The Goddess
The embodiment of beauty
The spirit of purity
Her complexion resembles gold
While Her senses are controlled
She is calm, composed, collected
To all souls She remains connected
She is the epicenter of radiance
As A flower’s essence is fragrance
She is the master in the cuisine
After Her craft She keeps it all clean
She is a teacher of surrender
Holding no place for a pretender
And those who are morose
To Her just can’t come close
She is the epitome of the feminine
Spontaneous in lo
Srila Prabhupada says...
These are not ordinary children, they are Vaikuntha children and we can give them chance to advance further in Krishna consciousness. That is very great responsiblity, do not neglect it or be confused. If you train a child in taking shelter of Krishna then that will become nature of child. Our children are the gift given by mercy of the Lord, they are delicate. Take care of them with Love and Devotion, by giving them Krishna Consciousness. Children are a blank slate. You
Kartamasa das: The first time I met Yamuna devi, my life changed forever.
I was in Saranagati for the Christmas holidays in 2000 having a reunion with my closest childhood friends. We were all in our early twenties, and having recently finished our university education and started work, we spent our time together recalling our childhood activities. One day we decided to have kirtan, but in a rather irreverent way, mocking the showy, elaborate vocal and instrument style we had all absorbed growi
Man has the chance to bloom spiritually by raising himself to the highest level of love of God.The Vedic scriptures divide consciousness into five categories, namely covered, shrunken,budding, blooming, and fully bloomed.
Trees and plants, for example, are almost inert. They fall into the “covered consciousness”category. They seem to show no sign of consciousness, but when we observe them carefully, we see they have a limited consciousness.
Other living entities, such as worms, insects, and oth
These are all the activities of sadhana-bhakti-yoga, it cleanses the heart from the conception that “I am the body” and it changes the spirit of possessiveness from “I want to possess things for myself, my enjoyment” to “I only want to possess Krishna”. And when we give ourselves to this process of hearing and chanting about Krishna, then the more we do it the more we want to do it, because we get the taste and there is nothing that’s more powerful than the taste. And when we get the taste for
A 50th installation offering to Sri Sri Radha Ksira-Chora Gopinatha
In 2019, the Building Improvement Committee (BIC) at ISKCON Toronto embarked on a monumental task of revolutionizing the facilities and spaces within the temple to accommodate the growing community and to ensure that the building is efficiently serving the needs of the devotees. Thus, theTemple for the Future Renovation Projectwas born.
Initially, the renovations started with a new and beautiful accessible washroom on the main
From Back to Godhead
By Chaitanya Charana Dasa
The final stage of the relationship between Vali and Sugriva, important characters in the Ramayana, provide important ethical lessons.
A poignant subplot in the Ramayana is the fratricidal confrontation between the two monkey brothers Vali and Sugriva. In the Mahabharata, fraternal animosity between the virtuous Pandavas and the evil Kauravas continues till the death of the Kauravas. In contrast, the Ramayana features a deathbed reconciliation betw
“Every living entity, beginning from Brahma, the first-born living being within the material world, down to the insignificant ant, desires to relish some sort of taste derived from sense perceptions. These sensual pleasures are technically called rasas. Such rasas are of different varieties. In the revealed scriptures the following twelve varieties of rasas are enumerated: (1) raudra (anger), (2) adbhuta (wonder), (3) srngara (conjugal love), (4) hasya (comedy), (5) vira (chivalry), (6) daya (m
By His Divine Grace Srila A.C.B. Swami Prabhupada
Śrī Brahmā-saṁhitā, Verse 32
Type: Sri Brahma Samhita
Date: Aug. 14, 1972
Location: Los Angeles
Prabhupāda: Hare Krsna.
aṅgāni yasya sakalendriya-vṛtti-manti
[Bs. 5.32]
Aṅgāni means limbs of the body. Govinda, Lord Kṛṣṇa is person. He’s got His limbs of the body as we have got. Man is made after God. We are imitation of Kṛṣṇa. Kṛṣṇa is not imitation of us. The atheist class, they think that “They have painted a form of God according to one’s own
By Matthew Learning
Through divine providence, in the autumn of 2020, a man named John Griesser sent me a message on Facebook asking me to be friends because of our common interests. I accepted and then received an invitation to view the trailer for his new film, Hare Krishna! He mentioned that he and his wife directed the film and if I enjoyed the trailer, that I watch the full-length film on Amazon Prime.
A few days passed before I actually saw the trailer. After viewing the trailer about a m
From Back to Godhead
To ensure the health of our spiritual life, we must transform material hope into spiritual hope.
Hope—the recognition within the human heart that something better is attainable—can mean the difference between life and death. In Man’s Search for Meaning, Holocaust survivor Victor Frankl writes that the rate of deaths in the concentration camp increased after Hanukkah, even though there was no change in camp’s already horrible conditions. Why did more die? Because each year r
Being absorbed in book distribution, we were hesitant to return to the temple, even for weekends. To stay out on Sunday provided a special challenge, as even today Sunday is a day where hardly any shops are open. Everything freezes to the sounds of bells being rung in empty churches, and the Germans retreat to their flats and gardens to once again cut their lawns precisely, so that no blade of grass can grow without the permission of the well-organized owners.
The neighbors compete over who has
“Ever since the Stone Age, people have come up with so many nonsensical ideas to explain the forces of nature.”
On encountering Hare Krsna devotees chanting on the street, people respond with every reaction from amusement to anger. Few understand what the chanting is all about. To many, it seems a frivolity, often inspiring the remark “Get a job!”
But there’s nothing frivolous about chanting the names of God. Srila Prabhupada had great faith in the transformative power of chanting. He told us that simply by chanting Hare Krsna we would become self-realized. He spoke from experience and on the basis of th
Bilvamangala Thakura was a wealthy south Indian Brahmin and belonged to a cultured family. But he got attracted to a prostitute named Cintamani. The attraction soon became attachment. And as it happens when we get attached to worldly enjoyment we lose our intelligence and subsequently our dignity. The fire of lust was so intense that he was not at all moved when his father died; in fact standing near the pyre of his father he was engrossed in the thought of Cintamani. The body of his dead fathe
By Giriraj Swami
Srila Prabhupada’s beloved disciple Yamuna-devi dasi passed away on Saphala-ekadasi.
There is so much to be said about Srimati Yamuna-devi dasi.
In October of 1970 I was one of a group of Srila Prabhupada’s disciples from America going to join him in India. On the way, we stopped in Brussels, and it was there, in an apartment, that I first met Yamuna-devi—and Malati and Syamasundara (I had met Gurudas before that, in Boston). Upon entering, I could immediately feel their intens
I found this talk by Yamuna-devi, from the Pune Yatra 2001, so profound and powerful, I wanted to share it with you all. If you wish to learn more about—and from—this extraordinary devotee and disciple of Srila Prabhupada’s, you may visit the beautiful new website Unalloyed: The Yamuna Devi Legacy Project (www.unalloyed.org). —Giriraj Swami
Radhanath Maharaja has requested that my godsisters and I speak something. Last night, after we left the transcendental program and before I took rest, I wa
By Sri Nandanandana dasa (Stephen Knapp)
Sometimes people say that they want to see God, or that God is not perceivable. And this is confirmed in the Vedic scripture, but with additional points of instruction on how we can perceive the Supreme Being. The Svetasvatara Upanishad (4.20) explains “His form of beauty is imperceptible to mundane senses. No one can see Him with material eyes. Only those who realize, through deep pure-hearted meditation, this Supreme Personality, who resides in ev
By Goloka Devi Dasi
Having been appointed just a matter of weeks ago, one of the first meetings the new Ambassador for Ireland, Mr. Akhilesh Mishra, wanted to arrange was with ISKCON!
A very nice, knowledgeable and humble man we spent about 40 minutes discussing Sanskrit (which he has studied and his father was a professor of), Vedic culture and the achievements of Srila Prabhupada.
Before leaving we presented him with the complete edition of the Srila Prabhupada Lilamrta. Somehow that seem
By
H.H. Bhaktisvarupa Damodara Swami
(On December 9th, 2021 (Odan Shasti), disciples and servants of H.H. Bhaktisvarupa Damodara Swami will be celebrating his 84th vyasa all over the world. On this occasion we are pleased to share below excerpts from his lecture’s question/answer session.
The excerpts from chapter ‘Prayers’ are adapted from the book “Sripada in Switzerland – Lectures, conversations and instructions of His Holiness Bhaktisvarupa Damodara Swami in Switzerland published by BI,
