Death by Suicide at an Early Age

Death by Suicide at an Early Age

He was the consummate student, disciplined, industrious. Eventually my friend Ralph, in his search for meaning, committed suicide at the age of sixteen. No one was less surprised than me.

The Peace Prize — The Vedic Observer

When the Nobel Prize Committee awarded the 1979 Peace Prize to Mother Teresa, the sixty-nine-year-old nun who has devoted her life to helping the poor of Calcutta, it seemed as though the learned men in Stockholm must have received some sudden enlightenment;

On Peace

Just as many men today labor dearly for peace—so there are even more who are laboring for war. This is an eternal process, according to Lord Sri Krishna.

Beyond the Formless Philosophies

By mental speculation one concludes that because material forms are temporary, spirit, to be eternal, must be formless. This reasoning, however, is illogical, like the conditioned thinking of a cow in a barn.

The Problem with Homosexuality — Happy Liberation

“There’s a difficulty in homosexuality, as soon as it goes into a personal relationship, there’s a raging contradiction. You’ve got two proud roosters or two hens—and sometimes one of the roosters is forced to play a hen, or one of the hens is forced to play a rooster. It’s edgy.”

Who’s Paying the Rent?

Who’s Paying the Rent?

The human family might ask, “Are we actually making our rent payments for all that is being supplied to us, or are we facing eviction?” Perhaps each one of us ought to examine our situation, while we still have time….

Krishna: The End of Knowledge

Today, for the majority of students attending universities and institutions of higher learning, the question of the end of knowledge, the destination of the long pursuit, hardly ever comes to mind. One’s eyes are usually fixed on graduation day and the diploma that signifies entrance into a good-paying job. For most, the goal of knowledge is money and the material pleasures it buys.

Baseball, Caste, and the Whole-Hog Syndrome

Confusing “cast” with “caste” is an innocent error, but mistaking Lord Krsna’s varnasrama system for an oppressive, hereditary class structure is a far more serious blunder. By Mathuresa Dasa Baseball, to most anyone’s mind, has little in common with the Indian caste system, which rigidly divides society into four hereditary classes. But for me there’s […]

Neighbor James

William James’s “Soul Theory” seemed imposing at first—as imposing as William James Hall must have looked to my grandmother. As it turned out, James was pretty close to home. by Mathuresa Dasa Gammy, my grandmother, had a passing acquaintance of sorts with William James, the great American psychologist and philosopher. She owned a two-century-old white […]

The Whole Truth

Satyaraja dasa addresses a gathering at the Whole Life Expo in New York City. Thank you for allowing me to speak at the 1985 Whole Life Expo. I would like to ask you all to reflect for a moment on the implications of the word whole. What does it mean to be truly whole? That […]