by Vasumurti das

In his book, Holy Cow, author Steven Rosen (Satyaraja dasa) does an expert job of explaining the philosophy and history of the sankirtana movement to nondevotees. He begins by quoting Srila Prabhupada as saying, "Real philosophy is nothing more than this: 'friendliness to all living entities.'"

Rosen explains that devotees do not artificially renounce the material world, but rather engage it in Lord Krishna's service. Offering one's food to Krishna is a standard Vaishnava practice, which Rosen compares to the Eucharist in Christianity—sacramental food.

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Commitment is an essential feature of all devotee relationships, especially the marriage relationship.

All of us have ups and downs, periods of craziness, and periods of clarity. Of course, as we become purified, situated in goodness and, ultimately, transcendental, we fluctuate less and less in our mood and character. But while our material conditioning still has a grip on us we experience periods of more or less Krishna consciousness.

This been said, devotees who have seriously committed themselves to applying the process have in effect declared, by this demonstration of commitment, that they deeply value purity of heart and aspire for it themselves. When a person shows such commitment and dedication, Krishna takes a personal interest in them and is committed to them in return. As devotees we must do the same for each other.

by Anuttama das

On June 20, 2008, Paramount Pictures releases The Love Guru nationwide. The film tells the story of Guru Pitka (Mike Myers), a westerner raised at an Indian ashram, who grows up to be a high-profile and eccentric holy man come west.

While the level of humor contained in the film is crass, the comedy has drawn significant attention even before its official opening—both pro and con—and from Hindu-Americans concerned that it violates appropriate boundaries in dealing with a religious subject.

On behalf of the North American chapters of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), a Vaishnava, or devotional Hindu organization with an ethnically diverse membership, we understand that many Hindus are concerned that the film may mock their faith. At the same time, having seen the film in its entirety, we find it to be a typical satire that does not intend to hurt religious sentiments.

Our Bhaktivinode Thakur Sankirtan Festival begins today with a harinam procession in downtown Palo Alto. Here is an excerpt from an email Vaisesika Prabhu sent out to inspire everyone for the upcoming festivities.

It is a really amazing glimpse into the heart of a vaishnava; I am very grateful to be connected to such a wonderful personality.

A deus ex machina (Latin IPA: de:us eks ma:khina (literally "god out of a machine") is an improbable contrivance in a story. The phrase describes an artificial, or improbable, character, device, or event introduced suddenly in a work of fiction or drama to resolve a situation or untangle a plot (such as an angel suddenly appearing to solve problems, or the entire story having been just a dream one of the characters was having).

Wikipedia

After hundreds of devotees have signed an online petition against GBC Resoluton 311, including many senior devotees and disciples of Srila Prabhupada, and the issue became a hot topic on several devotees' blogs, the directors of the BBT decided to keep Srila Prabhupada's books as they are and not to add footnotes or annotations, or change them in any way to make them more palatable to today's educated audiences.

by Vijay Venugopal dasa and Prema Padmini dd

Everyone got their turn to pour different coloured ingredients on their Lordships: milk, ghee, curds, and all sorts of juices. Then, as They were being dried and dressed, my husband narrated the story of the pastimes at Panihati, which everyone heard with great enthusiasm and joy, resolving to think of the lake as the river Ganga, hoping Their Lordships would bless them.

Once dressed, Caitanya Avatari and I in turn led a rousing kirtana, going round and round the deities with the devotees. Offerings were made, and we finally enjoyed the delicious mahaprasadam—chipped rice separately, and all the other items mixed together. The other visitors to the lake, as well as some locals, also got their share.

As His Holiness Bhakti Vidya Purna Maharaja put it so succinctly: "When men are men, women are women."

That's a simple yet powerful statement with profound implications in terms of both ideal and strategy for implementation.

A lot of problems come when unqualified men demand that roles be respected when qualification is not present. This is the same dynamic that lead the people to reject the varnas at the time of Buddha. Similarly people have rejected traditional gender roles.

Just as both Buddha and Sankara demonstrated at their relative points in the course of social development, we need intelligent readjustment. We have to keep the goal in sight like the pole star ("normative view" in the language of Krishna-kirti prabhu), and work our way back onto the "royal road" of varnasrama (as Srila Prabhupada describes it Bhagavad-gita—the safer path).

by Kaunteya Das

No, it's not my daughter—nor the daughter of any of my friends. It's the name of the new youth Nama-hatta group inaugurated in Mexico City.

On 21 May 2008, at around 4:00 pm, His Holiness Bhakti-bhusana Swami (GBC and initiating guru), accompanied by fifteen to twenty devotees (including yours truly) from the local temple, went to officially, and joyously, start the new congregational group coordinated and hosted by Bhaktin Carla. The devotees' happiness and enthusiasm was obvious.

by Devaki dd

The highlight of my visit to Mayapur this year was Anuttama Prabhu's seminar on leadership and management—an extremely valuable course, which teaches so many important skills and principles of effective leadership and management.

Taking this course confirmed my realization that there is another reason why we have lost so many devotees worldwide over the past years besides the fact that we have failed to create a supportive spiritual culture which would give nourishment and shelter to each and every devotee joining this movement. We have also failed to educate and train our leaders systematically and equip them with the necessary skills in order to become true servant-leaders, who lead with affection and detachment. Rather we have so often allowed that dangerous weed to grow and flourish: the attachment to power, position and facilities...

Of course, for a movement like ours to grow, we need the book distributors to also become interested in the people who actually read the books as well as those who buy them. We also need them to be interested in someone who, after reading one of Srila Prabhupada's books, decides to take up the practises of bhakti-yoga such as chanting the Hare Krishna mantra and offering food on their home altar.

Whilst it is tempting for any of us to simply be a book distributor, it defies logic if, after a person reads the book you gave them, for us to then not be interested in that newcomer's welfare. It defies logic but it does happen sometimes. Unfortunately, there are not enough devotees for some of us to 'only' be book distributors. Each of us must also be well-rounded teachers and encouragers to everyone who takes up our Vaishnava path.

Tucked in the upper northwestern corner of Mexico, between the Pacific Ocean and the U.S. border, Tijuana—said to be the most-crossed frontier point in the world—is a nondescript urban metastasis, born from countless people’s dream of crossing the line from poverty (their birthplaces in Latin America) to prosperity (Yankee land).

No imposing cathedrals or picturesque old-town here; on the other hand, plenty of drugs and other Kali-yuga specialties are easily available. Yet even here, Sri Krishna Caitanya Mahaprabhu’s devotees actively engage in reawakening their consciousnesses and kindling bhakti. This outpost is some three thousand kilometers away from the capital and the main temple in the country, but otherwise is close to San Diego and Los Angeles. As a result, they have received the visit of such luminaries as Radhanatha Maharaja and Devamrita Maharaja.

Recently the GBC has been considering multiple ISKCON centers in one city. It's an inevitable historical development that is currently being groked. One center cannot be all things to all people. The reality is that a cutting-edge urban preaching center reaching out to a western population has radically different priorities to an established ISKCON temple serving Deities and an established congregation including many ex-pat Indians. You can't effectively do both in the same place at the same time.

In order to have these two centers functioning at their optimum we've discovered that you need to have separation and cooperation between the two—they need to be interdependent. Each can remain focused on its core values and identity. There needs to be a constant process of communication and negotiation between the two. One cannot be subservient to the agenda of the other. In this way they can coexist in a symbiotic relationship.

Over the weekend I went to visit the Gaura Yoga centre in Wellington. It was very inspirational to see what they've done there. In my travels within ISKCON, I have seen nothing quite like it. Although there are many places trying to learn from its model, there is no substitute for the original. There are three aspects to what they do there which I think make it so special.

by Bhakta Mike, posted May 13, 2008

In response to a law suit citing obstruction of religious practice, the Arizona attorney general has requested the Tucson ISKCON temple and Govinda's Natural Foods Restaurant to provide three meals a day for inmate Jeff Walls, a Hare Krishna devotee in Federal Prison. Walls told the state that eating the prison food violated his religious practice of only eating sanctified food prepared in a clean, meat free kitchen by a brahmana with spiritual consciousness. The attorney generals office is negotiating with temple president Sandamini Mataji to provide those meals.

I visited the Museum of Tolerance a couple weeks ago (an outing we went on at my place of employment). The lessons taught were valuable and heart touching. The museum showed examples in history in which outer bodily distinctions like race, religion, gender, culture, and handicaps turned people against each other, like in the holocaust and segregation in America. Spiritual life is one solution to such problems, because the goal of real spiritual life is to become free from bodily designations—to not see ourselves and others as black, white, male, Christian, Hindu, teacher, lawyer, etc. but to know and see the essence of each person as a spirit soul.

Here is a message from HH Bhakticaru Maharaja to the PAMHO conference BCS Istagosthi, encouraging us to pay as much attention to Srila Prabhupada's Bhagavad-Gita as to our cell phones. While there is plenty of room for improvement in my Gita study habits, I don't pay much attention to my mobile phone; but I see many others, teenagers mostly, fiddling around with their phones all the time.

For many cell phones have become indispensible accessories; they would as soon leave home naked than leave without their phones. While it would be good to carry Bhagavad-Gita with us at all times, I doubt if many will adopt this practice. For those who own an iPhone or iPod-touch, though, this has become a lot easier now, thanks to Vinod Bihari Prabhu, who adapted some of the texts available at vedabase.net for use with these devices.

From this list we can see that the ISKCON of the 21st century has more than enough information to conduct its preaching activities. Most things we do will never change; how we do them might. Information technology has given us access to digitisation and rapid transit of the message of Krishna, to film, satellite television, and to the Internet. But it also means that atheism uses the same techniques. Ultimately, it will not be our means of transmitting information that will help the mission in the 21st century, but the oldest technique of all: making friends.

The current demographics of ISKCON tell the story that we now have many more people and many more centres in countries where ISKCON’s presence would have been unimaginable before. But out of the quarter million more people that ISKCON has since the day that Srila Prabhupada stood under a tree in a New York park, hardly 5% of them live in the communal way that he envisaged as being most helpful for spiritual life.

A few weeks ago I had a realization that it's healthy to be proud of something that's worth being proud of. That's kind of axiomatic, isn't it? Pride without something worth being proud of, however, is pathological, and that's the kind of unrealism that gets people into trouble.

Here's something worth being proud of:

Staff Sgt Aristotle Sonnenberg, aka Partha-sarathi das, a US soldier deployed in Iraq, was recently awarded a medal for exemplary bravery and leadership in combat conditions. This award recognized his pivotal role in saving the lives of 56 injured Iraqis while under fire.

Hare Krishna.

I have the good God given fortune to work at a place that challenges staff and clients to think outside the box, to challenge our daily habits and routines, to do things consciously and with purpose, and to reach our human potential.

Lately we have been speaking about two things that make me think about Krishna consciousness and the way we practice it.

First, we are focusing on breaking out of routines, out of our daily little comfort box we live in, going to new places, meeting new people, trying new tasks, etc. There is a big world out there with unlimited possibilities if we put on our creative hats, but human beings have a tendency to get stuck in the comfort of routine.

The first is that the idea of charity is very important for creating a spiritual revolution in society. In Srimad Bhagavatam 1.17.38 Srila Prabupada specifically mentions charity "up to fifty percent" as one of the three principle points in his manifesto for respiritualizing society. If we are going to really spread Krishna consciousness in a major way, to create the spiritual revolution that Srila Prabhupada repeatedly speaks about in his books, then we will need serious resources to make that happen. Of course the commitment of resources follows from a personal commitment to spiritual life, but a commitment to spiritual life is tangible. It is not just a vague sentiment but practical action.

Join the growing number of Bhakti Homes!
Have your place recognized as a

Sraddha-kutir

An Abode of Faith and Spirituality

Srila Prabhupada Wished to See All Homes Transformed into a Center of Spiritual Cultivation

"Everyone can establish a small temple in his house, and he can begin family-wise—himself, his wife, his children. That is wanted. This Krishna consciousness movement wants to see that every house has become a temple of Krishna. That is our program."

(Lecture, 13 December 1972)

In ISKCON, this aspect of nurturing every single family into a “center of Krishna conscious faith” has not yet developed to its fullness, although it is a central and core strategy for the respiritualization of the world. This Sraddha-kutir initiative (Sraddha-kutir is the original term used by Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakura) aims at acknowledging the residences of practicing devotees as places of spiritual cultivation. It’s an invitation to every family, couple, or single to be formally recognized as an “ISKCON-followers unit.”

In the notes of the last Euro-GBC meeting (Mayapur, 2008), there is this currious action item:

TRADEMARKS Praghosa dasa will inquire whether it is possible to trademark ‘The Hare Krishna Movement’ and the cost for doing it.

If this statement were trademarked, then would this create a spiritual liability, an impediment, for those who may not necessarily identify with institutional ISKCON? The "Hare Krishna Movement" is a referent for Lord Caitanya's Sankirtana movement, not ISKCON specifically, and although ISKCON has been an important part of the Hare Krishna Movement's historical legacy, by no means can institutional ISKCON be said to be the Hare Krishna Movement's exclusive heir and proprietor.

The bureaucratic restriction of the use of such a broadly applicable name would be something like trying to prune the branches of the Caitanya Tree to one branch and not letting any others grow.

Let ISKCON keep the acronym "ISKCON" trademarked. They can have as much control over its use by others as they want. But do not trademark names like "The Hare Krishna Movement". There will be branches of the Chaitanya Tree that will not be a part of ISKCON, and they should be rightfully recognized by that name without the fear of being threatened by legal sanction.

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by bhakta Jason Matthews

It was 1973 when I first came into contact with Krishna’s pure devotees. I was five years old and traveling through the Frankfurt airport with my parents and older brother. In thinking back on the experience it’s really odd that I remember it so clearly now, especially as it has become covered by other experiences of conditional life and remained forgotten for thirty two years.

As a very inquisitive child, I liked to explore and ask many questions of my parents and others around me. Therefore, it was always necessary for either my mom or dad to hold my hand so I did not wander off into the environment. This occasion was no different. My eyes were darting around from one person to another. Looking up and down the airport corridors, I was indeed enarmoured by all of the activity.

Saturday marked the finale of the grand ten day out-reach festival, "inSpirit" organized by couple of the local Toronto Devotees as a forum to do active preaching to the Yoga and the Student Community.

His Holiness Devamrita Swami was the guest speaker for this festival and it was organized by the Bhakti Yoga Club and the Urban Edge Yoga, two outreach projects undertaken by the Toronto temple devotees.

Needle less to say, I am yet to come down for the whirlwind of the past ten days. It was an amazing experience, watching how powerful the Holy name and the teachings from Srila Prabhupad's books and see it being understoon and experienced by a completely different audience.