gHari

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... always a silver lining

1God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. 2Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea; 3Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof. Selah. 4There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the most High. 5God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved: God shall help her, and that right early. 6The heathen raged, the kingdoms were moved: he uttered his voice, the earth melted. 7The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah. 8Come, behold the works of the LORD, what desolations he hath made in the earth. 9He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth; he breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder; he burneth the chariot in the fire. 10Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth. 11The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah.

Usually the word 'natural' relates to the physical world of nature, the pinball game of matter and energy that has hypnotized material scientists. Supernatural relates to the metaphysical, things that cannot be explained by the pinball physical laws. Modes of nature: one could expect different physical biological conditions. Which causes which? Again science oversteps its domain when trying to guess at the why's of things. 'How' is science; 'why' is religion.

Harerama, perhaps the first paragraph on this link may contribute to our scientific understanding: http://vedabase.net/sb/2/2/30/en

CORRECTION: in an earlier post, the reference was wrong. it should have read: GautamIya-tantra [Cited: SrImad-BhAgavatam 8.1.11] oM ajJAna-timirAndhasya jJAnAJjana-zalAkayA cakSur unmIlitaM yena tasmai zrI-gurave namaH ‘‘I offer my respectful obeisances unto my spiritual master, who, with the torchlight of knowledge has opened my eyes, which were blinded by the darkness of ignorance."

Melvin, has always been here as a trouble-maker, testing his english and generally being a pain. Further response is a waste of time. I believe the technical term is 'troll'.

You take the word of men who use lanterns to see the sun. Are we all idiots? Is it all Messiah-complex? Those who have seen have no doubt at all - no matter how many plugs and wires the white coats might stick in them. Perhaps some fantasies have been uprooted. Is that not a good thing? God is not so cheap. God is more than a cheap buzz.

Lord Narasimha does not instill fear in me - quite the opposite. In that pastime Krsna demonstrates that no one is greater than Him. No matter what powers a demon may possess, he will always be subject to Krsna. Krsna appears as Lord Nrsimha because the demon could neither be killed by an animal or human, on the land or in the sky, or by any weapon. The solution which I guess the demon never imagined was the fierce Lord Nrsimhadeva. When devotees remember Lord Nrsimha, the demons' hearts are filled with fear and they run away. To that extent Lord Narasimha does instill fear. But I like that. It's all good.

Don't fight greed: "anything can be used in Krsna's service". Lord Caitanya is greater than us all.

Prabhupada later preached about the sufferers he saw in the ocean: <blockquote>This morning we were talking about the sufferers, what is called? The sea suffers? Devotees: Surfers. PrabhupAda: Surfer, yes. (devotees laugh) Surfer. I call "sufferer.Sea-sufferer." (laughter) Sea-surfer, it is practical because we are creating a situation by which we shall become a fish. Yes. Contamination. Just like if you purposely contaminate some disease you must suffer from that disease. KAraNaM guNa-saGgo 'sya sad-asad janma-yoniSu [bg. 13.22], in the Bhagavad-gItA. Why there are different varieties of life? What is the reason? That reason means kAraNam. KRSNa says in the Bhagavad..., kAraNaM guNa-saGgo 'sya sad-asad janma-yoniSu. PrakRteH kriyamANAni prakRti-stho 'pi puruSaH bhuJjante tad-guNAn. So the reason is as we are infecting. The nature's law is so perfect that you infect something, some disease, some contamination, then you must suffer. This is nature's law, automatically going on. KAraNaM guNa-saGgo 'sya. So there are three modes of material nature--goodness, passion, and ignorance. So long we are in this material world, puruSaH prakRti-stho 'pi bhuJjante tad-guNAn. If we remain in certain place, we must be affected by the modes of that place. So there are three modes, sattva-guNa, rajo-guNa. We have to associate either with the modes of goodness or with the modes of passion or with the modes of ignorance. Now, three into three, it becomes nine, and nine into nine, it becomes eighty-one. So mixture. Just like color. There are three colors: blue, red and yellow. Now, those who are expert in manufacturing color, artists, they mix these three colors in different way and they display. Similarly, according to the guNas or mixture, association--kAraNaM guNa-saGgo 'sya--we get different types of bodies. Therefore we see so many varieties of bodies. KAraNaM guNa-saGgo 'sya [bg. 13.22]. So the person who is taking very much pleasure, dancing in the sea like fish, so he is contaminating that modes of nature so that in next life he will become a fish. He'll be very free to dance with the ocean. (laughter) Now it will take again millions of years to come to the stage of human being. JalajA nava-lakSANi sthAvarA lakSa-viMzati. He has to pass through the fish life. There are 900,000 different species of life. Then you again come to the land--you become trees, plants, and so on. Two millions different forms you have to go through. That is evolution. Darwin's theory of evolution, that is not perfectly explained. It is explained in the Vedic literature. So just a tree is standing for ten thousands of years, we had to pass through this life. But there is no perfect knowledge. We are thinking we are now very nice American body or Indian body. No. It took so many years to come to this life. Therefore zAstra says, labdhvA sudurlAbhaM idaM bahu-sambhavAnte: "You have got this human form of life after many, many millions of years' waiting." So do not misuse it. That is Vedic civilization, not to misuse the human form of life. Nature's law is very, very strict. This life, it is given, a chance. Nature gives a chance. Now you get this human form of life, advanced consciousness. Now you make further improvement. That is wanted. From here we can make further improvement. What is that further improvement? We can go to the better planets. There are many better planets. You can go there, heavenly planets. There you can live for ten thousands of years. Ten thousands of years, and that is also not our year. The higher planetary system, their one day--our six months. In that way you can live there for ten thousands of years. And the standard of living condition is thousand times better. Therefore it is called heavenly. So if you like, you can go there. UrdhvaM gacchanti sattva-sthaH [bg. 14.18]. YAnti deva-vrataH devAn. Everything is explained. Or if you can go, if you like you can go to the PitRloka. If you want to remain here as human being, you can also remain here, but you have to work for it to keep your position, status. Just like if you become rich man, high standard of life, you have to maintain it. Not that it will continue automatically. No, that is not possible, sir. This material world is not like that: you get one position and it will continue. No. A little discrepancy, immediately deteriorate your position. So you have to maintain it.</blockquote>

Once upon a time there was a man in an underground dungeon. For years and years the man lived in the dark with only a lantern to provide light. When set free he was told of the great things he would see when he was released. The man quickly grabbed his lantern so he could see the marvels of the free world. He just could not believe that he would not need his lantern to see the sun. And so it is with the mind and God. We are conditioned to believe that our little mind will be required to know that God exists, just as the prisoner thought his lantern would be needed to see the sun.

Here it is: BEIJING, China (Reuters) -- Humans are stripping nature at an unprecedented rate and will need two planets' worth of natural resources every year by 2050 on current trends, the WWF conservation group said on Tuesday. Populations of many species, from fish to mammals, had fallen by about a third from 1970 to 2003 largely because of human threats such as pollution, clearing of forests and overfishing, the group also said in a two-yearly report. "For more than 20 years we have exceeded the earth's ability to support a consumptive lifestyle that is unsustainable and we cannot afford to continue down this path," WWF Director-General James Leape said, launching the WWF's 2006 Living Planet Report. "If everyone around the world lived as those in America, we would need five planets to support us," Leape, an American, said in Beijing. People in the United Arab Emirates were placing most stress per capita on the planet ahead of those in the United States, Finland and Canada, the report said. Australia was also living well beyond its means. The average Australian used 6.6 "global" hectares to support their developed lifestyle, ranking behind the United States and Canada, but ahead of the United Kingdom, Russia, China and Japan. "If the rest of the world led the kind of lifestyles we do here in Australia, we would require three-and-a-half planets to provide the resources we use and to absorb the waste," said Greg Bourne, WWF-Australia chief executive officer. Everyone would have to change lifestyles -- cutting use of fossil fuels and improving management of everything from farming to fisheries. "As countries work to improve the well-being of their people, they risk bypassing the goal of sustainability," said Leape, speaking in an energy-efficient building at Beijing's prestigious Tsinghua University. "It is inevitable that this disconnect will eventually limit the abilities of poor countries to develop and rich countries to maintain their prosperity," he added. The report said humans' "ecological footprint" -- the demand people place on the natural world -- was 25 percent greater than the planet's annual ability to provide everything from food to energy and recycle all human waste in 2003. In the previous report, the 2001 overshoot was 21 percent. "On current projections humanity, will be using two planets' worth of natural resources by 2050 -- if those resources have not run out by then," the latest report said. "People are turning resources into waste faster than nature can turn waste back into resources." Rising population "Humanity's footprint has more than tripled between 1961 and 2003," it said. Consumption has outpaced a surge in the world's population, to 6.5 billion from 3 billion in 1960. U.N. projections show a surge to 9 billion people around 2050. It said that the footprint from use of fossil fuels, whose heat-trapping emissions are widely blamed for pushing up world temperatures, was the fastest-growing cause of strain. Leape said China, home to a fifth of the world's population and whose economy is booming, was making the right move in pledging to reduce its energy consumption by 20 percent over the next five years. "Much will depend on the decisions made by China, India and other rapidly developing countries," he added. The WWF report also said that an index tracking 1,300 vertebrate species -- birds, fish, amphibians, reptiles and mammals -- showed that populations had fallen for most by about 30 percent because of factors including a loss of habitats to farms. Among species most under pressure included the swordfish and the South African Cape vulture. Those bucking the trend included rising populations of the Javan rhinoceros and the northern hairy-nosed wombat in Australia. Report: Seafood faces collapse by 2048 WASHINGTON (AP) -- Clambakes, crabcakes, swordfish steaks and even humble fish sticks could be little more than a fond memory in a few decades. If current trends of overfishing and pollution continue, the populations of just about all seafood face collapse by 2048, a team of ecologists and economists warns in a report in Friday's issue of the journal Science. "Whether we looked at tide pools or studies over the entire world's ocean, we saw the same picture emerging. In losing species we lose the productivity and stability of entire ecosystems," said the lead author Boris Worm of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. (Watch how the seafood on your plate may become a thing of the past -- 3:10) "I was shocked and disturbed by how consistent these trends are -- beyond anything we suspected," Worm said. While the study focused on the oceans, concerns have been expressed by ecologists about threats to fish in the Great Lakes and other lakes, rivers and freshwaters, too. Worm and an international team spent four years analyzing 32 controlled experiments, other studies from 48 marine protected areas and global catch data from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization's database of all fish and invertebrates worldwide from 1950 to 2003. The scientists also looked at a 1,000-year time series for 12 coastal regions, drawing on data from archives, fishery records, sediment cores and archaeological data. "At this point 29 percent of fish and seafood species have collapsed -- that is, their catch has declined by 90 percent. It is a very clear trend, and it is accelerating," Worm said. "If the long-term trend continues, all fish and seafood species are projected to collapse within my lifetime -- by 2048." "It looks grim and the projection of the trend into the future looks even grimmer," he said. "But it's not too late to turn this around. It can be done, but it must be done soon. We need a shift from single species management to ecosystem management. It just requires a big chunk of political will to do it." The researchers called for new marine reserves, better management to prevent overfishing and tighter controls on pollution. In the 48 areas worldwide that have been protected to improve marine biodiversity, they found, "diversity of species recovered dramatically, and with it the ecosystem's productivity and stability." While seafood forms a crucial concern in their study, the researchers were analyzing overall biodiversity of the oceans. The more species in the oceans, the better each can handle exploitation. "Even bugs and weeds make clear, measurable contributions to ecosystems," said co-author J. Emmett Duffy of the Virginia Institute of Marine Sciences. The National Fisheries Institute, a trade association for the seafood industry, does not share the researchers alarm. "Fish stocks naturally fluctuate in population," the institute said in a statement. "By developing new technologies that capture target species more efficiently and result in less impact on other species or the environment, we are helping to ensure our industry does not adversely affect surrounding ecosystems or damage native species. Seafood has become a growing part of Americans' diet in recent years. Consumption totaled 16.6 pounds per person in 2004, the most recent data available, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. That compares with 15.2 pounds in 2000. Joshua Reichert, head of the private Pew Charitable Trusts' environment program, pointed out that worldwide fishing provides $80 billion in revenue and 200 million people depend on it for their livelihoods. For more than 1 billion people, many of whom are poor, fish is their main source of protein, he said. The research was funded by the National Science Foundation's National Center for Ecological Synthesis and Analysis.

http://vedabase.net/bg/17/en

For you, Max: Krishna at MTV Awards

Treasury of Mahamax gold: http://www.geocities.com/mahaksadasa ,

Such, one cannot conceive of surrender, surrender to guru and hence: parampara. The mind, operating from a slight sample of Srila Prabhupada's words, like the archeologist and his pocket of bones, flagrantly blasphemes great devotees like Srila Goura Govinda Maharaja. The mind is on the path to hell, with no light and no hope, eternally chained to ahankara Bhagavad-gita 6.7

Brick consciousness. So many are led away from Krsna by the power hierarchies of this camp or that camp. Pitch your tent in the wilderness and forget the free-lunch mentality, the ego-maintenance, delusion-maintenance mentality. Get serious - God is real; that is what this was all about, way back when. Wasn't it?

.... and super-duper-excellent-sattvic-as-it-is if you worship Him as Sri Krsna, the fountainhead of all incarnations and expansions of Godhead, one beyond a second, the cause of all causes, the primeval Lord, Govinda, around whose neck is swinging a garland of flowers beautified with the moon-locket, whose two hands are adorned with flute and jeweled ornaments, who always revels in pastimes of love, whose graceful threefold-bending form of Syamasundara is eternally manifested.

Lord Brahma answers his son's question "Which mantra is worthy of service?" <a href=http://geocities.com/caitanyamahaprabhu/upanisad.htm>HERE in the Sri Caitanya Upanishad</a>.

Waste of time? Are we so harried? I think we had better simplify our life if we don't have enough spare time for such pleasures.

harer nAma harer nAma harer nAmaiva kevalam kalau nAsty eva nAsty eva nAsty eva gatir anyathA [Cc.Adi 17.21] "In this age of quarrel and hypocrisy the only means of deliverance is chanting the holy name of the Lord. There is no other way. There is no other way. There is no other way." I had never even considered chanting the Panca-tattva mantra on beads, so I imagine that it would be good not to, as you say. But just for the sake of using beads, it hardly seems reasonable to abandon the yuga avatara's mercy, and Prabhupada's instructions. Demigod worship is simply not recommended, just as watering the leaves of a plant is not recommended ..... harer nAma is the prescription. It all comes down to "Upon whom will I meditate?". The sound focuses our attention. Will I meditate on Ganesh or on Caitanya? What is my final goal? Being cool or a show-bottle yogi is meaningless unless there is a change of heart. Srila Prabhupada wrote above that these acaryas (Caitanya, Nityananda, Advaita, Gadadhara, Srivasadi, and all the servants of Gauranga) will shower their blessing on one who faithfully meditates on Them through the Panca-tattva mantra. I can't imagine anything more fortunate. Beads or no beads.

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Certainly the Panca-tattva mantra is the most merciful recommended here. And it will lead to the Mahamantra, especially since Lord Nityananda knows that is your goal. They say we have to beg the Mahamantra from Lord Caitanya, and His favor is gained through the mercy of Nityananda Prabhu. Chanting Panca-tattva is your best approach until Hare Krsna naturally arises in your heart. And it will as your heart is cleansed. This is the authorized path. The following link will answer all your questions and perfectly clarify what is your best interest at this stage: http://vedabase.net/cc/adi/8/31/en http://vedabase.net/bg/9/23/en