The Most Confidential Knowledge
Engage your mind always in thinking of Me and become My devotee. Offer obeisances and worship Me. Being completely absorbed in Me, surely you will come to Me.
Varnasrama — The Anatomy of the Social Body
The Vedic scriptures, the oldest scriptures known to man, describe four principal classes. These are (1) an intelligent class (brahmanas), (2) a martial or administrative class (ksatriyas), (3) a mercantile class (vaisyas), and (4) a laborer class (sudras).
Krishna, Counting the Ways to Love Him
Krishna, the original person, is no less a person than we are. Most religions teach us to respect God as the almighty father. But we overlook His true greatness and power if we ignore He can relate to His devotees in loving relationships.
Baseball, Caste, and the Whole-Hog Syndrome
Confusing “cast” with “caste” is an innocent error, but mistaking Lord Krsna’s varnasrama system for an oppressive, hereditary class structure is a far more serious blunder. By Mathuresa Dasa Baseball, to most anyone’s mind, has little in common with the Indian caste system, which rigidly divides society into four hereditary classes. But for me there’s […]
Why we Read the Newspapers
Reading the newspaper this morning: Officials at the University of Nevada have OK’d a site in Reno for a sheepherder monument. Two young female tourists have drifted ashore in their disabled motorboat near Jakarta, Indonesia, after living for twenty-two days on short rations and rainwater.
Neighbor James
William James’s “Soul Theory” seemed imposing at first—as imposing as William James Hall must have looked to my grandmother. As it turned out, James was pretty close to home. by Mathuresa Dasa Gammy, my grandmother, had a passing acquaintance of sorts with William James, the great American psychologist and philosopher. She owned a two-century-old white […]
The Many Loves of Auto Man
There’s a long history to bumper stickers. It began with Stone Age cave dwellers, who sometimes painted pictures on the walls of their homes. Later on, the Egyptians invented pyramids and decorated them with hieroglyphics.
Festivals of India Come West
The festival shows how Vedic concepts and the Vedic lifestyle are, ever relevant in guiding human society and in fulfilling man’s quest for timeless knowledge. The festival is always “a surprise,” both visually and culturally.
Lord Caitanya’s Childhood Pastimes
The seemingly ordinary activities of Lord Caitanya as a child are entirely transcendental. Who would have thought that a child at play could topple the bastions of monism and pantheism?
Falling for Fido
The dog-food aisle runs the full length of the store, where, set against the back wall, one finds an equally long display: the meat cooler. Chickens, turkeys, pigs, cows, and sheep.
The Yogi in the River
To practice yoga you need a secluded place. Traditionally, yogis have retired to Himalayan caves, to remote corners of dense, unexplored jungles, even to the depths of an ocean or river. The great yogi Saubhari Muni meditated for many years within the Yamuna River.
Can God Do That?
If I were to tell you I knew a story about a boy who swallowed a raging forest fire to save his friends and relatives, you’d probably think it was a fairy tale. Boys don’t swallow forest fires.
Reflections At The Zoo
I spent an afternoon at the Zoo with my two-year-old son. As I carried him from the elephant compound to the lion house to the bird sanctuary, I began to wish I had heeded my wife’s advice to bring along the stroller. “Why He knows how to walk.”
Overpopulation—A Popular Myth
Social scientists from around the world gathered in Mexico City last August to discuss the alarming growth of the world’s population.
The Two Faces of Time
We measure time in terms of the movements of physical objects. The time the earth takes to orbit the sun we call a year. The time the moon takes to orbit the earth we call a month. And the time the earth takes to revolve on its axis we call a day.
How God Creates the Universes
When Lord Maha-Visnu, a plenary expansion of Lord Krsna, exhales, innumerable universes emanate from Him. Within each of these universes Maha-Visnu expands Himself as Garbhodakasayi Visnu and lies down on the water that fills half of each universal shell.
Krsna-Centered Life In Los Angeles
At 4:30 am Los Angeles Hare Krishna Temple resounds with drums and cymbals as four hundred men, women, and children, wearing bright dhotis and saris sing the holy names of God and dance before the Deity.
The Miracle of Mayapur
On the Ganges plain ninety miles north of Calcutta, the world headquarters of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) rises in Mayapur, the land of Lord Caitanya’s birth.
Scarcity In The Land Of Surplus
The United States has enough surplus wheat to provide more than two tons of cereal and baked goods for every American family and enough surplus cheese, butter, and powdered milk to put forty pounds of dairy products in every kitchen in the country.
Festival of the Chariots USA
The three towering chariots, their brightly colored silk canopies billowing, glide slowly down streets that on every other day of the year are reserved for a heavy traffic of cars, trucks, and buses.