Vyasa Puja Address Lecture by Radhanath Swami
Vyasa Puja Address Lecture by Radhanath Swami
10-Giriraja Swami – The Importance of Self Care
→ Successful Vaisnavas – Personal Development for Hare Krishnas
In this episode H.H. Giriraj Swami talks about Stephen Covey‘s concept of maturity as the “balance between courage and consideration” (win-win). He shows how we need to look after ourselves if we want to keep helping others. To learn more about His Holiness Giriraja Swami visit: http://www.girirajswami.com/ Other topics in this episode: Hear more about […]
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10-Giriraja Swami – The Importance of Self Care
→ Successful Vaisnavas
In this episode H.H. Giriraj Swami talks about Stephen Covey‘s concept of maturity as the “balance between courage and consideration” (win-win). He shows how we need to look after ourselves if we want to keep helping others.
To learn more about His Holiness Giriraja Swami visit:
Other topics in this episode:
Hear more about the “clean up the house” project.
To learn about the Successful Vaisnavas Online Course and to watch the latest hangout go to http://successfulvaisnavas.com/hangout
Leave a comment below or to leave a voice message using the popup box on the right.
Make your life successful.
Your servant,
Krsnendu dasa
A River of Nectar
→ travelingmonk.com
A photo album of 4 days of ecstatic bliss chanting the holy names with 700 devotees at the Sadhu Sanga Retreat in Austin, Texas. With some of ISKCON’s best kirtaneers the Maha Mantra was flowing like an endless river of nectar.
Travel Journal#9.8: New York, London, Amsterdam, and More
→ Travel Adventures of a Krishna Monk
Diary of a Traveling Sadhaka, Vol. 9, No. 8
By Krishna-kripa das
(April 2013, part two)
By Krishna-kripa das
(April 2013, part two)
New York City, London, Amsterdam
(Sent from Newcastle upon Tyne, England, on May 28, 2013)
(Sent from Newcastle upon Tyne, England, on May 28, 2013)
Where I Went and What I Did
I lot happened in the second half of April, and it is a challenge to recount it, what to speak of illustrating it!
After leaving Gainesville, Trevor and I flew from Jacksonville to New York. I did harinama in Brooklyn and Manhattan for several days, while Trevor joined the Manhattan party for what is turning out to be the entire summer! Each day, after chopping vegetables for Radha Govinda for two hours, I would chant with Nruhari Prabhu in Brooklyn for an hour in the morning and then chant with Rama Raya Prabhu’s harinama party at Union Square or different subway stations in Manhattan in the late afternoon for four hours. Our Rama-navami harinama in Manhattan was memorable, and I share pictures and videos of it. I also joined Atma Nivedana Prabhu and his wife and their team of devotees who chant and distribute books in their sankirtanafestival in Union Square one Saturday a month from 1:00 to 4:30 p.m. I went to Albany for a day and a half, sharing maha sweets from Radha Govinda with the members of my Quaker meeting there, cooking a nice prasadam dinner with and for my family, and visiting Satsvarupa Dasa Goswami and his assistants the next day for lunch. On April 23, I flew to London where I did harinama and gave lectures for a few days before going with Parasurama Prabhu’s party to the Queen’s Day harinama, which was better than ever. While in the UK, I chanted with the Hare Krishna festival team in Reading and Slough, two new cities for me, and one day I attended record number of five harinamas in London. I also chanted on the ferry between England and France, which I hardly ever do.
I have great quotes from Srila Prabhupada’s books, a quote by Kavicandra Swami, and a few quotes from the blog and books of Satsvarupa Dasa Goswami. There are also some valuable realizations from devotees in the London Yatra, including some great quotes about dancing.
Thanks to Kavicandra Swami for his photos from Queen’s Day, Atma-Nivendana Prabhu, Rasika Gopi Devi Dasi, and Bhaktin Zina for their pictures of harinamas in New York City, and a very special thanks again to Srikar Prabhu, who bought me the camera I used to take the pictures in Europe and a few of the pictures and all the videos in New York. Thanks also to Matt Hollingsworth for putting his video of us chanting in the United Kingdom on YouTube.
Harinamas in New York
The very day we arrived from Florida, Trevor and I went out on harinama at Union Square. Trevor led some of the time, playing the harmonium.
There are always people attracted to participate in harinamas, especially in a big city like New York. This chap in the picture below sat on his skateboard as he grooved on the transcendental sound.
Another evening in Union Square, some kids danced in front of our party.
Below, in Grand Central Subway Station, a small girl danced in a circle with her father, as devotees and passersby smiled.
The devotees were so fired up on Rama Navami! Usually we chant from 4 to 8 p.m. but on that day we started before 4 p.m. and went on to 8:45 p.m., when many of us went to the Rama Navami celebration at Radha Govinda Mandir. Our venue for the harinama was the Delancey Street subway station where people wait for the uptown “F” train and where the party often chants on Fridays. There is a mural behind where the devotees sit of a more natural scene, a touch of goodness there amidst the dinginess of the subway station.
I would stand on the far side and dance,
ready to distribute a flyer to an interested person.
At the height, we had seventeen devotees chanting.
Some people would move with the music as they passed by.
Near the end about seven devotees were dancing, as you can see the video below:
Prominent was Ray who is known for dancing with the devotees on occasion and who seemed to be an impetus to get the others going.
She has a lot of natural dancing enthusiasm as you can see in the video below:
One new boy who is now a regular chanter invited a girl he knew to come for the first time, and she was telling me how much she liked it. Later that boy said she was a friend from high school that he rarely sees, and it was fortunate that she came on harinamaand liked it.
Saturday was the Monthly Sankirtana Festival organized by Atma-Nivedana Prabhu and his wife Subhangada Devi. They have a Bhagavad-gita class at 26 2ndAvenue every Saturday evening, and once a month their congregation gets together and chants and distributes Srila Prabhupada’s books at Union Square from 1:00 to 4:30 p.m. You can see they get a good group of people participating. In the picture below, Kaliya Krishna Prabhu, who has helped greatly in funding my harinama trips to New York and other places and who sings lively tunes, is playing harmonium and leading.
In the picture below, Nruhari Prabhu, who has a summer harinama program based in Brooklyn, and who I chanted with there this time for an hour a day, is leading. During the thick of the summer he goes out in Brooklyn for two or three hours midday with a whole party of devotees.
So one who is ambitious could chant with Nruhari Prabhu and his party at midday and then join Rama Raya Prabhu and his party at Union Square in the late afternoon, and have a great program of seven hours of harinama per day, just like in ISKCON’s good old days.
You can see in the picture below, even on Saturday, there are quite a lot of people at Union Square.
Later Saturday night, my friend Michael Collins from Gainesville, who has a lot of musical talent and a powerful voice, came and led the singing. It it wonderful that activity of sharing the chanting brings us together a thousand miles from where we met.
One time on harinama in Brooklyn, one lady was very inquisitive about the blue person appearing on our invitation. She said He came to her in dreams and would take her places by flying. I explained that was Krishna, and I encouraged her to visit our temple where we had many paintings of Him on the walls, and a vegetarian restaurant. She gave a positive indication when I mentioned vegetarian food, and I hope she will come by the temple, which is just a block from where we were standing. It is rare to encounter people who are not devotees who have dreams of Krishna.
One day I was walking back to the temple after shopping, and an Afro American gentleman asked if we still had the place on Schermerhorn in Brooklyn and said that he remembered seeing Boy George there many years ago and that he was surprised by his great height. I explained that Boy George was indeed interested in Hare Krishna, although I did not know he visited the Brooklyn temple. Later that day on harinama in Manhattan someone else asked if we still had the temple in Brooklyn with its free Sunday and Wednesday programs, and I explained that we did, and we also had a restaurant Monday through Friday. It was nice to see there are fans of the Brooklyn temple wandering the streets of New York.
Harinamas in Great Britain
Although Sri Sri Radha-Londonisvara Temple, ISKCON Soho Street, already did more chanting on the street than most other temples, I found to my great surprise and delight that during the winter, they had increased the program. Now there is harinama between 11:00 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. in addition to the usual afternoon harinama from 3:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. Besides this, Bhaktin Erzsebet, who has incredible enthusiasm for harinama and book distribution, often chants with her friends on the streets in the evenings. One time I went with Erzsebet and her friends, and some people videoed us and put it on YouTube. The title they gave for the video was “The Best Job in the World.” It reminded me of how Lord Caitanya describes the congregational chanting as “the prime benediction for humanity at large.” Certainly sharing the prime benediction for humanity at large is the best job in the world!
London is great because you can easily do five or six hours of harinama each day in London just by participating in these existing programs. And all that without mentioning the super ecstatic Saturday night harinama!
In addition to the harinamas, London is a great place for speaking opportunities as well. Thursday I got to go on three harinamas and give two lectures. On Friday, I got to go on five harinamas and give a lecture about Lord Caitanya at the Matchless Gifts in King’s Cross. The kirtana at that program was very lively with one devotee playing a bass clarinet and a regular attender playing the saxophone. As I am not much of a musician, usually I do not so much appreciate the contributions of the additional instrumentalists, but in this case they seemed to add a lot to the kirtana and made the music sound more professional and more alive. On Saturday with the team who arranges Hare Krishna Festivals in different parts of the UK and advertises them, I went on two harinamas, one in Reading and one in Slough.
Then I joined the famous Saturday night harinama in downtown London where lots of people enjoy interacting with the Hare Krishnas. Let me show you some pictures of the people dancing with the devotees. See how happy they are:
On the boat to France enroute to Amsterdam for Queen’s Day, I took my harmonium out our van in case there were an opportunity to play it. During the journey, I went out on the no-smoking deck with my harmonium, and I was talking with my friends when a small Indian-looking girl asked if I could play her some music. I was overjoyed that Krishna had created an opportunity for me, and I chanted the Hare Krishna mantra five times, in the usual call and response fashion with my friends. The girl and her brothers and sisters, all older than her, smiled and clapped along. Her brother asked if I had met His Divine Grace Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. I explained that I met the Hare Krishnas in 1979 but Prabhupada left this world in 1977, so I had not. The young man explained how he had read Prabhupada’s Life Comes from Life and that he gained the conviction the theory of evolution is incorrect. The family was from The Hague in Holland and was originally from Surinam, the home of many Indian immigrants, including their forefathers. I told the brother about our book Forbidden Archeology which shows how much evidence contradicts the theory of human evolution and gave them my card so I could tell them of our programs in The Hague.
Queen’s Day Harinama
Kadamba Kanana Swami brought three buses of devotees from Radhadesh to attend the Queen’s Day harinama in Amsterdam this year, an increase from two in past years. We chanted from 11 a.m. to 2:45 p.m. and 4 p.m. to 6:30 p.m., or just over 6 hours on the streets and an additional hour and a quarter during our break for lunch, etc. There were lots of lively kirtana leaders, including Kadamba Kanana Swami himself.
Kavicandra Swami danced beautifully in the kirtana.
Parasurama Prabhu’s rickshaw, with his Gaura Nitai deities, and a great sound system added a lot.
Many, many onlookers danced with us, and some of them sang as well.
People were happier than I ever see people being.
Many took pictures.
Some clapped to the beat.
Many danced in pairs, swinging their partners.
The devotees formed an arch of paired devotees, and then passed through the arch from one end to the other. Many of the onlookers joined and had a great time.
One new devotee, Alexandra, who had met the devotees in Mayapur on a Indian tour by her yoga teacher Raghunatha, was visiting her relatives in Amsterdam and happened to see our Hare Krishna tent and join in the final harinama.
I think that of the six Queen’s Day harinamas I participated in, this was the best one because of the number of devotees and the enthusiasm of onlookers to participate. There was also plenty of prasadam for the devotees, which always helps.
As far as I understand, now that there is a King of the Netherlands, next year there will be a King’s Day instead, in April just a few days before the end of the month, and we hope we can get together and share the joy of chanting with thousands of people again then.
Devaprastha Prabhu made a video of Queen’s Day this year:
Itinerary
May 29 – Sheffield
May 30 – Preston
June 1–2 – London
June 2 – Leeds
June 3–5 – Newcastle
June 6–8 – Bhaktivedanta Manor
June 9 – London Ratha-yatra
June 10–13 – London
June 14–15 – Brighton
June 16 – Croydon Ratha-yatra, Crawley program
June 17–20 – Newcastle
June 21 – Stonehenge Solstice Festival
June 22–23 – Birmingham 24-hour kirtana
June 24–July 20 – mostly in the United Kingdom
July 21–26 – Lithuanian festival
July 30–August 4 – Polish Woodstock
August 10 – Bratislava
August 12–15 – German Kirtan Mela
August 15–18 – Czech Woodstock (Trutnov)
late August – London
September – New York City
October – November – Gainesville
December – New York City
Insights
Srila Prabhupada:
from Sri Caitanya-caritamrita, Adi-lila 17.78, purport:
“The members of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness cannot even call themselves brahma-bandhus. Therefore our only means for satisfying Krishna is to pursue the injunctions of Lord Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu, who says:
yare dekha, tare kaha ‘krishna’-upadesa
amara ajñaya guru hañatara’ ei desa
‘Whomever you meet, instruct him on the teachings of Krishna. In this way, on My order, become a spiritual master and deliver the people of this country.’ (Cc. Madhya 7.128) Simply trying to follow the orders of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu, we speak to the people of the world about Bhagavad-gita As It Is. This will make us qualified to satisfy the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Krishna.”
from Sri Caitanya-caritamrita, Adi-lila 17.88, purport:
“On principle, Lord Caitanya Mahaprabhu would distribute prasadam at the end of kirtana performances. Similarly, the members of the Krishna consciousness movement must distribute some prasadam to the audience after performing kirtana.”
from Sri Caitanya-caritamrita, Adi-lila 17.141, purport:
“The Krishna consciousness movement is not a sentimental religious movement; it is a movement for the reformation of all the anomalies of human society. If people take to it seriously, discharging this duty scientifically, as ordered by Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu, the world will see peace and prosperity instead of being confused and hopeless under useless governments.”
from The Nectar of Devotion, Chapter 48:
“It is to be understood that any person who is constantly engaged in chanting the holy names of the Lord—Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare/ Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare—has attained a transcendental affection for Krishna, and as such, in any condition of life, he remains satisfied simply by remembering the Lord’s name in full affection and ecstatic love.”
from The Nectar of Devotion, Introduction:
“The author of Bhakti-rasamrita-sindhu, Srila Rupa Gosvami, very humbly submits that he is just trying to spread Krishna consciousness all over the world, although he humbly thinks himself unfit for this work. That should be the attitude of all preachers of the Krishna consciousness movement, following in the footsteps of Srila Rupa Gosvami. We should never think of ourselves as great preachers, but should always consider that we are simply instrumental to the previous acaryas, and simply by following in their footsteps we may be able to do something for the benefit of suffering humanity.”
“From the date of initiation by the spiritual master, the connection between Krishna and a person cultivating Krishna consciousness is established. Without initiation by a bona fide spiritual master, the actual connection with Krishna consciousness is never performed.”
“As long as one identifies himself as belonging to a certain family, a certain society or a certain person, he is said to be covered with designations. When one is fully aware that he does not belong to any family, society or country, but is eternally related to Krishna, he then realizes that his energy should be employed not in the interests of so-called family, society or country, but in the interests of Krishna. This is purity of purpose and
the platform of pure devotional service in Krishna consciousness.”
from Srimad-Bhagavatam 4.28.12, purport:
“Now people are very busy trying to find petroleum in the midst of the ocean. They are very anxious to make provisions for the future petroleum supply, but they do not make any attempts to ameliorate the conditions of birth, old age, disease and death. Thus a person in ignorance, not knowing anything about his own future life, is certainly defeated in all his activities.”
from Srimad-Bhagavatam 4.28.16, purport:
“At the time of death both patient and physician still think of prolonging life, although all the constituents of the body are practically dead and gone.”
from Srimad-Bhagavatam 4.28.18, purport:
“If one thinks of his wife instead of Krishnaat the time of death, he will certainly not return home, back to Godhead, but will be forced to accept the body of a woman and thus begin another chapter of material existence.”
Kavicandra Swami:
If we stay alone we will not develop the good qualities like humility, tolerance, and compassion that are necessary for going back to Godhead. We will simply become proud and hard-hearted. Although Haridas Thakura chanted so much in seclusion, he also shared Krishna consciousness with others. If he had just chanted in a secluded place, the representatives of the king would not have taken the trouble to punish him.
Satsvarupa Dasa Gosvami:
‘“Of all the orders of the spiritual master, the instruction
to chant sixteen rounds is the most essential,’ wrote
Prabhupada. We have taken a solemn
vow at the time of our initiation. We
learn to chant avoiding the ten offenses
and then the whole panorama of Krishna’s fame,
qualities, pastimes and Krishna Himself
is revealed to us. Who is such a fool
that he will not take to the chanting
and hearing of the holy names?”
to chant sixteen rounds is the most essential,’ wrote
Prabhupada. We have taken a solemn
vow at the time of our initiation. We
learn to chant avoiding the ten offenses
and then the whole panorama of Krishna’s fame,
qualities, pastimes and Krishna Himself
is revealed to us. Who is such a fool
that he will not take to the chanting
and hearing of the holy names?”
“I’ll go down and join
the others for lunch today.
Eating alone is good as
occasional relief. I like
to be with the devotees
even if it causes a
certain strain because
it’s my duty to sit with
them and hear the Bhagavatam
and then personal
conversations. I want
to please and serve
them by my presence.”
the others for lunch today.
Eating alone is good as
occasional relief. I like
to be with the devotees
even if it causes a
certain strain because
it’s my duty to sit with
them and hear the Bhagavatam
and then personal
conversations. I want
to please and serve
them by my presence.”
from CC Asraya:
“As the feeling of hunger is the sign of a healthy body, so a live desire to hear the holy word is the surest mark of a soul’s good health.”
“Our reading of scripture is not reading for the sake of reading. It is reading for the sake of listening to Him who loves us.”
“When we listen to someone we first of all have to pay attention to him, and not to whatever else may be going on around us.”
“Sitting in rows in the courtyard, the many Bengali devotees honored prasadam.Svarapa Damodara and other great devotees took charge of distributing the prasadam. Not that Svarupa Damodara insisted on eating first, alone with Lord Caitanya. Service.”
from One Hundred Prabhupada Poems:
“While talking to a roomful of devotees yesterday
I discovered
that Srila Prabhupada was a perfect psychologist.
He assured us that we were fortunate and happy.
We have given up sinful life and
attained Krishna consciousness
so no one should be despondent.
But Prabhupada also made it clear
we are not Vaisnavas
but servants of the Vaisnavas.
A pure devotee is very rare.
He was expert and did it subtly
so no one noticed how—
giving us confidence and humility at the same time.
And what he gave we accepted.”
I discovered
that Srila Prabhupada was a perfect psychologist.
He assured us that we were fortunate and happy.
We have given up sinful life and
attained Krishna consciousness
so no one should be despondent.
But Prabhupada also made it clear
we are not Vaisnavas
but servants of the Vaisnavas.
A pure devotee is very rare.
He was expert and did it subtly
so no one noticed how—
giving us confidence and humility at the same time.
And what he gave we accepted.”
from a Rama Navami lecture:
“In an allegory you have a story that has a higher meaning but with the pastimes of the Lord the Supreme Lord is the highest truth, so it is not allegory.”
Murli Manohara Prabhu:
Bhagavad-gita has been relevant, is presently relevant, and will continue to be relevant.
There is movie called Singing in the Rain, but who do you see singing in the rain? It is only the Hare Krishnas, isn’t?
Animals have more acute senses than we have, for example, an eagle can see its prey from a mile in the sky. You will not, however, see a group of penguins inquiring about the Absolute Truth. That is our human gift. Not that we have attained the human form to shop on Oxford Street.
Q: Why are the men and women separate in your temple?
A: Actually, formerly even in this country, in educational institutions, the sexes were separated because it helps people concentrate on their studies. So it the same reason for us.
Ram Caran Prabhu:
Caitanya Mahaprabhu, in His pastime of the cleaning of the Gundica temple, shows that a leader should work along with his subordinates to inspire them.
Comment by me: Sometimes at the Polish Woodstock festival, Indradyumna Swami picks up the trash and thus inspires everyone else to join him.
Cleaning the temple of the heart is a lifetime project.
We may have the intention to please our guru and the Lord, but we may not go about it in ways they approve of, so we have to be careful.
In ISKCON we are all meant to be leaders. For one thing, we have this advanced spiritual knowledge to offer people.
Jagat Palana Prabhu:
Sri Caitanya-caritamrita is blissful, but the dancing of the Lord during the Ratha-yatra is especially blissful. Where do you encounter such symptoms of love of God displayed in public?
The rasa dance is the most celebrated pastime of the Lord, and thus it could be said that dancing is Krishna’s favorite activity.
Ultimately we like dancing because God likes dancing.
Dancing can be see as a manifestation of happiness.
Krishnadasa Kaviraja Goswami glorifies the listeners of his Sri Caitanya-caritamrita because listening to the glories of the Lord is the ultimate activity.
comment: In our outreach, Sunder Nitai Prabhu suggested that we can ask other theists, “If you accept that God reveals Himself, why then has He not revealed to you His form and activities?” Then we may propose they may be interested in the Vedic revelations of these.
Kulasekhara Prabhu:
We are feeling dissatisfaction in this world and then we meet the spiritual master who confirms that we are not meant to live in this world but to go back to the spiritual world.
The soul does not become self-realized because the soul is always self-realized.
There is a tendency to think we are the body and to seek out the soul but actually we are the soul.
The neophyte goes to see the Deity or to chant his japa, and then goes on with his life.
comment by lady devotee whose name I did not know: When Krishna says, “Abandon all varieties of religion . . .” he does not mean to abandon bhagavata-dharma, but other kinds of dharma.
Tribhanga Prabhu:
from a conversation:
Bhakti Vidya Purna Swami explains in the spiritual world that one’s form follows one’s mentality. Because Yasoda has maternal affection for Krishna, she manifests the form of a motherly lady. In the material world, we externally acquire the dress and activities of a devotee, and gradually develop the mentally of a devotee.
-----
patrapatra-vicara nahi, nahi sthanasthana
yei yanha paya, tanha kare prema-dana
“In distributing love of Godhead, Caitanya Mahaprabhu and His associates did not consider who was a fit candidate and who was not, nor where such distribution should or should not take place. They made no conditions. Wherever they got the opportunity, the members of the Pañca-tattva distributed love of Godhead.” (Sri Caitanya-caritamrita, Adi 7.23)
Travel Journal#9.8: New York, London, Amsterdam, and More
→ Travel Adventures of a Krishna Monk
Diary of a Traveling Sadhaka, Vol. 9, No. 8
By Krishna-kripa das
(April 2013, part two)
By Krishna-kripa das
(April 2013, part two)
New York City, London, Amsterdam
(Sent from Newcastle upon Tyne, England, on May 28, 2013)
(Sent from Newcastle upon Tyne, England, on May 28, 2013)
Where I Went and What I Did
I lot happened in the second half of April, and it is a challenge to recount it, what to speak of illustrating it!
After leaving Gainesville, Trevor and I flew from Jacksonville to New York. I did harinama in Brooklyn and Manhattan for several days, while Trevor joined the Manhattan party for what is turning out to be the entire summer! Each day, after chopping vegetables for Radha Govinda for two hours, I would chant with Nruhari Prabhu in Brooklyn for an hour in the morning and then chant with Rama Raya Prabhu’s harinama party at Union Square or different subway stations in Manhattan in the late afternoon for four hours. Our Rama-navami harinama in Manhattan was memorable, and I share pictures and videos of it. I also joined Atma Nivedana Prabhu and his wife and their team of devotees who chant and distribute books in their sankirtanafestival in Union Square one Saturday a month from 1:00 to 4:30 p.m. I went to Albany for a day and a half, sharing maha sweets from Radha Govinda with the members of my Quaker meeting there, cooking a nice prasadam dinner with and for my family, and visiting Satsvarupa Dasa Goswami and his assistants the next day for lunch. On April 23, I flew to London where I did harinama and gave lectures for a few days before going with Parasurama Prabhu’s party to the Queen’s Day harinama, which was better than ever. While in the UK, I chanted with the Hare Krishna festival team in Reading and Slough, two new cities for me, and one day I attended record number of five harinamas in London. I also chanted on the ferry between England and France, which I hardly ever do.
I have great quotes from Srila Prabhupada’s books, a quote by Kavicandra Swami, and a few quotes from the blog and books of Satsvarupa Dasa Goswami. There are also some valuable realizations from devotees in the London Yatra, including some great quotes about dancing.
Thanks to Kavicandra Swami for his photos from Queen’s Day, Atma-Nivendana Prabhu, Rasika Gopi Devi Dasi, and Bhaktin Zina for their pictures of harinamas in New York City, and a very special thanks again to Srikar Prabhu, who bought me the camera I used to take the pictures in Europe and a few of the pictures and all the videos in New York. Thanks also to Matt Hollingsworth for putting his video of us chanting in the United Kingdom on YouTube.
Harinamas in New York
The very day we arrived from Florida, Trevor and I went out on harinama at Union Square. Trevor led some of the time, playing the harmonium.
There are always people attracted to participate in harinamas, especially in a big city like New York. This chap in the picture below sat on his skateboard as he grooved on the transcendental sound.
Another evening in Union Square, some kids danced in front of our party.
Below, in Grand Central Subway Station, a small girl danced in a circle with her father, as devotees and passersby smiled.
The devotees were so fired up on Rama Navami! Usually we chant from 4 to 8 p.m. but on that day we started before 4 p.m. and went on to 8:45 p.m., when many of us went to the Rama Navami celebration at Radha Govinda Mandir. Our venue for the harinama was the Delancey Street subway station where people wait for the uptown “F” train and where the party often chants on Fridays. There is a mural behind where the devotees sit of a more natural scene, a touch of goodness there amidst the dinginess of the subway station.
I would stand on the far side and dance,
ready to distribute a flyer to an interested person.
At the height, we had seventeen devotees chanting.
Some people would move with the music as they passed by.
Near the end about seven devotees were dancing, as you can see the video below:
Prominent was Ray who is known for dancing with the devotees on occasion and who seemed to be an impetus to get the others going.
She has a lot of natural dancing enthusiasm as you can see in the video below:
One new boy who is now a regular chanter invited a girl he knew to come for the first time, and she was telling me how much she liked it. Later that boy said she was a friend from high school that he rarely sees, and it was fortunate that she came on harinamaand liked it.
Saturday was the Monthly Sankirtana Festival organized by Atma-Nivedana Prabhu and his wife Subhangada Devi. They have a Bhagavad-gita class at 26 2ndAvenue every Saturday evening, and once a month their congregation gets together and chants and distributes Srila Prabhupada’s books at Union Square from 1:00 to 4:30 p.m. You can see they get a good group of people participating. In the picture below, Kaliya Krishna Prabhu, who has helped greatly in funding my harinama trips to New York and other places and who sings lively tunes, is playing harmonium and leading.
In the picture below, Nruhari Prabhu, who has a summer harinama program based in Brooklyn, and who I chanted with there this time for an hour a day, is leading. During the thick of the summer he goes out in Brooklyn for two or three hours midday with a whole party of devotees.
So one who is ambitious could chant with Nruhari Prabhu and his party at midday and then join Rama Raya Prabhu and his party at Union Square in the late afternoon, and have a great program of seven hours of harinama per day, just like in ISKCON’s good old days.
You can see in the picture below, even on Saturday, there are quite a lot of people at Union Square.
Later Saturday night, my friend Michael Collins from Gainesville, who has a lot of musical talent and a powerful voice, came and led the singing. It it wonderful that activity of sharing the chanting brings us together a thousand miles from where we met.
One time on harinama in Brooklyn, one lady was very inquisitive about the blue person appearing on our invitation. She said He came to her in dreams and would take her places by flying. I explained that was Krishna, and I encouraged her to visit our temple where we had many paintings of Him on the walls, and a vegetarian restaurant. She gave a positive indication when I mentioned vegetarian food, and I hope she will come by the temple, which is just a block from where we were standing. It is rare to encounter people who are not devotees who have dreams of Krishna.
One day I was walking back to the temple after shopping, and an Afro American gentleman asked if we still had the place on Schermerhorn in Brooklyn and said that he remembered seeing Boy George there many years ago and that he was surprised by his great height. I explained that Boy George was indeed interested in Hare Krishna, although I did not know he visited the Brooklyn temple. Later that day on harinama in Manhattan someone else asked if we still had the temple in Brooklyn with its free Sunday and Wednesday programs, and I explained that we did, and we also had a restaurant Monday through Friday. It was nice to see there are fans of the Brooklyn temple wandering the streets of New York.
Harinamas in Great Britain
Although Sri Sri Radha-Londonisvara Temple, ISKCON Soho Street, already did more chanting on the street than most other temples, I found to my great surprise and delight that during the winter, they had increased the program. Now there is harinama between 11:00 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. in addition to the usual afternoon harinama from 3:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. Besides this, Bhaktin Erzsebet, who has incredible enthusiasm for harinama and book distribution, often chants with her friends on the streets in the evenings. One time I went with Erzsebet and her friends, and some people videoed us and put it on YouTube. The title they gave for the video was “The Best Job in the World.” It reminded me of how Lord Caitanya describes the congregational chanting as “the prime benediction for humanity at large.” Certainly sharing the prime benediction for humanity at large is the best job in the world!
London is great because you can easily do five or six hours of harinama each day in London just by participating in these existing programs. And all that without mentioning the super ecstatic Saturday night harinama!
In addition to the harinamas, London is a great place for speaking opportunities as well. Thursday I got to go on three harinamas and give two lectures. On Friday, I got to go on five harinamas and give a lecture about Lord Caitanya at the Matchless Gifts in King’s Cross. The kirtana at that program was very lively with one devotee playing a bass clarinet and a regular attender playing the saxophone. As I am not much of a musician, usually I do not so much appreciate the contributions of the additional instrumentalists, but in this case they seemed to add a lot to the kirtana and made the music sound more professional and more alive. On Saturday with the team who arranges Hare Krishna Festivals in different parts of the UK and advertises them, I went on two harinamas, one in Reading and one in Slough.
Then I joined the famous Saturday night harinama in downtown London where lots of people enjoy interacting with the Hare Krishnas. Let me show you some pictures of the people dancing with the devotees. See how happy they are:
On the boat to France enroute to Amsterdam for Queen’s Day, I took my harmonium out our van in case there were an opportunity to play it. During the journey, I went out on the no-smoking deck with my harmonium, and I was talking with my friends when a small Indian-looking girl asked if I could play her some music. I was overjoyed that Krishna had created an opportunity for me, and I chanted the Hare Krishna mantra five times, in the usual call and response fashion with my friends. The girl and her brothers and sisters, all older than her, smiled and clapped along. Her brother asked if I had met His Divine Grace Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. I explained that I met the Hare Krishnas in 1979 but Prabhupada left this world in 1977, so I had not. The young man explained how he had read Prabhupada’s Life Comes from Life and that he gained the conviction the theory of evolution is incorrect. The family was from The Hague in Holland and was originally from Surinam, the home of many Indian immigrants, including their forefathers. I told the brother about our book Forbidden Archeology which shows how much evidence contradicts the theory of human evolution and gave them my card so I could tell them of our programs in The Hague.
Queen’s Day Harinama
Kadamba Kanana Swami brought three buses of devotees from Radhadesh to attend the Queen’s Day harinama in Amsterdam this year, an increase from two in past years. We chanted from 11 a.m. to 2:45 p.m. and 4 p.m. to 6:30 p.m., or just over 6 hours on the streets and an additional hour and a quarter during our break for lunch, etc. There were lots of lively kirtana leaders, including Kadamba Kanana Swami himself.
Kavicandra Swami danced beautifully in the kirtana.
Parasurama Prabhu’s rickshaw, with his Gaura Nitai deities, and a great sound system added a lot.
Many, many onlookers danced with us, and some of them sang as well.
People were happier than I ever see people being.
Many took pictures.
Some clapped to the beat.
Many danced in pairs, swinging their partners.
The devotees formed an arch of paired devotees, and then passed through the arch from one end to the other. Many of the onlookers joined and had a great time.
One new devotee, Alexandra, who had met the devotees in Mayapur on a Indian tour by her yoga teacher Raghunatha, was visiting her relatives in Amsterdam and happened to see our Hare Krishna tent and join in the final harinama.
I think that of the six Queen’s Day harinamas I participated in, this was the best one because of the number of devotees and the enthusiasm of onlookers to participate. There was also plenty of prasadam for the devotees, which always helps.
As far as I understand, now that there is a King of the Netherlands, next year there will be a King’s Day instead, in April just a few days before the end of the month, and we hope we can get together and share the joy of chanting with thousands of people again then.
Devaprastha Prabhu made a video of Queen’s Day this year:
Itinerary
May 29 – Sheffield
May 30 – Preston
June 1–2 – London
June 2 – Leeds
June 3–5 – Newcastle
June 6–8 – Bhaktivedanta Manor
June 9 – London Ratha-yatra
June 10–13 – London
June 14–15 – Brighton
June 16 – Croydon Ratha-yatra, Crawley program
June 17–20 – Newcastle
June 21 – Stonehenge Solstice Festival
June 22–23 – Birmingham 24-hour kirtana
June 24–July 20 – mostly in the United Kingdom
July 21–26 – Lithuanian festival
July 30–August 4 – Polish Woodstock
August 10 – Bratislava
August 12–15 – German Kirtan Mela
August 15–18 – Czech Woodstock (Trutnov)
late August – London
September – New York City
October – November – Gainesville
December – New York City
Insights
Srila Prabhupada:
from Sri Caitanya-caritamrita, Adi-lila 17.78, purport:
“The members of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness cannot even call themselves brahma-bandhus. Therefore our only means for satisfying Krishna is to pursue the injunctions of Lord Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu, who says:
yare dekha, tare kaha ‘krishna’-upadesa
amara ajñaya guru hañatara’ ei desa
‘Whomever you meet, instruct him on the teachings of Krishna. In this way, on My order, become a spiritual master and deliver the people of this country.’ (Cc. Madhya 7.128) Simply trying to follow the orders of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu, we speak to the people of the world about Bhagavad-gita As It Is. This will make us qualified to satisfy the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Krishna.”
from Sri Caitanya-caritamrita, Adi-lila 17.88, purport:
“On principle, Lord Caitanya Mahaprabhu would distribute prasadam at the end of kirtana performances. Similarly, the members of the Krishna consciousness movement must distribute some prasadam to the audience after performing kirtana.”
from Sri Caitanya-caritamrita, Adi-lila 17.141, purport:
“The Krishna consciousness movement is not a sentimental religious movement; it is a movement for the reformation of all the anomalies of human society. If people take to it seriously, discharging this duty scientifically, as ordered by Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu, the world will see peace and prosperity instead of being confused and hopeless under useless governments.”
from The Nectar of Devotion, Chapter 48:
“It is to be understood that any person who is constantly engaged in chanting the holy names of the Lord—Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare/ Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare—has attained a transcendental affection for Krishna, and as such, in any condition of life, he remains satisfied simply by remembering the Lord’s name in full affection and ecstatic love.”
from The Nectar of Devotion, Introduction:
“The author of Bhakti-rasamrita-sindhu, Srila Rupa Gosvami, very humbly submits that he is just trying to spread Krishna consciousness all over the world, although he humbly thinks himself unfit for this work. That should be the attitude of all preachers of the Krishna consciousness movement, following in the footsteps of Srila Rupa Gosvami. We should never think of ourselves as great preachers, but should always consider that we are simply instrumental to the previous acaryas, and simply by following in their footsteps we may be able to do something for the benefit of suffering humanity.”
“From the date of initiation by the spiritual master, the connection between Krishna and a person cultivating Krishna consciousness is established. Without initiation by a bona fide spiritual master, the actual connection with Krishna consciousness is never performed.”
“As long as one identifies himself as belonging to a certain family, a certain society or a certain person, he is said to be covered with designations. When one is fully aware that he does not belong to any family, society or country, but is eternally related to Krishna, he then realizes that his energy should be employed not in the interests of so-called family, society or country, but in the interests of Krishna. This is purity of purpose and
the platform of pure devotional service in Krishna consciousness.”
from Srimad-Bhagavatam 4.28.12, purport:
“Now people are very busy trying to find petroleum in the midst of the ocean. They are very anxious to make provisions for the future petroleum supply, but they do not make any attempts to ameliorate the conditions of birth, old age, disease and death. Thus a person in ignorance, not knowing anything about his own future life, is certainly defeated in all his activities.”
from Srimad-Bhagavatam 4.28.16, purport:
“At the time of death both patient and physician still think of prolonging life, although all the constituents of the body are practically dead and gone.”
from Srimad-Bhagavatam 4.28.18, purport:
“If one thinks of his wife instead of Krishnaat the time of death, he will certainly not return home, back to Godhead, but will be forced to accept the body of a woman and thus begin another chapter of material existence.”
Kavicandra Swami:
If we stay alone we will not develop the good qualities like humility, tolerance, and compassion that are necessary for going back to Godhead. We will simply become proud and hard-hearted. Although Haridas Thakura chanted so much in seclusion, he also shared Krishna consciousness with others. If he had just chanted in a secluded place, the representatives of the king would not have taken the trouble to punish him.
Satsvarupa Dasa Gosvami:
‘“Of all the orders of the spiritual master, the instruction
to chant sixteen rounds is the most essential,’ wrote
Prabhupada. We have taken a solemn
vow at the time of our initiation. We
learn to chant avoiding the ten offenses
and then the whole panorama of Krishna’s fame,
qualities, pastimes and Krishna Himself
is revealed to us. Who is such a fool
that he will not take to the chanting
and hearing of the holy names?”
to chant sixteen rounds is the most essential,’ wrote
Prabhupada. We have taken a solemn
vow at the time of our initiation. We
learn to chant avoiding the ten offenses
and then the whole panorama of Krishna’s fame,
qualities, pastimes and Krishna Himself
is revealed to us. Who is such a fool
that he will not take to the chanting
and hearing of the holy names?”
“I’ll go down and join
the others for lunch today.
Eating alone is good as
occasional relief. I like
to be with the devotees
even if it causes a
certain strain because
it’s my duty to sit with
them and hear the Bhagavatam
and then personal
conversations. I want
to please and serve
them by my presence.”
the others for lunch today.
Eating alone is good as
occasional relief. I like
to be with the devotees
even if it causes a
certain strain because
it’s my duty to sit with
them and hear the Bhagavatam
and then personal
conversations. I want
to please and serve
them by my presence.”
from CC Asraya:
“As the feeling of hunger is the sign of a healthy body, so a live desire to hear the holy word is the surest mark of a soul’s good health.”
“Our reading of scripture is not reading for the sake of reading. It is reading for the sake of listening to Him who loves us.”
“When we listen to someone we first of all have to pay attention to him, and not to whatever else may be going on around us.”
“Sitting in rows in the courtyard, the many Bengali devotees honored prasadam.Svarapa Damodara and other great devotees took charge of distributing the prasadam. Not that Svarupa Damodara insisted on eating first, alone with Lord Caitanya. Service.”
from One Hundred Prabhupada Poems:
“While talking to a roomful of devotees yesterday
I discovered
that Srila Prabhupada was a perfect psychologist.
He assured us that we were fortunate and happy.
We have given up sinful life and
attained Krishna consciousness
so no one should be despondent.
But Prabhupada also made it clear
we are not Vaisnavas
but servants of the Vaisnavas.
A pure devotee is very rare.
He was expert and did it subtly
so no one noticed how—
giving us confidence and humility at the same time.
And what he gave we accepted.”
I discovered
that Srila Prabhupada was a perfect psychologist.
He assured us that we were fortunate and happy.
We have given up sinful life and
attained Krishna consciousness
so no one should be despondent.
But Prabhupada also made it clear
we are not Vaisnavas
but servants of the Vaisnavas.
A pure devotee is very rare.
He was expert and did it subtly
so no one noticed how—
giving us confidence and humility at the same time.
And what he gave we accepted.”
from a Rama Navami lecture:
“In an allegory you have a story that has a higher meaning but with the pastimes of the Lord the Supreme Lord is the highest truth, so it is not allegory.”
Murli Manohara Prabhu:
Bhagavad-gita has been relevant, is presently relevant, and will continue to be relevant.
There is movie called Singing in the Rain, but who do you see singing in the rain? It is only the Hare Krishnas, isn’t?
Animals have more acute senses than we have, for example, an eagle can see its prey from a mile in the sky. You will not, however, see a group of penguins inquiring about the Absolute Truth. That is our human gift. Not that we have attained the human form to shop on Oxford Street.
Q: Why are the men and women separate in your temple?
A: Actually, formerly even in this country, in educational institutions, the sexes were separated because it helps people concentrate on their studies. So it the same reason for us.
Ram Caran Prabhu:
Caitanya Mahaprabhu, in His pastime of the cleaning of the Gundica temple, shows that a leader should work along with his subordinates to inspire them.
Comment by me: Sometimes at the Polish Woodstock festival, Indradyumna Swami picks up the trash and thus inspires everyone else to join him.
Cleaning the temple of the heart is a lifetime project.
We may have the intention to please our guru and the Lord, but we may not go about it in ways they approve of, so we have to be careful.
In ISKCON we are all meant to be leaders. For one thing, we have this advanced spiritual knowledge to offer people.
Jagat Palana Prabhu:
Sri Caitanya-caritamrita is blissful, but the dancing of the Lord during the Ratha-yatra is especially blissful. Where do you encounter such symptoms of love of God displayed in public?
The rasa dance is the most celebrated pastime of the Lord, and thus it could be said that dancing is Krishna’s favorite activity.
Ultimately we like dancing because God likes dancing.
Dancing can be see as a manifestation of happiness.
Krishnadasa Kaviraja Goswami glorifies the listeners of his Sri Caitanya-caritamrita because listening to the glories of the Lord is the ultimate activity.
comment: In our outreach, Sunder Nitai Prabhu suggested that we can ask other theists, “If you accept that God reveals Himself, why then has He not revealed to you His form and activities?” Then we may propose they may be interested in the Vedic revelations of these.
Kulasekhara Prabhu:
We are feeling dissatisfaction in this world and then we meet the spiritual master who confirms that we are not meant to live in this world but to go back to the spiritual world.
The soul does not become self-realized because the soul is always self-realized.
There is a tendency to think we are the body and to seek out the soul but actually we are the soul.
The neophyte goes to see the Deity or to chant his japa, and then goes on with his life.
comment by lady devotee whose name I did not know: When Krishna says, “Abandon all varieties of religion . . .” he does not mean to abandon bhagavata-dharma, but other kinds of dharma.
Tribhanga Prabhu:
from a conversation:
Bhakti Vidya Purna Swami explains in the spiritual world that one’s form follows one’s mentality. Because Yasoda has maternal affection for Krishna, she manifests the form of a motherly lady. In the material world, we externally acquire the dress and activities of a devotee, and gradually develop the mentally of a devotee.
-----
patrapatra-vicara nahi, nahi sthanasthana
yei yanha paya, tanha kare prema-dana
“In distributing love of Godhead, Caitanya Mahaprabhu and His associates did not consider who was a fit candidate and who was not, nor where such distribution should or should not take place. They made no conditions. Wherever they got the opportunity, the members of the Pañca-tattva distributed love of Godhead.” (Sri Caitanya-caritamrita, Adi 7.23)
Devotee Association – Most Essential Element in Krishna Consciousness
→ Servant of the Servant
It is extremely essential to associate with the spiritual master and with Vaisnavas who are fully surrendered to the spiritual master. Unless we associate with Vaisnavas, how will unqualified people like ourselves learn the proper code of conduct and come to serve Guru ? We always need ideal examples. If we don’t associate with Vaisnavas who are fixed at the spiritual master’s lotus feet, attached to chanting the holy name, and fixed in the Lord’s service, we cannot ourselves become fixed at guru’s feet. We cannot learn to consider the spiritual master our well-wisher. We cannot understand that the spiritual master is as good as God. We cannot develop the tendency to serve the spiritual master. If genuine devotees who are fixed at the Guru’s feet teach us neither how to serve the spiritual master nor how to behave when we are with him, then even after receiving a bona fide spiritual master we may lose him. We would be losing a coveted jewel if we were bereft of his service.
- Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur (Page No.17 and 18 of the book ‘Amrta Vani’)
- Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur (Page No.17 and 18 of the book ‘Amrta Vani’)
Devotee Association – Most Essential Element in Krishna Consciousness
→ Servant of the Servant
It is extremely essential to associate with the spiritual master and with Vaisnavas who are fully surrendered to the spiritual master. Unless we associate with Vaisnavas, how will unqualified people like ourselves learn the proper code of conduct and come to serve Guru ? We always need ideal examples. If we don’t associate with Vaisnavas who are fixed at the spiritual master’s lotus feet, attached to chanting the holy name, and fixed in the Lord’s service, we cannot ourselves become fixed at guru’s feet. We cannot learn to consider the spiritual master our well-wisher. We cannot understand that the spiritual master is as good as God. We cannot develop the tendency to serve the spiritual master. If genuine devotees who are fixed at the Guru’s feet teach us neither how to serve the spiritual master nor how to behave when we are with him, then even after receiving a bona fide spiritual master we may lose him. We would be losing a coveted jewel if we were bereft of his service.
- Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur (Page No.17 and 18 of the book ‘Amrta Vani’)
- Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur (Page No.17 and 18 of the book ‘Amrta Vani’)
Sadhu Sanga Notes – HH Sacinandana Swami’s class "Faith III – Prajña Nuggets Prospector"
→ Nityananda Chandra Das' Blog, ISKCON Dallas
SB 07.09.18 Sacinandana Swami
Sum: Prahlada expresses his deep faith in the chanting the holy names of the Lord.
Two minds sets for the this festival.
1. Let me see what is happening.
2. Or How can use the days to the best of my abilities how can I go deeper.
As a neutral observer or an active participant.
Faith III
Faith is the ground on which we walk.
No faith no results.
Two things in the beginning. Place. A resting place
Viśvanātha Cakravartī Thakura says it is sastra & process
Śaraṇām gacah
Faith and surrender
Faith in the upaya, the sadhana, by which you reach your upeya, the goal.
Gold nuggets in Alaska. Journey made on faith, so much austerities.
As one attempts to find gold whether he is successful or not.
Jīva Goswami
Virya strength comes from faith, no wobbly knees
smriti remembrance, clarity
Prajña realization of Krishna.
Samadhi Nama samadhi
"Sanga is the birth place of faith"
Therapeutic efforts.
Prajña nuggets prospector
Story of Sumanasena Maharaja.
Nārada Muni came, why depressed?
Yes help me. Are youu Bahir Mukha or Antar Mukha.
You body will have you smelly body go quickly down a river.
Only thing permanent, Bhakti. When Kali Yuga come, Gauranga.
Chanting Pancha Tattva
But he wanted to see Lord Caitanya
Then one night a dream
A golden flash in a dark night.
QUESTIONS
Question 1: the king he had no faith. He got he highest associating. Faith vs association.
Answer: One make offenses & seal heart off
Or
Left me follow. - Viśvanātha Cakravartī Thakura
Did not seal off. Open his heart.
Question 2: difference between intellectually understand. In the mind Vs movement of heart.
Answer: How do we know the difference.
When we get the fruit.
A matti? Will arise. Leaning towards goal. Encouraged good, discouraged then did not work. Not to validated in our maya. No prajalpa
Sadhu Sanga Notes – HH Sacinandana Swami’s class "Faith III – Prajña Nuggets Prospector"
→ Nityananda Chandra Das' Blog, ISKCON Dallas
SB 07.09.18 Sacinandana Swami
Sum: Prahlada expresses his deep faith in the chanting the holy names of the Lord.
Two minds sets for the this festival.
1. Let me see what is happening.
2. Or How can use the days to the best of my abilities how can I go deeper.
As a neutral observer or an active participant.
Faith III
Faith is the ground on which we walk.
No faith no results.
Two things in the beginning. Place. A resting place
Viśvanātha Cakravartī Thakura says it is sastra & process
Śaraṇām gacah
Faith and surrender
Faith in the upaya, the sadhana, by which you reach your upeya, the goal.
Gold nuggets in Alaska. Journey made on faith, so much austerities.
As one attempts to find gold whether he is successful or not.
Jīva Goswami
Virya strength comes from faith, no wobbly knees
smriti remembrance, clarity
Prajña realization of Krishna.
Samadhi Nama samadhi
"Sanga is the birth place of faith"
Therapeutic efforts.
Prajña nuggets prospector
Story of Sumanasena Maharaja.
Nārada Muni came, why depressed?
Yes help me. Are youu Bahir Mukha or Antar Mukha.
You body will have you smelly body go quickly down a river.
Only thing permanent, Bhakti. When Kali Yuga come, Gauranga.
Chanting Pancha Tattva
But he wanted to see Lord Caitanya
Then one night a dream
A golden flash in a dark night.
QUESTIONS
Question 1: the king he had no faith. He got he highest associating. Faith vs association.
Answer: One make offenses & seal heart off
Or
Left me follow. - Viśvanātha Cakravartī Thakura
Did not seal off. Open his heart.
Question 2: difference between intellectually understand. In the mind Vs movement of heart.
Answer: How do we know the difference.
When we get the fruit.
A matti? Will arise. Leaning towards goal. Encouraged good, discouraged then did not work. Not to validated in our maya. No prajalpa
Sadhu Sanga Notes–Realizations of Senior Vaisnavas
→ Nityananda Chandra Das' Blog, ISKCON Dallas
Dhanudhara Swami - 10 sentences about Sadhu Sanga
Nityananda Prabhu - liberate the 3 worlds, ABCDE,
Gaura Sakti - anarthas dissolving,
Mother Chandravali - amazing, I thought I had to go to India.
Braja Mandala Priya - only shelter, holy name,
Purushartha Prabhu - the bass player - saintly persons all leading kirtan, book distribution. Now a new wave, hours and hours of kirtan festivals.
Sudevi Sundari - my husbands name sake. Thanking all the helpers. Thanking Indradyumna Swami.
Mother Kosa Rupa - last year I thought that this was the best festival. This weekend was especially wonderful, I got to meet so many wonderful devotees, new devotees will chant all the way Back to Godhead.
Edhaniaswabhava - giving thanks
Devarsi - no anxiety, just come and chant.
Syamala Kisori - so many great devotees helped us to focus on the only name.
Lila suka - top most favorite gathering, even though I am from Alachua
Nityānanda Chandra Dās - dreams of Krishna
Kapil Patel - reflecting on Kirtans, this helped me chant deeper.
Lalita Madhavi - thank Maharaja and others
Sundara - cry out to the Holy Name,
Mother Guru Bhakti - so much better than last year. New people were blown away. What people are looking for.
List of thanks.
Kirtaniyas
cooks
Transportation
VIS Very Important Sadhus hospitality
Child care
Registration
Deity Sevaka
Clean up crew
Flight arrangement
CYJ Helpers
Organizers
Indradyumna Swami - thanks Caturatma.
My heart of hearts is bringing Krishna to the public. I haven't been to a temple in months due travel festivals. But I feel that this festival is like a reward.
Sadhu Sanga Notes–HH Giriraj Swami’s Class “Śrīla Prabhupāda’s Kirtan World Revolution”
→ Nityananda Chandra Das' Blog, ISKCON Dallas
Giriraj Swami
Memorial Day weekend there is a Prabhupada Festival in Los Angeles.
“I hope you can change your plans.” – Indradyumna Swami
Prabhupada's Sanskrit editor, Pradyumna Prabhu said a Striking statement.
Śrīla Prabhupāda took the same principles. That most acharyas take it for personal advancement to the advancement of the world.
Purport of this verse refers to Cetah Darpana marjanam.
It shows his inner mood. Śrīla Prabhupāda is telling us what is going on inside him. He wants the leaders of the world to take it. So Revolutionary
Reforming the world.
Tamal Krishna Goswami had a hernia operation. There was no phone.
America phone story with Śrīla Prabhupāda “Is this the time to inquire”
They decided to the hospital. Śrīla Prabhupāda was so concerned about Tamal Krishna Goswami.
When he was wheeled out, he said. “I just I had a dream. You were reporting to previous acharyas on your preaching mission, you said on Earth they have:
No good qualities.
No knowledge
No background
But one good quality
What ever I tell them they do.”
That is the what Śrīla Prabhupāda is saying in this purport.
Did not care even if they were not Indian.
Smartas say. Greatest disservice by giving sacred thread.
What is more powerful Paapa or Naaama. .?
Tree of Lord Caitanya
Rupa and Sanantan, the best of all.
They spread Krishna Consciousness in pascyamdesha.
How does Kaviraja Goswami describe such residents,no good behavior or well educated and etc
And trained them
When Śrīla Prabhupāda returned to India he went to a Sadhu Mela on the sands of Chowpatty
Long winded dry talks by impersonalist.
Śrīla Prabhupāda instead did kirtan
Malati then got everyone dancing.
"I don't wish to speak much" He said.
But these Americans. Sad achar
They had never seen white sadhus. Nor such enthusiasm.
One man said, "”I get people to chant Hare Krishna for health, can we join forces?”
“No! We serve Naama”
Our own worse enemy like the panic of a drowning man is his worse enemy
Reflections from the 2013 Sadhu Sanga Retreat
→ Trying to reach a state of equilibrium....
I just returned from one of the most amazingly inspiring events of my lifetime, the 2013 Sadhu Sanga Retreat… 3 days of nothing but kirtan, sadhu sanga & plenty of prasadam. Just when I had thought it couldn’t get any better than last years retreat, words can’t even describe by how far it did. More […]
HG Sridama dasa – Advent of Sita – consort of Lord Ram
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HG Sridama dasa – Advent of Sita – consort of Lord Ram
Deity Darshan: 5/26/2013
→ The Toronto Hare Krishna Blog!
Deity Darshan: 5/26/2013
→ The Toronto Hare Krishna Blog!
ISKCON Scarborough- Grand Narasimhadev caturdasi celebrations
→ ISKCON Scarborough
ISKCON Scarborough- Grand Narasimhadev caturdasi celebrations
→ ISKCON Scarborough
The Way to Prosperity
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If people want any type of material and spiritual prosperity, they have to perform a yajna, a sacrifice, for God. It’s a must. You have to do it.
YOU NEED TO PAY – EVERY SINGLE DAY
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GITA COACHING: YOU NEED TO PAY - EVERY SINGLE DAY: In working with hundreds of devotees from many parts of the world, I have seen that the real effective change and a positive progress starts...
HG Bhuta Bhavana dasa – 5th may
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HG Bhuta Bhavana dasa – 5th may
29 May 2013 – Disappearance Day of Sri Ramananda Raya
→ ISKCON Desire Tree
Nrsimha Caturdasi
→ Ramai Swami
Sri-nrsimha, jaya nrsimha, jaya jaya nrsimha
prahladesa jaya padma-mukha-padma-bhrnga
All glories to Nrsimha-deva! All glories to Nrsimha-deva, who is the Lord of Prahlada Maharaja and, like a honeybee, is always engaged in beholding the lotus like face of the goddess of fortune.
Ugro ‘py anugra evayam sva-bhaktanam nr-kesari
kesariva sva-potanam anyesam ugra-vikramah
Although very ferocious, the lioness is very kind to her cubs. Similarly,
although very ferocious to non-devotees like Hiranyakasipu, Lord
Nrsimha-deva is very, very soft and kind to devotees like Prahlada Maharaja.
The devotees gathered at the Brisbane temple in Jennifer Street to celebrate the auspicious appearance of Lord Nrsimhadeva. It is said that anyone who hears the story of The Lord and His devotee Prahlada Maharaja, will be liberated from this material world and transferred to the spiritual abode very soon.
GITA AND COACHING
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GITA COACHING: GITA AND COACHING: Dear Friends, The Bhagavad-gita As It Is is a powerful success book that shows you How to Get From Where You Are to Where You Want to Be. ...
HOLY STRONGER SONG BY ANAMARIJA
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Yoga is Music event in Zagreb Croatia - "Holy Stronger" song by Bhaktin Anamarija
HOLA
Holy Stronger is a song by our Gita Band.
HOLA
Holy Stronger is a song by our Gita Band.
HH Kesava Bharati Swami – Guru Puja 20130521
→ Gouranga TV - The Hare Krishna video collection
HH Kesava Bharati Swami – Guru Puja 20130521
Deity Darshan: Narsimha Caturdasi
→ The Toronto Hare Krishna Blog!
Deity Darshan: Narsimha Caturdasi
→ The Toronto Hare Krishna Blog!
Failed Success
→ Tattva - See inside out
Success can divert our attention from the internal journey we are on. If success gives birth to pride and breeds a mentality of looking down on others, then what have we really achieved? If success instigates complacency, inattentiveness and a false sense of security, then how bright does the future look? If we become intoxicated by success, enjoying the limelight and fame instead of using it for a higher purpose, then how long before we are humbled? It’s interesting that we often identify external success as a sign of spiritual vibrancy. But maybe it’s not.
External success is surely a gift of God, but those achievements must be kept in perspective. Real success is internal success. Sincerity of purpose, purity of desire, dependence on divine grace, dutiful and determined effort – these are the components of internal success (not necessarily detectable by external signs). In 1965, upon arrival in America, Swami Prabhupada made an incredible prayer: “make me a success or failure as you wish”. For most of us the thought of failure is scary, demoralising and humiliating. Not something we’d welcome with open hands. Am I ready to try my best, be an outright failure, and still remain happy and satisfied? That complete detachment from external results, however, is unimaginably powerful. It comes from a heart which values internal purity and recognises divine grace in whatever form it may come. Will I ever be able to submit such a prayer with genuine feeling? It seems a long way away, but I sincerely hope so.
Failed Success
→ Tattva - See inside out
Success can divert our attention from the internal journey we are on. If success gives birth to pride and breeds a mentality of looking down on others, then what have we really achieved? If success instigates complacency, inattentiveness and a false sense of security, then how bright does the future look? If we become intoxicated by success, enjoying the limelight and fame instead of using it for a higher purpose, then how long before we are humbled? It’s interesting that we often identify external success as a sign of spiritual vibrancy. But maybe it’s not.
External success is surely a gift of God, but those achievements must be kept in perspective. Real success is internal success. Sincerity of purpose, purity of desire, dependence on divine grace, dutiful and determined effort – these are the components of internal success (not necessarily detectable by external signs). In 1965, upon arrival in America, Swami Prabhupada made an incredible prayer: “make me a success or failure as you wish”. For most of us the thought of failure is scary, demoralising and humiliating. Not something we’d welcome with open hands. Am I ready to try my best, be an outright failure, and still remain happy and satisfied? That complete detachment from external results, however, is unimaginably powerful. It comes from a heart which values internal purity and recognises divine grace in whatever form it may come. Will I ever be able to submit such a prayer with genuine feeling? It seems a long way away, but I sincerely hope so.
LETTER FROM KRISHNA
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Written by my dear friend Mahatma Prabhu
http://www.mahatmawisdom.com/
LETTER FROM KRISHNA
My dear devotee
I wanted to send you a note to remind you how much mercy is always available to you.
I saw you yesterday as you were talking with your devotee friends about Me. This gives Me great pleasure, and the bliss you were feeling was just my way of reciprocating.
I saw you sleeping last night and I know how tired you are from working so hard for me (I saw you staying up late to chant your rounds). I just wanted you to know that such service is never forgotten.
I am so much looking forward to you coming back to Godhead. I know how hard you are trying to get out of the material world, and if you follow My instructions and the instructions of your gurus and Srila Prabhupada, I will always be helping you. I miss you and want to be with you.
When you are in trouble, you can talk to Me. I will listen. I am always there for you and I will never let you down.
I have given you My holy names as My special gift to you. It makes it easy for us to unite even while you are still on the earth. Please value it deeply. You will come to know our relationship by chanting without offence. You will get everything from My name.
Love
Krishna
http://www.mahatmawisdom.com/
LETTER FROM KRISHNA
My dear devotee
I wanted to send you a note to remind you how much mercy is always available to you.
I saw you yesterday as you were talking with your devotee friends about Me. This gives Me great pleasure, and the bliss you were feeling was just my way of reciprocating.
I saw you sleeping last night and I know how tired you are from working so hard for me (I saw you staying up late to chant your rounds). I just wanted you to know that such service is never forgotten.
I am so much looking forward to you coming back to Godhead. I know how hard you are trying to get out of the material world, and if you follow My instructions and the instructions of your gurus and Srila Prabhupada, I will always be helping you. I miss you and want to be with you.
When you are in trouble, you can talk to Me. I will listen. I am always there for you and I will never let you down.
I have given you My holy names as My special gift to you. It makes it easy for us to unite even while you are still on the earth. Please value it deeply. You will come to know our relationship by chanting without offence. You will get everything from My name.
Love
Krishna
HH Kesava Bharati Swami – Consciousness in Suffering 20130521
→ Gouranga TV - The Hare Krishna video collection
HH Kesava Bharati Swami – Consciousness in Suffering 20130521
310. Law of reception
→ 9 Days, 8 Nights
One should offer a guest a seat, water to drink and sweet speech. They should never be neglected at your place and feel they have entered the house of an enemy. It is a question of good manners and need not be an expensive arrangement.
Narsimha Chaturdasi 2013 Celebrations
→ ISKCON BRAMPTON'S BLOG
THE ADVENT OF LORD NRSIMHADEV
In the purport of 7.8.51 of Srimad-Bhagavatam, Srila Prabhupada writes, “The Supreme Personality of Godhead in His transcendental form of Lord Nrsimhadev is always ready to kill the demons who always create disturbances in the minds of honest devotees. To spread the Krishna consciousness movement, devotees have to face many dangers and impediments all over the world, but a faithful servant who preaches with great devotion to the Lord must know that Lord Nrsimhadev is always his protector.”
Lord Nrsimhadev is therefore worshipped by the devotees as their Supreme Protector and they also pray that He vanquishes all obstacles that they may face on the path of devotional service. So it is with much enthusiasm that the devotees come to together to worship the Lord on this day of His appearance in the material world.
Special prayers are sung for Lord Nrsimhadev throughout the day and a complete fast is to be observed by the devotees till dusk to express their love and gratitude to the lotus feet of the Lord.
Here’s the link to Srila Prabhupada’s lecture regarding Advent of Lord Nrsimhadev:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
NARSIMHA CHATURDASI PROGRAM INCLUDES:
7:00pm Guru Puja
7:15pm Main Aarti
7:30pm Narasimha Pranam
7:35pm Welcome Announcements
7:40pm Glories on Appearance of Lord Narsimha Dev by HG Vaisnava Dasa
8:20pm Abhishekam
Recitation of Brahma Samhita
9:00pm Sunday School performance
9:30pm Sringar Aarti & Closing kirtan
9:45pm Honouring of Prasadam
SPONSORSHIPS AND DONATIONS:
ISKCON Brampton always appreciates your constant support in so many different ways that you are doing to help us carry on Srila Prabhupada’s mission of spreading the message of the Bhagavad Gita all around.
Maha abhiseka......................
LakshmiNarasimha maha feast.....$251
LakshmiNarasimha maha aarti.....$108
Florals and garlands......................
For sponsorships, please contact Mother Krsna Smaran (kavitabalram@yahoo.com).
Lord Nrsimhadev is therefore worshipped by the devotees as their Supreme Protector and they also pray that He vanquishes all obstacles that they may face on the path of devotional service. So it is with much enthusiasm that the devotees come to together to worship the Lord on this day of His appearance in the material world.
Special prayers are sung for Lord Nrsimhadev throughout the day and a complete fast is to be observed by the devotees till dusk to express their love and gratitude to the lotus feet of the Lord.
Here’s the link to Srila Prabhupada’s lecture regarding Advent of Lord Nrsimhadev:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
NARSIMHA CHATURDASI PROGRAM INCLUDES:
7:00pm Guru Puja
7:15pm Main Aarti
7:30pm Narasimha Pranam
7:35pm Welcome Announcements
7:40pm Glories on Appearance of Lord Narsimha Dev by HG Vaisnava Dasa
8:20pm Abhishekam
Recitation of Brahma Samhita
9:00pm Sunday School performance
9:30pm Sringar Aarti & Closing kirtan
9:45pm Honouring of Prasadam
ISKCON Brampton always appreciates your constant support in so many different ways that you are doing to help us carry on Srila Prabhupada’s mission of spreading the message of the Bhagavad Gita all around.
Maha abhiseka......................
LakshmiNarasimha maha feast.....$251
LakshmiNarasimha maha aarti.....$108
Florals and garlands......................
For sponsorships, please contact Mother Krsna Smaran (kavitabalram@yahoo.com).
Please contact Acarya Thakur Prabhu [alexf108@gmail.com]or mother Prema Gaurangi [premagaurangi.jps@hotmail.com
Narsimha Chaturdasi 2013 Celebrations
→ ISKCON BRAMPTON'S BLOG
THE ADVENT OF LORD NRSIMHADEV
In the purport of 7.8.51 of Srimad-Bhagavatam, Srila Prabhupada writes, “The Supreme Personality of Godhead in His transcendental form of Lord Nrsimhadev is always ready to kill the demons who always create disturbances in the minds of honest devotees. To spread the Krishna consciousness movement, devotees have to face many dangers and impediments all over the world, but a faithful servant who preaches with great devotion to the Lord must know that Lord Nrsimhadev is always his protector.”
Lord Nrsimhadev is therefore worshipped by the devotees as their Supreme Protector and they also pray that He vanquishes all obstacles that they may face on the path of devotional service. So it is with much enthusiasm that the devotees come to together to worship the Lord on this day of His appearance in the material world.
Special prayers are sung for Lord Nrsimhadev throughout the day and a complete fast is to be observed by the devotees till dusk to express their love and gratitude to the lotus feet of the Lord.
Here’s the link to Srila Prabhupada’s lecture regarding Advent of Lord Nrsimhadev:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
NARSIMHA CHATURDASI PROGRAM INCLUDES:
7:00pm Guru Puja
7:15pm Main Aarti
7:30pm Narasimha Pranam
7:35pm Welcome Announcements
7:40pm Glories on Appearance of Lord Narsimha Dev by HG Vaisnava Dasa
8:20pm Abhishekam
Recitation of Brahma Samhita
9:00pm Sunday School performance
9:30pm Sringar Aarti & Closing kirtan
9:45pm Honouring of Prasadam
SPONSORSHIPS AND DONATIONS:
ISKCON Brampton always appreciates your constant support in so many different ways that you are doing to help us carry on Srila Prabhupada’s mission of spreading the message of the Bhagavad Gita all around.
Maha abhiseka......................
LakshmiNarasimha maha feast.....$251
LakshmiNarasimha maha aarti.....$108
Florals and garlands......................
For sponsorships, please contact Mother Krsna Smaran (kavitabalram@yahoo.com).
Lord Nrsimhadev is therefore worshipped by the devotees as their Supreme Protector and they also pray that He vanquishes all obstacles that they may face on the path of devotional service. So it is with much enthusiasm that the devotees come to together to worship the Lord on this day of His appearance in the material world.
Special prayers are sung for Lord Nrsimhadev throughout the day and a complete fast is to be observed by the devotees till dusk to express their love and gratitude to the lotus feet of the Lord.
Here’s the link to Srila Prabhupada’s lecture regarding Advent of Lord Nrsimhadev:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
NARSIMHA CHATURDASI PROGRAM INCLUDES:
7:00pm Guru Puja
7:15pm Main Aarti
7:30pm Narasimha Pranam
7:35pm Welcome Announcements
7:40pm Glories on Appearance of Lord Narsimha Dev by HG Vaisnava Dasa
8:20pm Abhishekam
Recitation of Brahma Samhita
9:00pm Sunday School performance
9:30pm Sringar Aarti & Closing kirtan
9:45pm Honouring of Prasadam
ISKCON Brampton always appreciates your constant support in so many different ways that you are doing to help us carry on Srila Prabhupada’s mission of spreading the message of the Bhagavad Gita all around.
Maha abhiseka......................
LakshmiNarasimha maha feast.....$251
LakshmiNarasimha maha aarti.....$108
Florals and garlands......................
For sponsorships, please contact Mother Krsna Smaran (kavitabalram@yahoo.com).
Please contact Acarya Thakur Prabhu [alexf108@gmail.com]or mother Prema Gaurangi [premagaurangi.jps@hotmail.com
Srila Sivarama Swami Maharaja – Bhajan – 2013.05.11.Budapest
→ Gouranga TV - The Hare Krishna video collection
Srila Sivarama Swami Maharaja – Bhajan – 2013.05.11.Budapest
Hard Work
→ 16 ROUNDS to Samadhi magazine |
Based on the notes taken from a conversation Srila Prabhupada had in June of 1976 at an organic farm in West Virginia.
The modern Western civilization is a nasty civilization that is artificially increasing the necessities of life. For example, take the electric light. The electric light requires a generator, and to run the generator you need petroleum. As soon as the petroleum supply is stopped, everything will stop. But to get petroleum you have to painstakingly search it out and bore deep into the earth, sometimes in the middle of the ocean. This is ugra-karma or horrible work. The same purpose can be served by growing some castor seeds, pressing out the oil, and putting the oil into a pot with a wick. The modern system has improved the lighting system with electricity, but to improve from the castor oil lamp to the electric lamp you have to work very hard. You have to go to the middle of the ocean and drill and then draw out the petroleum, and in this way the real goal of life is missed.
Just try to understand. The consequence of improving from the castor seed oil lamp to the electrical lamp is that you forget the real business of life, you lose yourself. This kind of civilization is going on. This is called maya or illusion. For some fictitious happiness you lose your whole purpose of life.
People are in a precarious position, constantly dying and taking birth in various species of life. Getting free of this cycle of birth and death is the real problem. This problem is meant to be solved in the human life. Humans have advanced intelligence for self-realization, but instead of using the advanced intelligence for self-realization, people are utilizing it to improve from the castor oil lamp to the electric lamp.
Get Monsanto Out (GMO)
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Food. The concept resonates with every man, woman, and child; however, what is food and what is not food? In today’s industrialized food culture, that which is now considered food would not be considered edible in pre-industrial times. Furthermore, food is defined as any nourishing substance that sustains life, provides, energy, and growth, but when this standard is applied to the majority of foodstuffs sold on the market today, it falls short when observed in longitudinal studies on consumer health.
So what has changed from the times of our grandfathers and great-grandfathers, and now? How has the food changed and how can one discriminate between ‘contemporary’ food and ‘traditional’ food? To get a truly comprehensive understanding of this issue, one must understand the history of food manipulation and its manipulators.
History
Since the time of George Mendel’s discovery of classic selection, whereby one plant species is cross-bred with a related species to produce desired characteristics, scientists have been working on manipulating organisms. Control over the organism’s characteristics was enhanced with the discovery of DNA in 1953 because scientists could splice individual genes of an organism’s helix to another organism. These events were the forerunner of the genetically modified (GMO), non-organic foods of today.
Modern corporations have since taken up the flagship of genetic modification as a means of economic development; and of the corporations that have been the most dynamic in influencing the genetic food culture, especially here in the United States, is Monsanto.
Monsanto has a history of seedy behavior that has been anti-humanitarian and grossly disingenuous. In the 1970s, Monsanto Corporation was a thriving chemical manufacturing company. The chemicals they engineered were highly toxic to animals and humans alike. One especially infamous chemical they manufactured was Agent Orange, which was used in the Vietnam War for chemical warfare purposes, and resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and the injury of millions more.
In addition to manufacturing Agent Orange, Monsanto produced other deleterious chemicals like DDT, PCBs, and bovine growth hormone. DDT, which was commonly found in insecticides as prevention for malaria and typhus, was banned in the United States in 1972 when it was discovered to be carcinogenic. Similarly, PCBs were banned in 1979 by Congress for reasons akin to DDT, being reported by the EPA to cause a variety of carcinogenic and non-carcinogenic disorders. The people of Anniston, Alabama are live testimonials of the dangers of PCBs because they were directly exposed to it when Monsanto Corporation covertly dumped these chemicals in the water system and buried them in residential neighborhoods. Bovine growth hormone, known as rBST, is a hormone injected into dairy cows to increase milk production. Studies have found that the growth hormone increases the probability of developing mastitis (inflammation of the breast tissue), and lameness in cows that receive regular rBST injections. These chemicals have a dismal history of causing health problems in thousands of people that came in contact with them; accordingly, their use today is highly controversial.
Despite clear research indicating the chemicals were highly dangerous, Monsanto willfully sold their products to the public under false pretenses. Lawsuits were levied against the corporation in response to the false advertisements of their products being organic and biodegradable. Furthermore, numerous documents have been uncovered in recent years that detail insalubrious qualities found in their products when they were studied in research labs by the company’s own research team, even before it was made known to the public through the research of independent scientists. Therefore, despite knowing the dangers of their products, they still sold it to make profit.
No longer a chemical manufacturing company, Monsanto Corporation is now the most lucrative biotech company in the world. They control 95 percent of the seed industry.
How did they become so successful? The same business practices that made it successful in the chemical sector were applied to agriculture. Intellectual property rights and patents were applied to GMOs in the 1980s through the legal phenomenon of ‘plant breeders rights,’ which gave the company exclusive privilege to the seeds they developed in the laboratory and set a legal precedent of corporations being able to patent life in the form of seeds. This law not only cements Monsanto’s monopoly, but gives the company perpetual control of their product. Farmers that use their seeds can only do so for one harvest instead of saving seeds for the next harvest, as is the traditional practice.
Organic Famers: An Endangered Species
Organic farmers are being muscled out. The blitzkrieg against farmers by Monsanto is based on the initial fallacy of claiming nature to be private property. As a result of such a mentality, anyone who infringes on Monsanto’s property is considered a thief, and subject to prosecution, even if such ‘thievery’ was actually not the part of the farmer, but was done by Mother Nature (i.e. winds blow Monsanto seeds to another’s property).
Lawsuits brought against farmers mostly deal with these two subjects: reusing their seeds or having their seeds on the property. The mentality of owning life is a form of gross ignorance because it attempts to supersede Mother Nature by establishing it as private property. As we can see throughout the course of time, society has incrementally infringed on the path of Mother Nature and created more complex, artificial boundaries that simply create more complex problems.
Force Fed
The permanent effects of GMOs on biology have created a momentous and long-term shift in agriculture in a short duration; combined with the effect of herbicides, which can be disastrous to health and biodiversity, chemical manipulation in farming has raised a vehement concern on the safety and future of food.
The process of making a GMO plant cannot be reversed. They are engineered through splicing a particular gene to the DNA of a plant via a pollen carrier. The virus gene infiltrates the DNA, changing the natural characteristics of the plant. Thereafter the original plant is forever changed and the hybrid plant is maintained through the genes in successive generations.
In addition to being irreversible, GMOs affect the food in a number of important ways. It has shown to spur food allergies, create higher levels of toxicity in the food itself, lead to degenerative diseases, immune disorders, cancer, and other maladies. All these findings come from case studies of consumers of GMO products; however, no official studies have been published, because despite the findings I mentioned above, food safety officials have presumptuously deemed GMOs to be equivalent to organic crops. To make matters more credulous, Monsanto is the only one with the legal right to study their own seeds!
Bill HR933: The Monsanto Protection Act
Bill HR933 is an act of violation against the Constitution and proper political procedures. In the bill HR 933 that President Obama signed on March 26, 2013 was a section that was not originally part of the bill, but discreetly tacked on as it was undergoing review, which gave Monsanto’s GMOs protection from litigation. Because the bill gives Monsanto inviolability from government intervention, it is unconstitutional as it obviates the judiciary.
Prevention vs. Deception
The sordid history of Monsanto is an ancillary issue because what was done is now in the past and unchangeable. However, the wise look to the past for indications of what is to come and for the intelligent class of men whom are aware of the precarious position of agribusiness, there is a pressing need to engender change in government policy to prevent future injustices. For example, if a criminal has a history of stealing bread and a man knows of the criminal’s proclivities, then it is the fault, not of the criminal, but of the man, if he unconsciously leaves bread for the criminal to steal. Fool me once, fool me twice, and fool me again and again. Monsanto has been left to its own devices when it has shown to be untrustworthy, and now those to blame are the regulators and the ignorant masses for failing to recognize the situation. The Monsanto Protection Act is a most barefaced indicator of the company’s future plans at avoiding regulation.
We cannot trust Monsanto nor can we trust the food regulators whom are as selfishly invested. In bygone times, if any person in a position of power was not performing his duties for the welfare of the people, they would be brought to swift justice. In stark contrast, what we find in today’s federal and civil authority is a patchwork system of inefficacy, duplicity, and equivocation bent towards economic development at the cost of rectitude. Monsanto’s continued growth despite their serial abuses are due evidence of a society that has lost its ability to discriminate.
The Bhagavad-gita tells us that when attachment increases, intelligence is eventually lost; and how can one expect to make prudent decisions for oneself or on behalf of others when one’s intelligence is compromised? How can selfish motives ultimately be good for anyone?
Two Hours In LA
→ travelingmonk.com
On the auspicious appearance day of Queen Rukmini we visited the temple of New Dwarka in Los Angeles, where the deities of Rukmini Dwarkadish reside. We had kirtan for 2 hours with the devotees and then started our journey to the Sadhu Sanga Retreat to be held in Austin, Texas this coming weekend.
Freedom
→ 16 ROUNDS to Samadhi magazine |
His habit is to identify his self with the matrix into which his person is poured, and to identify his self-interest with the experiences he finds in that matrix.
A person is an eternal being with limited freedom of choice. His awareness of what choices lie before him is shaped by time-bound material phenomena, which include experiences that are physical, emotional, and mental. The phenomena a person currently experiences are in reaction to his past actions. These reactions are plotted in accordance with three modes of work. Due to his past work within these modes, a person presently has good, mediocre, and bad physical, emotional, and mental experiences. All such experiences are temporary.
In the midst of the matrix of my experience, what do I, a person, ultimately seek? The answer is freedom. “What light is to the eyes,” said a wise man, “what air is to the lungs, what love is to the heart, liberty is to the soul of man.” Everyone wants liberation. Srila Prabhupada, my spiritual teacher, explains that this is the constitutional position of the soul. Constitutionally, we are eternal, complete in knowledge, and full of happiness. But the experience of matter suppresses the experience of our original nature. Now we find ourselves subject to time, ignorance, and misery. Innately, we all yearn for freedom from that suppression.
Three false conceptions of freedom
A liberated person is free to make real choices. Real choice is possible where there are options of real satisfaction. Unfortunately, the matrix of our experience may not permit us free choice. Why? The answer is quite simple: We are eternal, yet the options available to us in this world are not. We want the experience of unadulterated bliss, yet the options available to us in this world are mixed with distress. Choice as we know it now, within the matrix of our present experience, is insubstantial. We select shadows – of love, social life, recreation and so on – that appear and disappear in time. Yet within the confines of our experience, it seems very difficult for us to understand that we have no real freedom of choice. The matrix even supplies us with three notions of freedom: in goodness, in passion, and in ignorance. Unfortunately, they are not real.
“Freedom” in the mode of goodness
Though it too is ultimately false, the goodness conception of freedom is superior to the others. Here, a person aspires for freedom by knowledge and morality, virtues that greatly boost the power of detachment. However, knowledge and morality do not grant us authority over our senses, namely the eyes, the tongue, the nose, the ear, and the sense of touch. Even in goodness, consciousness remains subjected to physical, emotional, and mental phenomena arising uncontrollably out of good, bad, and mixed fortune. A learned, moral person experiences those phenomena in an analytical, self-composed manner. Being detached from his experience, he may think himself liberated. But he is not really liberated if, in the name of goodness, he remains habituated to a life of imprisonment within mundane sensation. In his book The King of Knowledge, chapter seven, Srila Prabhupada explains:
“Goodness is also a kind of contamination. In goodness one becomes aware of his position and transcendental subjects, etc., but his defect is in thinking, ’Now I have understood everything. Now I am all right.’ He wants to stay here. In other words, the person in the mode of goodness becomes a first class prisoner and, becoming happy in the prison house, wants to stay there.”
Our two natures
Our first nature, the substance of our person, is eternal spirit. Our second nature is habit. For example, we have the habit to rejoice or lament our change of fortune. In the language of the Bhagavad-gita, this habit is the duality of bewilderment, which captivates all creatures born in the material world. In a lecture, Srila Prabhupada gave the illustration of a man crying over the death of a son. Who in the world will not cry if his son dies? Even a man of learning and morality will cry at such a loss. “It is habitual,” Srila Prabhupada said. But a person in the mode of goodness tries to be philosophical about it.
In the ancient world, philosophy meant primarily the intellectual method of distinguishing the spirit self from the habits of the body and the mind. Philosophers of the classical Mediterranean culture, which sired European civilization, knew that our first nature can be made well or unwell. The first nature (the spirt self) is made well by the cultivation of virtue. Conversely, as one loses his virtue, his first nature sickens.
In the Latin language, like Sanskrit, the root vir means “strong;” hence, virtue is the quality of a strong, healthy spirit. In European culture there are four classical virtues, foremost of which is sophia, true knowledge of the self beyond time. The others are fortitude, justice, and temperance or self-restraint. In Vedic culture too there are four similar virtues: truthfulness, austerity, mercy, and cleanliness. These are fostered when we refrain from gambling, intoxication, meat-eating (or lack of compassion towards animals and other creatures), and licentiousness.
Attachment to truth is essential to detachment from matter. Above all, truth means the timeless truth beyond my temporal self-image. The image of myself as a father of a son is “true” in a biological, psychological, and social sense, but in fact it is not true in the highest sense because my role as a father is only temporary. It takes real virtue to admit this.
As he laments the death of a son, the grief of a virtuous father is tempered by a sober insight into the deeper meaning of his change of fortune. He knows that what is given and taken away is not his own, for the eternal soul can possess nothing that is temporary. Hence, misfortune for a good person is not really bad. It often serves a lesson healthier than good fortune can, since in so-called good times we tend to forget that nothing in this world can last. As Philosophia, goddess of Greek and Roman thought, declares in The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius: “But if you could see the plan of providence, you would not think there was evil anywhere.”
The world is so planned that misfortune follows good fortune. The childless King Citraketu felt himself greatly blessed by providence when at last his wife bore him a son. Shortly, in a palace intrigue, the baby was poisoned. The king was emotionally crushed. But the sage Narada showed Citraketu that this loss was the very same gain he had celebrated days before. Thus the son was “good” and “evil,” “friend” and “enemy,” the object of both the king’s happiness and distress. When he understood this, the king really gained something – detachment.
For one detached from material gain and loss, “being” is far more important than “becoming” (becoming a father, for instance). No matter what good or ill fortune comes with time, the virtuous person chooses timeless being – his spiritual substance – over any material situation. On the other hand, a person of weak virtue is attached to the ebb and flow of his destiny. He sees the appearance and disappearance of pleasant and unpleasant experiences within time as good or evil. Because he is blind to his own karma under the wheel of fate, he supposes fate to be blind chance; or he supposes there is no fate at all, that success is tenacity of purpose, and failure the reward for laziness. In any case, his habit is to identify his self with the matrix into which his person is poured, and to identify his self-interest with the experiences he finds in that matrix. Thus, he who is pure spirit, becomes dependent upon the shifting arrangements of matter. Such is his bad habit.
When one becomes increasingly dependent upon and controlled by a bad habit, he is said to be addicted. That addiction is sin. Sin is persistent ignorance of our first nature. Sin develops from meat-eating (or participation in unnecessary animal slaughter), licentiousness, gambling, and intoxication, four kinds of behavior that corrode virtue.
It’s like getting rid of a persistent head ache by chopping off the head.
“Freedom” in the mode of passion
In the world of time, the mind hunts for sensual delights that are in turn haunted by old age, disease, death, and rebirth. Yet it is our habit to cherish the restless mind and senses as the agents of our hope. From this habit a passionate philosophy of freedom develops, one that some thinkers call “instrumentalism.”
An instrumentalist is a person for whom the “instrument panel” of the mind and senses is the only valid source of knowledge. He believes the human being can find, with the help of these instruments, the answer to the complex problems of material existence. A human is distinguished from other creatures not by his virtues but by the complexity of his problems. Human questions of right and wrong, true and false, can be solved only on the basis of useful facts, for usefulness is a measure of truth. Theories of the soul and its virtues are useless in practical affairs. Therefore they are untrue. Theories are to be judged not by their “goodness” but by their consequences: what results they give us.
The passionate instrumentalist uses his mind and senses like tools, to locate and dig up treasures buried deep within material nature – riches, rare pleasures, sources of energy, cosmic secrets – that he hopes will serve the needs of the human race. His outlook is prospective, since his faith is invested in the future. Thus “becoming” is far more important than “being.”
But what will he become? He will certainly not become free. His future holds countless births and deaths, for the philosophy of instrumentalism is simply the philosophy of embodied existence. For example, aerospace technology has made it possible for humans to fly high in the sky. If in the human body I convince myself that the most important problems of life are those that flight can solve, I deserve no better than to become a bird in my next life.
“Freedom” in the mode of ignorance
The person in the mode of goodness seeks freedom in being rather than becoming. The person in the mode of passion seeks freedom in becoming rather than being. The person in the mode of ignorance seeks freedom in non-being, or nihilism. He is retrospective in his outlook because in his heart he nurses unending dismay, anger, and frustration about his past experience. Thus he sees hope neither in the present nor future. He chooses to cancel out further involvement in this world by negating his personal self. There are demanding, highly disciplined philosophical systems dedicated to losing one’s self; but, in today’s Western world, many people try it the easy way, through alcohol, drugs, and suicide. Now, there are other angry, frustrated individuals who are not content to passively extinguish themselves. They want to drag the world down with them. Through aggressive, violent behavior and the oppressive domination of others, they seek freedom from the trouble of having to think rationally about the purpose of life. Striking out at the world in blind hatred and trampling it underfoot is just a motif of self-annihilation, as is clear from the examples of history’s famous tyrants like Caligula and Adolf Hitler. Thus, whether he takes the passive or aggressive path, the nihilist’s goal is to eradicate all differences in his life, which means to eradicate life itself.
A creed of voidism is, ex nihilo omne ens qua ens fit – “Every being in so far as it is being is made out of nothing.” If my being is nothing, then neither my self who chooses nor the world of choices has real importance. For a person in goodness, it is important to always choose internal well-being over entanglement in external variety. For a person in passion, it is important to entangle oneself in external variety; yes, more important even than internal well-being. But for a person in ignorance, all this is not worth the trouble.
Good people struggle to be free from the loss of the self to material attraction. Passionate people have no problem with losing themselves in that way. But they struggle to get free from the problems that result from their attraction to matter. The ignorant person claims freedom by disclaiming the importance of the struggles of goodness and passion. He thinks eternal life and worldly happiness are impossible, and the effort to attain them is a waste, an absurdity, nothingness. In Caligula, the French philosopher Albert Camus wrote, “Really this world of ours, this scheme of things as they call it, is quite intolerable. That’s why I want the moon, or happiness, or eternal life – something, in fact, that may sound crazy, but which isn’t this world…This world has no importance; once a man realizes that, he wins his freedom. And yet, I know that all I need is for the impossible to be the impossible!”
On one side, Camus advocated the “ignorant” freedom gained by rejecting life in this world. But that freedom is negative. It is like getting rid of a persistent headache by chopping off the head. On the other side, he admitted this is not what we positively want and need. We want and need positive freedom “to do the impossible.” And what is this impossibility, “Which isn’t this world,” which isn’t the matrix of our present experience? As explained before, it is the freedom to choose among options of real satisfaction, options formed out of the nature of eternal existence, complete knowledge, and pure bliss. But to one in ignorance, because it seems impossible, it is crazy.
Real Freedom
Srimad-Bhagavatam, 3.25.15, explains how a person can be bound by and liberated from the three modes of nature:
“The stage in which the consciousness of the living entity is attracted by the three modes of material nature is called conditional life. But when that same consciousness is attached to the Supreme Personality of Godhead, one is situated in the consciousness of liberation.”
Choice, the essential function of an individual’s consciousness, is defined here. We have two options: to choose to associate with the three modes of nature, or to choose the divine association.
If we choose the modes of nature, we are entrapped by them (the word ‘guna’ means “rope;” each of the modes is a strand of a rope that binds the soul within the matrix of temporal experience). Once so trapped, the soul’s dynamic essence, his power of choice, alternates rapidly back and forth between material dualities: mind and matter, intelligence and foolishness, good and evil, light and darkness, male and female, young and old, sickness and health, heat and cold, pleasure and pain, happiness and distress, wealth and poverty, beauty and ugliness, excitement and boredom, sobriety and whimsy, sanity and insanity, honor and dishonor, fame and infamy, birth and death, up and down.
As long as the soul continues to choose between duality, his field of material activities is perpetuated life after life. Choosing the divine association unties the knot of bondage to material duality. As we shall see, liberation in spiritual association affords the soul unlimited opportunities for substantial choice.
(Excerpt from the book Transcendental Personalism by Suhotra Swami)