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From Back to Godhead

Why we should surrender to Lord Krishna’s lotus feet.

At the junction of two ages, amidst two immense armies arrayed on the battlefield at Kurukshetra, Arjuna scans his foes and becomes confused. When Krishna expounds eternal dharma to enlighten him, Arjuna addresses Krishna as pavitram paramam: “the purest of the pure.” (Bhagavad-gita 10.12) Arjuna adds, “All the great sages . . . confirm this about You, and now You Yourself are declaring it to me.”

Apart from the Bhagavad

Loving Krishna means loving everyone because Krsna is in their heart. Conversely, applying that logic backwards, if you don’t love everyone, it means that you are not loving Krsna. Using the root and leaves example, if the leaves are looking healthy, it is to be understood that the root is receiving nourishment.

In SB, eleventh canto, it is explained that only the kanishta or neophyte sees Krsna in the temple, but not in the hearts of all, and fails to respect and develop loving relationships w

Discipline methods should be in harmony with our educational goals. And what is the goal of gurukula education? Many devotees have proposed their own objectives. Here are a few: to produce moral citizens, to produce “not hippies,” to produce productive members of the outside society who can maintain devotional principles, to produce book distributors, to produce temple devotees, or to produce varnasrama members.

To help us decide the proper goal of gurukula, let’s look at the often quoted descr

From Back to Godhead

We all worship someone all of us but the question is…

One of the principles of worship is at traction. When you are reverentially attracted to someone, you have the desire to establish a relationship with that person, and when the relationship is established then you want to perform some worship. Therefore the most important principle is attraction. So the question is what makes a person attractive?

In a spiritual discourse if we announce beforehand that there will be a lec

Srimad Bhagavad Gita: A Pathway to Inner Awakening

This article on Srimad Bhagavad Gita has been written by Premanjana Das (Pranjal Joshi)

Premanjana Das (Pranjal Joshi) is a writer, blogger, healer, spiritualist, software engineer and a management graduate who has been writing for more than two decades in various magazines, websites, newspapers, and forums.

I have read several books in my life. Each one of them had a message to give and a purpose to serve, since words have immense power to re-

A devotee sees all as God’s dear children and wants to relieve their misery.

As eternal parts of Krishna, we naturally possess some of His quality of being concerned for the welfare of all living beings.

Krishna, the seed-giving father of all living beings (Gita 14.4), is also the well-wisher of all living beings (Gita 5.29). As a father wants the best for his children, Krishna wants the best for every one of us. And as a father provides for his children, so Krishna provides for all of us – eko

Srila Prabhupada says that Narada is a great personality and he was so pleased by the devotional attitude of Dhruva, that he could have just given him everything. He could have given Dhruva exactly what he wanted. Why didn’t he do it? [a devotee replies that it was because he wanted Dhruva to surrender to Krishna]. Yes, essentially that’s correct. He wanted him to follow the correct path, he wanted him to engage in devotional service.

You see, and this helps us to develop our perspective about

The great sage Parashara, the father of Vyasadeva, listed six essential qualities of God. Srila Prabhupada shows that Krishna has them all.

By His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, lecture given in Los Angeles on May 18, 1972

Lord Krishna meets the definition of God given in the Vedic literature, and He can teach us everything about the nature of reality.

Ladies and gentlemen, I thank you very much for your kindly participating in this Krishna consciousness movement. When this

Have you checked, if your heart longs for Krishna or is still attached to things of this world?

Externally we may dress perfectly, speak expertly, recite shlokas scholarly, sing melodiously but these qualities may not attract the attention of the Lord. Maybe we are doing it to seek people’s attention and self-glorification.

Krishna hardly bothers about our externals instead he directly peeps into our heart to see whether our heart longs for him or it hankers for something else.

When Duryodhana

It was four months ago when the door bell rang and I found Jason at the door looking rather disturbed. Jason is an old client of mine whom I’ve known for over 20 years. I was rather shocked that he had turned up without an appointment and when I asked him why he’d come, he said that he was interested in upgrading his turntable. I could see he was upset and felt his explanation hid something deeper, so I invited him in.

Jason sat down and we talked and listened to Jazz. Then I played Vandeham wh

Thirty years ago I was doing the Prabhupada marathon at the Chicago airport. One afternoon, we devotees were so intoxicated by distributing books that we decided to show that one doesn’t have to speak to sell books, that book distribution just depends on our state of consciousness. So we didn’t speak.

Just after loading my bookbag with (20) maha books I tapped a man on the arm and looked him in the eye. He stopped, expecting me to say something. I didn’t. I put a book in his hand, pointed at Pr

“This was because Kṛṣṇa and Balarāma could not joke freely and Yaśodā could not liberally pamper the boys because of the presence of Nanda and his brothers. However for Kṛṣṇa’s relatives the evening meal was a hundred times more blissful because the entire family could eat with Kṛṣṇa. It was a million times more blissful for Yāśodā because of seeing the bliss of the relatives.” – Sri Govinda Lilamrta 20.52

Throughout “Sri Govinda Lilamrta,” which is arguably the most prominent boo

(from Sri Caitanya-caritamrta, Adi-lila, Chapter 8)

Whether he is offensive or inoffensive, anyone who even now chants “sri-krsna-caitanya prabhu-nityananda” is immediately overwhelmed with ecstasy, and tears fill his eyes. Simply by talking of Nityananda Prabhu one awakens his love for Krsna. Thus all his bodily limbs are agitated by ecstasy, and tears flow from his eyes like the waters of the Ganges.

There are offenses to be considered while chanting t

From Back to Godhead

Pradyumna Dasa, Srila Prabhupada’s Sanskrit editor, begins reading The Nectar of Devotion, Introduction: “Invoking auspiciousness: Lord Sri Krishna is the Supreme Per

From Back to Godhead

Krishna is always engaged in sport, and when we try to imitate Him, we lose.

When the 2017 Super Bowl game, the summit of American professional football, was held in Houston, a devotee convinced me and a few others to try to distribute Srila Prabhupada’s books at a huge pregame event downtown. Venturing into the passionate, teeming crowd, we sold a few books, but not so many. This experience reinforced what was already obvious: mundane sport certainly has a powerful allure.

There are bumper stickers that say, “I’d rather be hang-gliding”. For devotees of Krishna it could read, “I’d rather be distributing books”. Book distribution is that beautiful experience that melts the heart and is not
easily forgotten.

However, sometimes we neglect to distribute books, so Krishna sends certain reminders. Here are several reminders I have experienced:

Once I was standing outside the LA temple when a couple approached me. “Don’t you remember us? You gave us a calendar.” I vague