During the two months spent at 26 Second Avenue, Srila Prabhupada had achieved what had formerly been only a dream. He now had a temple, a duly registered society, full freedom to preach, and a band of initiated disciples.
Our lines are jammed from midnight to 6 A.M. An important reason for the show’s success is that we touch on real issues and give practical solutions. We go into detail about everything from medicine to meditation, from international policy to the economy, abortion, and natural foods.
Maharaja Pariksit, the great king of the entire world, was cursed by a brahmana to meet death from the bite of a serpent within seven days. When he was informed of the curse he at once left his palatial home and went to the bank of the Ganges to prepare for his impending death.
“All reputable evolutionary biologists now agree that the evolution of life is directed by the process of natural selection, and by nothing else.” With these words Sir Julian Huxley summed up the consensus of learned opinion at the Darwin Centennial Celebration in 1959.
On a small press Srila Prabhupada’s disciples printed the first BACK TO GODHEAD magazine, one hundred copies, and then distributed them by bicycle.
Srila Prabhupada’s message to the world was not one of artificial renunciation but of devotion. Whatever you may be—family man, businessman, professional—add Krsna to your life and be happy. Business, after all, is an essential element of society.
I have come to England especially here to your home to explain Krsna consciousness. It is very beneficial. You are intelligent boys. So my request to you is that you try to understand this Krsna consciousness philosophy with all your powers of reason and argument.
Recently I was reading one of the many new books by women who feel they should make their miserable plight known to the world. The book read like a horror story. It told how nuptial love becomes a nightmare of neglect and abuse.
Shortly after founding the first Krsna conscious temple in the West, Srila Prabhupada organized the first Vedic marriage ceremony, replete with fire sacrifice, garlands, exotic foods, and an intimation of the worldwide mission soon to follow.
Attempts to establish equality among all people are naive and superficial unless supported by spiritual understanding. Materially, we are not equal. Some people are geniuses; others are fools.
Srila Prabhupada often translates dharma simply as “religion.” But he indicates that he uses this particular translation for convenience and for want of a better single English term, and he expresses dissatisfaction with a translation that could be misleading.
The President was informed that the earth and life on it are slowly dying. And that’s putting it euphemistically. The outlook is bleak. The report, entitled “Global 2000,” paints a landscape of a wasteland that makes T. S. Eliot’s portrait paradisal.
As far as the Krsna conscious movement is concerned, there is really no such thing as East and West. For instance, the sun rises from the eastern horizon and sets on the western horizon, but the sun is the same. You cannot say “the eastern sun and “the western sun.”
A million dollars and three dozen magazine covers later, Anne had wealth, fame, and apartments in most European capital cities. Anne Schaufuss had everything. Except, maybe, happiness.
I finished the school year, bade farewell to my family, girlfriend, and other intimates, and set off for Japan to practice Zen in earnest.
The illusion I want to destroy is perhaps the most deeply rooted and pervasive of all human convictions. It is the idea that we can achieve happiness through the enjoyment of our senses, especially through that prototype of all pleasure, sex and sexual love.
Prabhupada announced that he would soon hold an initiation. “What’s initiation, Swamiji?” one of the boys asked, and Prabhupada replied, “I will tell you later.”
Radha and Krsna are always engaged in loving affairs in the kunja, the groves of Vrndavana. Krsna is very dear to the gopis and the gopas. Vrndavana is a village and Krsna is always taking pleasure there on the bank of the River Yamuna.
The ’60s proved a fertile field for Prabhupada’s planting the seeds of Krsna consciousness in the West. Now the intensifying war in Vietnam, bringing forth a widespread clamor for peace, provided him an opportunity to present Krsna consciousness as the real peace formula.
The temple cave of Varaha-Nrsimha juts out from the mountain leading to Ahovalam. Local priests say the Deities in these solid-stone temples were installed thousands of years ago.