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By Madhava Smullen
 

After graduating from gurukula, a student of TKG Academy in Dallas has been accepted into the Eric Jonsson School of Engineering at the University of Dallas Texas at just seventeen years old.

Vraja Kishor Schomaker has also been awarded a Comet transfer scholarship, and is entering his third year of college with over seventy-five credits. All this despite a terrifying battle with a brain tumor in 2017 that left him temporarily unable to read. 

His mother, Gopi Gita, who

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While singing the Nrsimha prayers today, I was struck by the juxtaposition of two very different moods of the Lord—prahladahlada-dayine: He gave bliss to Prahlada, and hiranyakasipor vaksah-sila-tanka-nakhalaye: He cracked the stonelike chest of Hiranyakasipu with His sharp chisel-like nails.

namas te narasimhaya
prahladahlada-dayine
hiranyakasipor vaksah-
sila-tanka-nakhalaye

“I offer my obeisances to Lord Narasimha who gives joy to Prahlada Maharaja and whose nails are like chisels on the sto

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In Thunder Bay, the day usually starts with the sound of a seagull flitting by one's bedroom.  It's the big lake nearby, Lake Superior, which attracts these entertaining birds who are aerobatic by nature.  I imagine the fish from the fresh water keeps them in the area.

Ananda, Gaura and I left our apartment, a condominium within the re-defined space of an old school, The Queen Elizabeth.  With a solid foundation, strong walls and high ceilings, our group of six men felt safe, had good res
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Diary of a Traveling Monk
Volume 15, Chapter 4 July 22, 2019 “Summer of Love”

During my teenage years, I was living in San Francisco during 1967’s “Summer of Love” when hippies were trying to establish the brotherhood of mankind without any positive lifestyle alternative or anyone to guide them. History shows that the young people of my generation fell hopelessly short of the goal of universal peace and love, for true love and peace can only be experienced on the spiritual platform.

The summer

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The ISKCON Deity Worship Ministry (IDWM) acts on behalf of the GBC to ensure that the worship in our temples and centres is done according to the standards as given by Srila Prabhupada. It also provides training for devotees interested in developing their skills and abilities as Pujaris and brahmanas. The Ministry is also presently compiling ‘position papers’ that address often asked questions related to worship. By closely studying and researching Srila Prabhupada’s books, conversations and le

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Events

The New Govardhan ISKCON community in Murwillumbah, Australia is famous for the many outreach activities, especially catering and prasadam distribution programs they organize all year round.

This year the prasadam distribution management team utilized a Temple of the Vedic Planetarium (TOVP) shaped pandal at one of the largest festivals in Australia, Splendour in the Grass 2019 Music Festival, in Byron Bay, attracting thousands of festival-goers to the beauty of the TOVP and the wonderful pras

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There is a culture within this movement. Srila Prabhupada brought the transcendental knowledge from India and brought the culture from India as well. Seated on the floor, eating with the right hand, chapattis, puris, sabzis and so on. In the philosophy that we get through the scriptures, the knowledge is preserved. In the culture we get from the devotees, the knowledge is also preserved.

What Srila Prabhupada brought from India was the establishment of this ISKCON culture and many such things c

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Observed by Bhaktimarga Swami

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As has been observed many times before, when I move about in devotional attire, I get noticed.  After a swim in Lake Boulevard, I had changed into a dhoti and kurta, when a cyclist slowed down and asked, "Hare Krishna?"
 
"Yeah, and I guess you'll be there for the Festival of India tomorrow?"
 
"Yes, sir!" he responded, and then picked up speed, off to his own destination.
 
At the harbourfront, the boys and I, in the midst of air-gliding seagulls, had just completed a kirtan/chanting sess
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Diary of A Traveling Monk
Volume 15, Chapter 5 July 27, 2109
”Bonds of Brotherhood”

During the month of June I visited ISKCON’s temple in Skopje, Northern Macedonia. Macedonia is a small, land-locked country in Southeastern Europe with a population of just 2.7 million people. I had been invited to speak and hold kirtan at the country’s International Yoga Day Festival.

While we were waiting at a red light on the way to the festival, a horse-drawn wooden cart driven by a teenage boy and holding a

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How it's Going by Bhaktimarga Swami

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Our coordinator for this Vedic Mace traveling tour, is a competent person, a doctor from Thunder Bay by the name of Prem Kishor.  ‘Prem’ means love for the Divine.  It is Prem who demonstrates an actual caring for people, by organizing these events in venues throughout the towns in northern Ontario, where few folks get to the heart of the culture of India, and the heart of the soul.
 
Last year, we were here when a modest turnout of local people came. "This year you doubled!” said one woman wh
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In the Boreal by Bhaktimarga Swami

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Gaura and I took to the Great Northern Road as a head start to Terrace Bay.  So, on foot we tread with traffic roaring by our side until our van pulled up.  We spotted this perfect display of reversed karma: a sculpture of a moose on its rear legs, dangling an adversary, a hunter, suspended in the air from its front hoof.
 
We hopped into the van and joined our boys’ team to go westward through the prettiest scenery of nature you can imagine.  The boreal forest is very special, covering 60%
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First Krishna Homeschool Convention

Events
 
By Sri Radhika devi dasi
 

Forty four adults and nineteen children came together in the home of Sri Sri Kishore Kishori in Chicago during the weekend of July 13 and 14 to participate in the first-ever Krishna Homeschool Convention. The registrants came from 12 states across the USA, namely, Utah, Missouri, Colorado, Wisconsin, Tennessee, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Massachusetts, California, and Illinois. Many are currently homeschooling, while others are exploring homeschooling as

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Events
 
By Madhava Smullen
 

For many years, the Rathayatra at Laguna Beach, California has been tailored more towards devotees. Once again, this year the festival on July 20th featured a parade in front of the ISKCON temple, followed by a class and feast in the temple with special guest Radhanath Swami.

“So we decided to add an outreach portion for the tens of thousands of people walking around the beach in the summertime,” says temple president Tukarama Das.

Dubbed “Mantra Fest,” the new event wil

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In the tenth chapter of Bhagavad-gita, ahaà sarvasya prabhavo mattaù sarvaà pravartate (Bhagavad-gita 10.8), we can see that Krsna is the origin of all that is spiritual and all that is material, and the wise who notice this, they perfectly worship Him with love. That is ultimately where we want to come. Because we are seeing how kind Krsna is… how unlimitedly kind He truly is! He is the Supreme, the topmost personality, all powerful, all beautiful, all perfect, yet He takes interest in insigni

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Events
 
By Madhava Smullen
 

A Palace Reunion Festival, commemorating forty years since the official opening of Srila Prabhupada’s Palace in 1979, will take place in New Vrindaban, West Virginia from September 27th to 29th.  

Devotees began building the Palace themselves back in 1973 as a residence for Srila Prabhupada, when he expressed a desire to retire to New Vrindaban and translate his books. Young and inexperienced, they trained themselves in construction and artisanal skills. Although the bui

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Lifestyle

By Madhava Smullen 

Devotees from the Harmony Collective outreach center in Ypsilanti have purchased a new farm property in Maybee, Michigan. They closed on July 12th, on the sacred day of Ekadasi.   

The property comes with ten acres of land, a two-storey, four-bedroom/three bathroom house, a pond, a cow barn, a shaded cow pasture and three cows.

It will serve three Hare Krishna communities in the Metro Detroit area, which are all only half an hour to forty-five minutes’ drive away – the Ha

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Question: So how can we, the youth of the world, take on this great ideal where we say, “We are concerned with the happiness of all and not just our own happiness!”

Kadamba Kanana Swami: It can be done! It is definitely possible but only on one condition – that we work towards having a common goal. That is not hard to find, but it cannot be found on Earth because when we look at earthly things, we all have different goals in life. One wants a BMW, another a Mercedes and another an aeroplane!

Th

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Just A Guest by Achyut Gopal Das

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"People are guests in our story, the same way we are guests in theirs. But we all meet each other for a reason because every person is a personal lesson waiting to be told." - Lauren Klarfeld

These days I regularly go to our ISKCON center at Ponda (a city in Goa) to assist in the preaching activities there. One night as I was about to sleep in the bedding provided to me by the devotees there, I noticed that on the mat was written, "Guest mat". The word "guest" caught my attention and I wonde
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Only Swam by Bhaktimarga Swami

We did go and jump in the lake.  Enroute to Sudbury for another Festival of India show, the boys and I stopped in Parry Sound to get wet get refreshed.  Gaura and I found the dip to be perfectly normal, being born and raised in Canada, but Gopal, Ananda and Dwarkanatha looked on it as purely experiential.  What fresh, clean water to swim in no fast currents, no dangerous aquatics.

Once we arrived at Grace Hartman's Auditorium in Bell Park, set at the edge of Ramsey Lake, we met the van-load of
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Mayapur Community Hospital Needs Help

Millions of devotees and visitors from all over the world and local pilgrims visit Mayapur every year and this is well known fact. A small team of dedicated Doctors, Dentists and Nurses have been tirelessly working to provide basic health care to all these devotees and visitors with the available facilities in Mayapur.

There is an acute need to add certain very essential facilities to medical care and support which Mayapur is offering in order to cater to emergencies and bare essential health c

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