HG Bhuta Bhavana dasa – 5th may

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.

HH Kesava Bharati Swami – Guru Puja 20130521

HH Kesava Bharati Swami – Consciousness in Suffering 20130521

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.

Srila Sivarama Swami Maharaja – Bhajan – 2013.05.11.Budapest

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.

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?

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)

Reality is structured; governed by laws. And that is evidenced by patterns. For instance, everywhere on earth that one may throw an object into the sky, it will return to the ground. Depending primarily on the mass of the object and the force that was exerted upon it, the height achieved by the object and the time taken for it to return will differ in a manner that is calculable. Scientists have similarly searched out patterns for countless phenomena that occur in the physical world and thus we have the subjects of physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics, etc. and their corresponding laws. However, dogma of both a religious and a scientific kind have hindered an unbiased inquiry by modern scientists into the patterns of our own metaphysical reality. While we now have logically and philosophically comprehensible and cohesive answers to questions pertaining to our day-to-day survival and entertainment, science is yet to discover equally persuasive answers to the questions of life and death.

Why are we born; some to a life of riches while others in the gallows of poverty? Why do we look the way we do, some beautiful and others ugly? Why do good things happen to bad people and the other way around? Why do the innocent suffer while the guilty roam free? Why do we die? Does it seem right that the above questions are categorically ordained to the realms of randomness by the same scientists who strive endlessly to see patterns and laws in the microscopic movements of subatomic molecules? This “scientific” attitude will seem rather nonsensical and counterintuitive to the unbiased observer and so herein are presented two laws that do in fact offer philosophically and logically sound alternatives to our presently prevailing paradigm. The current western worldview induces one to consider all the above situations of life a result of randomness, totally devoid of reason, even though that is completely uncharacteristic of the rest of reality which functions like clockwork. But the Vedic perspective explained below is exactly the opposite and aligns completely with our observations of the rest of nature. It constitutes the laws of Karma and Samsara; two frequently misunderstood and hence easily misused concepts, that are accurately elucidated herein, as described in their original source, the ancient Vedic texts.

Karma is cosmic justice. It can be easily understood as a metaphysical extension of Newton’s 3rd law: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Just as Newton’s laws apply to all objects, all over the planet, irrespective of our knowledge thereof; similarly, karma brings to all sentient beings the effects of their actions, in the course of time, irrespective of their acknowledgement. It is crucial to understand that time is the vehicle that carries our karma to us. In other words, the results of certain actions may occur within a short time from their cause, but the results of other actions may take many years to fructify. For instance, if I were to slap you now, and you were to slap me in return, I would have received the karmic reaction of my action within moments of the cause. However, if you had restrained yourself from slapping me in return, I would be due to receive the karmic reaction of my action at some time in the future. A useful analogy to understand how we receive our karma is that of an attendant bagging our purchased items at a grocery store. The attendant will not always place our items in the bags according to the order in which we purchased them. Instead, the attendant will place the items in the order that is most convenient to carry and least likely to cause damage. For example, he or she probably won’t place the ice-cream along with some hot bread! Similarly, we won’t receive our karmic reactions in the order we performed our actions, but in the order that restores the cosmic balance.

Who can claim that their body has always been the same and not seen the tremendous changes from boyhood to youth to adulthood to old age?

However, karma fails to give answers until understood alongside reincarnation. The theory of reincarnation suggests that we, as embodied selves or souls, have been wandering around the universe since time immemorial; constantly changing bodies in a cycle of birth and death. Any honest person will admit that even within the confines of this one life, their body has never really been the same for more than a few years. In fact, every single body in existence is going through six different stages of birth, growth, reproduction, maintenance, dwindling and death. Who can claim that their body has always been the same and not seen the tremendous changes from babyhood to youth to adulthood to old age? The Vedic teachings of reincarnation are only an extension of this very evident phenomenon. They suggest that since we’ve only ever known the change of bodies, that is exactly what happens at death. Just as we’ve been accepting new bodies at every stage of “life,” we accept another new body at “death”. This is the law of samsara or reincarnation in the cycle of life and death.

According to our karma, we receive birth in a particular family with a particular body type, having certain innate talents within a particular nation, of a particular planet, and in a particular universe. Nothing is left to randomness; everything has a reason. Even what seem to appear to us as accidents or coincidences, are the results of our actions from the past. So when someone ‘innocent’ faces turmoil in life, or when a ‘wrongdoer’ enjoys happiness, it is a result of their actions from previous lives. In fact, every single situation that we face in life is karmically bound to our past. In effect, that which we do now creates our own future. Indeed, we are the true architects of our lives and in many ways our destiny is in our hands.

Professor Ian Stevenson, until his retirement in 2002, was the head of the Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia. He investigated more than 2500 past life cases which he published in a series of technical books: Cases of the Reincarnation Type (1975-1983), Children Who Remember Previous Lives: A Question of Reincarnation (1987), etc. He was internationally renowned for his research, which he called the “survival of personality after death” (Fox, NY Times, 2007). It revealed that many people do in fact have memories from their past lives and that these memories are fresh mostly in young children. But why do only some people remember and not everyone?

The Vedic literature explains that our subtle mind, the storehouse of all our memories, travels with us from one body to another in the cycle of samsara. And that a combination of our karma and our thoughts at the moment of death lead us to another body. Some people, especially those who die in traumatic ways, have very strong impressions from their previous lives on their subtle mind. This strong attachment to the previous body enables them to recall certain events, people and places from their past lives, even in their current body. However, just like most of us forget our childhoods by the time we’re in adult bodies, most people forget their past lives after birth. This is indeed desirable, as it saves us from chronic personality disorder! Reincarnation also provides an explanation for many psychological phenomena such as phobias. What modern science explains away as “irrational” phobias are simply strong impressions on our minds from past lives still affecting the psyche in our current life. So it is likely that those people who’re afraid of heights or darkness without any apparent reason, in this life, have had a traumatic experience at a high place or in the darkness in a previous life.

There are three kinds of actions: good actions, bad actions, and non-karmic actions. Good actions result in good karma such as getting a good job, having a healthy life, winning a lottery, etc. Bad actions, those that cause unnecessary suffering to other living beings, result in bad karma such as falling ill, meeting with an accident, having a poor relationship, etc. Bad karma is not as much punishment as it is an opportunity for learning. Just as there’s no better way to teach a thief not to steal than by having something dear stolen from him, bad karma offers every one of us an opportunity to learn from our mistakes. No action, good or bad, is ever overlooked in the cosmic scheme; karma is as infallible as gravity. However, those actions that are performed in transcendental consciousness, when the doer is not looking to selfishly enjoy the results of the activities but is offering them to God, do not incur any kind of karma and are thus called non-karmic or akarmic activities.

The nature of karma is to bind the performer to the material plane of existence. This is because anyone who has some karma remaining at the moment of death must receive another body in order to enjoy or suffer the result of their karmic actions. Thus the only way to escape the endless cycle of birth and death is to cease all karmic activities and perform all work in transcendental consciousness. But why would anyone want to escape the cycle of samsara? To many it may be more appealing to simply accumulate good karma and enjoy the results in a worldly life of luxury. However, good karma -no matter how good- will also bring one back to the material atmosphere, wherein it is impossible to escape the four unwanted conditions of life: birth, old age, disease and death. Irrespective of anyone’s karma, all must face the discomfort of gestation and birth, the inconvenience of old age, the pain of disease, and finally, the doom of separation at death. A truly happy existence must therefore be devoid of these four conditions and so, those who are convinced of this, seek respite from the cycle of repeated birth and death.

Karma and reincarnation, correctly understood, do away with what theologians refer to as the problem of evil. In the Vedic paradigm, life is not unfair or out of our control; everyone deserves exactly what they are experiencing. This is a much more satisfying outlook than the commonly held belief that everyone is victim to randomness or that we’re at the whims of a heavenly screenwriter. Although this paradigm may seem deterministic at first glance, a deeper understanding of it reveals that it certainly allows for free will. Even though our present circumstances are predetermined by our own choices from the past, our future is dependent on our choices right now. The situations we find ourselves in life may for the time being be out of our control, but how we respond to those circumstances and in what consciousness, will determine our future; in that way we have free will.

The purpose of understanding karma and reincarnation isn’t so that we can blame others for their ill-luck or fixate over the karmic consequences of our every action. The purpose is to understand that we’ve been here in the material world a very long time and that we will continue to watch the same movie of life again and again, with only slight changes in the script, until we endeavor to gain release from the cycle of birth and death by understanding our essential nature as eternal spiritual beings in search for the absolute truth; the highest plane of existence devoid of birth, old age, disease and death.

Iskcon Rajkot S.B.(1-18-48) BY INDRADYUMNA SWAMI 23-01-2013

Indradyumna Swami. 12 hour kirtan. Saint-Petersburg 07.05.13

A friend recently asked me,

“How come Rupa Goswami said to worship Ganesh? I saw on FB you have a Ganesh altar and since you studied Bhakti Rasamrta Sindhu, I’m asking you for the tika behind that instruction of worshipping Ganesh.”

(A) I don’t exactly have a Gaṇeśa altar. Once upon a time my wife and I bought a wooden statue of Gaṇeśa from a “Pier One” type store. We took it with us when we moved to Japan. My mother in law, whom we live with, created an altar around it. So, it’s not my altar, really.

(B) Rūpa Goswāmī didn’t say to worship Gaṇeśa.  Nectar of Devotion (a summary presentation of Śrī Rūpa’s Bhakti-Rasāmṛta-Sindhu) does say, in Chapter Eight,

“One should begin the worship of the demigod Gaṇapati, who drives away all impediments in the execution of devotional service. In the Brahma-saḿhitā it is stated that Gaṇapati worships the lotus feet of Lord Nṛsiḿhadeva and in that way has become auspicious for the devotees in clearing out all impediments. Therefore, all devotees should worship Gaṇapati.”

This, however, is Śrīla Prabhupāda’s inclusion of material from Śrī Jīva’s commentary on Śrī Rūpa’s Bhakti-Rasāmṛta-Sindhu. The commentary is on BRS 1.2.118, which lists as the 19th item of sādhana “seva-nāmāparādhānāṁ varjanaṁ” (“Casting off the anti-affections in deity worship and chanting of Krishna’s name.”) In his commentary on this verse, Śrī Jīva goes to the extent of enumerating 64 anti-affections (aparādhā, “offenses”) to serve as examples of what to avoid and cast off. One idea that emerges from this list is to avoid jumping into worship unprepared. When you do service to Krishna, you should do it nicely, calmly, and fully from start to finish – not abbreviating it. Abbreviation is likely to be a symptom of anti-affection. Therefore Jīva Goswāmī advises us to be on guard against abbreviation of our services.

One specific way in which abbreviation can take place involves neglect of Gaṇeśa. All auspicious deeds should begin be worshipping Gaṇeśa. This puts the performer in a fortunate, blessed position therefore more likely to carry out the deed / service nicely. If we skip the worship of Gaṇeśa at the beginning of our seva, we are abbreviating our service – and that is likely to be an anti-affection that will ruin the point of the service: to practice affection (bhakti).

Now, the devotee may question:

But Gaṇeśa is a material demigod, and we are not supposed to worship other gods besides Krishna.

This attitude is not exactly, necessarily “wrong” but in most cases today it carries the strong scent of the Judeo-Christian approach to divinity, “Thou shalt have no other Gods before me… For I am a jealous God.” This is not an accurate conception for Krishna. Krishna is generous, not jealous.  There are many other gods, and they are all invested with power by Hari (Krishna), therefore we certainly respect them all – though certainly our heart naturally reserves its true affections for adorable Krishna alone.

This, in fact, is the injunction given by Śrī Rūpa in the verse two verses before the one under discussion here. BRS. 1.2.116 lists the 16th practice of sādhana as anya devajñā (“Following the orders of other gods”) – and Śrī Rūpa quotes Padma Purāṇa to substatiate it: “Always worship Hari – who is the master of all the Gods; but also do not disrespect Brahmā, Rudra, and others.”

There is nothing wrong with worshipping a demigod for the purpose of serving Krishna. What is wrong is to worship a demigod to gain personal rewards. In fact this is the general principle applying to all things: “anukūlyeṇa saṁkalpa, pratikūlyeṇa varjita” - we will do anything for the purpose of serving Krishna, and not do anything for any other purpose.

Gaṇeśa, like all gods, worships the Supreme Person, Hari – to obtain the power to carry out his responsibility as a god. Specifically Śrīla Prabhupāda says that he worships Hari in the form of Nṛsiṁhadeva. Seeing the gods as a class of Vaiṣṇava, we who aspire to be Vaiṣṇava will always respect them as such.

So, if we are very elaborate and “full-format” in our pūjā, we begin with “maṅgalācaraṇa” (auspicious beginning), which traditionally means respecting Gaṇeśa. If we abbreviate this, it is a lack of affection for Krishna – and we should avoid that. Perhaps it is not necessary to include Gaṇeśa in the maṅgalācarana of our pūjā. All gods are respected by respecting the guru. Therefore by remembering and respecting our guru in the beginning of our worship of Krishna – we perform a full maṇgalācarana. And, as Prabhupāda indirectly indicates in the 8th chapter of Nectar of Devotion – a full maṅgalācarana can be effected simply by chanting the all-powerful Hare Krishna mantra in the right state of mind.

One might ask:

Why is Gaṇeśa traditionally associated with auspicious beginnings?

The answer is that Gaṇeśa is the god of thresholds. You can investigate the story of Gaṇeśa getting an elephant’s head to see that his mother Pārvatī put him in charge of guarding the door, the threshold. A doorway is the entrance to, thus the beginning of, a place. So, by being the guardian of thresholds, Gaṇeśa Jī is the guardian of beginnings. If you want a new endeavor to “get off to the right start” you should remember Gaṇeśa while starting, and ask him humbly for his blessing of your crossing the threshold.

I hope this helps satisfy your curiosity.

1. Water
2. Aasana
3. Cloth
4. Lamp
5. Food grains
6. Betel nuts

1. Water
2. Aasana
3. Cloth
4. Lamp
5. Food grains
6. Betel nuts

A Simple Gita

The Bhagavad-Gita – with all its depth and detail – in simple, succinct, straightforward terms.

Available in paperback, kindle and pdf here: http://www.vicdicara.com/gita

The Australian National Council met at Govinda Valley in May for their annual general meeting. There were about 20 participants who came from the temples to discuss various issues pertaining to development of the Australian yatra.

Govinda Valley, a property of about 20 acres, was purchased about 10 years ago and is set in a beautiful valley at Otford, just one hour south of Sydney. It is also only 5 minutes from the beach and visitors like to swim there during the summer months.

Throughout the year devotees have retreats there and at other times yoga groups book the facility for their functions as well.

2013-04-25 Srimad Bhagavatam 10.18.23-24 – Sweet and Wonderful Pastimes of Lord and his Devotees