to give people an opportunity to associate with those who have not forgotten Krishna.
