"Planet ISKCON" - 40 new articles
H.G. Sankarshan das Adhikari, USA: Sunday 6 February 2011--Perfect Your Existence for Eternal Happiness--and--Can You Be My Spiritual Master?A daily broadcast of the Ultimate Self Realization Course(tm) Sunday 6 February 2011 The Supreme Personality of Godhead, Lord Sri Krishna, and His eternal consort, Srimati Radharani are enjoying transcendental pastimes in the topmost planet of the spiritual world, Sri Goloka Vrindavan. They are beckoning us to rejoin them. Our Mission: To help everyone awaken their original Krishna consciousness, which is eternal, full of knowledge and full of bliss. Such a global awakening will, in one stroke, solve all the problems of the world society bringing in a new era of unprecedented peace and prosperity for all. May that day, which the world so desperately needs, come very soon. We request you to participate in this mission by reviving your dormant Krishna consciousness and assisting us in spreading this science all over the world. Dedicated with love to ISKCON Founder-Acharya: His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, our beloved spiritual master, and to you, our dear readers. Today's Thought: Perfect Your Existence for Eternal Happiness Uploaded from Bhaktivedanta Ashram--Austin, Texas USA If a musical instrument is not properly tuned, when it is played it sounds horrible. Similarly when the living being is not in tune with the source of his existence, no matter what he may do to try to become situated in lasting happiness, he will be unsuccessful. Of course, if he has good karma, he may be able to go on for some time falsely thinking that he is happy in this material world. But time and tide wait for no man. Sooner or later he will be crushed by the inexorable wheel of time, and he will find that his material happiness has been completely ruined. Therefore if one wants enduring happiness, he must perfect his existence by bringing himself back into harmony with the source of his existence, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Lord Sri Krishna. Sankarshan Das Adhikari Answers According to the Vedic Version: Question: Can You Be My Spiritual Master? Thanks for your blessings. I am a fallen soul. Therefore I have taken birth in this materialistic age known as the Kali-yuga. I beg you, Prabhu, can you be my spiritual master and guide me in my journey of Krishna consciousness, I might not be eligible due to my past deeds to have you as my spiritual master, but I pray for your mercy to accept me because I really want to come out of this cycle of birth and death. Please help me. P.N. Answer: Yes, If You Will Follow My Instructions This is very nice that you would like to become a disciple, because becoming a disciple is a required step on the pathway to spiritual perfection. Disciple means one who disciplines his life strictly according to the orders received from his spiritual master. If you are willing to place yourself fully under my instructions, I will be happy to accept you as my disciple. My instruction to all those who would like to become formally initiated as my disciples is that they should be recommended to me by their local ISKCON center as being qualified for initiation. To qualify for being recommended the first thing is that you must be solidly fixed in following Srila Prabhupada's instruction to chant at least 16 rounds of the Hare Krishna mantra on japa beads every day along with strictly avoiding illicit sex, meat eating, intoxication and gambling. After you have been doing this for at least six months, you can then be recommended by your local ISKCON center to formally take shelter of me as your future initiating spiritual master. And then after six months of this shelter, you can be recommended to me by your local ISKCON center as being qualified for initiation. Once these requirements have been met, I will happy to accept you as my duly initiated disciple. Sankarshan Das Adhikarii Transcendental Resources: Receive the Special Blessings of Krishna Now you too can render the greatest service to the suffering humanity and attract the all-auspicious blessings of Lord Sri Krishna upon yourself and your family by assisting our mission. Lectures and Kirtans in Audio and Video: Link to High Definition Videos Link to Over 1,000 Lecture Audios Lecture-Travel Schedule for 2011 http://www.ultimateselfrealization.com/schedule Have Questions or Need Further Guidance? 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Simply we request you to acknowledge where it is coming from with a link to our sign up page: http://www.backtohome.com Our records indicate that at requested to be enrolled to receive e-mails from the Ultimate Self Realization Course at: This request was made on: From the following IP address: • Email to a friend •  •H.H. Satsvarupa das Goswami: 213 (EJW: November 18, 1996)8:12 A.M. Every Day, Just Write, Volume I: Welcome Home to the One Big Book of Your Life
November 18, 1996 Again my words, not Zimmer’s or Duncan’s, or anybody’s, not my daddy’s, “[Your] mind is in the sewer.” Not my mommy’s, “Oh, Stevie, don’t suck around, ask straight for what you want.” I want a small billiard table like the kid next door has. And what else? A chocolate rabbit for Easter and whatever else you can get, maybe from Jimmy Duncan. Get me a blue Schwinn tricycle with chain action so that I can ride up and down 76th Street and dare (Romapada Swami must have similar memories) to go to 77th Street, strange territory where they never saw this tow-haired kid racing 0n an expensive tricycle past their houses, and they didn’t catch me. I rode so fast on three wheels, I circled and went around back to 76th Street, where everyone knew me in knickers and straight blond hair, skinny kid. Father in the Pacific World War II. My word, not my sister’s. “Stevie, you are a jerk.” No, she didn’t say that. I don’t remember. She said, “The truth hurts, doesn’t it?” She harpooned, I recall, and cried sometimes her sweet face.
You better sober up. For looking at the poets, we fine you and curse you. Make it tough. No, make it just your own expression of praise of God. If you don’t, you’ll be killed and smashed to pieces. Why don’t you love the Supreme? Because you were contaminated in the past? Then why do you go back and plug into it again? That’s what I’m asking you, why don’t you do like the strict brothers claim to do and only think of Krishna and ISKCON, and stay on the computer , get faxes on how to manage this big movement, get the deviants in line, and fight back and raise money, we’ve got enough to do without plugging into our pre-ISKCON past, right? You’re just too idle, that’s your problem. You should associate with your raring-to-go Godbrothers, or you’ll end up like you-know-who. There is no angel. There is no devil, there is no myth. I hear and repeat what Rshabhadeva said. He walked into a forest which burned his own body to ashes. He did that of his free will. There is a spider sitting on the saffron-painted wall. There is here and now. What about the spider? He has four legs on each side, or rather there are both feelers and legs and they encircle his whole body. The limbs come out like rays on all sides. Like needle points of the compass. The spider gets around. He distracted you. You mentioned Rshabhadeva. You want varieties. You want the honest truth pavement, lay it down. So KC is like that. You can’t keep your thoughts very straight. Then move on. Okay, we were saying the Deity is not a statue. I was lecturing okay, but today bow out. Save your strength and muster it to walk out to the shed and write something. But how KC can you be? It depends on your love. You have to get the mercy, or else you’ll stay in the fire of the material world. Unless you get at least a drop of the mercy you cannot know God. They would reject all this as myth. You must realize that you will never be appealing to the non-devotees. You are writing for the devotees but their number is increasing by the distribution of Prabhupada’s books and other preaching. You take advantage of it (as the spider takes advantage of the wall), and you write for the audience who know KC. That’s my virtue, that I may stay within the KC context. I spider am. You a spiderman.
6:00 A.M. The Body Betrayed says you must keep track of your illness episodes, cycles, etc. in a journal. My health journal is a simple daily log. I could expand it a little, but not much. They describe how it gets depressing not knowing whether the next breakdown headache will come, or when it comes and when it will end. You will come, you remain always anxious. They don’t give any solution to this except to try to be strong or whatever. I’ll look at the chapter again. I’m always aware that I may overexert or that a headache may begin of itself at any time. Yesterday while lecturing I forgot I ever had headaches. Today is just the opposite. So wary of it that I cancelled the lecture even without a headache. Keep up nightly meetings, even after Karttika? You never know when “it” will strike. You act normal. What to do? Is it hypochondria or common sense to be very aware at all times that a headache might result, either from some indiscretion on your part or by itself? Heigh-ho.  • Email to a friend • •
H.H. Satsvarupa das Goswami: Poem: February 5, 2011This is the most snow
The astrologer said
• Email to a friend • •H.H. Satsvarupa das Goswami: EJW: November 18, 1996Every Day, Just Write, Volume I: Welcome Home to the One Big Book of Your Life November 18th, 1996 7:00 A.M. Manu, on his way out to sell paintings for days at a time (in his car, which appears to be falling apart), left me with a letter. He said, “I’m sure you know more than me how valuable these days are, coming up to the end of the year again. It seems like a very good opportunity for you to, with abandon, launch into your most important service to Krishna, Srila Prabhupada, the Vaisnavas and the greater community, and we need you fit and healthy for that. Today should be a good day, and I’m praying that you’ll be healthy and ready. Please keep me informed of the conditions in the hut or in the room so I can respond.” I wrote him back that as yet I haven’t been deeply into writing. But yes, these last days of the year are special. 8:13 A.M. Shed windows completely iced over, can’t see out. Ground white frost, amazing red-pink clouds close to ground and going right up against blue-and-white-sky background.
Krishna is great, source of twenty-one patriarchs, seven sages, four Kumaras and Manus. Do I believe it? It sounds so Indian, like a myth. Like a myth-system. I thought He was universal God, but do we have to insist on these twenty-five patriarchs as originators? Yes, I am “afraid” so. They come from Garbhodaka-Visnu, and you can’t deny Him or you’ll end up denying Krishna. Believev it, man, it’s your sastra. Don’t go on your own ecliptic, fool intelligence stolen by Maya. Vedic, Vedic all the way, that’s my football team. Put it on your tee-shirt, sweatshirt, “I’m a Vedic Sisya.” This is what He teaches. Krishna is the source of all. Organ in a church. Or Win-B. Moving loafered feet across the pedals to play, and me beside him, sound emanates all around us in the Dutch Reform Church. God, Lord of Hosts, is honored, praised, directly we hope by this exercise up and down the keys. But I’m not used to it and don’t know what it means. In this hut, clean and varnished wood, with merry eye-knots on desk. Can’t see out frosted panes, but there is a sun there, and it will melt down and give us sight. God, Krishna, plays His flute, and demigods are amazed. You write what He has written. You can do it in a new way, but don’t depart from the principle that God is Krishna. Crashing down the scale and rolling along, his solo organ.
I think I better go alone to follow.
Your problem, sir, is that you want to be yourself, but you want to be KC, right? And KC means to follow. Rohini-nandana asked, “Can you be an original thinker in Krishna consciousness?” Yes and no. You can originally think how to present the old best. For me the question is, “Can you be yourself and be a KC person?”
Fact is twenty-five patriarchs means you rule out all other cultural religious systems and say they are, at best, shadows and offshoots of original Vedas. Twenty-five or forty-five millions of years ago. Whatever it was, it’s still good. I have to uphold this. Say I don’t know everything about the universe. I don’t know, and I accept the sastra. Be enthusiastic to believe it and repeat it. Give me plain self, no other music or culture required. Okay, yeah. 11:25 A.M. While massaging Prabhupada I heard him lecturing in Vrndavana, November 30, 1976. His lecture had mostly been about the fire that is repeated birth and death, and how it can’t be put out by the ordinary fire brigade. It takes the mercy of Krishna through the spiritual master. At the end of the lecture he spoke of how envious persons are like snakes who bite even inoffensive creatures. Similarly, cruel persons attack even devotees who are faultless. The very good example is Jesus Christ, who was crucified although his only fault was that he was speaking of God. Lord Nityananda continued to give mercy to Jagai and Madhai even after they hit Him and drew blood. “Therefore a preacher devotee is so favored by Krishna. They have to actually meet dangerous persons, cruel persons. It is not sitting very idly, comfortably and discuss Vedanta. No, it is not like that. Preaching practically, practically meeting dangerous opposition. Because they are sympathetic . . . para dukha dukhi . . . He meets Jagai and Madhai and faces all kinds of danger. Therefore he is the powerful authorized agent of Krishna.” When I listened at first it sounded ordinary, the same examples I’ve heard before. But by accumulation, when he got to the end of his lecture I asked myself, “What about me?” What preaching am I doing? Then I thought of my headaches. And I wondered if someday I can be more active . . . and I thought of those who are active now, such as the book distributors. • Email to a friend • •H.H. Satsvarupa das Goswami: Secretive: February 5, 2011Huge melting icicles • Email to a friend • •ISKCON Melbourne, AU: Today's Darsana
• Email to a friend • •Japa Group: What Is Our Motivation
So what is our motivation when we are chanting? “Oh Krsna I am chanting Your holy name, please give me a good wife, a good husband. Make my wife peaceful.” But he is saying no. What did Srila Prabhupada tell us? He said chant the holy name, begging, “Oh Mother Hara, energy of the Lord, Oh Srimati Radharani, please engage me in the service of Krsna.” Radhanatha Swami  • Email to a friend • •Kurma dasa, AU: You Are What You Eat
"Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are." - Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755-1826) • Email to a friend • •ISKCON Melbourne, AU: Daily Class - Gangesvara PrabhuSriamd Bhagavatam 11.30.2 - All activities of Lord Krishna are transcendental and supremely perfect. • Email to a friend • •Bharatavarsa.net: Bhakti Vikasa Swami: Sincerity and book-sellingI am very pleased to hear that you are putting your full energy into distributing books and magazines very widely all over Canada. It is not so much the numbers of books sold, it is the sincerity which Krishna appreciates, and I am encouraged by your determined enthusiasm to increase in every respect. The travelling SKP and teaching in the schools and colleges which you are organizing is excellent proposal, and I think that this is the best program for pushing on this Lord Caitanya's Movement: simply travelling and preaching, and infiltrating the schools where young boys and girls are interested to learn something which will satisfy them. In both activities you may distribute many of our literatures, and that will please me very much. >>> Ref. VedaBase => Letter to: Jagadisa — Bombay 5 February, 1972 • Email to a friend • •H.H. Prahladananda Swami: Photos – Prahladananda Swami Yoga Retreat
• Email to a friend • •David Haslam, UK: Jaya Radha MadhavaJust uploaded a lovely little clip taken from Bhaktavadanta Manor by Parashram Das, a little unusual and not quiet what you would expect but so much fun; hope you enjoy it as much as me Jaya radha madhava • Email to a friend • •David Haslam, UK: My PeopleSo I’m leaving ISKCON as I’ve found my people, the one’s I’m meant to be with; I love the devotees but I’ve always been an outsider and now I feel a part of something. In some ways hearing that someone is leaving always for me anyway makes me feel sad, the comings and goings of [...] • Email to a friend • •Sastra Dana, San Diego, USA: FEB issue
February issue of our free magazine, 16 Rounds To Samadhi, is out. Please consider making a donation. All our staff members are volunteers. All donations are used exclusivelly to cover the printing cost. www.sastradana.com/donate/donate-online                     • Email to a friend • •New Vrndavan, USA: Lord Nityananda Appearance DayLord Nityananda Appearance Day Wednesday February 16th. 2011 Fast till noon 5.45 pm Abhishek • Email to a friend • •Subhavilasa das ACBSP, Toronto, CA: Travelling Sankirtan Party, eh? Part 2. A borrowed pic from Gaura das' wall. Nitai Rama dasa on far right and a couple of devotees from the sankirtan party on harinam with devotees in Quebec. Will post more pics from him soon but their camera got smashed on a car door... Yesterday's blog was a segway to today's post.
Please read it at: http://www.radhashyamasundar.com/2/post/2011/02/radha-damodara-travelling-sankirtan-party-and-srila-prabhupadas-mercy-part-1.html Yesterday's post was about the famous Radha Damodara Travelling Sankirtan Party in the seventies. At the end of post there were some musings... "Now it has crossed my mind a few times that it would be wonderful to have a Radha Damodara Sankirtan Party spreading Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabu's message through Srila Prabhupada's books. Wouldn't it be absolutely wonderful to see a group of devotees travelling by bus and doing sankirtan? Well...maybe that can happen... Well...maybe that is happening..." Well...imagine our excitement late last year when we were appraoched by Mother Praharana (ACBSP) that a group of young Bramacharis under the inspiration of Bhaktimarga Maharaj and headed up by Nitai Rama Prabhu were in the process of purchasing a bus to start a travelling sankirtan party! A Canadian Traveling Sankirtan Party, eh! What a marvelous development that pulled at our heart strings and that we had to support. This type of program is exactly what Srila Prabhupada wanted....outreach to expose society to Krishna Consciousness. Many times we are trying to "convert the converted" by preaching to each other. Prabhupada wanted us to distribute this vedica knowledge far and wide and to everybody, no matter if the body is white, brown, yellow, black or anything in between. When our grand guru, Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Thakur gave instructions to Srila Prabhupada to print books he spoke of his frustrations of followers being attached to rooms in the "marble temple". He wanted to sell the marble and print books since it is a missionary movement in the mood of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. So this group of devotees exemplify the sankirtan spirit and are carrying out Srila Prabhupada's wishes and it is our duty to support them! You can do this by contacting info@iskconhalifax.com or by clicking the DONATE button at http://www.iskconhalifax.com We cannot wait to see the Sankirtan bus and it us our prayer to Sri Radha Gopinatha and Srila Prabhupada that They will empower the Canadian yatra that one day another magnificent picture may be taken with multiple buses and devotees distributing thousands of pieces of transcedental literature from coast to coast. All glories to Srila Prabhupada! Param Vijayate Sri Krishna Sankirtanam!!!  This is not the actual bus :) Picture of the actual bus on my computer at the office. Will update the post tomrrow or Monday with an actual picture of the bus they acquired. • Email to a friend • •Rupa Madhurya das, TX, USA: Bhajan - Bir Krishna Goswami - Jaya Radha Madhava Bir Krishna Goswami singing the bhajan "Jaya Radha Madhava" prior to Kirtan Rasa's Inititation. Dallas, TX
Download: 2011-01-25 - Bir Krishna Goswami - Jaya Radha Madhava.mp3 • Email to a friend • •ISKCON News.com: Vaishnava Arts Council Reaches out to British Devotee Artists
• Email to a friend • •ISKCON Toronto, Canada: Kirtan by HH Niranjana Swami @ ISKCON BostonA video of HH Niranjana Swami singing a vintage ISKCON tune from ISKCON Boston! There are rumblings that Maharaj may make a visit to ISKCON Toronto sometime this summer. Keep your fingers crossed!   • Email to a friend • •ISKCON News.com: BBT Sales Rebound in 2010
• Email to a friend • •ISKCON News.com: Hungary’s Bhaktivedanta College Moves Into New Renovated Villa
• Email to a friend • •Dandavats.com: GBC Thoughts On… EuthanasiaWhile the teachings of our acaryas and the scriptural precedents to which we aspire teach us compassion for every living entity and mercy to all, it is understood by Vaisnavas that these two qualities are based on the tenets of transcendental knowledge that require conscious intelligence to understand. When applying these qualities to the subject of euthanasia, therefore, it is understood that this seemingly kind act does not, in fact, end anyone's suffering, nor does it embody the spirit of compassion or mercy. That one is suffering a painful death is understood by Vaisnavas to be the result of past activities, karma, and elimination of one's present suffering does not eliminate the root cause but only postpones [it] to a later date. While compassion and mercy are required when one is observing another's pain, suffering, or death, it is humility that is the key to understanding that pain and suffering in context |
domingo, 6 de febrero de 2011
Rupa Madhurya das, TX, USA: Bhajan - Bir Krishna Goswami - Jaya Radha Madhava
PLANET ISKCON
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