namahatta.org - Congregational Development Ministry

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."

This was an e-mail sent some time ago by HH Mahavishnu Swami on the use of Yeast; my own conclusion as faulty as it may be is that if we cannot offer it to the deities then it cannot be Krishna Prasadam and so not used.

It also reminds me of the importance of devotional life and the mercy of both Srila Prabhupada and our own Guru Maharaja’s in adjusting things to help make the adjustment into devotional life a little easier due to our conditioning as gross materialists.

It is December of 1936. Abhaya Caraṇāravinda Dāsa, a forty-year-old pharmaceutical distributor then in Bombay on business, feels a sudden impulse to write a letter to his spiritual master, Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura.

Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura

It is December 9, 1968, thirty-two years later. The same disciple—now a renunciant and spiritual master himself—finds himself in the city of Los Angeles where he relates to a gathering of his own disciples the story of his 1936 letter. He is observing with them the “Disappearance Day” of his spiritual master.

Clueless? Indeed.

As the bard of my generation once lamented:

You’ve been with the professors
And they’ve all liked your looks
With great lawyers you have
Discussed lepers and crooks
You’ve been through all of
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s books
You’re very well read
It’s well known

Because something is happening here
But you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

The real remedy for cluelessness is to become a person who can see things through the “eyes of knowledge” (jñāna-cakṣuṣaḥ). This blog (whose very title owes something to Dylan’s  “something is happening here”) aims to promote seeing through the eyes of knowledge.

Knowledge of the three modes (guṇa-traya) proves to be fruitful on a variety of levels. The principles that offer insight into the working of individuals also illuminate the characteristics of entire cultures or civilizations. Prabhupāda demonstrates this application in a comment on the Gītā: “Modern civilization is considered to be advanced in the standard of the mode of passion. Formerly, the advanced condition was considered to be in the mode of goodness.”

Prabhupāda’s remark provides us with an illuminating and useful way to comprehend recent western history.

Last Saturday afternoon at the Krishna-Balarama Mandir in Queens, NY, toward the end of conducting a workshop in chanting (japa-yoga), I felt thankful—as indeed I had on similar occasions—to be able to present the participants with the kind and reassuring statement that Kṛṣṇa himself offered Uddhava. And my auditors, whose sincerity and seriousness had become evident to me, were similarly grateful.

by David Haslam

• Do we take the need for association seriously?
• Do we truly know and understand the importance?
• Do we actually care?

Srila Prabhupada always stressed the need for association of devotees, with this association we develop the taste of pure devotional service and a deep understanding and appreciation of Krishna.

If we are always in association we can come to the point were we actually take it for granted or think that life would be far better away from the prying eyes of others, for those like me who have limited association at times stare into the pit of self pity and convince ourselves that in some way we do not need it anyway.

But I am also reminded of the importance of making sure that those devotees and aspiring devotees close by should be cared for, but at what stage do we say enough is enough, they neither care nor appear to have any interest in coming?