namahatta.org - Congregational Development Ministry

Sri Godruma Kalpatavi ("The Desire-tree Grove of Godruma") is an English translation of Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakura's newsletter collection. A very timely book release, as this year Sri Mayapur's Nama-hatta Department celebrates it's thirtieth anniversary.

Sri Godruma Kalpatavi was originally produced in Bengal one-hundred-and-twenty years ago by Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakura, to guide leaders and members in his preaching movement. The topics discussed are very practical issues often faced by those with families and careers who also want to fully engage in practicing and preaching Krishna consciousness.

HH Jayapataka Maharaja felt Godruma Kalpatavi to be so relevant to the lives of devotees today that he translated the text and inspired the current publication.

From HH Jayapataka Maharaja's introduction ("From the Publisher") to our Congregational Preaching Journal 12:

Holy Jail is a compilation by HH Candramauli Maharaja on the activities and stories of ISKCON's Prison Ministries (IPM). In their thirty years of operation, the lives of hundreds of inmates have changed due to the practice of Krishna consciousness and the support received by devotees.

The prisoners very beautifully with great depth express how they came to Krishna through the help of ISKCON Prison Ministries and how their lives have been changed for the better through the love and care showered upon them by IPM sevaks.

There are also wonderful memories of those great devotees who have served with ISKCON Prison Ministries and sadly left their material bodies to continue their eternal service. You'll also find anecdotes, a history of the Prison Ministries, letters, art, and poetry from prisoners, as well as their vyasa-puja offerings to Srila Prabhupada—an interesting and uplifting read.

Satya dd's Avatar: Dasi Lane

Hare Krishna!

Please accept my obeisances. All glories to Srila Prabhupada.

Please come visit us in Second Life for Gaura Purnima! Within you will find an invitation to our Gaura Purnima celebration in Second Life along with the festival schedule. We can only hope that devotees find this pleasing and attend. Thank you so much for passing the word along.

If you have any questions or I can help you with anything, please feel free to contact me.

Your servant,
Satya devi dasi

Vijay Venugopal das and Prema Padmini dd

And so the festival closed. In the morning, senior devotees including Krishna dasa Kaviraja Prabhu, Acala Prabhu, Vishvamitra Prabhu, and ourselves spoke. It had been a wonderful festival and the team who made the arrangements were all young Bhakti-vriksha leaders and members—more than half of them being women, including the main coordinator. Everyone praised their efforts and service, and also spoke of the wonderful loving atmosphere among the devotees throughout the festival. Bhakti-vriksha has clearly brought immense changes to the Russian devotee community, which was in decline only a few years ago.

Most significantly, the Bhakti-vriksha leaders and members are all disciples and prospective disciples of a whole array of gurus, proving that the Bhakti-vriksha system is not linked to any particular spiritual master in ISKCON. It flourishes in an atmosphere of freedom and enthusiasm, combined with serious training and advancement. The activities of the devotees, their seriousness in following vows, their happy acceptance of heavy responsibilities, in spite of being fully involved in family life, shows that these indeed are quality devotees. And it is this high quality of purity, sincerity, and commitment, which creates the large quantity. In short quality creates quantity—it is not that we have to choose between one or the other.

by HH Bhaktiraghava Maharaja

HH Jayapataka Maharaja took upon himself many great austerities to establish and promote the Nama-hatta program, from its early inception to its present day development. I remember how he would sometimes arrive from oversees and from the airport he would have to dash to the Howrah station in Kolkata to catch a night train, which would take him to some remote village where programs had already been scheduled.

He would make his way to the local pandal, sometimes using his own small flashlight as no one had thought of getting a proper torch or lantern. In those early days, the arrangements in the village were quite simple and somewhat humble in nature. Still Maharaja was always ready to accept any and all inconveniences to hold programs and preach in the local Bengali language to the eager local listeners.

by Kripamoya das

Wouldn't it be nice if all the religions could get along? Peacemakers like to suggest an impersonal way to do it. Sometimes they even try to use the Gita to support their ideas

"Well, we can understand that all you spiritual and religious people still need something to believe in. But please listen to us—there is a difference between the God of Religion and the Ultimate Reality. The first is the figure you believe in, pray to, and have a kind of emotional faith in. The second is a slightly more abstract notion of a state of universal, cosmic light from where all the incarnations and saints, angels and prophets come from and into which they merge after their time with us is finished."

"Youth Crew" is the name we (tentatively) decided to call our Ministry's youth section, instead of "youth wing," "youth preaching department," or the like. It's a name Zak came up with, who as of a few days ago, is heading this CD Ministry effort.

Unlike me Zak is a young devotee who grew up in different parts of the world, most recently in Sridham Mayapur and London, UK. He studied at Sri Mayapur Gurukula and finished his secondary education at a college in London. Recently he returned from the UK to live in Mayapur again, accepting the service of coordinating our Ministry's youth preaching efforts.

Ask yourself,

• Do you read Srila Prabhupada's books?
• Do you use vedabase when reading or searching Srila Prabhupada's books?
• Do you have access to the internet and some basic computer skills?
• Can you spare some time each day, week or month; an hour or two?
• Would you like to serve the devotee community is a special and unique way?

If you can answer "yes" to these questions, then Vanisava is for you. You can do it anywhere and everywhere, during your lunchbreak, or even sitting in your bed at home.

by HH Bhaktiraghava Maharaja

Just a few hundred years after the manifest pastimes of Lord Caitanya Mahaprabhu, the great acarya Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakura again took up the preaching mission of the Lord and recorded the following words in reference to the Nama-hatta preaching work:

boro sukher khabor gai surabhi-kunjete
namer hao khule'che khoda nita

"I am singing news of the greatest happiness! At the place known as Surabhi Kunja in Sri Navadvipa, the Marketplace of the Holy Name has now been opened and Lord Nityananda Himself is the Proprietor."

Vaisnava-siddhanta-mala

By the mercy of Lord Caitanya Mahaprabhu and by the mercy of Srila Prabhupada, the same preaching spirit meant to help inundate the entire world with the Hari Nama Sankirtan Movement of Lord Caitanya has also been introduced in the form of the Nama-hatta program by the devotees serving at Sridham Mayapur under the guidance and inspiration of HH Jayapataka Maharaja.

by David Haslam

This is for me the essence, this is the crucial lesson from Srila Prabhupada: that we have the cure and we have the measure to see if it works. This is our only standardization; the rest can only be achieved by forming relationships, getting to know the person, warts and all, and helping and guiding them on a single individual basis—encouraging and ever adjusting until the ultimate goal of self realization is achieved.

Like these core care plans, we need to individualize and personalize the way we administer and give the medicine. We will never be able to make a "one size fits all" devotee society, but we can make a society that recognizes individual traits, individual weaknesses, and individual strengths.

Then we can see how each one can help others in one way or another, and we will see externally the internal changes: the rough diamond becoming the glittering, all attractive gem it really is.

Would you like to live and operate in Sridham Mayapur and simultaneously serve all ISKCON communities in the world?

Type of Service: Full-time

Location: Sridham Mayapur, India

Remuneration: As required

Direct line of report: The Ministry's Operation Team

Summary Service Description:

• Coordinating communication with the Ministry's contacts, receiving and processing reports;
• Producing interviews and articles;
• Coordinating educational campaigns;
• Coordinating the production and circulation of books, magazines, and audiovisuals;
• Organizing presentations and seminars in Mayapur, with local educational institutes and visiting groups;
• Supervising resident staff and volunteers;
• Supervising the office and its equipment;
• Managing periodical events such as festivals, award ceremonies, etc.;
• Overseeing research and analysis of congregational dynamics within ISKCON and in other organizations;

I circulated the following around the New Vrindaban community and was, unfortunately, not surprised by this response from someone who makes sure to always keep himself in what he brands as a "leadership" position.

1. To turn the whole NV complex over to the dream of Balakrishna / Prabhupada is not realistic.

Okay, Prabhupada's "dream" (though he himself termed it a vision) is not realistic, in the view of one of our "esteemed" leaders. You can see what we are up against.

A Field Trip

by Bala Krishna das

I would like to take you on a journey, and am asking you to please fasten your seat belts. We are going to time-travel a few years into the future, to a small village, to take a little tour.

by Akruranatha das

I was very happy to see Niscala dasi's comments (Srila Prabhupada is Our Martin Luther, Dec. 29) to Hare Krishna dasi's article (Waiting for Iskcon's Martin Luther, Chakra, Dec. 25).

I was sorry to see the frustration and disillusionment with the whole ISKCON project that Hare Krishna dasi seemed to be expressing. Even though I've never met Hare Krishna Prabhu face to face, my first reaction upon reading her article was to want to go visit her wherever she lives and try to reassure her and listen sympathetically to her complaints. Surely her frustration must be due to a whole series of bad experiences and not only from one suggestion about "membership" raised by H.H. Sivarama Maharaja at a European GBC meeting (see: HH Sivarama Swami on Sex by Sita-pati to listen to Maharaja's podcast), which seems to have been not very well received by many major ISKCON constituencies and probably is not likely to be adopted or enforced. Hopefully Sivarama Maharaja's proposal will spark some constructive dialogue, as it already seems to be doing.

by Prema Padmini dd & Vijay Venugopala das

Caru Candra and Prana Govinda Prabhus arranged our tour from Cox's Bazar on the Bay of Bengal in the south of Bangladesh all the way to Sylhet in the north, close to the border with Assam in India.

Tuesday, 14 April: Cox's Bazar

Cox's Bazar boasts one of the longest beaches in the world. It is lined with many hotels and Bangladeshis flock there during all holidays. The temple is in the poorer part of town where most Hindus live. Here the roads are lined with open drains, narrow and dirty. The temple is built on a small plot of land with another building and shops in front. There is a big temple room with huge and beautiful deities of Sri Sri Jagannath, Baladeva, and Subhadra, donated by Ramani Manohar Prabhu, who became a devotee in Mathuradesh.

by Padmanetra das

It was the most remarkable year in my life when I joined ISKCON in 1989. Since being a new devotee I have always been interested in preaching activities, so I joined the Nama-hatta preaching division, helping HH Gauranga Prema Maharaja's preaching in north Bengal.

Later I got involved in our Nama-hatta office in Sri Mayapur, which manages preaching in India's eastern region, including the the states of Bengal, Orissa, and Assam. At present I am serving as one of the co-regional directors in charge of the southern parts of West Bengal. My godbrothers Gaurachandra and Biswajit Prabhus manage Nama-hatta preaching in central and and northern Bengal respectively. Over and above HH Gauranga Prema Maharaja guides us in reaching out to more and more people in a systematic way.

Here's a podcast that David Jorm and I recorded this morning. We talked around ISKCON membership, covering the Chocolate incident, and some wider ISKCON Constitutional issues.

• Podcast: ISKCON Membership, part A
• Podcast: ISKCON Membership, part B

Some related resources:

• David's blog
• H.H. Prahladananda Swami's 2006 paper "Duties of GBC and Guru

I've also attached a copy to this post, in case the other link goes dark at some point. Here's the section I quoted in the podcast:

Sarvasakti Mataji, reporting from Lima, Peru

The following is a brief report of the highlights of our Latin American Convention on Congregation Development, held this past weekend in Lima, Peru. Over twenty-five devotees attended; fourteen devotees representing seven countries, and another twelve from Peru. They all came to share their experiences and to learn from each other, and from the various topics our Ministry had to share.

From day one we started connecting, meeting everyone, allowing everyone to introduce themselves, and to share how they became involved in taking care of other devotees. By the end of the day we all had a laugh together, ready to work with each other.

by HH Gauranga Prema Swami

In our country, particularly in east India, "Nama-hatta" is not a new name. 'Nama' refers to the holy name, the maha-mantra:

hare krsna hare krsna krsna krsna hare hare
hare rama hare rama rama rama hare hare,

and 'hatta' means market place. Even in casual Bengali, hatta means market, but in this case there is a difference:

In material market places so many people come together for material exchanges like selling and buying. In the Nama-hatta, the market place of the holy name, Vaisnavas gather for congregational chanting, discourses, krsna katha, and exchange of loving feelings relating to Lord Krishna.

by Shyamagopika dd

Now we are approaching that time of the year where we need to prepare for the Damodara vrata month. Once I asked Srila Prabhupada whether we needed to do something special in this month; and he was saying that the month is specially to attract the new devotees, non-devotees. How?

Because the regular devotees, they are doing all the devotional services in all the months, therefore they get all the benefit.

I have been thinking about this and for the past many years we have been trying to give this opportunity to the non-devotees, to the new devotees, to take advantage of the month of Damodara. In this way we can also reap many different blessings ourselves.

The launch of the 2009 Deepavali Damodara Festival in Malaysia was highly anticipated by the devotees of Sri Jagannatha Mandir, ISKCON Kuala Lumpur (SJMKL) for two reasons. One was that the venue of the launch was to be at the temple premises itself, unlike previous years when it was held in the Kuala Lumpur City Centre. The other major reason for the excitement and joy was that this year's launch was to be graced by the presence of His Holiness Jayapataka Maharaja. His Holiness is very dear to the devotees of the Malaysian yatra, most being his disciples.

by Iksvaku das

This year, ISKCON Sri Mayapur is commemorating the thirtieth anniversary of their congregational preaching, or Nama-hatta. The initiative constitutes a milestone in fulfilling the desires of Sri Caitanya and the previous acaryas.

It started in West Bengal when a group of western and Bengali devotees, followers of Srila Prabhupada, began to preach Krishna consciousness in the villages around Mayapur. Despite the lack of facilities, the results were surprising: in less than one year thirty Nama-hatta sangas were formed.

by Sita-pati das

I was restoring a back up of my machine today and found a couple of articles that I wrote about Bhakti-vriksha. Phanisvara could tell me about when they were written if he can remember the event that I describe in it about namahatta.org, but it think it's a couple of years ago. Not sure if I published them previously, but here they are:

[Sorry, I can't find this article on our site, and don't remember publishing it earlier. I do remember the forum discussion mentioned, but that has been taken offline long ago.]

[The second part of Sita-pati's Bhakti-vriksha criticism is linked to this one as a book page; here is the direct link.] --phani.

I spent a couple of years working in technical support for a Linux operating system software vendor, supporting my family in between trying to do some missionary work. All too frequently in my job I would have a similar exchange to the the following with a customer:

Me: "Could you please try XYZ."
Customer: "It didn't work."
Me: "It didn't work... anything more specific than that?"
Customer: "It's just sitting there blinking."
Me: "O...K... but after you typed in the command, what did it say?"
Customer: "Oh, it said 'Error something something' and then a whole bunch of stuff."
Me: "Right... Do you think you could you read that error message to me please..."

Continuing on the theme of pay and if we should be paid for service and if so how much, there is as always a lot of gray area and the argument is divided into two camps; those who feel that there is a necessity for devotees to be paid and it does not detract from or diminishes the quality of service, and those who feel strongly that if devotees are getting paid to work in the temple or center, then this cannot in any way be counted as service.

We see in many spiritual organizations that this issue over pay has been addressed in a variety of ways, from those who work and support their ministry service to those who are supported by the local congregation or spiritual organization they are part of.

This weekend the theme of our Sankirtan Festival here at ISV is loving exchanges. This is such a wonderful focus because that is really what ISKCON and sharing Krishna consciousness is all about. Unfortunately many people have been turned away by our "preaching," or by the way people within the Hare Krishna movement have presented Krishna consciousness because it was not a loving exchange, but done in the mood of lust or exploitation.

Every action is either an expression of pure love and meant to satisfy the transcendental sense of Krishna, or it is an expression of selfishness meant to satisfy our own mind and senses.

BBTedit.com puts annotated Gita scans online

The BBT has launched a new website, BBTedit.com, full of information about the editing of Srila Prabhupada's books.

Among the features:

• More than 80 video clips: BBT editors and other senior devotees offer facts and perspectives on editorial history, myths, and controversies.
• A collection of Srila Prabhupada's instructions about editing.
• First time ever: Annotated scans of Jayadvaita Swami's copy of the 1972 Gita showing his editing for the second edition.

"The book is the authority. So how can you change it?"

Lord Vamanadeva appeared within this world from the womb of Aditi, the mother of the gods. He appeared at midday on the shravan-dvadasi, the 12th day of the lunar month of Shravan when the moon is waxing.

There are many lessons for Vaishnavas to learn from the narration of His activities, as found in the 8th canto, 18th chapter of the Bhagavat Purana (Srimad Bhagavatam). Amongst the lessons are these:

1. That God comes to this world in many forms; not just once, in one form, or even many times in the same form, but many times in many forms. He is never limited by the form, but remains all powerful.

I found the TIME Magazine article Why Exercise Won't Make You Thin, by John Cloud, informative and useful in shattering some commonly-held myths, which also devotees might implicitly accepts as facts.

Among the essential messages distilled by the author—a committed (self-defined) "gym-rat"—is the notion that "fiery spurts of vigorous exercise could lead to weight gain." How could that be? Simple: After strenuous workouts people get hungry and eat more calories than what they loose; plus they tend to reward themselves with foods they would have avoided if they did not exercise; plus the fatigue accumulated tends to make them more reticent to perform more physical work during the rest of the day.