Blog

By Madhava Smullen 

After many years residing on the third floor of Sri Sri Radha Vrindaban Chandra’s temple, Tulasi Devi at the New Vrindaban farm community in West Virginia has been offered a beautiful new dedicated greenhouse to provide her with a high standard of care. 

An intimate servant of Lord Krishna who appears in the form of a plant, Tulasi Devi is described in the Srimad-Bhagavatam as very dear to Lord Krishna. Her leaves are placed on the lotus feet of the Lord, and her Manjari flow

My day finished with a piece of lightly sweetened carob cake. The topping of the day, not the cake (with no icing), was a continual cleanup in the temple’s pantry, some emailing, some calls to promote the Gita-drive known as “Give to Live,” and a call with Radhanatha Swami, something we regularly share.

My conversation with Radhanatha was private enough, however, we did cover conversations of a more sharing nature. First of all we were both participants in a forum of eulogies about our recently

The Bhaktivedanta Players of UK have made their Bhagavad-gita audio drama available for everyone to hear during the this most auspicious month of Marga when Bhagavad-gita was spoken, and when whole of ISKCON focuses on the Gita.

The nearly hour-long play consisting of two parts uses carefully chosen music and dramatic sound effects to make listening to the most important conversation in humankind a memorable experience for the audience.

Listen to the audio drama here: https://www.bhaktivedantama

From Back to Godhead

By Mohini Radha Devi Dasi

In the interactions between the Lord and His
devotees, both relish the highest happiness.

Bhagavad-gita and other scriptures praise Arjuna for his close relationship with Krishna. Arjuna is known for his mood of friendship (sakha-bhava). Since relationships are by definition reciprocal, not only is Arjuna known as Krishna’s friend, but Krishna is known as Arjuna’s friend. Krishna drove Arjuna’s chariot and is therefore called Partha-sarathi, the “c

Have you ever asked yourself: What keeps holding me back despite my best efforts to advance and break the chain of undesirable habits? The answer, more often than not, is our karma. To be more precise, it’s the part of our karma that must be experienced and cannot be mitigated even through various methods like austerities or sacrifices. Such unavoidable karma is called prarabdha karma.

Prarabdha karma is so strong that even a Brahman-realised soul, who directly and uninterruptedly perceives the

By taking initiation, there are such powerful blessings which are passed, that practically our journey back to the spiritual world is guaranteed. We just simply do our level best, whatever that is, as good as we can. To follow this for our lives and surely, then success will be there. So it is a very joyous occasion. It is a serious matter also. One question we can raise is that how can one take a vow for one’s whole life? How do we know what it would be like in ten years’ time? It maybe be very

It’s strange but Toronto has been my home base since 1973 and in all that time I’ve never had, or taken, the opportunity to venture into High Park. It is rated as 4.5/5 and I can testify. When you’re there you won’t feel like you’re in the city.

Walking along the pond called Grenadier is pleasant as well as the main trails and off route ones. It’s always great to be in nature, with or without company. I’m not going out to even small home events but in nature’s social-distance venues I have no pr

My dear devotees

Please accept my humble obeisances
All glories to Srila Prabhupada

Homebase :Sridham Mayapur
Camp :Sridham Mayapur

In Mayapur, because of the outreach programs, various namahatta devotees attending in Mayapur, somehow the coronavirus has spread amongst our namahatta preachers. Of them, two swamis, His Holiness Gauranga Prema Swami and His Holiness Bhakti Vilasa Gauracandra Swami have tested positive. So they have quarantined the whole namahatta and they are undergoing treatment

Our cook, Dwarkanath, made this amazing pumpkin cake. It was baked to perfection; somewhat moist and sweet. Since pumpkin is a fruit I hope no sugar was added, especially that dreadful worst of foods—white sugar.

I do have a small issue with my friends from India or Bangladesh, that cook or bake, over the use of the word “pumpkin.” “Pumpkin,” I tell them, without malice, “is roundish, orange and is a member of the squash family.” I also mention that our indigenous people of this area grew squash

By Gauranga Das

Festival for the soul

During the extended lockdown due to the pandemic situation, the residents of Govardhan Ecovillage (GEV) took to an in depth study of Srimad Bhagavatam, making the most of the collective opportunity.

GEV is the home for many scholarly devotees who share the wealth of their Vedic wisdom across the world. As circumstances would have it, many of them like Sanatkumar Prabhu, Gauranga prabhu, Chaitanya Caran prabhu, Damodar prabhu, Gauranga Darshan prabhu, Balara

Sri Narahari Sarkar Thakura , who is Madhumati Sakhi in Vraja pastimes, was born at Sri Khanda. Sri Krsnadasa Kaviraja Gosvami describes that the residents of Sri Khanda formed a branch of the desire tree of love of God. “Sri Khan davasi (the residents of Sri Khanda) Mukunda and his son Raghu nandan were the thirty ninth branch of the tree, Narahari was the fortieth, Chiran Jiva the forty first and Sulocana the forty second. They were all big branches of the all merciful tree of Caitanya Mahapra

I made an official call on behalf of our temple to an agency. It’s not my favourite type of service but nevertheless it must be done. My legal name was in their records but not my email address. I gave them my current email address but it did not compute with what they had. They were nice to me in terms of being helpful but the mood of service stepped up when I explained the following.

“Well, at one time I may have had thewalkingmonk@pamho.net. You see, I’m a monk who’s walked long distances, fo

Being God, Krishna has no work to do and simply enjoys in His original abode, while His expansions and energies, such as time, take care of the material creation.

As working men and women we typically leave home in the early morning and spend eight or nine hours on the job. Life at work sustains life at home. Official dealings at work contrast with family intimacies at home. However diffuse and overlapping the boundaries between the two, our work persons differ from our home persons.

Krishna, t

Today is a red-letter day—I received an advance copy of my book about Srila Prabhupada and Juhu: I’ll Build You a Temple: The Juhu Story. The volume is beautiful, and I felt humbled by and grateful for all the help I received in this effort.

Thank you very much.

Hare Krishna.

Yours in service,
Giriraj Swami

Source: https://girirajswami.com/blog/?p=16720

Sometimes we may question the suitability of the term “razor’s edge” when applied to the process of Krsna consciousness. Isn’t this too harsh? Shouldn’t Krsna be more kind and yielding to His devotees? Is there not a more suitable term that we could use?

That God displays features of unyielding and uncompromising hardness cannot be denied. In Bhagavad Gita Lord Sri Krsna says: “Those who are envious and mischievous, who are the lowest among men, I perpetually cast into the ocean of material exi

By Gauranga Das

Do you know before the advent of proper paper, what was the substance on which people used to write? What are the types of manuscripts?
The Manuscript Mission team at Bhaktivedanta Research Centre has visited more than 50 remote corners of India and Bangladesh over the past decade. BRC now has over 1000 manuscripts preserved digitally and around 70 physical manuscripts.
There are three primary types of manuscripts:
1. Tree Bark – Birch bark manuscripts are documents written on p

ISKCON Temple of Greater Chicago is based in Naperville, a growing suburb of Chicago, Illinois, USA. The temple moved to its current location a few years back and since then, the community has been growing exponentially. Looking at the growth, there is need for a commercial kitchen, community hall along with additional space to conduct different programs for children, youth, devotees and other community members, and thus a new temple construction plan was in motion.

And then COVID came along! W

With folded hands, we thank all the Vaishnavas for participation in this year’s Kshetra Parikrama.  Irrespective of the pandemic and the bridge in physical association it has caused, in great numbers from all around the world, has tuned in daily to participate in the parikrama engaging our minds fully in Puri Dham.

This has proved to us that indeed we can systematically and devotionally engage modern day technology fully for the service of the Lord and how it can be used perfectly in this period