“Is chanting all that your religion does? Don’t you do welfare or anything like that?”
Alex, my barber, works at the Pilatos salon in Queens, New York, on the cusp of a Hispanic neighborhood. The salon has mostly Latino hairdressers and clients, and it is bright and upbeat, with salsa music often playing softly in the background. On a recent visit there, instead of salsa, I heard the chanting of om namo bhagavate vasudevaya, which means “obeisance to the Supreme Lord Krishna.” I remarked to Ale
A look at what the Srimad-Bhagavatam has to say about time, a concept that has challenged philosophers for centuries.
Time is a little difficult to define. Philosophers and theologians have tried for at least twenty-five centuries. Albert Einstein remarked, in the midst of slightly more esoteric statements regarding physics, that time was what his wristwatch measured. St. Augustine said that he knew what time was as long as no one asked him to explain it. And sounding a note of frustration in
Like a beautiful palace with a closed door the dhama also requires a key to grant us entrance. This is chanting the Name. According to Sri Bhaktivinoda Thakura it is chanting the Holy Name with loving affection.
“Dham is Nam”. That is the very first manifestation for the sincere sadhaka.
You remember, Indra was very afraid. He offended Krsna to a very bad degree.
Krsna does not forget such an offense to a devotee – He waits till this person goes to that devotee and gets forgiveness, satisfies t
karmany evadhikaras te
ma phalesu kadacana
ma karma-phala-hetur bhur
ma te sango ‘stv akarmani [ B.g. 2.47]
“You have a right to perform your prescribed duty, but you are not entitled to the fruits of action. Never consider yourself the cause of the results of your activities, and never be attached to not doing your duty”.
The above mentioned verse is one of the most famous verses in Bhagavad Gita, although many know this verse and probably might have recited and heard them many times, very few
From Back to Godhead
An answer to the question:
"Why is a good Christian like you worshiping a Hindu god?"
People often ask me why I changed my faith from Christianity to worship of Krsna. They ask what made me give up Christianity. I am always quick to answer that I never "gave up" Christianity. The principal instruction Jesus gave was to love God, and I believe I can best do that by worshiping and serving Krsna.
What is it that makes Krsna more attractive or meaningful to me than the God of
Our spiritual practice should nourish us, it should supply us with a taste that is better than the taste that material activities and sense gratification provide us with. When our spiritual practice lacks this taste, the temptation of material life which then allures us with a seemingly greater taste is always close to us. And at that time we are in danger. However, if we can find taste in our spiritual practice we are safe on the spiritual platform.
The chanting of the Holy Names is recommende
Krsna’s plan unfolds in our life and we have to allow it to do so. Over time, our destiny will become clear and we begin to see Krsna’s plan. We are all in one sense family members of Krsna now that we are part of the Acyuta-gotra. The Acyuta-gotra is the infallible family lineage of Krsna. Before I was in Krsna consciousness, I went to Gaya and I stayed in a dharmasala. The manager asked me, “What is your gotra (family lineage)?” I said, “Well, in my country we do not really have that.” So the
Krsna is conquered by all, but most by the devotee who gives the most, who does the most.
Love is the foundation of everything. It is not like a sentimental wet blanket. Sometimes, we hear of impersonalists speak about the cosmic love and how one has to connect to that cosmic love, that all this cosmic loving energy is all-pervading and if one simply connects to it then they will also become like an instrument of that love. That is the impersonal loving energy, like a wet loving bla
A Dubai commuter, stuck in traffic, muses on how modern inventions have failed to improve the quality of our lives and have added to our distress.
It’s 7:00 P.M., and I’ve been driving for more than an hour. As I head home from work along Sheikh Zayed Road in Dubai, I’m caught in the usual evening traffic jam. Like the car ahead of me, my car starts, stops, and starts again. While my car moves slowly, my mind races. I do mental mathematics with the number on the car plate in front of me. The tr
Forgiveness is Pleasing to Krsna
The duty of a brahmana is to culture the quality of forgiveness, which is illuminating like the sun. The Supreme Personality of Godhead, Hari, is pleased with those who are forgiving. (SB 9.15.40)
The Lord is very satisfied with His devotee when the devotee greets other people with tolerance, mercy, friendship and equality. (SB 4.11.13)
Forgiveness is Dharma
Forgiveness is virtue, forgiveness is sacrifice and forgiveness is the Vedas. Forgiveness is purity and pe
More so than us becoming attracted to Krsna, let us do something that attracts Krsna to us!
Devotional service is about attracting Krsna. It is not just about us getting attracted to Krsna. In the beginning, we think that devotional service is about us becoming attracted to Krsna but we can think of Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Thakur, who was standing a bit off to the side for the darshan in the temple of Sri Sri Gandharvika Giridhari in his head headquarters in Mayapur. He did not actuall
Recenly a friend gave a Bhagavad Gita to a person named Donald. From the beginning of his reading he liked it so much. Every day he was reading for two hours. He had smoked for thirty years but stopped, then he had stopped eating meat, and he felt a sense of being purified, all from reading Srila Prabhupada's books.
He contacted the devotees in Columbus, Ohio, and asked whether there was any way to get more books. It was during the pandemic so he wasn't working, meaning he was short of money. H
We have these ‘noise boys’, who are playing all their instruments in the kirtan very energetically. But that energy is not theirs, that energy is given to them by Krsna. It is Krsna’s energy which He has deposited in the ‘noise boys’, and now they have it. But as time goes by, they will not have it, a lot of that energy will be gone, won’t it? If you look at some of the elderly gentlemen, they are sitting on chairs, leaning against the wall. (laughter) They do not have the same energy anymore. S
We see that brahmanas in Vedic culture would refuse to simply take up a job. They just lived from teaching scriptures and glorifying scriptures. People would bring them some rice and other things and in this way they lived their whole lives; it was very simple, “My wife makes this very nice soup. We have a tamarind tree in our yard and my wife uses its leaves to cook this nice soup with the rice. I am very happy!” So like this, it was a virtue in Vedic culture; the highest class people were the
Question: The Supreme Lord is quoted as paraṁ satyam (the Supreme Truth). But then we see Krsna saying to Mother Yashoda that He has not eaten the clay. Is He saying a lie or is it the truth?
He is saying a lie. Krsna can lie, that we all know.
Question: But then how is Krsna called paraṁ satyam?
Yes, He is the Supreme Truth and the Supreme Truth can also lie. But the lying is only for enjoyment. So it is not that it means that the Supreme Truth is not the Supreme Truth. Krsna is still the Su
Krsna is so attractive, yet our material desires constantly bounce back up like a ball in water. We push it down, but then it always pops back up. How about that? Krsna will always win in the end because Krsna is the most attractive, however maya also appears to be attractive. Not as attractive as Krsna, but enough to make you think, “Yes, you can have Krsna, but He is far away. But I am here right now. You also have to live now. I mean of course, pure love of God is a beautiful and desirable t
It is important to always turn to Krsna and remember that Krsna will decide. Krsna has His plan. We can think of a chess board where we are a pawn on the chess board. So as a pawn on the chess board, we can see the squares that are closest to us. Oh, there is a horse coming! We can see that, so then we must watch out. But while there are a few squares around us that we can see, we cannot oversee the whole board. We cannot oversee the whole game. Krsna, however, is the chess player and He can se
There are various answers in various scriptures to this question. In the Bhagavad-gita, we have the verse: paritrāṇāya sādhūnāḿ vināśāya ca duṣkṛtām dharma-saḿsthāpanārthāya sambhavāmi yuge yuge (Bhagavad-gita 4.8). Krsna says here that He appears millennium after millennium to annihilate the demons and to re-establish the principles of religion. In the Srimad Bhagavatam, Kuntidevi is explaining that the Lord appeared because of the austerities carried out by Vasudeva and Devaki and that it was
Everybody close your eyes and take a deep breath – breath in and then breath out. Now, in your mind, go to your favourite place, wherever that is. Now in that place, try your best to see Krsna. Do you see Krsna? Maybe, maybe not. This is difficult. What we see is usually a picture of Krsna that we may have seen of Krsna, maybe even in the form of His deity. That is what we try to remember when we see Krsna. So we have this mental image of Krsna, but can we actually see Him? Can we see His face
Krsna’s beauty is not only external. His beauty is not only in His form and in His lotus eyes and so on, the beauty is in His very nature. Krsna is very noble. Our Krsna is extremely kind. When Draupadi was in the assembly of the Kurus and Shakuni was carrying out his tricks with the dice and cheating, the Pandavas lost everything. Even Yudhistira himself was totally lost. He lost all his brothers, then he lost himself and then he wagered Draupadi. So Draupadi was saying that it was not a prope
