namahatta.org - Congregational Development Ministry

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 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 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..."

This frank admission of the challenges faced by the Bhakti-vriksha program is a breath of fresh air.

Here are a few of my observations:

1. Lack of Leadership Support

One of the issues explained in this article is a lack of widespread support for the initiative by the leadership of ISKCON.

One of the qualities of an effective manager or leader is realism. Leaders need to be able to make a realistic assessment of the situation, in order to calculate a course from where they are now to where they want to go. "Know yourself and know your enemy and you need not fear defeat in any battle."

In our ongoing publication of the Bhakti-vriksha Diaries we are jumping to the current year; earlier entries will be published later.

Katwa, Sitahatti, and Bangladesh Tours (April 2009)

Vijay Venugopal das
and Prema Padmini dd

On 8 April we were taken in a Tata Sumo to Nirmala Krishna Prabhu's house, accompanied by Sumadhur Krishna Prabhu, his wife, two daughters, and two sons. The daughters Vrinda and Sumitra now speak excellent English, studying at the Bhaktivedanta School in Mayapur, and the sons, Sudama and Subal Sakha, are very mischievous. The girls are closer to us due to our association in Mathuradesh, and we had many loving exchanges with them throughout the trip.

Also with us was Sita Ram Lakshman Prabhu, temple president of Perth, Australia, whom we have known since he accompanied Guru Maharaja to Mathuradesh years earlier; with him we discussed preaching in Australia.

The vyasa-puja of HH Prabhavisnu Maharaja was observed in the morning and Aditi Dukhaha Prabhu sang his intense kirtanas. Back at the room we found the GSM had no more memory space for taking pictures; we had to transfer them to portable USB memory via Bluetooth and delete them from the mobile phone. Using a devotee's laptop, struggling with the settings, we finally succeeded. Lunch was brought to our room by eager devotees, and we went to conduct a seminar, 'Happy Vaishnava Life,' at 5 pm.

A cold day, and today guru-puja was shifted to a summer auditorium—which meant it was designed to let in the breeze which, in autumn, was freezing. The legendary Russian singer Aditi Dukhaha Prabhu was at the mike, and his kirtana really rocked!

Aditi Dukhaha and Aindra in Sri Mayapur, 2007—click to view.

Development during the Year 2008

Bangalore Bhakti-vriksha Yatra follows the Bhakti-vriksha method of preaching to spread Krishna Consciousness. By the causeless mercy of Guru and Gauranga, this year we could attract lots of new people to devotional service under the ISKCON umbrella; this brought about advancement in the existing members' spiritual lives, too. Everyone is enthusiastic, inspired and we could witness a steady growth all around.

Following are some of the factors in the Yatra's growth:

by Vijay Venugopal dasa and Prema Padmini dd

Monday, 17 September 2007

A sunny day at last! For people who live in the tropics, this is nothing special. But in the temperate regions, when the weather turns cloudy and rainy, the sun is something to long for. We had breakfast of bread and cheese, and went for the seminars at eight o’clock.

Carudesna Prabhu recapped that the evolution of the mind takes place in four stages:

by Sita-pati das

I'd always chalked up the success of Bhakti-vriksha among ex-pat. Indian populations to "cultural predisposition" to Krishna consciousness. Now, this is true. However, it's a special case of a general principle that can also be applied to Western populations. That is, that Bhakti-vriksha groups fulfill a social and psychological need of the participants, and they do so in a Krishna conscious way.

The homesick and newly nationally chauvinistic young student in a foreign land (I'm sorry, but New Zealand is the best damned country in the world) has psychological needs that participating in a Bhakti-vriksha group fulfils. The role of temple as a hub of social life is also fulfilled, especially in Muslim countries where temple worship and congregation is forbidden, and where Bhakti-vriksha preaching had its earliest successes.

So what this means is that Bhakti-vriksha is not impossible among populations who are not "culturally predisposed" to Krishna consciousness, it's just a question of understanding what their psychological and social needs are, and meeting those in the context of the small group program, in a Krishna conscious way.