The other day, while here in Boston, I turned forty years old. I remembered when I was twenty-five years old and went out to chant Hare Krsna with my fellow devotees on the Boston Commons. Once a heckler shouted at us: “You kids better quit this while you can!”
Thousands of young people were walking the streets, not simply intoxicated or crazy (though they often were), but searching for life’s ultimate answers.
Whoever you are, your body is changing. You once had the body of a child. Now you have the body of a young person or old person. The change is gradual, yet continuous.
Before I came to Krishna consciousness my life was completely impure. I was confused and indecisive about spiritual life and couldn’t help myself. But after I read that book, I lost my taste for materialistic activities. And now I understand that I was being cheated by maya, illusion.
Last night you had some dream, but now it has no value. It is gone. And again, tonight when you sleep, you’ll forget all these things and dream. You won’t remember, when you are dreaming tonight, “I’ve got my house; I’ve got my wife.” You’ll forget it all. So all of this is a dream.
So the first thing is that one should be searching after a spiritual master, just as when you search after some school, you must have at least some preliminary knowledge of what a school is.
Last year the printing total surpassed the previous year’s total by thirty percent, and BBT books appeared for the first time in Danish, Greek, and Kannada (a South Indian dialect).
When we were chanting Hare Krishna My pleasure was so great I was afraid lest I be swept to heaven and given a chariot ride down the length of the rainbow.
The dingy loft, its rafters unpainted, was more like an old warehouse than a temple. The members of his audience, most of them musicians, had come to meditate on the mystical sounds of the Swami’s kirtana, his chanting.
The word karma literally means “action,” yet it also carries the import of “fate” or “destiny.” This is entirely reasonable, for it is our actions that determine our fate.
Yes. For meat-eaters, that is what the Vedic culture recommends: “Eat dogs.” As in Korea they are eating dogs, so you also can eat dogs. But don’t eat cows until after they have died a natural death.
Sivananda had not been in the temple more than a year when Srila Prabhupada came to Montreal. After a short meeting, Srila Prabhupada requested Sivananda to go to Europe to try to open a center there.
A young cowherd boy appeared before Madhavendra Puri and offered him a pot of milk. That boy was none other than Krishna, the Supreme Personality of Godhead.
Most people think they have no need for a spiritual master. In a sense, they are right. People interested only in an animal-like existence do not need a spiritual master. A spiritual master is required for a person who is inquisitive about transcendental knowledge.