Here is a very nice video broadcast on krishna.com live where Mahatama dasa talks about the mood of chanting and how we should be aware of pronounciation and concentration on the sound vibration.

[Watch Video]

This is a lovely clip produced by a devotee on YouTube:

[Watch Video]

This is a collection of posts from atmayogi.com, Sita-pati Prabhu's personal blog, where he analyzes public debates between different opponents, showing which mistakes to avoid, and how to act in difficult situations.

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Date: 

8 weeks 4 days ago

Original article: 

http://www.atmayogi.com/node/858

Great points from Seth Godin, easy to apply to a Krishna Conscious outreach program - especially if you are free from the layers of constraints and expectations imposed by doing a traditional program in a temple. My comments, based on doing the Hare Krishna Sunday Feast in Brisbane's Govinda's restaurant for two years, inline:

Easily overlooked, but incredibly important: the way you arrange the room where people speak.

On a related but separate note, further to the points that I made in Preaching in the post-Gay-Marriage World about de- and recontextualized quoting of Srila Prabhupada, I should add that cutting and pasting a whole lot of Prabhupada's statements from different places to create a compendium is also creating a different context, and thus quoting out of context.

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Author: 

Madhava Gosh

Date: 

15 weeks 3 days ago

Original article: 

http://walkingthefenceline.wordpress.com/2008/05/13/vedabase-hint-copying-large-...

Some devotees think, that because they are devotees, they must preach instantly to whomever they meet. Perhaps if we had the required force of purity, we could effect changes in people’s hearts on first contact. The reality is however, that not everyone has the required sukrti to appreciate our words; we have to create it for them.

Being in the workplace alongside the same faces, day in and day out, can present challenges for a devotee keen on preaching. Simply letting everyone there know one is a devotee, who always has a superior say on any issue, will more likely cause others to think we are highly opinionated and indifferent, have lost the ability to socialize properly. This will lessen or even destroy any chance of developing the required sukrti for them to hear Lord Caitanya’s messages.

by Kripamoya das

Do you fear public speaking? It’s a helpful skill to have, but requires practise. Here are a few tips I have written down over the years:

Sitapati Prabhu published this detailed instruction of how to prepare and give a good class as an attached MS-Word document on his blog, www.atmayogi.com, at this address. (Download the original word-doc. here.)

I've taken the liberty to publish it here, reformatted in HTML, with some minor editing which, in my opinion, makes it more readable and user-friendly. I hope Mahavan Prabhu, the author and head of the Parama Karuna Men's Ashram in Wellington, New Zealand, doesn't mind.

by Vyenkata Bhatta Dasa (Vineet Chander) on 30 Sep 2007

On my first day of my first full-time job, my supervising attorney herded us new hires into a windowless room that housed three ancient-looking FAX machines and was littered with reams of paper, ink toner cartridges, and assorted office supplies. The room was tight, but remarkably accommodated the five or six of us standing around in a semi-circle. And this, the supervisor informed us, was very much the point. This glorified supply closet was meant to be the place where casual social interactions and banter about current events was to take place between co-workers. In deference to that all-American colloquial shorthand, it had been long ago dubbed “the Water Cooler room” – despite the fact that it lacked anything remotely resembling water. “Oh, just one piece of advice,” the supervisor said as she herded us back to our cubicles, “Stay away from discussing sports, politics, and religion.”

Table of contents to an extensive work on brahmacarya by the "Divine Life Society," a mayavadi-organization founded by Swami Sivananda. While they are staunch in their mayavadi conclusions—they even explain Krishna's rasa-lila pastimes from an impersonal angle—they do have a scientific understanding of the vedic world view and, apart from their final conclusion of merging into the Supreme, are talking a lot of sense.

Source: Ultimate Self-Realizaton

As you walk down the supermarket aisles selecting the foods you will offer to Krishna, you need to know what is offerable and what is not. In the Bhagavad-gita, Lord Krishna states, "If one offers Me with love and devotion a leaf, a flower, a fruit, or water, I will accept it." From this verse it is understood that we can offer Krishna foods prepared from milk products, vegetables, fruits, nuts, and grains. Meat, fish, and eggs are not offerable. And a few vegetarian items are also forbidden—garlic and onions, for example, which are in the mode of darkness. (Hing, or asafetida, is a tasty substitute for them in cooking and is available at most Indian groceries.) Nor can you offer to Krishna coffee or tea that contain caffeine. If you like these beverages, purchase caffeine—free coffee and herbal teas.

While shopping, be aware that you may find meat, fish, and egg products mixed with other foods; so be sure to read labels carefully. For instance, some brands of yogurt and sour cream contain gelatin, a substance made from the horns, hooves, and bones of slaughtered animals. Also, make sure the cheese you buy contains no rennet, an enzyme extracted from the stomach tissues of slaughtered calves. Most hard cheese sold in America contains rennet, so be careful about any cheese you can't verify as rennetless.

Source: Ultimate Self-Realizaton

You will likely find that your japa and kirtana are especially effective when done before an altar. Lord Krishna and His pure devotees are so kind that they allow us to worship them even through their pictures. It is something like mailing a letter: You cannot mail a letter by placing it in just any box; you must use the mailbox authorized by the government. Similarly, we cannot imagine a picture of God and worship that, but we can worship the authorized picture of God, and Krishna accepts our worship through that picture.

For those who feel inspired to take up the process of Krishna consciousness but don't get the benefit of devotee association at this time, the basic principles are explained here.

I found this article at the Ultimate Self-Realization web site, where you can subscribe to a free online-course conducted by HG Sankarsan das adhikari (ACBSP) and find numerous articles about bhakti-yoga, including some in Spanish and Latvian language.

As far as I can tell the article was originally published by the BBT and can be ordered as a small, inexpensive booklet here.

by Kaunteya Das

Yesterday I was reading in Sri Caitanya-caritamrita the episode of Haridas Thakura turning a prostitute into a devotee. The envious rascal Ramacandra Khan had hired her to make the Thakura fall down and then arrest him, but after a few days of association, her mind changed and she surrendered to Haridas Thakura as a disciple.

Before leaving, Haridas Thakura told her, "Chant the Hare Krishna mantra continuously and render service to the tulasi plant by watering her and offering prayers to her. In this way you will very soon get the opportunity to be sheltered at the lotus feet of Krishna." (Cc Antya-lila 3.137).