“Climate change and the unjustified consumption of energy are two of the most serious issues we face today at the macro-level.”

Last week the construction of the bas-relief dedicated to the first saint of ISKCON Jayananda Thakur has been completed. The artwork is situated near the samadhi of Jayananda, on wall of the Lord Jagannatha temple complex in Mayapur. Three sections of the bas-relief depict scenes from the life of Jayananda, glorifying his outstanding contribution to the development of the mission of Lord Caitanya, and his spiritual master Srila Prabhupada’s love and gratitude to him.

On Sunday January 29^th in a special program at the New Govardhana Farm in Murwillambah, Australia, Mukunda Goswami shared memories of the Mantra-Rock Dance he helped organize fifty years ago on January 29^th 1967. The Mantra-Rock Dance concert was a key event in both ISKCON’s early growth and in the counterculture scene of the time, and commemorating it is an important part of ISKCON’s 50^th anniversary celebrations. 

“Now our PhDs must collaborate and study the 5th Canto to make a model for building the Vedic Planetarium” proved a mandate from Srila Prabhupada that entered deep into the heart of his disciple Sadaputa dasa, in 1976.  Having received his PhD in Mathematics from Cornell University just two years prior, he would soon be inducted as one of the founding members of Prabhupada’s Bhaktivedanta Institute. In that capacity, he devoted over 30 years researching Vedic perspectives on cosmology and the natural world.

ISKCON Govardhan Eco Village (GEV) won a prestigious United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) Award for India on 18^th January in Madrid, leading over 55 countries in the category of ‘Innovation in Non-Governmental Organizations’. The UNWTO awards are recognized as one of the world’s most coveted awards in the global tourism sector. The 13^th edition of this award saw 139 applications from 55 countries.

You might not have heard of Jaya Chaitanya Das, the thirty-year-old who’s been the number one book distributor in the U.S. for the past two years. Even if he sold 85,000 of Prabhupada’s books this year alone. That’s because until recently, the young man was living at home with his parents in Orange County, California.

Elementary and some secondary school students at the Govardhan Academy in Saranagati, B.C., Canada have produced an inspirational and heartfelt puppet show film of how Srila Prabhupada founded ISKCON for ISKCON’s 50^th anniversary. The forty-minute film, "Mission of Mercy," premiered at Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati’s disappearance day at the Saranagati temple on December 17^th, and was very well received. 

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Prabhupada: The Cutting Edge