Bhisma was such a fierce and skillful fighter that he was virtually invincible; only by a trick was he mortally wounded. Now, in recognition of his exalted position and his profound devotion to Lord Krsna, many great saints and sages have also gathered to hear his last words.
Ladies and gentlemen: Please accept my greetings for the happy new year of 1969. and please accept the blessings of Sri Krsna, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, for your kindly participating in this happy meeting of Krsna consciousness.
Fasting for some political purpose my help us reach some political goal. But the Vedic teachings direct us beyond such goals. Fasting, say the Vedic scriptures, is meant to help us control the mind and senses so we can advance in spiritual realization; it’s not for any other purpose.
This material nature is constituted in such a way that we have to suffer; it is God’s law. And we are trying to relieve the suffering by patchwork remedies. Everyone is trying to get relief from suffering; that is a fact. The whole struggle for existence is aimed at getting out of suffering.
Apart from the hundreds of European and American devotees who come to visit Krsna-Balarama tourists constantly fill the guesthouse and vegetarian restaurant, which are considered Vrndavana’s finest.
The poet John Berryman was my teacher at the University of Minnesota the year he jumped from a bridge over the Mississippi and killed himself at the age of fifty-seven. In some respects, his suicide puzzled me.
The majority I suppose, came to express—well, in a word, fear. Fear that thermonuclear weapons might blow the world, or a big part of it—or at least their part of it—to pieces. Hot pieces.
By whom are you being taught what is healthy and what is not healthy? What is you authority? Actually this ‘healthy’ and ‘unhealthy’ is a material consideration. We are simply interested in what Krishna wants. So we offer Him whatever He wants to eat.
“We learn everything they learn—like English, arithmetic, history, and geography—but we also learn Sanskrit, the Bhagavad-gita, and how to know Krsna. So our education will get us out of the cycle of birth and death, but theirs will keep them in it.”
The Vedas describe how great an artist Krsna is. Nobody can be found who is greater than the Supreme Personality of Godhead or equal to Him, and although He is the greatest artist, He doesn’t have to do anything personally.
You have not had LSD, Allen? “I have had it.” It is dependence, Allen. “It’s like a car—a mental car—to resolve certain inner things.” Krishna Consciousness resolves everything. Nothing else is needed.
Just hearing that Swamiji was coming back to New York, the devotees, having felt separation from their Spiritual Master, were filled now with so much bliss. Their joyful shouts of “Haribol!” filled the temple at Kirtan.
With Krsna consciousness flourishing on New York’s Lower East Side, Srila Prabhupada felt he could entrust the New York center to his followers and expand the movement west.
Just around a bend in the road in the West Virginia panhandle, stands Prabhupada’s Palace of Gold, a handcrafted seven-years-in-the-making miracle of inlaid marble walls and floors, stained-glass windows, crystal chandeliers that glitters like a second sun.
God is there. Anyone can go back to Him and live an eternal life full of bliss and knowledge simply by knowing about it. When God Himself comes, all great acaryas, stalwart men, accept Him: “Yes, He is God.” If we simply understand God, we make a solution to all our problems.
In the beginning there is myself [Brahma], and the Prajapatis, the great sages who generate; then there are Lord Visnu, the demigods with controlling powers, and the kings of different planets. But at the end there is irreligion, and then Lord Siva and the atheists full of anger.
Absolute is sentient, Thou hast proved, Impersonal calamity Thou hast removed. This gives us a life Anew and fresh. Worship Thy feet, Your Divine Grace.
The Sanskrit word karma means “action” or, more specifically, any material action that gives us a material reaction and thus binds us to the material world. So a karma-free diet is one that produces no material reaction; it’s a sinless diet.
Of course, there are different types of yoga, but ultimately the basic principle is to purify the mind so we can understand our pure spiritual identity. Yogis want to go beyond the mind, beyond even the intellect, to the very root of life, the soul.
The Supreme Lord rescues His devotee from the ocean of birth and death. A soul suffering in material existence can never save himself from the ocean of repeated birth, old age, disease, and death.