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Srila Prabhupada would describe how sometimes during the rainy season in Mayapur, the Ganga is flooding its banks and the entire area goes underwater. And sometimes, Mayapur is almost two months in a lockdown underwater, imagine that! I remember spending some time in that flood during a year and it was quite an experience. We would have to swim from one building to another and we were not the only ones swimming. There were also cobras swimming to add some excitement. Some had rubber boats and t

Much of the snow has turned into water, trapped between heaps of white and bordered by slush. The reason is the mild temperature. It got up to 8°C and that meant wrapping my jacket around my left arm, leaving a full orange cloth exposure. People noticed. It stands out; especially with snow patches as a backdrop. It’s been a while since I strolled into the daytime. There’s a lot more pedestrians out.

“Hey, that attire really is something,” said one service/repair person.

Monks are rare. Period.

About Radhika Raman Das
Radhika Ramana Das, also known as Dr. Ravi M. Gupta, is a notable Vaishnava scholar. Presently, he is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia and a member of the faculty at Bhaktivedanta College. He received his doctorate from Oxford University on the topic of Jiva Goswami’s Vedanta,and has a Post Doctoral Fellowship from Linacre College.He grew up in Boise Idaho where his academic accomplishments were docume

By Acarya dasa, All-India Padayatra leader

Taking a detour from our route padayatra reached Jasdan, a municipality town in the Rajkot district, the home of Mahavishnu Maharaja disciple Ganshyam dasa. When Ganshyam and his wife had darshan of Sri Sri Nitai-Gaurasundar in Belgaon, Maharashtra, he prayed to Their Lordships for blessings so that he could become a good grihastha devotee. He had served in padayatra for six months and also in Vraja-mandal Parikrama where he received the blessings of R

ISKCON Ujjain celebrated the 15th anniversary of its temple inauguration on 25th February 2021, Nityananda Trayodasi, the day of the divine appearance of Lord Nityananda.

On 10th February 2006, the beautiful temple of Their Lordships, Sri Sri Radha Madan Mohan ji, Krishna Balarama and Gaura Nitai was inaugurated in the auspicious presence of many GBCs, sannyasis and senior devotees of ISKCON. HH Bhakti Charu Swami Maharaja had constructed this beautiful marble temple in a very short time of 9 mo

Many years ago a great Krishna Bhakti teacher, Bhakti Tirtha Swami, penned the following 4 principles of community building:

1. Treat everyone you encounter as if the success or failure of your spiritual life depends on the quality of your interactions with them.

2. Think of the person you love the most and aspire to treat everyone with that same quality of love.

3. View all conflicts as your own fault first.

4. Realize that people in your present environment might very well be the people with

By Gauranga Darshan Das (Gaura Purnima Special)

Lord Kṛṣṇa says in the Bhagavad-gīta that He descends in every yuga as an incarnation for three purposes: to protect the righteous, to punish the mischievous, and to establishes dharma. Lord Śrī Kṛṣṇa descended in the current age of Kali as Lord Śrī Kṛṣṇa Caitanya Mahāprabhu or Śrī Gaurānga. In this incarnation, the Lord appears in the form of a devotee to teach how to perform loving devotional service (bhakti) unto Him.

Assuming the emotions of a

nama oṁ viṣṇu-pādāya kṛṣṇa-preṣṭhāya bhū-tale
śrīmate bhaktisiddhānta-sarasvatīti nāmine

śrī-vārṣabhānavī-devī-dayitāya kṛpābdhaye
kṛṣṇa-sambandha-vijñāna-dāyine prabhave namaḥ

mādhuryojjvala-premāḍhya-śrī-rūpānuga-bhaktida
śrī-gaura-karuṇā-śakti-vigrahāya namo ‘stu te

namas te gaura-vāṇī-śrī-mūrtaye dīna-tāriṇe
rūpānuga-viruddhāpasiddhānta-dhvānta-hāriṇe

I offer my respectful obeisances unto His Divine Grace Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī, who is very dear to Lord Kṛṣṇa, having taken shelter at His

While studying about Madhavendra Puri I came across these gems.
Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Thakur says that there are 5 primary counter examples we should learn from Ramachandra Puri:
(1)Faultfinding, especially finding fault in Vishnu and the Vaishnavas, is extremely detrimental to one’s spiritual advancement. A devotional practitioner should look at his own faults rather than at others’. By correcting his own faults, he will be able to make some advancement.

(2)All the disciples who take initi

He is indeed by far
The mercy avatar
For he bore the blood
During the love flood

As companion to Gaur
Life was less is more
Distributing a wealth
For everyone’s health

Committed to the name
And establishing its fame
He went door to door
In the effort to explore

He went with Haridas
Many gains, no loss
With interesting reception
Prepared for any rejection

Jagai/Madai, there in queue
The loud obnoxious two
Met more than their match
When Nitai did dispatch

They swayed, they fell
Totally drunk as h

By Madhava Smullen 

In mid-March, the ISKCON Communications Journal (ICJ) is set to publish its first issue after a fifteen-year hiatus, under the guidance of Mahaprabhu Dasa, Director of ISKCON Communications Europe. The Journal is edited by Tattvavit Dasa and Rupa Sanatana Dasa.

 ICJ was known for addressing many important topics and issues, including challenges and crises that ISKCON faced. Articles were written by scholars from both within and outside of ISKCON.

The ISKCON Communications Jo

“Slowing Down in a Fast-Paced World” was the theme chosen for the Mauritian Zoom crowd. I started off with everyone doing a boogie snap of the finger and singing Simon and Garfunkel’s first stanza to 59th Street Bridge song, “Slow down you move too fast/you’ve gotta make the morning last…”

Arjuna slowed down. To process. To listen. Only then to pick up due to the empowering words of Krishna. Further still, to go in high gear; into the battle of Kuruksetra. For us ordinary folks it appears that a

By Madhava Smullen

The Live to Give Campaign, run by the BBT Marketing, Communications and Innovations team, has smashed its 2 million Gita goal, distributing 2,172,456 copies of Srila Prabhupada’s Bhagavad-gita As It Is around the world. 

Over 250 ISKCON communities in more than 55 countries participated, between September 17th 2020 and January 7th 2021. The campaign also commemorated Gita Jayanti, or World Gita Day, on December 25th. 

Live to Give was a phenomenally successful effort to get de

At noon we had a Zoom. “Mindful Trinity” is a regular broadcast/podcast from South Africa and I had the pleasure to be interviewed on one of those “Tales from Trails” by an elegant host, Vaishnavi Carana.

It certainly puts me back on the road when recalling and conveying the stories from the trails of past walks. It will be 25 years ago that I began my first marathon walk across Canada. In April 1996 I took that journey, which lasted seven and a half months, starting in British Columbia and fin

In Canto Twelve of Srimad-Bhagavatam, Bhumi, Mother Earth, says this: “Although in the past great men and their descendants have left me, departing from this world in the same helpless way they came into it, even today foolish men are trying to conquer me. For the sake of conquering me, materialistic persons fight one another. Fathers oppose their sons, and brothers fight one another because their hearts are bound to possessing political power. Political leaders challenge one another: ‘All this

Wherever we see the greed for wealth, gold, power, prestige, name or fame – consequently we see a rise in hate, envy, fighting and war.
Greed is a source of misery because it never gets satisfied. Its demand increases more and more, despite of our efforts to pacify it. It is compared to feeding a blazing fire, no matter how much amount of fuel you put in, the fuel gets consumed in seconds. It always ends in dissatisfaction.
The harder you try to satisfy this enemy of greed, the deeper you fall

By Radha Damodar das

The year 2021 marks the centennial celebration, the 100th appearance anniversary, of  Bhaktivedanta Narayana Maharaja. A disciple of Bhakti Prajnana Keshava Maharaja—himself one of the foremost disciples of Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur—Narayana Maharaja served the Gaudiya Vaishnava community as a sannyasi for fifty-eight years. From 1996 to 2010 when Narayana Maharaja left this world, he circled the globe many times sharing the teachings of bhakti-yoga.

Narayana Ma

There is bliss in service. That bliss is demonstrated by those in the devotional realm of bhakti. One person, whom I snuck up on, who characterizes this joyful practice, was a person in the kitchen of our ashram. Uttamananda is a kind soul — and a kind soul is usually a happy one — and in the early hour of 6 a.m. he was immersed in pot washing. That’s how I was able to get in from behind him. The pot sinks are against the wall, so anyone who has that designated role of pot washing has a wall in

My life is hectic, going from one program to another and one place to another. It never stops! But one thing that is sacred and is untouchable are my rounds. “Don’t toucha my rounds!” You know how they say, “If you smasha my car, I smasha your face!” Well, in my case, “If you toucha my rounds … ” So the rounds become sacred and gets close to the heart!

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