I couldn’t find any reason for living the way people do. Because their death is just inevitable. They’re all just going to die anyway. And it makes everything kind of useless. All these things people are so caught up in—but they could just die at any second.
It so happens that 1971 is the year that Srila Prabhupada initiated me. He explained to me then that to become qualified to go back to Godhead, one must hear about Lord Krsna, chant His holy names and serve Him and His devotees.
Without Making Yourself Miserable by Sita devi dasi In college I was a would-be humanitarian, always getting myself into one altruistic group or another. I leafleted with grape and lettuce workers, read books to blind people, demonstrated against the war in Vietnam, and quit jobs when it became clear my employers were discriminating against minorities. […]
Bahudaka dasa has been the president of the Vancouver ISKCON center for six years. When he first joined, in 1970, the center had only four full-time devotees. It is now a community of more than ninety.
There’s nothing so sublime and pure As knowledge of the soul. And loving service to the Lord As part unto the whole. Of knowledge ’tis the ripened fruit For which the mystics long. Whoever tastes it finds a joy Which makes the spirit strong.
If I throw a handful of stones into the water, the circles they make will overlap and clash. But if I could throw the stones all at one center point, the circles would never clash. If we find the perfect center, we’ll have perfect harmony.
As Emerson said, “It is natural to believe in great men.” And in his book, The Hero, American Style, Marshall William Fishwick remarks that “people are ineffective without leaders.”
Peace Corps veteran tells how on his first professional photo assignment he became interested in Krishna consciousness and started making films for Krishna.
One day a friend of mine showed me a book she had gotten from a Hare Krishna devotee. It was called Sri Isopanisad, The book’s introduction alone was so complete—it explained all the things I’d been wondering about!
He was an expert hatha-yogi in the respected order of spiritual life (sannyasa), and had been running a major yoga center in New York for thirteen years.
I am staying here at the temple in Atlanta, and this has upset my parents very much. They started crying on the phone, and my mother even fainted once. Now I see what you meant when you told me that the family ties are much stronger in Indian families than in American families.
John, a traveler, found himself in Istanbul. With nothing to do, he’d gone to the magnificent Blue Mosque, an awe-inspiring monument with huge stained-glass windows, to offer a sincere prayer to God—the first such prayer of his life.
A pretty girl wearing an exotic Indian dress and carrying a handful of flowers and a shoulder bag full of books pinned a flower on my lapel and asked, “Have you ever read the Bhagavad-gita? This book will answer all your questions about life.”
I was Jewish, and my early education was steeped in the lore and culture of Judaism. Weekly my mother would send me for my violin lesson and dance class.
In 1969 I saw the devotees of Krsna on the television program Top of the Pops. Disgusted by the shaved heads of the men, I turned to my mother, “You’ll never catch me joining that bunch.”
Although I was interested in Krsna consciousness, I doubted that I could follow the four regulative principles. I just couldn’t see myself living the renounced life of a devotee. These habits were so deeply ingrained in me that to purify myself of them seemed impossible.
The devotees’ happy, smiling faces, their enthusiasm, and their music all attracted me deeply. Suddenly I felt that I’d like to be a part of this group. I let the idea pass, but I purchased a set of three Krsna books from one of the devotees.
John Favors, alias Toshombe Abdul, had become Bhaktitirtha Swami of the Hare Krishna movement. He had set aside the politics of the revolution and adopted the life of a monk.
My interest in the Hare Krsna movement goes back to when I was a freshman at Southern Illinois University. When those strange-looking people with the orange robes and shaved heads first appeared on campus, I had no idea who they were.
I grew up in Connecticut in the fifties and sixties. Always “the observer,” dissatisfied with the status quo, I saw my parents’ lifestyle as boring and futile. They had to bear the burdens of the kids and their only reward was a yearly summer vacation.