“No matter what was going on, Srila Prabhupada always related it to his service to Krsna.”
Srutakirti dasa, ISKCON Mayapur
During my first trip to Mayapur with Srila Prabhupada, the guesthouse had not been built, so our quarters were very austere. We stayed in a goshala, a thatched hut, which had been prepared for his stay. Srila Prabhupada stayed in one room and the rest of us stayed on the other side of a partition. I had never seen so many mosquitoes in my life. It was so bad that by the tim
Srimati Radharani is wandering in the forests of Vrndavana and she is not entirely in a calm state of mind. Her love for Krsna is not casual. It is not love that you put on the shelf and sometimes take it off and dust it off for a romantic moment. It is not love that is there after work and after business is done. It is not love in between. It is there all the time and with intensity. It is not that sometimes it peaks and other times it is sort of flat. No, this love is existing constantly in gr
The nature of time is that it is constantly passing. Everything comes into being, everything grows, everything flourishes, gives some by-product, dwindles and then ceases to exist. Our meetings are also going through these stages and we are coming to the latter stages of these meetings. So many people are coming to say goodbye to me. I was calculating – say if people come in groups, 200 people come to say goodbye, with 5 minutes per person – that is 1000 minutes alone! That is over 15 hours of
Every morning our reader, Vallabha Hari, who is a natural Master of Ceremonies, projects out on the microphone a passage from the Bhagavad-Gita: As It Is and it is always a reassuring message from God. Today’s passage went as such from chapter six:
“For one who sees Me everywhere and sees everything in Me, I am never lost, nor is he ever lost to Me.” And, very closely connected to verse thirty is the sloka of yesterday, verse twenty-nine, “A true yogi observes Me in all beings and also sees ev
Dear Devotees,
Please accept my humble obeisances. All glories to Srila Prabhupada.
The Annual General Meeting of the ISKCON GBC Society will begin in February 2023. Following the ISKCON GBC Society’s Rules of Order, the GBC Secretariat requests proposals, duly sponsored by two GBC members, to be submitted by *November* 15, 2022. Note that no proposals will be entertained after this date.
Please follow the format for GBC Proposals. The PDF is found here:
It was today, with umbrella in hand, that I walked to my old spiritual stomping grounds, or, to put it in another phrase, my spiritual birthplace. 187 Gerrard St. is the actual location, currently a house and formerly a temple, where my spiritual training took place. That was back in the spring of 1973, almost a half a century ago. I almost shed a tear looking at the place when actual raindrops fell from the sky.
It is only a few doors down on Gerrard, which is the home of Praharana, my godsist
The Pastimes of Lord Damodara.
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. Even unserious persons who execute devotional service according to the regulative principles during the month of Karttika, and within the jurisdiction of Mathura (or Vrindavana) in India, are very easily awarded the Lord’s personal service”. During the Kartika month millions of devotees worship Damoda
How many of us hide behind the will of God as an excuse to inactivity or laziness? And how many of us attribute our successes to our efforts alone? The Vedic scriptures teach us that nothing in this world moves without the will of God—He is the creator, controller, overseer of multifarious universes, the benefactor of speech, intelligence, talent, and everything else without which we would be considered useless; however, do we just sit back, waiting for God’s will to save or direct us without e
We should be prepared to open ourselves up. We should be prepared to take down our guards. We should be prepared to dismantle our protective fences that we have around us. And we should say:
“I’m ready to serve You. So You just please do to me whatever is necessary so that I would serve You purely”.
And that’s called “unconditional” love. But generally we have many conditions. And that’s because of our long conditioned nature. Now, the fact that we’re going to the direction of Krishna is a good
When Lord Brahma ordered Drona, the best of the Vasus, and his wife Dhara to increase progeny, they said unto him, “Dear father, we seek your benediction. Please let us be born on earth so that after our appearance the Supreme Lord will appear as our son and spread devotional service.
In this way those born in the material world may very easily be delivered from misery.” Brahma agreed, and thus when Drona and Dhara took birth in Vrndavana as Nanda Maharaja and mother Yasoda, Lord Krsna appeared
“Srila Visvanatha Cakravarti Thakura, quoting from the Vaisnava-tosani of Srila Sanatana Gosvami, says that the incident of Krsna’s breaking the pot of yogurt and being bound by mother Yasoda took place on the Dipavali Day, or Dipa-malika. Even today in India, this festival is generally celebrated very gorgeously in the month of Kartika.” (SB 10.9.1–2 purport)
We are now in the month of Damodara. It began on the full-moon night and will continue until the next full moon. Damodara is a name for
I get concerned these days about travel and the time it takes to get somewhere by a vehicle. It can take so long with so many more people and so many more cars.
The drive to Niagara Falls from Toronto used to be one and a half hour — max. These days it’s a frustrating extra hour. There and back is almost a whole, or at least a chunk of, your day. But we were lucky, maybe smart. It’s all in the time of day you leave and time of return that can determine a good or bad trip. Our return was a mere
Kartik and offering lamps 🪔are synonymous. While you must be offering at your home, even at the local Temple but then there is a unique 👉 advantage of offering lamps 💫in the 💥holy Dham of Sri Mayapur in the auspicious month of Kartik🌅, so why would one want to miss this cumulative ✨spiritual ✨benefit?
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, mill
A splendid day kicked off with strong sadhana at the temple including a Bhagavatam class outlining how self-realization can truly take off by way of the nostrils. Such was the case for the adorable four Kumara sages. They caught a whiff of the fragrant Tulsi (sacred green), which were found at the feet of Vishnu. From there on those boys excelled in their devotion.
Our group of Bhakti Academy, along with Ajamil and I, made our way to Queen’s Park once again, this time under an old horse-chestnu
“So during Kartika month we can more easily obtain the favor of Radha. If Shri Radha recommends us to Krishna, we can be sure he will take notice”
Prabhupada speaks in the Nectar of Devotion (summary of the Bhakti-Rasamrita-Sindhu) about the power of performing devotional service during the month of Karttika:
“One of the most important of these ceremonial functions is called Urja-vrata. Urja-vrata is observed in the month of Karttika (Oct.-Nov.); especially in Vrindavana (Krishna’s place of “bi
People are running around–“Oh, I am the manager. I am the factory owner. I am this. I am that. We know his politics, we have to defeat our competitors.” All these things are created just like a man creates a situation in a dream– svapna–drastur ivanjasa.
So when someone asks, “When did we come into contact with the material nature?” The answer is that we have not come into contact. By the influence of the material energy, we THINK that we are in contact. Actually, we are NOT fallen. We cannot b
After a blissful kirtan at Queen’s Park, and once all participants dispersed, I chose to go solo on foot on the very active streets on this Friday night. It is quite remarkable to see the demographical change the city is experiencing. There is an increase in Asian presence, more particularly Chinese and Indian folks, many of them students. By the time I reached Dundas Square at Yonge, it was a very low and crammed protest by youth of Iranian dissent. With place cards and mantras of slogans “Fre
Audio: Click here
The “American Dream” is built on the presumption of free will: If we try hard enough and work smart enough, we can reach our goals. Yet karma and destiny are some of the biggest influences in our life. Now new findings in neuroscience have a lot to say about free will vs. determination.
