namahatta.org - Congregational Development Ministry

• IPM is actively arranging for leading preachers to visit prisons and lead prison preaching programs. We encourage inmates to organize these programs with at least five to ten people attending. Please give us sufficient notice and instructions on how to co-ordinate such a program and we will be delighted and eager to hold a Krishna consciousness sat-sanga program.

  Param vijayate Sri Krishna sankirtanam

  Contact bhakta Jerry with details.

• If any inmates need a copy of Tirtha Prabhu's The Definitive Guide to Practicing Krishna Consciousness in Prison, or, if you are in need of Srila Prabhupada's books in Spanish, or, if you are in need of CDs or cassette tapes of lectures and bhajans, please contact bhakta Jerry.

• IPM is now offering deity altar pictures for those inmates who are willing to take on the responsibility of deity worship within their facility. This nice altar set comes compliments of Candramauli Swami and has all the altar pictures necessary on a nice 8.5 by 11 inch cardstock paper. We are also providing descriptions and prayers to help inmates properly worship their deities. For an altar set please contact bhakta Jerry.

by His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada

...Continued from the last issue...

If you hear about Krishna, if you chant about Krishna, if you think about Krishna, if you worship Krishna, if you render some service to Krishna, if you offer everything to Krishna, you'll see Krishna always, twentyfour hours a day. This is bhakti-yoga. My students in the Krishna consciousness society are following these principles: They are cooking for Krishna, dancing for Krishna, singing for Krishna, talking for Krishna, going around the world for Krishna— everything for Krishna. Anyone can adopt these principles. Where is the difficulty?

by Chandrasekar das

“The benediction moon of the mercy of Sri Caitanyacandra shone only in the courtyards of the professional brahmanas proficient in various rituals, and the prominent and wealthy vaisyas who were as laden with laksmi as the beehives overflowing with honey in Sri Vrindavana-dhama. Sri Gaurahari and his brother Sri Nityananda Rama never chanted the holy names amongst the contaminated masses, which included prisoners of state, students, women, the lowborn, sudras, simple villagers, the forlorn, the distressed, and the unsophisticated.”

—Swami Bogananda’s Bogus Caitanya Upanisad

“Everything is so surrea l… As the senses flash before me … I see the mirror, but I am unable to see my reflection for the dust … ‘Flash’ I see the womb and I know it covers the embryo … ‘Flash’ I see the opposite sex … a feeling of heat burns, there is smoke and that’s how I know there is fire … ‘Flash’ I see Krishna and I awake from my nightmare.”

What does my dream mean, where does it come from and why is the flash of the opposite sex so intense that it stands above the others? These questions and many more roll through my mind like marbles in a whirlwind. Fortunately, there is a way to stop the whirlwind and collect my marbles, but in order to do this I must first understand why my marbles have tumbled from me.

By Bhakta Kendrick Curry

Everyone wants to be happy. The sad truth is that most of us do not understand what true happiness is, where it is found or how to go about attaining it. Fortunately for us all, the Supreme Lord, Sri Krishna, has given us the keys to happiness in His famous discourse, the Bhagavad-gita. Once we come to know the source of and the means to achieve happiness we can understand that our focus must be within ourselves, for happiness is an intrinsic quality of our true self.

By Bhakta Carl Sheppard

... He found his mind on his first birthday, surrounded by giants and bright colored balls of light. He suddenly realized the giants and balloons were there for him and because of him. His shrieks of laughter filled the room when he found his mind. When he was two his mind found its creativity, joy and happiness. When he was four he was punished and he found pain and suffering because he could not understand what he did wrong. At six, the bull calf he loved and nurtured was killed for food by his father. He loved Billy the bull and stayed with him everyday. At night he would sneak out into the pasture and sleep curled up with the bull. When Billy was killed his mind found hate, anger, fear, revenge and horror. And when he was thirteen he found freedom by running away from his farm in California to San Francisco.

By Bhakta Arthur

By Bhakta David Lightsey

By Bhakta Victor

During the segregation period a vast amount of energy had been put into litigation against this unjust punishment. It was unacceptable since I had not engaged in any activity that would warrant an investigation and since no real investigation was actually taking place. Later, another realization came that there was no existence of punishment and only promotion. Had Krishna called in the wilderness in order to bestow and perfect His favor? That is, He granted me the favor of being in close association with a devotee and granted me the opportunity to become a part of this great movement.

We can become so entangled in our personal concern that we start reacting instead of acting. I felt most dumb-founded having no knowledge of the acting energies of Krishna. Certain officials may have believed they were delivering punishment to me by the segregation and then the transfer to a potentially more dangerous institution very far away from my hometown. Indeed, it was easy to tune and zoom in on negative energy. But it requires a trained eye in order to tune and zoom in on the positive energy that’s sometimes strangely mixed with the negative energy.

By Bhakta Jerry

I remember a particular day in freshmen biology class very well. We were informed of our next assignment: a bug collection. Here I am, studying the science of life, surrounded by dead animals stuffed and hanging on the walls, surrounded by many species petrified in jars, smelling the aroma coming through the window of cooked animals from the Burger King down the street, and now I am being forced to partake in the study of life by killing more creatures. Is it any wonder why vegetarianism, based on the principle of non-violence, is a shock to Westerners?

Reprinted from The Spiritual Scientist
By Radheshyam Das (M Tech IIT, Mumbai, Director, IYF),
Chaitanya Charan Das (BEE &TC, Editor, The Spiritual Scientist)

A two inch tongue can kill a six foot man. This traditional saying is being confirmed by modern obesity statistics. The prosperity of the Indian middle class is showing up - in a not-so-pleasant way in the burgeoning waistline, of over 25% of urban Indians. Obesity is the cause of diabetes, hypertension, heart attacks, strokes and a variety of other chronic diseases. Unlike infectious diseases which are curable, chronic diseases need lifelong care, leading to enormous expenditure.

The same trend is seen globally. Obesity, if left unabated, is set to overtake smoking as the number one cause of preventable death in USA.