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.
Yoga is a word becoming increasingly familiar to people all over the world. Many are asking, “What is yoga? What does the yoga practitioner seek to achieve? And what is the ultimate goal of yoga?
I spent long hours in study. I never took to service of Your lotus feet as I do now. Reading on and on, I felt knowledge would be the highest goal. That knowledge was ignorance.
Is there a higher enjoyment beyond the relative pleasures and pains of material life? His Holiness Revatinandana Svami describes how to achieve the realm of transcendental consciousness, where pleasure is ever increasing
We may find a typical villager in a Vedic community living with his wife and a few children in a thatched hut with mud walls and a dirt floor. He has a couple of cows, a well and four or five acres of land. The river is nearby.
They have converted three Greyhound buses into mobile temples to bring the message of Krishna consciousness to every town and village in the United States and Canada.
There are ten offenses to be avoided while chanting the Hare Krishna mantra. These are given in The Nectar of Devotion. When we chant Hare Krishna, we must therefore be very careful to avoid these offenses.
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.
Lord Caitanya did not advent Himself to liberate only a few men of India. He says in the Caitanya-bhagavata: ‘In every town, country and village, My name will be sung.’
For a typical initiation, about one hundred devotees gather in the temple. The devotees to be initiated—perhaps a dozen of them—sit in two rows, facing the devotee designated to be the priest of the ceremony.
Srila Prabhupada thought if he could get some of the Westerners to become devotees of Krishna, the Indians would then realize the importance of the spiritual culture they had given up.
In Calcutta in 1896, the teachings of Lord Caitanya began their journey to the West. In Bengali-speaking Calcutta on August 20th of that year, Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakura published a small English treatise entitled Lord Caitanya—His Life and Precepts.
Four days after his thirty-eighth birthday, Srila Prabhupada’s very dear disciple Jayananda dasa passed away in his quarters at the Los Angeles Temple complex (New Dvaraka). For the last few months his body had been ravaged by leukemia.