Dear Hindu Friends,
1. On behalf of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, we offer our best wishes as you celebrate Deepavali on 30 October 2016. May your celebrations around the world deepen your familial bonds, and bring joy and peace to your homes and communities.
2. The health of society depends on our familial bonds and yet we know that today the very notion of family is being undermined by a climate that relativizes its essential significance and value. So too, family life
This morning we are posting the Siksastakam prayers by Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu and commentary by our Srila Prabhupada. This is a very nice morning meditation
Sri Siksastakam
The Eight Instructions of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu
From: “Teachings of Lord Chaitanya” Original version 1968
by His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada
Lord Sri Krishna Chaitanya Mahaprabhu appeared 500 years ago in Navadvip, West-Bengal and is considered the most recent incarnation of the Supreme Personalit
Gaura Govinda Maharaja on Saranagati, Unconditional Surrender
Saranagati is the chief symptom of a devotee. Saranagati should be complete. The symptoms of it are there. One should have firm faith, drdah visvas, that “avasya raksibe krsna”, Krishna will protect me. If you have no faith, you cannot achieve the goal; asraddhadanah purusah… says the Gita: You’ll have to come back in this mortal world. The Vedic siddhanta is that everything is based on firm faith, sastriya sraddha.
Saranagati, unc
When one corner of the spiritual world becomes covered by a cloud of illusory energy then Krsna cannot be seen, nāhaḿ prakāśaḥ sarvasya, yoga-māyā-samāvṛtaḥ, mūḍho ’yaḿ nābhijānāti, loko mām ajam avyayam (Bhagavad-gita 7.25), Krsna becomes covered by his yogamaya energy.
āvṛtaḿ jñānam etena, jñānino nitya-vairiṇā, kāma-rūpeṇa kaunteya, duṣpūreṇānalena ca (Bhagavad-gita 3.39), Krsna becomes covered when lust is burning in the heart. In this way, the living being resides in this covered portion
After one of my talks in an American university, a student who had heard attentively and asked good questions approached me and enquired, “What is your name? I couldn’t get it when you were introduced.” When I answered, she shook her head regretfully and said, “I will never get that.” Even just Chaitanya was difficult for her to repeat. One of her friends, who had tagged along with her and had been not so interested in the talk, just rolled her eyes and muttered something about unpronounceabl
Dear Maharajas and Prabhus,
Dandavat Pranam. Jaya Srila Prabhupada.
You may be glad to know that the US Ambassador to India, Mr. Richard Verma, visited Sri Sri Radha Parthasarathi temple yesterday.
Mr Verma has previously served as the Assistant Secretary of State, Member of the Secretary of State’s Foreign Affairs Policy Board and a member of the Commission on the Prevention of WMD proliferation and terrorism.
After offering pushpanjali to Srila Prabhupada and an arati to Their Lordships, he
Govardhana Puja – the sweetest day of the year – celebrates the day when Lord Krishna as a young boy lifted Govardhana Hill with just His little finger, to protect the residents of Vrindavana village from Lord Indra’s furious thunderstorm.
The king of heaven’s outrage was caused by Krishna’s family and friends offering huge amounts of delicious food to Govardhana instead of him, as a thank you for the hill’s indispensable role in their livelihood and caring for their cows.
Copying this, devot
“Satisfaction of the self-realized spiritual master is the secret of advancement in spiritual life. Inquiries and submission constitute the proper combination for spiritual understanding. Unless there is submission and service, inquiries from the learned spiritual master will not be effective. One must be able to pass the test of the spiritual master, and when he sees the genuine desire of the disciple, he automatically blesses the disciple with genuine spiritual understanding.” (Bhagavad-git
We may approach the Lord for something material and he may fulfill our desire, but in such a way that we don’t approach him again for that desire. So, it is better if we approach the Lord and great souls like Giri Govardhan with spiritual desires like the gopi’s—just to serve and please Krishna—without any desire for themselves. By serving and pleasing Krishna we become pramodah—we become exceedingly happy. That is how we become happy. Not by trying in our own independent way to enjoy but by
Today we honor the disappearance day of His Dive Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada with a half day fast and are celebrating your disappearance with remembrances and prayers.
The Disappearance of a Vaisnava was explained very nicely by Srila Prabhupada is a lecture given on the disappearance day lecture of Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Goswami Maharaja Prabhupada on Dec. 13, 1973 in Los Angeles:
“So spiritually, appearance and disappearance, there is no difference. Just like in mate
A friend returning from India and dealing with jetlag added a small line in an email to me – my goal today: to stay awake.
That jumped out. What a goal, not just for the day, but for life.
In spiritual life when we think of being awake, we think of being conscious, being mindful of how we are relating with the world and with others. Being awake in bhakti means being awake to Krishna, to our particular relationship with Him, and our intentional effort to honor, respect, and grow that relations
This is an old post I saved many years ago in my files, which I found on The Bhaktivedantas website. After re-reading it, I realized why I saved it. It is good information.
Krishna Consciousness in a Nutshell
by Hansadutta das
Krishna consciousness is the original consciousness of every living being, and it is explained in different Vedic literatures. One of these literatures is the Chaitanya-charitamrita. Chaitanya-charitamrita means “characteristic of the eternal living force”. Every living
Continued from, "Lessons in life," Bhismadev's list of challenges for society at large to improve their quality of life…
With regards to these moral principles given by Bhismadev here in the purport, the principle of, "Not to lie," may be exempt in exceptional circumstances. When devotees are hiding in the basement and a soldier comes looking for them then we can say, "Devotees, I don't know, I've never seen them!" One must not take these principles in a fundamentalist way, they must be appl
In this chapter, the passing away of Bhismadev, in the purport to this verse there is a list of challenges for society at large to improve their quality of life. The first challenge is, "Not to become angry!" We remember Upadesamrta, the Nectar of Instruction Verse 1, vaco vegam manasa krodha vegam, one must control the pushings of anger. So even when anger is pushing, one must somehow or other subdue it. Bhismadev also said that in order to conquer anger, one must learn to forgive because it
ISKCON Youth Ministry’s annual Mexico Bus Tour is coming up December 9 – January 3, taking youth and young adults ages 16 and older on an amazing adventure of a lifetime. Young people will be flying in from all over the USA and Canada, the UK and more.
They will spend three weeks traveling across Mexico, presenting Krishna culture festivals in towns and villages, going on Harinama Sankirtana, and visiting Mayan pyramids, jungle waterfalls and beaches along the way.
Participants will get a real
Very few souls take to the path of pure unmotivated loving devotional service to God. This is because the gross or subtle egoistic disposition of the typical soul of this world prevents him/her from whole heartedly serving someone whom he/she considers "someone else". The typical soul wants to serve himself or those closely related to him materially.
This false ego is the fundamental reason for souls being averse to God. Once one understands that God is actually his most intimate relation, the
There is no easy translation into English of the Sanskrit word, bhakti. It’s a bit of an anomaly. Bhakti is love, specifically divine love, but even the word love itself is a poor attempt to describe this most cherished of all emotions.
One translation Srila Prabhupada gave for bhakti is ‘devotional service’. Love indeed means service – the things we do to make the beloved happy. When it comes to Krishna, bhakti is the expression of our love through activities for Him with our consciousness ste
One evening a drunk came to our stall and picked up a Gita and told me that it is an incomplete Bhagavat-gita. He said that by reading the first page, he understood that it is not complete.
Instead of arguing, I was trying to avoid him & looking for an interested person. But the drunk stayed at our stall arguing with me.
Suddenly another drunkard showed up and told the first drunk, ”You cannot take the Bhagavad-gita, because you are not a Hindu.“
The first drunk said, “No, I am Hindu.”
The seco
His Holiness Bhakti Charu Swami continued to engulf Headquarter corporations in London with the spiritual wisdom of Lord Rama in commemoration of Diwali. On 26th October, 2016, HSBC invited His Holiness Bhakti Charu Swami to join over 200 Bankers and Executives at its Headquarters in Canary Wharf, London to make relevant the teachings of Lord Rama for one of the largest corporations on the planet.
Even after 150 years, HSBC continues to provide multinational banking and financial services t
Originally, the living being was with Krsna in the spiritual world and the living being, upon eternity, came to understand that he also had independence, that he did not have to serve Krsna and that rather he could be served too! At this point, he was not yet envious but when he made the choice to be served, then envy came.
It is said that this state of consciousness where one is contemplating the possibility of not being engaged in the service of Krsna is a neutral state – one is neither abso
