Today is Balarama Purnima, the appearance day of Lord Balarama, the first expansion of Lord Krishna, who plays as Krishna’s older brother. Listening to Sri Caitanya-bhagavata this morning, I happened to hear a description of Lord Chaitanya’s special affinity for the mood of Lord Balarama: “Every day, Lord Chaitanya, accompanied by Lord Nityananda, visited various Vaishnava’s homes and enacted transcendental pastimes. The Lord was constantly engaged in His ecstasies, manifesting the moods and be
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Four of us set out to step in the mountainous woods of the Rocky Mountains. Even for a Monday, because it is summer after all, the big draw to nature is one. My companions, Radha Madhava, Nanda Gopal, Vallabha Hari, and I took to trail walking along the Bow River, which has an admirable aqua colour. Banff is a town, a tourist trap, where the mighty river flows. It is a place of respectable folks. It appears pedestrians, locals and visitors, show courtesy to a monk with greetings as I pass by. I
Prabhupada’s Money Analogy and the Politics of Doing the Right Thing
- Satyaraja Dasa (Steven J. Rosen)
According to Srila Prabhupada, one can gauge a person’s spiritual status by how they react to finding money on the street: Do they keep it for themselves? Do they leave it lying there? Or do they look for the original owner? What would you do?
In Sanskrit, there are three terms that cover the gamut of possible reactions to finding money in the street: bhoga, (enjoyment); tyaga (renunciation)
By HG Tejiyas Das
It was May and already by 6 am it was sweltering hot, even for Delhi. I started the day, going house to house in Hauz Khas, business to business in Connaught place. Yesterday I had received a notice, on a white post card, from the phone company, to return the phone we had leased during the LIC grounds festival last year. At that time the only phone company, along with almost everything else in India, including the buses, was owned and managed by the socialistic leaning central
Some people hold that, having been prophesied by scripture, by Lord Chaitanya and by the previous acharyas, if Srila Prabhupada had not spread Krishna Consciousness, some other devotee, or some group of devotees, would have been empowered to do so in Srila Prabhupada’s place.
In other words, the prophecy to spread Krishna Consciousness around the world relied on empowerment, rather than an empowered individual, for its fulfillment. It is similar to saying that if we were empowered like Hanum
By Acarya dasa, All India Padayatra leader
The All India padayatris started their char dhama yatra from Haridwar on May 10, 2022, heading for Badrinath dhama via Joshimath, Kedarnath, Yamunotri, and lastly arriving at Gangotri on June 18. From Gangotri, we negotiated the steep downhill walk back to Haridwar and on June 20 returned to our preaching journey.
Padayatra headed south from Haridwar stopping at Bijnor where we celebrated the disappearance day of Srila Bhakti Vinod Thakur. There are so
By Patri Das
Meeting with Honorable Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Sri Yogi Adityanath Maharaj ji. We had a nice conversation on Spirituality, Life’s Journey, the teachings of Bhagavad-Gita and many more. I am grateful for the quality time we spent together.
I am thankful for the special exchange of gifts that happened today.
Maharaj ji honored us with Anniversary coins which were unveiled by Honorable Prime Minister of India, Sri Narendra Modi ji on the auspicious occasion of the Ground Brea
One of the major fears and concerns that most of us hear about, especially in the past 10 years, is the danger of Vaisnava-aparadha. Any aspiring Vaisnava fears offenses towards devotees as they are detrimental to one's spiritual progress. However, not knowing what "offensive behavior" means is dangerous. Why? Because that may end up being detrimental to our spiritual progress as well. For example, maintaining a healthy distance from "devotee-pretenders" can be seen as "offensive", yet it is ve
The Jhulan Festival is celebrated in the month of Shravana (August), from the eleventh day of the bright fortnight (Ekadashi) to the full-moon day (Purnima). This festival is celebrated to commemorate the childhood pastimes of Sri Krishna with His friends, the young cowherd boys, and girls, swinging underneath the trees.
In Sri Dham Mayapur, Sri Radha Madhava is decorated nicely and seated on a swing. All devotees wait patiently in a queue to swing Their Lordships. The swing (Jhulana) beautifie
It is stormy, windy and rainy in Goa for the last few days. Seeing the wind and the heavy downpour, I started wondering, "What an experience it would be to be in such a storm and wind in a boat in the middle of the turbulent ocean". A crazy thought, I guess.
But then I got this insight that, "Well, we are already in the middle of an ocean with violent winds around." The scriptures explain that, this material world is a huge ocean of birth and death, with turbulent winds and storm of problems
We have a family, we have a language, we have a culture and so on, and it seems like all this is a part of ourselves due to some sense of belonging. This is described, however, in the Vedic literatures as our false identity. It is explained that our true identity is totally different – we have actually no connection whatsoever with the place of our birth or culture. If one considers the land of their birth to be a part of themselves, is thinking that their body is themselves. It is then very d
When we first met Srila Prabhupada and we told him we were artists, he immediately decided to engage us in making some paintings.
The first painting that he engaged us in was a four-foot by four-foot painting of Radha-Krishna that was to be hung in the San Francisco temple.
I had no idea what Radha-Krishna looked like so Prabhupada handed us his book cover to copy.
In the course of painting, I couldn’t tell what color Krishna’s eyes were since the picture I was copying from was too small.
In tho
Hare Kṛishna!
Please Accept Our Humble Obeisances, All Glories to Srila Prabhupada!
ISKCON Mayapur welcomes all you for a Festive Month!
An all-auspicious Month and one you wouldn’t want to miss out!
Festivals are the Summum Bonum of ISKCON. exude with colourful decorations, palatable feasts, elaborate rituals, kirtans, dance and dramas, the festivals make spiritual progress a fun-filled experience for the devotees of ISKCON. The original Vedic flavor is thus revived, and anyone wh
So Vrndavana is just covered by cows. When you came to Vrndavana at the time of Krsna, you would hear the mooing of cows everywhere, and there was milking of cows everywhere too. The milk was being churned everywhere too. The cowshed of Nanda Maharaja was enormous. There were nine hundred thousand cows. And how many cows do we have here? Almost nine. So there were almost a hundred thousand times more cows at the cowshed of Nanda Maharaj, can you imagine?! I mean if we had nine hundred thousand c
Kurma Das is not just a wonderful chef and manager of his restaurants. He is a wonderful writer too and he takes us on a journey of when Srila Prabhupada visited Australia and New Zealand over the years. Five years of research and over 950 hours of interviews offer a stimulating book about Srila Prabhupada’s pastimes and ISKCON’s history down under.
Source: http://www.dandavats.com/?p=96018
This world is like an airport. Here, we are supposed to board a plane. But some people get so excited when they get to an airport because there are so many shops and they go shopping, and what happens is that they end up missing the plane. So, the purpose was that we had come to fly, we did not come for shopping, we came to fly to go somewhere.
It’s the same for us in this material world. So, this world is an airport and here we are meant to board the plane to fly to the spiritual world, that i
The ancient holy town of Haridwar is on the west bank of the Ganges. Haridwar means "The Gateway to Lord Hari." It is also called Gangadwara, because the sacred Ganges enters the plains from here. Haridwar is one of the seven main holy cities (sapta-moksha puri) in India as described in Garuda Purana.
Hari Ki Pauri (literally, "footsteps of Lord Hari.") is the most famous landmark of Haridwar. The footprints of Lord Vishnu are imprinted on a stone underneath the water at this ghat. This is
Nepal is a 75% hilly country, so our chariot can’t go everywhere and we often need to walk from one village to another. We carry only our luggage and books and do book distribution and sankirtan. In Nepal, due to poverty and casteism many residents are converting to Christianity, having their books translated into the Nepali language.
There is less preaching of Sanatan dharma, but I was amazed to see the response of people to padayatra. As they hear harinama, they come out to join us and are v
Time ago , a particular news item caught my eye: “Shmeat: Reducing Animal Cruelty or Defeating the Purpose of a Sustainable Diet?” written by Sarah Jugovic.
The article explains that shmeat, also known as “in vitro” meat (i.e., test-tube flesh), is cruelty free – it is a lab-grown food product using animal stem cells to create an edible solid without killing the creature. Or so they say.
Shmeat has been in the works for more than a decade, the article tells us, and was conceived, in its present
