Blog

By Madhava Smullen

ISKCON Youth prepare to go out on Harinama in Las Vegas. Harinama on the strip will be a major focus of the new temple.

By Vraja Bihari Das

We are afraid to make chanting our number one priority in life because of the fear of failure.

Chanting Hare Krishna can be the most humbling experience, especially if we make it the most important goal of our life. Krishna is inaccessible to the conditioned souls; those who are not qualified won’t get access to Krishna’s intimate association. He reserves the right of not being exposed to the conditioned souls. Thus chanting can expose us to our own disqualifications; chanti

We will be posting some of Lord Krishna’s childhood pastimes durning this month of Damodara (Kartika)

All the gopī friends of Yaśodā and Rohiṇī enjoyed the naughty childish activities of Kṛṣṇa and Balarāma in Vṛndāvana. In order to enjoy further transcendental bliss, they all assembled and went to mother Yaśodā to lodge complaints against the restless boys. When Kṛṣṇa was sitting before mother Yaśodā, all the elderly gopīs began to lodge complaints against Him so that Kṛṣṇa could hear. They sai

By Madhava Smullen

On Friday September 15th, Bhaktimarga Swami, “The Walking Monk,” crossed the finish-line for his 3,550-mile walk across the USA in San Francisco, beneath shining blue skies and rolling white clouds.

It had been two years since he set off.

This wasn’t the Swami’s first adventure on foot. He has walked across Canada from coast to coast four times; and he has trekked across Ireland, the Fiji Islands, Mauritius, Trinidad, Guyana, and Israel, to promote a more simple, healthy and

By Niranjana Swami

I was introduced to the Krishna consciousness movement and introduced to Srila Prabhupada by first receiving a copy of Bhagavad Gita As It Is. Sometimes people ask me “When was the first time you met Srila Prabhupada?” And my answer is always “I first met Srila Prabhupada in the fall of 1972,” and that is because that was when I got my first copy of Bhagavad Gita As It Is. That was my first meeting with Srila Prabhupada, when I purchased Bhagavad Gita As It Is in a book store

By Satyaraja Dasa

This is an article published recently on the important online scholarly magazine MDPI (Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute).
MDPI is an academic open-access publisher with headquarters in Basel, Switzerland. Additional offices are located in Beijing and Wuhan (China), Barcelona (Spain) as well as in Belgrade (Serbia).
Their publishing activities are supported by more than 15,700 active scientists and academic editors on our journals’ international editorial boards,

By Sayer Ji 

Chanting (mantra) is an ancient technology that, as modern science reveals, connects us in a very real way to the farthest reaches of the universe.

I love chanting mantras, and I do so daily as an integral part of my kundalini yoga practice. I don’t need to know the specifics of how it produces a calming and sometimes even transcendent effect on my consciousness, but I’ve always been deeply curious about the mechanisms that may be at play beneath the surface of my awareness.

This i

Sri Damodarastakam
By Sri Satyavrata Muni
From the original 1974 “Songs of the Vaisnava Acaryas” songbook

This eight sloka prayer is sung morning and evening during the month of Damodara, which begins today.

namāmīśvaraḿ sac-cid-ānanda-rūpaḿ
lasat-kuṇḍalaḿ gokule bhrājamanam
yaśodā-bhiyolūkhalād dhāvamānaḿ
parāmṛṣṭam atyantato drutya gopyā

1) To the supreme controller who possesses an eternal form of blissful knowledge, whose glistening earrings swing to and fro, who manifested Himself in Gokul

By Giriraj Swami

“It is important that devotees take care of each other. Like other people, devotees have different aspects to their lives—physical, emotional, social, and spiritual. So we want to support each other in all these ways. Of course, with devotees, everything is for Krishna. We help each other in all respects to better serve guru and Krishna. That is really our goal: gopi-bhartu pada-kamalayor dasa-dasanudasa—we want to be the servant of the servant of Krishna, the maintainer of the

By Giriraj Swami 

Today i.e 05th Oct 2017 we begin the beautiful month of Damodara. The Nectar of Devotion, Chapter 4, says, “There is a statement in Padma Purana describing the ritualistic function during the month of Karttika (October–November). During this month, in Vrndavana it is the regulative principle to pray daily to Lord Krsna in His Damodara form. The Damodara form refers to Krsna in His childhood when He was tied up with rope by His mother, Yasoda. Dama means ‘ropes,’ and udarameans

By Vaikunthanath das

It is a miracle of good fortune that Srila Prabhupada’s disciple, Saradiya dasi, should leave her physical body on the very day of the Sri Krsna Saradiya Rasa-yatra (October 5, 2017). She left at 6:15 a.m. San Diego time. The time zone in India is twelve and a half hours ahead of California, so it was 6:45 p.m. in Vrindaban at that moment. The moon rose at 6:03 p.m. in Vrindaban. So Saradiya left her body just as the moon was rising above the horizon in Sri Vrindaban Dham.

By Kadamba Kanana Swami

In 1986, I was very involved in the construction of Srila Prabhupada’s Samadhi in Mayapur. There was NO LIMIT to what had to be arranged for that building! One day I looked at the Samadhi and it looked like a huge face with a big mouth, and the mouth just said, “Aniyor! Aniyor! Bring me more! Bring me more!”

And I brought trucks of cement, steel, bricks, stone, marble. I brought engineers and draughtsmen, drawing and technical experts and I had to deal with endless thing

By Nishanta-lila Dasi 

Sri Damodara-janani is the latest book from Sivarama Swami and the fourth volume of the Krishna in Vrndavana series, a unique retelling of the damodara-lila that weaves a captivating tale of the glories of Mother Yasoda.

No other person has ever received the unique mercy that Krishna showed His own mother, teaching devotees for all time that the binding force of love for Him is more powerful than even His own supreme will. A lila that stopped the demigods in their tracks,

By Umesh Modak 

He is an initiated disciple of A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (Srila Prabhupada) since 1974. He first met Bhaktivedanta Swami in Dallas, USA. Alfred Ford joined the International Society for Krishna Consciousness in 1975 and that same year he made his first trip to India with Prabhupada. He assisted in the establishment of the first Hindu temple in Hawaii and also donated $500,000 to help establish the Bhaktivedanta Cultural Center in Detroit which was completed in 1983. A

By Sanatana Gosvami

Kartika month is the most important month in our calendar, as it is very dear to Sri Sri Radha-Madhava. Just as there is no yuga equal to Satya-yuga, no scripture equal to the Vedas, and no place of pilgrimage equal to the Ganges, so there is no month equal to Kartika. During the Kartika month, millions of devotees worship Damodara Krishna with ghee lamps and devotional bhajans, glorifying His playful childhood pastime of stealing yogurt. And traditionally, desiring to satis

By Madhava Smullen for ISKCON New Vrindaban Communications

Born to a devotee family in New Vrindaban, West Virginia in 1977, Bhagavan Bauer lived and attended gurukula there until the age of eighteen.

While he developed great friendships with the other gurukula students and has good memories of fun times with them, he also endured the kind of traumatic abuse and neglect that was unfortunately all too common in many of ISKCON’s ashram-based gurukulas at the time.

So it was no surprise that he le

By Ramai Swami

I accompanied a small but enthusiastic band of devotees from Govinda’s Asrama on harinama to Newtown.

This inner suburb of Sydney is famous for students and alternative lifestyle residents. The shopping strip has about 8 vegetarian/vegan restaurants and some years ago we had a centre there too.

People enjoyed the kirtan with many waving and clapping from the cafes and bars.

Source: http://www.ramaiswami.com/newtown-harinama/

By Navin Shyam Prabhu

TKG Academy is now offering an after school chess club, facilitated by Navin Shyam Prabhu.

The club, “Yudhisthira’s Chess Court”, is meant to provide interested students an opportunity to learn the rules and fundamental strategies of the game and have an opportunity to practice with their peers. The club will focus on respectful playing and encouragement of all participants. Timings:

Tuesdays, 3:15 – 4:00 PM
Fee: $10 per month, or $50 for the whole school year.
*September