Krishna wants us to eat only food offered first in sacrifice to Him: “The devotees of the Lord are released from all sins because they eat food which is offered first for sacrifice. Others, who prepare food for personal sense enjoyment, verily eat only sin.”
Bhakti is as much a science as physics, chemistry or any other science. It is based on observation and experiment, and its results are capable of verification. But bhakti is a transcendental science, and its experiments are of a different nature.
The word Govinda refers to one who gives pleasure to the cows and the senses. There are many incarnations of Godhead, but Govinda is the adi-purusa, or the original person. As such He is not technically an incarnation of God but is God Himself.
Most of the Bowery’s 7,600 homeless men slept in lodging houses that required them to vacate the rooms during the day. Having nowhere else to go and nothing else to do, they would loiter on the street—standing silently on the sidewalks, leaning against walls, or shuffling slowly along.
We grabbed the chariot ropes and pulled Krsna, and He pulled us along with Him. Krsna’s chariot rolled on and on, and the waves of chanting and feeling rolled in and in, deeper and deeper. Hare Krsna,
We are all in the womb of the Age of Kali, a historical age in which the faults of society and the individual are like a great ocean. Who has not experienced this current phenomenon? To some extent we are all implicated.
The International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) is a movement aiming at the spiritual reorientation of mankind through the simple process of chanting the holy names of God.
In spite of working so hard, there is frustration. No one is satisfied. We are always wondering what danger is coming next. This is material life: You work very hard, so hard, and still you feel frustration and are always fearful, and then one day you die.
The Krishna consciousness movement can help Africa develop in an atmosphere of peaceful cooperation and harmony, beyond racial or territorial conflicts caused by lack of true spiritual understanding.
The sage does not make any distinction on the basis of color, intelligence or species. He sees every living entity as a small particle of spirit soul.
The Sankirtana Safari is on. Chanting and dancing to the hypnotic beats of Hare Krsna, a few American sadhus are daily seen on the main streets of Nairobi and other towns in Kenya, East Africa.
Srila Prabhupada dropped a bomb no one was expecting. At the morning lecture, someone asked him about the significance of initiation, and he answered, “Initiation means you accept a spiritual master and agree to worship him as God.” There was a stunned silence.
Suddenly, a huge crocodile attacked the mighty elephant’s leg. Gajendra was uncommonly strong, but though he tried and tried, he could not get free. His wives felt aggrieved and began to cry.
My first impression of the Hare Krsna temple was, “Here is something that is very beautiful and lovely.” As far as the worship was concerned, it was the happiness of it, the joy of it, that I noticed.
I am trying to open a temple here because Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura wanted it. I think that after the temple has started, some men, even from America, may be available.
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.
You may hold unity conferences—hundreds and thousands. But the leaders will never unite, because they have no common platform. You are trying that’s nice. But it will never be successful. You can write it down in your notebook.
There are many philosophers. Some of them think the Absolute Truth is impersonal, and others say it is personal. In India the impersonalists are known as Mayavadis and the personalists are known as Vaisnavas. So, here Lord Krsna resolves the controversy about whether the Absolute Truth is impersonal or personal.
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.
Do we have free will? Are we all on the same path? Are we going in the same direction? Will we all reach the same destination?