Introducing people to Krishna is a full-time job for the members of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. They chant Hare Krishna on San Francisco Bay and on Parisian boulevards, give out free pineapples
We milk the cows at two o’clock, and as soon as we’re done milking, we go into the temple and attend the morning functions. We’re busy all the time this way, and we don’t fall down to a mundane level.
This Age of Kali is an ocean of faults. But in this age there is one great advantage—simply by chanting the Hare Krishna mantra, one can be freed of all material contamination.
At Mayapur the devotees will chant and visit the places where the Lord performed His pastimes. But most importantly, they will hear from their spiritual master, Srila Prabhupada.
For the anti-material particle, which is the vital force, there is never birth nor death. Nor, having once been, does it ever cease to be. It is unborn, eternal, ever-existing, undying and primeval. When the material body is annihilated, the anti-material particle is never affected.
Public chanting of the holy names of God is now commonplace in the streets of cities throughout the world, and Lord Caitanya’s famous prediction, “In every town and village the holy name will be sung,” is quickly being fulfilled.
He’s probably logged as much flight time as any other traveling emissary. Prabhupada has circled the globe twelve times visiting his ISKCON centers, lecturing and insuring a high standard of spiritual life among his disciples.
At the same time that Lord Jagannatha was being pulled through Jagannatha Puri in three giant carts with millions of pilgrims in attendance, Srila Prabhupada and his young friends would pull their small cart through the streets near their home in Calcutta.
We generally think that we’re in control of our actions and that we’re making our own decisions, but the supreme authority, Krishna, declares that this is not the case. He says that we are acting as puppets—victims—of the forces of nature.
Prasadam means God’s mercy, and specifically refers to food that’s been offered to Krishna. Prasadam has been offered to Lord Krishna in love by one of His devotees, whereas ordinary food has not.
A study of material nature, for the purpose of distinguishing matter from spirit, is known as Sankhya philosophy.
In New Vrindavan, the devotees find that by following the Lord’s example of living with what the land and cows provide, they can easily be free of all economic problems.
Vrindavan is a simple village unlike all other places in the world, for this is where Lord Krishna, the Supreme Godhead, comes to earth with His associates to display His pastimes.
Three festival days of special celebration for all devotees occur during August and September. Janmastami, Vyasa-puja of Srila Prabhupada and Radhastami.
At JFK International Airport, as more than one hundred disciples royally greeted him and curious reporters thronged around him, Srila Prabhupada explained, in clear language and with fixed conviction, the Krishna conscious philosophy of a God-centered society in which “everything animate and inanimate is recognized to be controlled and owned by the Lord.”
All the press operations, including shooting with a copy camera, designing, spotting, stripping, printing, cutting and binding, are carried out by the disciples, with the intention of pleasing the Supreme Personality of Godhead and His pure devotee, Srila Prabhupada.
We would sit together and eat fresh hot puris with hot milk. For me it is hard to see how Westerners enjoy dry bread when there is something as wonderful as puris.
We faced so many difficulties, but gradually we saw how Krsna assembled a varied and competent crew to build this temple. “The devotees saw the project as a labor of love for glorifying the Supreme Lord and His pure devotee, Srila Prabhupada.
Badas in India were one of my favorite dishes, but in Oregon it was such an ordeal to make them that my taste for them dramatically waned. Making badas with a blender eliminates the grind and adds to the pleasure of cooking classic Vedic dishes.
For so long I’d been hearing the devotees in Mayapur talk about terra cotta panels, terra cotta tiles, terra cotta bas-reliefs, terra cotta statues, terra cotta this, terra cotta that. After seven years I’d developed a kind of apathetic I’ll-believe-it-when-I-see-it attitude.