Where Pipelines and Coal Mines Intersect: Under Hare Krishna Shrines
The Krishna devotee community in Moundsville, W.Va., has been giving and taking its share of the earth’s bounty for decades. In recent years it signed leases with two natural gas companies, giving them access to the fuel trapped inside. The lease bonus money has already gone a long way toward restoring New Vrindaban’s campus, which had fallen into disrepair.
New Vraja Dhama is perfect for the main event – devotees on the 660-acre farm have had decades of experience and grow their own vegetables, fruits, and grains. They also care for cows and have their own waste water treatment system and solar panels that cover a large portion of their electricity needs.
Members in New Raman Reti, Florida -- ISKCON's largest community in the Western World -- are launching an ambitious attempt to unlock its full potential.
The UK's first "slaughter-free" dairy farm, Ahimsa dairy, is hoping its model will be picked up upon by other farms. Dairy cows are usually culled when they get older and cannot produce as much milk. But for Ahimsa dairy, the older cows are "retired".
An adult body consists of 60% water. We need to constantly replenish to ensure we’re hydrated and fully-functioning.
The Museum of Sacred Art (MOSA) in Radhadesh, Belgium, is exhibiting the works of famous Indian mandala painter Om Prakash Sharma, whose meeting with Srila Prabhupada left an impact on him. Now 85 years old, Om Prakash has had a long and productive career including serving as Dean at the Delhi College of Art for over a decade. He met Srila Prabhupada at Dr. Mishra’s yoga studio in New York in 1965.
Not long ago, someone in our community passed along to me a magazine pitch she’d received in the mail. On the front of the oversize envelope, a headline announced—blue type on a bright green background—”Old Age Isn’t Natural.”
This book by Bhurijana Das contains the essence of his years of teaching experience and his study of Srila Prabhupada’s instructions on education. Included are such topics as the importance of the mode of goodness in teachers and students, how to become self-disciplined, principles of organization and management, ideas for setting and achieving objectives, how to lead discussions, ask effective questions, listen, and counsel.
Jaya Chaitanya Das, 30, recently went from being a hip-hop producer to ISKCON’s top book distributor in the U.S., selling 85,000 of Srila Prabhupada’s books in one year. Now, he has come up with an innovative new program that shows young Americans today may be more interested in staying in ISKCON’s brahmachari ashrams than we might think.
There is a whole realm of spiritual development, which is about shedding, cutting, letting go and downsizing.
Last October, brahmachari Narottam Das and his friend Mukharavinda Das walked an incredible 654 kms from Johannesburg to Durban to raise funds for a new Sankirtana bus so that their Brahmachari ashram could bring Prabhupada’s books and the Holy Name to people. The journey, which took them eighteen days, saw them walking alone with no supporting vehicle through baking sun and torrential rain.
Spiritual knowledge given in the Bhagavad-gita is like a life-saving medicine.
I used to think, before I came to Krsna consciousness, that now I would join a movement of very like-minded people and that I would feel very intimate friendship.
Choosing love over hate doesn’t necessarily mean that we have to love those who have hurt us.
Philosophy means the love of wisdom, the ability to separate truth from error, reality from illusion, and the subsequent discernment as to correct action. Professional philosophers use the word in specific ways according to which type of reality and illusion they are talking about.
On May 7th, well-known “spiritual scientist” Chaitanya Charan Das, a former engineer who has an online following of some 400,000 spoke on the topic “Reincarnation – Myth Versus Reality” at the five-star Hotel El Panama in Panama City. The talk drew 350 doctors, architects, real estate agents and government workers from Panamanian, Colombian and Venezuelan backgrounds.
One of the biggest criteria for deepening our spirituality is the strength to be open and honest. Instead, however, we are often closed and pretentious. In the name of saving our face, we kill our soul.
We are instructed to “surrender”; and at the same time, Srila Prabhupada encourages us to achieve apparently impossible tasks, like “Krishna-izing” the whole world, becoming pure devotees, and unalloyed, fully qualified spiritual masters in our own right. Are these ideas contradictory?
A lone eagle soars high in the sky above the craggy foothills of the Himalayas, wheeling and gliding on the thermal currents. Her golden-brown wings, extending to a gloriously feathered span of five feet, catch every breeze.
Ratha Yatras are always amazing and wonderful events, but I was trying to pinpoint why this venue felt more auspicious than usual to me. I did not realize the answer until the next day when Shranti devi informed me that Their Lordships Radha Damodar had presided at the exact same venue, Pier 60, when Vishnujana Swami and the traveling party brought Then there over forty years ago!
The Grihastha Vision Team surveyed couples and individuals in ISKCON to ascertain some of the greatest challenges in their marriages. Two top challenges emerged: 1. Lack of emotional and/or physical intimacy;
Many works of art with sacred themes have been painted under the inspiration of ISKCON-founder A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. These paintings were originally intended to illustrate books by Prabhupada, author of many original writings and translations, and were also meant to decorate temples and houses of devotees of Krishna. Now, these Prabhupada-inspired paintings have arrived at a new, unusual place: a shopping center in Brazil.
When surface approaches of sensitivity and strength are founded upon a sincere selflessness, balancing the two emotions becomes effortless and natural. When our underlying motivation is to genuinely help someone, and that becomes the universal reference point, then we can confidently and unhesitatingly embrace whatever approach will facilitate growth.
Are you sluggish and low on energy? Do you feel like you work and work toward your weight loss goal and never seem to make any dramatic improvement? You could be suffering from a slow metabolism.
