In the October issue of BTG, the “Yoga Dictionary” made a careless definition of Christ. It was stated, “The Bible speaks of Jesus Christ as the son of God, and the Vedic scriptures speak of Lord Krsna as God Himself. So Jesus Christ is the son of Lord Krsna.”
THE BOOK purports to be a reinterpretation of Vedanta, one of the ancient Scriptures of India. This is necessarily like re-writing The Bible, and it wouldn’t be possible not to come up with at least a few solid statements of deathless value.
Arthur Avalon [a writer on yoga] places as: Ram the mantra of the Manipura cakra (around the navel) and Ha . . . Ksa . . . for the petals of the Ajna cakra (between your eyebrows).
Recently the president of India, His Excellency Sri Giani Zail Singh, cordially received three leaders of the Hare Krsna movement. They gave President Singh a set of Srila Prabhupada’s books.
The big change is that no longer will we be a magazine you see now and then or pick up when you meet a devotee on the street. At least in America, BACK TO GODHEAD is now a subscription magazine. You won’t see BTG on the streets anymore.
Now, for the first time outside India, a Deity of Lord Nrsimhadeva has been formally installed in a temple—the temple at Nava-Jiyada-Nrsimha-Ksetra, the Hare Krsna farm deep in the Bavarian Forest.
After reading Ravindra-svarupa dasa’s article on Rabbi Kushner’s book Why Bad Things Happen to Good People, one really begins to wonder how someone who’s supposed to have some religious responsibility to others can get away with ideas like those put forth in his book.
Sesa dasa, my traveling companion, says that in this pleasant tropical clime people don’t watch the problems of world politics so closely. They tend to drift mildly in this climate, where you can pick ripe mangoes from the trees.
I would like to know why you never seem to write articles on Krsna consciousness in the black community? I’ve seen so many talented black devotees. I feel you owe it to yourselves to do some articles about them.
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.
SIDDHARTHA could only have been written by a European scholar, and even though the setting is India, however every line and page seems to crackle with European Heaven, European Hell, European misconceptions about Vedic culture.
Last summer, thousands of tourists sightseeing in the center of this city may have been more than a little surprised to see a forty-foot-high, gaily decorated chariot being pulled around a corner onto Park Lane by scores of chanting and dancing Hare Krsna devotees.
“People have the right to believe in whatever they wish, and such freedom exists only in countries which uphold the ideal of separation of church and state.”
In a letter Srila Prabhupada wrote to me in 1974 or ’75, he told me to develop New Vrindaban like Tirupati in south India. But at that time I didn’t know anything about Tirupati; I’d never been there.
Ask anyone who lives near the New Vrindaban farm community, Who built Prabhupada’s Palace? and chances are they’ll say, “Oh, the Hare Krsnas built it.” Ask the devotees, and they’ll all say, “Srila Kirtanananda Swami Bhaktipada built the Palace.
A 12-foot by 20-foot mural entitled “French Explorers” has been painted by Muralidhara dasa, a devotee at the New Vrindaban farm community, for the Wheeling Civic Center.
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.
I read with interest some of the books sold by your vendors, and I would like to ask the following questions: Who am I? Where do I come from? What is the purpose of my existence? How can I get out of the cycle of repeated birth and death?
Observers of the Krsna Consciousness Society’s educational system often admire the joyfulness of the Society’s children, but they also sometimes criticize the devotees for teaching “only about Krsna.”