Websites from the ISKCON Universe
Memories of the early times of the Hare Krishna movement as narrated this morning in Radhadesh, Belgium, by Gurudas, one of the first and closest... Conversation.
By Yogesvara Das The hero of India’s epic Bhagavad Gita, Arjuna, is at a crossroad. He is intelligent, well-intending, and overwhelmed by a dilemma we all might recognize: the apparent incompatibility of worldly responsibilities and other-worldly aspirations. Arjuna is a warrior who feels the call to a more peaceful, non-invasive life. On the verge of a mammoth war he refuses to fight, even though the enemy is an aggressor who must be brought down. Like Arjuna, once we acknowledge the call to a more enlightened life we may also find mundane duties distasteful. Is it possible to attend to such obligations without compromising our higher self? Is it possible to live in the material world without becoming overwhelmed by it? The Gita responds by analyzing our dilemma through the eyes of a soldier preparing to do battle. Continue reading "The Self at War
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By Satyaraja Dasa When you're actually on the platform of love of God, you understand your relationship with God: "I am part and parcel of God - and this dog is also part and parcel of God. And so is every other living entity." Then you'll extend your love to the animals also. If you actually love God, then your love for insects is also there, because you understand, "This insect has got a different kind of body, but he is also part and parcel of God - he is my brother." Sama sarvesu bhutesu: you look upon all living beings equally. Then you cannot maintain slaughterhouses. If you maintain slaughterhouses and disobey the order of Christ in the Bible - "Thou shall not kill" - and you proclaim yourself a Christian, your so-called religion is simply a waste of time . . . because you have no love for God. Continue reading "Srila Prabhupada and the Sixth Commandment
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Iskcon Mayapur: Lalita devi’s favourite instrument is the vina, and her favourite tune is raga Bhairava-kalingada. She specialises in serving tambula, betel nut to the Divine Couple. She can be seen offering a chamara whisk to Sri Sri Radha Madhava on the altar in Mayapur. She is twenty-seven days older than Srimati Radharani, her age being eternally fourteen years, eight months and twenty-seven days old. Her mood is khandita, like that of a jealous heroine who chastises her beloved. This mood is never manifested in relation to herself, however, but only when there is a delay in the meeting of Sri Radha and Madhava. She is well known for her hot and contrary nature, and her protective mood over her Prana-sakhi – Srimati Radhika.“Activism is my rent for living on the planet.”
– Alice Walker
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The idea of activism – of being a part of some cause that helps makes things better in the world – is increasingly catching on. It has become much cooler than what it was a few decades ago, when greed ruled the roost.
What has led to activism’s increased appeal? Thoughtful people have started realizing that when we live only for ourselves, for our own gratification, we sink into a black hole of self-centeredness wherein our obsession with our own cravings becomes compulsive and destructive. Today, we are ecologically threatened because of the indiscriminate exploitation of natural resources. We are intellectually adrift because mainstream materialistic culture doesn’t offer our life any meaningful purpose. We are emotionally alienated because our families, communities and countries are becoming increasingly fragmented. This ecological, intellectual and emotional context underlies activism’s appeal.
However, is the notion of paying rent for living on the planet anything more than a quaint image? From the materialistic perspective mainstream in today’s world, the material is the only thing we need, the only thing we can have, the only thing that is real. And the planet we live on is just a blob of stardust in a vast unfeeling cosmos. By some lucky accident, it has somehow provided the conditions for us humans to live. Given that the planet’s human-friendliness is accidental, no one owns it. So, materialism reduces the notion of paying rent for living on the earth to just a cute metaphor.
Some utilitarian materialists may reason that if the notion inspires people to do good, there’s no harm in using it. Maybe. But the notion would have far greater impact if it were appreciated as being not just metaphorical but also metaphysical. What if we could have an alternative vision of reality, a vision that made greater sense of things and brought deeper meaning into our life?
The Bhagavad-gita offers us such a vision wherein it (05.29) states that the entire world, nay all of existence, belongs to the Whole, whose parts we all are. We use the resources of the earth for our sustenance and enjoyment, though we didn’t create any of these resources. Just like some apartments come with the basic facilities for cooking, ventilation and sanitation, so too does our cosmic apartment come with the basic needs for living. And just as we need to pay rent for the apartments we live in, so too do we need to pay rent for staying on the earth – the rent of activism.
People often conceive of activism as anything done for making a difference. Gita wisdom gives such activism a deeper foundation and a more fruitful direction. It explains that we are at our core spiritual beings, parts of a Whole. We are meant to live in harmony with the whole. How? By using whatever talents and interests we have in a mood of devotional contribution.
This holistic vision can spiritualize our specific form of activism. If we feel driven to make the world a greener place, we can become spiritual environmentalists. We can help clean not just the polluted rivers but also the polluted hearts that make people indulge in short-sighted, self-aggrandizing actions that pollute the rivers. If we feel driven to use education as a means to make a difference, we can share spiritual knowledge that equips people to find higher purpose and pleasure in their lives. By thus spiritualizing our educational activism, we help people to counter and conquer the forces that impel them to live disharmoniously.
When we imbue our activism with the inspiration to harmonize with the whole, our activism makes an enduring difference – in our own lives, in our social circle and in the world at large.
The post Activism is our rent for living on the earth appeared first on The Spiritual Scientist.
Chariot procession through York city center (UK) (Album with photos)
SINGING and dancing members of the Hare Krishna movement have staged their first procession through York city center - pulling along a big chariot.
Tourists and shoppers were treated to a colorful and noisy parade, which began and finished in Parliament Street and took in streets including Coney Street, Stonegate and Low Petergate.
The Lord Mayor of York, Cllr Barbara Boyce, began the procession in line with tradition by breaking a coconut.
About 100 devotees of the movement, which follows ancient teachings of devotional yoga with roots in the Vedic culture of India, came to York from all over the country, including leader Janananda Goswami.
An American member, Krishna Kripa, said he really liked coming to York. “There’s a really nice group of people here,” he said, adding that they met once a month at the Quaker Meeting House.
A spokesman said the Hare Krishna philosophy was attractive to many people, adding: “In a world that’s becoming increasingly competitive, and has people believing they’ll only be happy through material gain, we’re showing a deeply positive alternative.”
One of the procession organizers, Ganesh Thapa, said it had been very successful, despite delays in transporting the chariot to York, and he hoped it would become an annual event. “It’s been amazing,” he said.
Find them here: https://goo.gl/8NcCcE
“Cooperation with devotion lead to happiness” ( min video)
SB class by HH Bhakti Charu Swami on August-18-2017 at Iskcon London Temple.
Watch it here: https://goo.gl/JKaT43
Krishna: Expert Dancer, Uninhibited Lover
The following is an article published by the Times of India, as part of their “Speaking Tree” philosophy section. It was written by ISKCON devotee Chaitanya Charan Dasa.
“I would believe in a God who could dance”, said German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. During his time, God was generally portrayed as a frozen perfection, remote, static, and wholly unsociable. No wonder he was disillusioned by this stereotypical idea of God.
Nietzsche would have been pleasantly surprised had he heard of Krishna, who danced expertly on the hood of the venomous serpent Kaliya. He also danced to the tune of his mother just to get butter, and he danced with gopis in celebration of divine love, in rasa-lila. He is Vrindavana-natabara, dancer par excellence in the pastoral paradise of Vrindavana.
All theistic traditions assert that God is great. In Krishna, that greatness is graphically demonstrated. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna gives a glimpse of his awe-inspiring greatness through his vishva-rupa darshana, which is one of the greatest mystical visions in world literature. Arjuna saw within the Universal Form - within Krishna - everything and everyone in existence. He saw all the planets, stars and universes as well as all living beings: celestial, terrestrial and subterranean. Krishna also exhibited his omnipotence by effortlessly over- powering numerous demons, who were the scourges of the universe.
Most endearingly, Krishna delights, not in the magnificence of godhood, but in the sweetness of uninhibited love. Krishna expresses his sweetness in His lila as a prankster who steals butter from the homes of elderly gopis. Krishna as God is self-satisfied and doesn’t need anything for his enjoyment. Moreover, when everything belongs to him, where is the question of his stealing anything? Yet just to reciprocate love with those devotees who love Him in a parental mood (vatsalya-bhava), Krishna plays the role of their darling child and speaks and behaves mischievously. The disarming hospitality that Krishna extended to Sudama and the subsequent generous benedictions that he bestowed upon his poor gurukula-friend are also eloquent testimony to Krishna’s personal warmth and sweetness.
For the demoniac, Krishna’s sweetness gives way to his greatness. Krishna went as a shanti-duta (peace messenger) to dissuade Duryodhana from war with sweet words. But when the arrogant prince tried to arrest him instead, Krishna foiled the attempt by manifesting the gigantic universal form. But for devotees, Krishna is sweetness. During the rasa-lila, Krishna disappeared and reappeared as the majestic four-armed Vishnu. When his most beloved consort Radha offered him obeisance and asked him where Krishna had gone, He tried to point in a false direction. But seeing her selfless love and her intense anxiety caused by separation, Krishna could no longer maintain his guise. His two extra hands disappeared and Radha beheld before her the sweet Lord of her heart.
The laws of karma impartially and unerringly deliver everyone of their karmic dues sooner or later. But if we turn to Krishna with devotional love, He manifests his sweetness as a forgiving father: “Abandon all varieties of religion and surrender unto me. I will free you from all sinful reactions. Do not fear”.
We can easily surrender to Krishna by chanting his holy names, which manifest both his greatness and sweetness. The holy name has the great power that even nuclear weapons don’t have: the power to destroy all our negative habits and tendencies. Janmashtami is a reminder that our right to enjoy divine sweetness is beckoning us. Krishna is ready for us. Are we ready for him?
Krsna says in Bhagavad-gita (4.11), ye yatha mam prapadyante tams tathaiva bhajamy aham, ‘As you surrender unto Me, I will reward you accordingly.’ But with the gopis Krsna says, ‘I don’t know what to give them! With them, my promise falls short because I have nothing to give them in exchange for their service.’ If I give you something very valuable, you also have to give back something valuable. Therefore, Krsna was thinking, ‘I have nothing in my possession that can match the value of what the gopis are offering. Therefore let their own service stand as the reward and speak of their glory.’ In this way, we remember how Krsna is just taken by surprise! He does not know how to deal with these gopis. They show a level of love, which goes beyond what he can comprehend. It bewilders his mind and of all the gopis, Srimati Radharani is the most outstanding!
“DEATH” Just avoid this one thing, he said, and we’d be okay…
T.E. Holt: “In medicine, even the skillful ones, surgeons and physicians, themselves from Death all turn and flee — Fear of Death unhinges me.” — William Dunbar (1465–1530), translation by T.E. Holt, M.D.
“Dude! You totally Melvined Death!” — Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991)
My first day of medical school was a series of inspirational talks. The tone, set by the anesthesiologist who led off, was lighthearted. His subject was “Everything you will ever need to know about medicine.” This turned out to be just three things, which he had us all recite: Air goes in and out. Blood goes round and round. Oxygen is good. Just keep these in mind, he said, and you’ll be okay.
By the end of the day, we were as blank as the huge whiteboards at the front of the room. Within the next 24 hours, these would start filling up with diagrams of cell-transport mechanisms, cartoons of developing embryos, maps of the brachial plexus. But on that first day, the lectures were so inconsequential that only one speaker bothered to write anything down. This was a pathologist who also wanted to reduce medicine to its essentials. He scrawled a single word on the board: DEATH.
Just avoid this one thing, he said, and we’d be okay.
The word stayed up there on the whiteboard the rest of the day. I waited for someone to notice and wipe it away, but no one did. It was gone the next morning, replaced by the Krebs cycle, that happy intracellular Rube Goldberg mechanism that keeps us all alive, whether you can diagram it from memory or not, thank God.
Whoever scribbled the Krebs cycle in place of that single stark word gave us our real orientation to medicine. Despite death’s modest appearance that first day, what we were really learning wasn’t “Don’t Fear the Reaper” so much as “Don’t See the Reaper.”
We don’t like to find that word staring down at us from the wall. If we do, we’ll hang it on somebody else, shrouding it behind a screen of medical abbreviations, and then we’ll be gone. The word’s still there — it follows us, of course, as the moon follows a moving car — but as long as we don’t have to keep looking at it, we’re okay.
The problem is, death keeps looking at us. When I’m forced to think about this, what I see most clearly are the faces of patients at the moment they recognized the incredible fact that they were going to die soon. This is what I can’t forget: the look they had as they read the writing on the wall like Belshazzar did at his feast in the Bible story, faced at the height of his power with the message that he was about to die. Just what people see as they read that message is, I suspect, the most important fact about death. I know that fact escapes my grasp, but I keep reaching for it, all the same.
He was 18 years old with cystic fibrosis. By unspoken agreement, we had left him until last on morning rounds, because overnight the lab had analyzed his blood and cultured Burkholderia cepacia — an organism that flourishes in the pus that overwhelms the lungs in end-stage cystic fibrosis. It’s notoriously resistant to antibiotics. (It’s been found growing on penicillin.) Once B. cepacia escapes the lungs and enters the bloodstream, death is inevitable: sepsis, circulatory collapse, multiorgan system failure, the end.
After a muttered conversation in the hallway, we edged into the room. I was nervous: I was going to have to tell this kid he was dying. He was awake, sitting up in bed. The room was dark. It had that lived-in look CFers cultivate — posters, clothes strewn everywhere, a game console flickering on idle. A wasted-looking father slumped in the corner chair. The patient watched us file in. When I saw the expression on his face, my anxiety about what I was going to say seemed suddenly unimportant.
He knew. He already knew. He barely listened as I reported what we had learned from the lab. Then there was silence. He looked back at me as if I weren’t there and said, “I’m going to die, aren’t I?”
It wasn’t really a question, the way he said it. My answer was as irrelevant as everything else that we had left to offer him. The attending stepped in and started talking, but I could tell the patient wasn’t listening.
A year or so later, I was the resident on the oncology service, responsible for two dozen or more patients, all of whom were doing badly. Doing badly with cancer means terrible things: organs malfunctioning as tumors squeeze them off, pain that soaks up morphine like water, treatments with a list of possible side effects that includes death.
Into this substation of hell one day walked a strong man in his early 40s, looking about as healthy as a man can look, though perhaps a little pale. Earlier that day, a blood test had revealed a swarm of misshapen, blue-stained cells that should have been functioning parts of his immune system but instead were leukemia. He was in what they call “blast crisis”; our job was to help him survive the night so he could start chemotherapy in the morning.
Over the course of that night, his blood levels of oxygen started to drop, his left eyelid developed a droop, and I had to explain to him that if I didn’t insert this honking big catheter into his femoral vein, he wasn’t going to live to see the morning.
I could see him change. He had walked in as a functioning adult. He had asked intelligent questions before signing the consent form. He had been calm, helpful, determined. He had a pleasant smile. That was until about 4 p.m. As things started to unravel, he became at first bewildered, then querulous, and then, as the leukocytes started clogging the capillaries of his brain, confused. He tried not to groan as I probed for that vein in his groin, but despite the lidocaine, when I sliced into his skin to widen the opening for the catheter, he screamed. After that he settled into a silence that deepened throughout the night.
He lived to see morning, and beyond, but over the next 3 weeks, he never smiled again in my presence. The misery that had settled around him deepened as his blood counts dropped, and even the most trivial infections swept over him like brush fires. By the end of his third week, he was unrecognizable: gaunt, with crusted lips and a look in his eyes. Hollow, haunted, certainly, but also sullen, as if he resented us and everything we’d done in the name of curing his disease. We should have warned him, I thought his eyes might say. We should have told him just how bad it would be. But by that time he had stopped speaking to anybody.
He wasn’t that sick, understand, not until the very end. What stopped him from speaking wasn’t anything physical. I think it was the knowledge that had started growing in him that first night, that all of this could unravel. That everything he had taken for granted — his health, his body, his life — could all turn out to be so fragile that a wayward sneeze could blow it away. In the face of that knowledge, what is there to say?
‘Let him go’
Another case: A nice enough guy in his mid 40s came to the E.R. complaining of chest pain. Changes in his EKG and the results of blood work showed that his heart had been damaged. I managed to meet the patient for about 5 minutes before they wheeled him off to the cath lab. A nice enough guy, a little giddy from the morphine, not really able to take any of it in.
He came out to the CCU a few hours later, still groggy, surrounded by a forest of IV poles running all of the latest anticoagulants. A few hours after that, a nurse paged me to say she couldn’t wake him up. He was answering questions in a sleepy, fretful voice. His answers just weren’t making sense. When I arrived at his room, I pulled up his eyelids: His pupils were tiny black dots, and they were pointing in different directions. We had him in the scanner 12 minutes later.
I put the CT frames up on the view box and they showed a big white blot in the middle of the patient’s brain. The blot was blood: an artery had ruptured. The neurosurgery resident on call was looking over my shoulder.
“We can’t touch it,” he said.
And that was it. Over the next several hours I was going to watch this patient die. In fact, he was already dead. The process is well described in the literature, inexorable and orderly in its progression. A classic. I’d seen it a dozen times in textbooks, but I’d never watched it happen in real life.
The blood collecting in his skull was starting to build up, pressing on his brain. Soon his brain would have only one place to go: down a very tight opening in the membrane that supports the brain within the skull. There it would squeeze off its own blood supply and die. And a little while later, it would bear down on the brain stem and squeeze off the nerve centers that kept him breathing.
I called my attending and gave him the story. When I was done, he said, “Just keep him comfortable. And let him go.” And then the attending said, “Have you seen this before?”
I told him I hadn’t.
“Go examine him periodically. Check his retinas. Watch the posture change. Everyone should see this once.”
Every half hour or so, in between trying to keep others alive in the ICU that night, I went into the room and peeled back the man’s eyelids. I don’t remember, really, what I felt as I watched the retinas bulge out as the pressure in his skull increased. I memorized the way it looked, because sometimes you will see this in, say, a case of meningitis, and it’s important not to miss it.
The last time I came into the room, the man’s eyes were open. They were blank as a pair of billiard balls. He was panting, his pulse was 42, and his pressure was dropping. The end was near. I thought to look one more time at his retinas. But as I leaned over him, in both of his open eyes I saw my own reflection hovering, a figure robed in white, immense, hazy, and distorted.
In my fourth year of medical school, I spent a month in the neurology consult service. Many of the cases we were consulted on were sad: a teenager in the eighth day of an epileptic seizure; a man who had come in because of a twitching thumb — and left with a diagnosis of Lou Gehrig’s disease; a 52-year-old who couldn’t remember anything since a car accident on Christmas Eve in 1964 and kept asking where his parents were. But the worst times were when the admitting team wanted us to decide if its patient was brain dead. This is a dismal question, and the request is usually prompted by a family struggling to accept what has happened. We averaged one of these each week. The first that month was a 22-year-old housepainter who had set an aluminum ladder against a high-voltage power line. He lay in a bed in the burn unit, surrounded by a dozen relatives who followed our every move.
The brain-death determination involves some startlingly crude maneuvers, one of which is a test for “withdrawal from noxious stimuli.” This means hurting someone to elicit a reaction. I stood and watched as the attending demonstrated this. As he worked, a murmur arose from the relatives lining the wall. When the attending rolled the patient’s head from side to side, yanked on the endotracheal tube, and poured ice water in both ears, the murmuring grew louder. When we left the room, I was sure the expressions that followed us were reproachful.
My last brain-death evaluation that month involved a 32-year-old man who had been found unconscious on a stifling hot July day. When brought to the E.R., his core temperature had registered 107.8°F. The man had shown no sign of mental activity in 4 days, and the ICU team was starting to worry.
The room was almost empty when I found him: no relatives, just me and the form in the bed and the ventilator at its side, hissing and chuffing in its stately rhythm. The man’s pupils were fixed and midline. Ice water in the ears produced no movements of the eyes. There was no withdrawal from noxious stimuli. I recorded all of this and took the story to the attending.
“Let’s go see,” he said.
When we got back to the room, his family members had arrived. They stared at us solemnly as the attending began the exam all over again. There was no murmuring this time. Even at the application of noxious stimuli, the entire group — parents, siblings, spouse, children — simply watched us.
When the patient’s eyes flew open, I may have gasped. Certainly the family did. The attending let out a satisfied crow: “Did you see that?” The man on the bed was staring, eyes wide. Behind me, voices were rising, uncertainly at first, then breaking into cries of jubilation. I think the attending actually took a little skip in the air before he turned to the bed again. He was busy for 1 or 2 minutes, his hands waving this way and that before the patient’s gaze. Ecstatic sounds filled the room.
In their joy, the family didn’t hear, as I did, the attending quietly say something that sounded like “Uh-oh.” With a guilty sideways glance at them, he turned to me and beckoned. I leaned over. “Look at this.” He waved a penlight up and down before the patient. The eyes followed it exactly.
“Do you notice anything?”
Locked in
The eyes had moved. They were clearly tracking. Our patient lived, aware of our presence, probably hearing voices of people he loved crying out in exultation. Yet, despite the precise activity of the eyes, despite all the tumult around us, the patient’s face revealed nothing. His limbs were motionless. Not even a finger was twitching.
I looked at the attending. He was staring down at the patient, looking stricken. “My God,” he said quietly. “He’s locked in.”
“Locked-in syndrome” is one of those things you learn about in medical school, not because it’s common, but because it’s terrible. Every year, when the neurology lecturer introduces it to the second-year class, everyone makes that gasping sound reserved for special cases — the ones we hope we never see ourselves. The man in the bed had suffered a small stroke in the area of his brain stem called the ventral pons. It had cut the connections between his brain and every muscle in his body except the few that make the eyes move up and down. Above the stroke, the mind is awake, aware, as alive as a mind can be. The body below is as inert as death itself. Without the ventilator, he would suffocate in less than a minute. He would never speak, never grimace in pain, never again lift one finger off the bed. Awake, aware, he was buried alive in a body that was already dead.
As I stood at the bedside, looking down on the eyes that occasionally locked with mine, I felt the closest approach to horror I’ve ever had. It was the absolute absence of expression, I think, coupled with eyes that still somehow signified a living presence, that made this thing so horrible. Compared with people looking death in the face, these living eyes staring back at me were simply intolerable.
As the chorus of voices at our backs faltered, died away, and then, as the attending talked to them, rose up softly in a moan, I had to catch myself to keep from joining in. This was, I told myself, the worst thing that could ever happen to a human being.
Waiting for a miracle
When we returned the next day, the family members were still there, gathered around the bed. We heard them before we reached the doorway. They sent up an excited chatter that rose and fell as if they were spectators at a fireworks display. As we entered, they drew aside. At the bedside a figure in blue scrubs was chanting “there, there, yes, that’s it, there.” At each of her words, the patient’s right hand responded with a wave. And as we reached the bedside the patient’s face changed, rearranging itself into an expression I could not at first understand, until I realized the left side was twisting upward into half a grin. The stroke was resolving. We had been completely wrong.
The attending found his voice when we’d left the room.
“You’ve just seen a miracle,” he said. “And now, for the rest of your life, every time you come up against a hopeless case, you’re going to remember this guy.” He shook his head. “God help you. And God help your patients.” I didn’t need him to explain. He meant that from then on, I would keep expecting miracles, and they would never come.
He was right, of course. No miracle, nor any medical machinery, is ever going to scrub that word off the wall. But in the years since, I have come to think he also missed the point. It wasn’t about miracles at all. It was simply a matter of (as the old vaudevillians used to say)…timing. We hadn’t really been wrong. The patient was locked in — as locked in as we all are, in this mortal shell, with only one way out. But the prison door hadn’t closed on him quite yet. Knowing as much as we do, spending so much of our time staring at something we don’t want to see, under the tension of not death so much as our denial, we had simply assumed the worst.
What I have learned from my patients since that day is that we give death power (as if it needs it) — power not to kill us but to rivet us, to silence us, to drive us from our humanity while we still live. We give death power precisely to the extent that we work to ignore it, to blind ourselves to its closeness, to imagine we have the power to stave it off forever. If we go through life imagining that, then the moment when we are forced to look at death can only rupture everything we know and paralyze us, still alive. That’s not a good way to die.
Death may be, as Wallace Stevens has it, the mother of beauty. But it’s also a lot like that Krebs cycle: It just keeps happening, whether we pay attention or not. You really can go about your business, as long as you remember that death is taking care of his. Air goes in and out. Blood goes round and round. Oxygen is good. Take care of yourself. And totally Melvin somebody today.
Taking Science on Faith.
Paul Davies: SCIENCE, we are repeatedly told, is the most reliable form of knowledge about the world because it is based on testable hypotheses. Religion, by contrast, is based on faith. The term “doubting Thomas” well illustrates the difference. In science, a healthy skepticism is a professional necessity, whereas in religion, having belief without evidence is regarded as a virtue.
The problem with this neat separation into “non-overlapping magisteria,” as Stephen Jay Gould described science and religion, is that science has its own faith-based belief system. All science proceeds on the assumption that nature is ordered in a rational and intelligible way. You couldn’t be a scientist if you thought the universe was a meaningless jumble of odds and ends haphazardly juxtaposed. When physicists probe to a deeper level of subatomic structure, or astronomers extend the reach of their instruments, they expect to encounter additional elegant mathematical order. And so far this faith has been justified.
The most refined expression of the rational intelligibility of the cosmos is found in the laws of physics, the fundamental rules on which nature runs. The laws of gravitation and electromagnetism, the laws that regulate the world within the atom, the laws of motion — all are expressed as tidy mathematical relationships. But where do these laws come from? And why do they have the form that they do?
When I was a student, the laws of physics were regarded as completely off limits. The job of the scientist, we were told, is to discover the laws and apply them, not inquire into their provenance. The laws were treated as “given” — imprinted on the universe like a maker’s mark at the moment of cosmic birth — and fixed forevermore. Therefore, to be a scientist, you had to have faith that the universe is governed by dependable, immutable, absolute, universal, mathematical laws of an unspecified origin. You’ve got to believe that these laws won’t fail, that we won’t wake up tomorrow to find heat flowing from cold to hot, or the speed of light changing by the hour.
Over the years I have often asked my physicist colleagues why the laws of physics are what they are. The answers vary from “that’s not a scientific question” to “nobody knows.” The favorite reply is, “There is no reason they are what they are — they just are.” The idea that the laws exist reasonlessly is deeply anti-rational. After all, the very essence of a scientific explanation of some phenomenon is that the world is ordered logically and that there are reasons things are as they are. If one traces these reasons all the way down to the bedrock of reality — the laws of physics — only to find that reason then deserts us, it makes a mockery of science.
Can the mighty edifice of physical order we perceive in the world about us ultimately be rooted in reasonless absurdity? If so, then nature is a fiendishly clever bit of trickery: meaninglessness and absurdity somehow masquerading as ingenious order and rationality.
Although scientists have long had an inclination to shrug aside such questions concerning the source of the laws of physics, the mood has now shifted considerably. Part of the reason is the growing acceptance that the emergence of life in the universe, and hence the existence of observers like ourselves, depends rather sensitively on the form of the laws. If the laws of physics were just any old ragbag of rules, life would almost certainly not exist.
A second reason that the laws of physics have now been brought within the scope of scientific inquiry is the realization that what we long regarded as absolute and universal laws might not be truly fundamental at all, but more like local bylaws. They could vary from place to place on a mega-cosmic scale. A God’s-eye view might reveal a vast patchwork quilt of universes, each with its own distinctive set of bylaws. In this “multiverse,” life will arise only in those patches with bio-friendly bylaws, so it is no surprise that we find ourselves in a Goldilocks universe — one that is just right for life. We have selected it by our very existence.
The multiverse theory is increasingly popular, but it doesn’t so much explain the laws of physics as dodge the whole issue. There has to be a physical mechanism to make all those universes and bestow bylaws on them. This process will require its own laws, or meta-laws. Where do they come from? The problem has simply been shifted up a level from the laws of the universe to the meta-laws of the multiverse.
Clearly, then, both religion and science are founded on faith — namely, on belief in the existence of something outside the universe, like an unexplained God or an unexplained set of physical laws, maybe even a huge ensemble of unseen universes, too. For that reason, both monotheistic religion and orthodox science fail to provide a complete account of physical existence.
This shared failing is no surprise, because the very notion of physical law is a theological one in the first place, a fact that makes many scientists squirm. Isaac Newton first got the idea of absolute, universal, perfect, immutable laws from the Christian doctrine that God created the world and ordered it in a rational way. Christians envisage God as upholding the natural order from beyond the universe, while physicists think of their laws as inhabiting an abstract transcendent realm of perfect mathematical relationships.
And just as Christians claim that the world depends utterly on God for its existence, while the converse is not the case, so physicists declare a similar asymmetry: the universe is governed by eternal laws (or meta-laws), but the laws are completely impervious to what happens in the universe.
It seems to me there is no hope of ever explaining why the physical universe is as it is so long as we are fixated on immutable laws or meta-laws that exist reasonlessly or are imposed by divine providence. The alternative is to regard the laws of physics and the universe they govern as part and parcel of a unitary system, and to be incorporated together within a common explanatory scheme.
In other words, the laws should have an explanation from within the universe and not involve appealing to an external agency. The specifics of that explanation are a matter for future research. But until science comes up with a testable theory of the laws of the universe, its claim to be free of faith is manifestly bogus.
Paul Davies is the director of Beyond, a research center at Arizona State University, and the author of “Cosmic Jackpot: Why Our Universe Is Just Right for Life.”
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Lecture on Compassion at the Artha Forum, Silicon Valley, by Radhanath Swami (Album with photos)
Radhanath Swami spoke recently at the home of Damodar Reddy, an entrepreneur and Founder of Sutisoft Inc., on the topic “Conscious Entrepreneurship – Deepening the Human Connection” as part of an event organized by Artha Forum. Artha Forum is a platform dedicated to connecting entrepreneurs, professionals and business leaders and bringing to them the relevance of ” Earn with Integrity, Spend With Compassion”. The event was attended by approximately 80 guests, including executives from Apple, Google and other important Silicon Valley companies, including Sushant Patnaik and his wife, Namrata, and the CFO from Pulse Secure. Dr. James R. Doty (Stanford Neurosurgeon and Direction of Stanford CCARE) attending as a Special Guest of Honor.
Dr. Doty gave the introduction, expressing that his happiness and his adoration for Radhanath Swami who began his talk by sharing his experiences of joining the counter culture movement as a youth as a way of searching for meaning and purpose in life. He was witnessing so much hatred and discrimination in the name of God and religion, and was inspired by the words of Mahatma Gandhi to “Be the change you want to see in the world”. His experiences lead him to realize that although externally there may be different methods and approaches to different religions, the underlying essence of all true religion is compassion. “In Sanskrit, its called Karuna. This is the foundation for a happy and meaningful life.”
Speaking to the group of leaders Radhanath Swami shared the idea that, “People don’t love you for what you have, your material attachments or position. People really love you for what you are. People love you because of how you have loved them and others. What really is meaningful in life? When you live a life of value and compassion, then your life is meaningful. It’s the greatest need today.”
“The quality of a truly enlightened person is that he sees everyone with an equal vision irrespective of their color, creed, nationality, complexion etc. Actual knowledge is to see the sacredness of every living being. When we recognize the sacredness of our own life, who we really are, the divine child of God, then we can appreciate the sacredness of every other living being. When we harmonize of our mind and body with our own self, then we can see that everything is sacred. We understand that we are not proprietors, but simply caretakers. We are caretakers of each other and the environment. Environmentalism is an eternal sacred principle. Everything we have is nature’s gift and we are simply caretakers.”
“The body is always changing. Who are we really? The living force within our body known as atma, is our real self. When we connect to our true self, we realize that we all have the potential to love. When we water the root, it naturally extends to the branches etc. Similarly connecting to our inner self, naturally extends to all beings. The real key to inner fulfillment is to connect to our real self and to live with integrity. We need to put quality time aside to cultivate our own internal awareness and inspire transformation of heart. The universal principle of all religion – to love God with all your heart and soul.”
Radhanath Swami then shared his appreciation of the entrepreuner, Rajeev Srivatsava and the example of his life, business and the spirit of service and compassion. He concluded with the message, “Every living entity has a certain beautiful quality, and as we grow through our experiences we can appreciate the divinity within every living being. Every part of the body is assisting all other organs of the body. Similarly, for the body of humanity to be happy, we have to appreciate the value that we all have. Compassion is to bring the best out of people to whatever capacity we have, by our example. Compassion doesn’t make us lazy. Real compassion makes us truly active.”
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Dear Sir, (Album with photos)
Yesterday my family and I attended your event, the Festival of India, in Mielno. It was a wonderful experience.
I read about Lord Krishna as a teenager when one day, by chance, I came across a book called, “The Science of Self Realization” in a local library. I was only 10 years old at the time and it wasn’t easy reading. Even today I am still trying to grasp the deep knowledge within that book. One thing I have understood from reading it is that my present life is not the only life I have lived. I have lived many lives. This I have realized by the grace of God.
Yesterday my 6-year-old daughter was invited onto the stage of your festival to take part in a singing prayer. It was a beautiful prayer repeated over and over. I was touched watching her so happy singing and dancing at the same time. It is something children rarely get to do these days. Her eyes were shining!
As I watched her I prayed she would remember those moments later in life and as a result, would be inspired to read “The Science of Self Realization” and understand the mysteries of life.
And O! How beautiful she looked in the sari which she received at the end of the prayer along with all the other girls on stage. What a wonderful gift. Thank you all so much.
I was so inspired by everything that at the end of the function I purchased a Bhagavad Gita As It Is, by your leader at a book stall. I feel strongly that this book will help me at this stage of life, wherein I am undergoing a number of difficulties. I pray it will take me from darkness to light, from despair to hope and ultimately to God. I desire that so much.
I am wishing you all the best in your upcoming festivals and I end this letter with deep gratitude!
With regards,
Jaroslaw
August 21, 2017
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The post Daily Darshan: August 23,2017 appeared first on Mayapur.com.
By Balaram Nityananda Das At the beginning of this year, I found out that one of my close friends, JD (a.k.a Janakinath) got diagnosed with cancer. When I spent time living as a monk, he gave me a lot of support and guidance, as he is and has been a monk for over 10 years! In such situations, one starts to lose faith, but I have not seen someone fight it with such spiritual drive and he still hasn't lost the smile from his face! Continue reading "Inspire Sundays with Monk: Janakinath Das
→ Dandavats"
Truth and Power.
Ananda Vrindavaneswari Dasi: There are big truths and small truths and truths that are true just for some and not for others.
There are also absolute truths - those that are for everyone. Dying is one of those. Old age another. No matter what we call them or how we try to avoid them, they come with the territory of the world.
These absolute truths, shared by all of us, are also powerful. Power, by this definition, is something that is stronger than us and can control us. Besides things like time and death, we also have mother nature that is super powerful, and even certain animals and people. A tiny mosquito has power that can kill us with a malaria-ridden bite!
To bring it closer to home, our own body has a certain amount of power. We recognize that our mind, senses and false ego, can madden, sadden, and bewilder us. They pull us here and there and everywhere in our search for happiness and yet at the end of the day often leave us feeling empty and alone.
For a better life, the practice of bhakti invites us to speak truth to power on a regular basis. Any material power, no matter how powerful, can be put into perspective by daily spiritual exercise.
The first truth is that we, as spirit souls, are something completely separate from our body and mind. We need not be defined by the experiences of our life. The soul cannot be burned by fire, withered by the wind, nor cut to pieces by any weapon. We are, happily, something untouched by this material body and the world around us.
We can speak that truth to any and all material power. Prabhupada said it many times and he would return to this truth again and again in his writings and lectures - “We don’t talk of any religion. The material consciousness should be changed into spiritual consciousness. That is our propaganda. It is meant for Hindu, Muslim, Christian, anyone. White, black, yellow, everything. Because it is the function of the soul. Soul is not black, white, yellow. Soul is spirit. So one has to realize that “I am spirit soul. I am not Indian nor American nor Englishman nor German nor white nor black. This is my bodily description. I am not this body.” This is the beginning of spiritual understanding.”
Life is messy and understanding it and all of its complexities can take a lifetime. With essential spiritual truths in our pocket, we can cut to the chase and stand tall against the weather patterns of our material karma. It is a truth that is both powerful and kind. It is the truth of the soul.
Book distribution by GBC members in Chicago (1 min video)
Watch it here: https://goo.gl/ZbwvKX 
The post Daily Darshan: August 22,2017 appeared first on Mayapur.com.
TOVP: Srila Prabhupada’s murti (Album with photos)
Ambarisa Das: Locan das prabhu, famous Iskcon sculpture, has been engaged by the TOVP project to make the life size murti of Srila Prabhupada for the Vyasasana in the new temple. This is the work so far. We wanted to capture Srila Prabhupada’s love, compassion, and wisdom. I think it is awesome!!!
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Harinama in Barnaul, Russia (Album with photos)
Srila Prabhupada: When there is large-scale congregational chanting of the Hare Krishna maha-mant... 
Appreciate now!
Vaisesika Das: After someone dies, friends and loved ones suddenly remember the deceased person’s good qualities, how important the person actually was to them, and so on.
“You don’t know what you’ve got ‘till it’s gone.”
Because this world is unpredictable, one should personally appreciate people while one has the opportunity.
Don’t wait.
Appreciate now.
“Your appreciation of devotees like Upendra and Ananda is super excellent. Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu taught us this lesson—one who appreciates a sincere devotee is eligible to approach the Supreme Personality of Godhead.” (Srila Prabhupada letter to Mr. Windisch, 21st March 1969)
Istagosti report.
Today is the auspicious appearance day festival of one of the most dearmost disciple of Srila Prabhupada, His Holiness Gour Govinda Swami Maharaja. At Mayapur, the disciples and devotees of Mayapur community came together to offer glorification & pushpanjali at his puspha Samadhi mandir. In the morning, video class of Gour Govinda Maharaj was played in the temple […]
The post HH Gour Govinda Swami Vyasapuja appeared first on Mayapur.com.
ISKCON Mayapur Nama-hatta, under the leadership of HH Jayapataka Swami and HH Gauranga Prem Swami, developed several Nama-hatta preaching centers in & aroud West Bengal. Nama-hatta is the most traditional of the congregational programs and mirrors the organization of a regular ISKCON temple with the leader and his assistants in the center. When HH Jayapataka Swami […]
The post Namahatta Sammelan in Mayapur appeared first on Mayapur.com.
Hallowed Be Thy Name (audio interview)
BBC Radio: Musician Jahnavi Harrison explores why chanting the name of God can be such a powerful devotional practice.
Drawing on her own Hindu tradition, she recalls hearing her parents chanting and how important it became to her from an early age. “The name of God,” she explains, “is said to be the panacea for whatever ails the mind, body and soul. It was the ever present soundtrack to my life - night, day, birthdays, funerals, weddings and road trips.”
Her experience at a Christian school also showed her that other religious traditions say and sing the God’s name. She notes that she was “thrilled to discover this common thread, and the myriad ways that this praise was expressed.”
Using the words of the Psalms, the Sufi poets and a number of Hindu saints and mystics, Jahnavi celebrates the power of chanting in different ways and locations and, alongside the music of Vivaldi and Rachmaninov, she relishes in the most famous of all Hindu songs, My Sweet Lord by George Harrison, who is quoted in the programme:
“My idea was to sneak up on them a bit. The point was to have the people not offended by ‘Hallelujah’ and, by the time it gets to 'Hare Krishna’, they’re already hooked.”
Presenter: Jahnavi Harrison
Producer: Michael Wakelin
A TBI Media production for BBC Radio 4.
Edinburgh Rathayatra, UK - 21st August 2017 (Album with photos)
Srila Prabhupada: Chanting involves the activities of the upper and lower lips as well as the tongue. All three must be engaged in chanting the Hare Krishna maha-mantra. The words “Hare Krishna” should be very distinctly pronounced and heard. (Sri Caitanya-caritamrta, Adi-lila, 17.3 Purport)
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The Sparkle In Their Eyes (10 min video)
Indradyumna Swami: Every samkirtan devotee knows the joy of sharing Krsna Consciousness with others. This video shows that joy first hand. All glories to the public chanting of Sri Krsna’s sweet holy names!
Watch it here: https://goo.gl/53jsMU
Answer Podcast
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Answer Podcast
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Answer Podcast
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