Murali_Mohan_das

Very nice!!!!

Narcissm is not as bad as a lot of other vices, such as greed for example. If I was to name the most prominent feature of modern men, it would be greed. Narcissma is just a personal problem, but greed ruins the entire society due to ruthles exploitation and unnecessary hoarding.

What if the narcissist in question is a parent who neglects his/her child(ren)?

Aren't narcissism and greed related? Isn't a narcissistic person more likely to be greedy than a devoted, selfless person?

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Link:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5786471797807353867&hl=en

As the anniversary of the sannyas of Sriman Mahaprabhu approaching, Sripad Janardan Maharaja tells of the Lord's pastimes leading up to, during, and following that holy day.

I guess. The Lord makes rules He won't break?

It's not worth an argument, to be sure. Time will tell.

The Lord is Vyasa. He has made some revealations in his scriptures and he will go by what he said.

 

The Lord is doing what he wishes and he has already informed us about some of his activities like coming to Earth as Kalki at the end of KaliYuga. He would not be very great if he predicted one of his future activities and then changed his mind like you imply for the prediction will be false and he did not know the future.

Thanks for the tips. I'll try to keep them in mind. Of course, I need to go back and review (or view for the first time) the ABC's.

Srila Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada's Bhagavad Gita As It Is , especially the introduction or a presentation along those lines, the first several cantos of Srimad Bhagavatam with its philosophical exlplanations (including the autobiography of Sri Narada) and the stories of the great devotees in later cantos like Dhruva Maharaja, Praladha Maharaja, Bharata Maharaja (including Jada Bharata) Abhirisa Maharaja, the story of Ajamila. Parts of Gaura lila which show the glories of the Holy Name, like the different narrations of the life of Hari das Thakur and the parts of Caitanya Caritamrta where Mahaprabhu defeats impersonalism like his talks with Sarvabhauma Bhattacarya and Prakasananda Saraswati. The first half of Jaiva Dharma by Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakur where the basic siddhanta of Gaudiya Vaisnavism are presented.

So, then, tell me which ABC's I ought to present.

How about, "Just accept Prabhupada as your personal Lord and savior and He will take away all your sins"?

So, then, tell me which ABC's I ought to present.

Not necessarily.

Well, the thing is that in this day age what we feel spiritually, is placed behind what we physically see. Many people need these kind of things to reafirm that God exists. I see what you mean though, and I humbly thank you for opening my eyes here.

Oh, don't thank me, I'm easily embarassed that way. I'm glad you can see the point I was trying to present, though.

The thing is, our attachment to what we see (or think we see, since, as science has shown, so much of what we think we see is really our brain/mind filling in the gaps between what our eyes actually see) is often what keeps us from transcending the mundane plane.

Best wishes to you!!

You've got all the answers (and a lot more free time than I have).

Divine service to who? Can it be interrupted or must it be constant? What if one engages in "seva" but harbors personal desires? What is the difference between divine service and what Srila Bhaktivedanta Prabhupada calls "pure devotional service"? How would one define pure devotional service or divine service? If one has material senses how can one engage in divine (non-material) service. How does the chanting of the holy name of Krsna, the yuga dharma of this Age of Kali relate to divine service?

I would think that having the lord physically consume what you offer to him through a murti, would be even better then enjoying the glories of consuming food which he has blessed for you as prasad.

Why would you think that? Is the mundane better, or more "real" than the spiritual?

Do the eternal shastras, as they have been revealed to Veda Vyas for our illumination, contain descriptions of other chatur-yugas, or cycles of the four yugas, or are they limited to our own? If it's the latter, how can we say that each manifestation is like every other?

As for what's important, isn't the most important concept on which to focus that the Lord is free and independent of any limitation? Is it possible for any scripture to detail every pastime of the Lord?

That the Lord is the Divine Autocrat *is* the ABC's.

Here's a classic example of an argument lost in sematics. "He isn't bound by any rules or timetables". But what if He chooses to "bind" Himself to a rule or timetable? Can He do that? The answer is obvious. So what is the basis of the disagreement? Maybe over whether there can be an exception to the rule that Bhagavan comes at scheduled times as stated in sastra. Murali Mohan Prabhu, can you show from sastra an instance of when the Lord did not come at scheduled time? I don't believe that you can. So if I'm correct on this point, then where is the disagreement? I'm sure both parties accept the premise that the Lord is svarat or independent. But what is the relevance here? For instance one person could say that in Bhagavad Gita that Krsna says that the living entities are eternal. Srila Bhaktivinode Thakur has stated one place (can't quote it here) that if Bhagavan desires then He can actually destroy the existence of the jiva.

This illustrates the completely independent nature of His divine will. But what would be the reason to bring this up in a basic Bhagavad Gita class for beginners? Every thought or concept has its proper application.

There different levels of understanding and from a didactic angle they can be called installments. For instance why should I tell a group of relative neophytes that "Vrndavana is for shallow thinkers" when they have not even digested the Vrndavana conception of Krsna to begin with? What will they get out of it except confusion?

Overly stressing of one angle of vision - Angle G at the expense of another, angle B will not be a balanced approach, especially if such angles unfold progressively, that is ABCDEFG... The same thing is true about the topic of mercy. One may say that "everything depends on what type of sadhu we have connection with". But such a view must be tempered with a rather large - "on the other hand" explanation. Otherwise we will think that Mahaprabhu accepted the surrender of the kitten. The mother cat holds the kitten and therefore that kitten only depends on the mercy of the mother. But Mahaprabhu rejected this and accepted the example of the mother monkey and the baby monkey. The mother monkey holds the baby monkey when she runs, but if the baby monkey does not also hold on then he will fall. So Mahaprabhu accepted that some endeavor must come from the practitioner. Just like Mother Yasoda kept coming up two finger lengths short when she was attempting to bind Krsna. One finger represents mercy and the other represents our endeavor.

3.) What is the highest goal for Vaishnava?

What's the name for it?

Divine service/seva. It is its own reward.

Certainly, psychiatric Krishna Consciousness is a much more sound science than mundane psychiatry.

http://www.motherjones.com<wbr>/news/feature/2003/11/ma_565<wbr>_01.html

New research suggests that the miracles promised by antidepressants may be largely due to the placebo effect. Too bad there's no money to be made in sugar pills.

and

The FDA does not consider, however, the relative advantage that new drugs show over placebo. So long as the difference is statistically significant -- meaning that the results are not merely random -- a drug can be advertised as "safe and effective" whether clinical trials proved it to be 5 percent or 50 percent or 500 percent more effective than an inert pill. In the case of the Prozac generation of antidepressants, marketing efforts have paid off wildly. Some 92 million prescriptions were written for the top six antidepressants in 2002, a ubiquity that has, far more than any research, helped to bolster the theory that depression is the result of a biochemical imbalance that the drugs cure -- a theory that has not been proved, despite more than 40 years of trying.

It's amazing how much a little punctuation can change the meaning, isn't it?

But, if the Deities drink all the milk (physicallly), there won't be any prasadam left for the hungry devotees!!

Please *do* keep writing, socrati. I like very much what you have said so far.

Mahak, how many stars did you count in the Milky Way? To me it just looks like a big curtain of light in the night sky, but they say it is made up of countless starts.

Here I come again with my thoughts.

 

Looking at the design of universe, we can see that a single design pattern manifests itself starting from the design of an atom to solar system to galaxies.

 

We are made up of billions and billions of atoms. String theory was derived to look beyond the physical atoms. Scientists realized that if we start disintegrating the atoms the last thing that remains is energy. Perhaps the bond between energy and physical is where the God has played at its best.

 

This way our conscious can be further stated as the energy present in every atom that we have got for us ( our body ). When we start going inside us, what are we experiencing. The energy present in different dimensions.

 

The discussion over bramahand can also be looked as the journey inside us where everything is same that we see outside in our universe.

 

Going back to astronomy, we are present in vast vaccum filled with dark energy and impossible to penetrate beyond couple of thousand miles from earth.

 

I will write more

Srila Prabhupada has soooo much common sense, doesn't he? He just cuts through all the mental crap like a knife.

I've been arguing these points with some hard-core meat-eaters on another site. They dogmatically insist that animals have no rights because they cannot stand up and demand their rights in the Queen's English (or something silly like that).

So, the Lord is bound by what He revealed to Vyasdev? The Lord cannot do as He wishes? If that is the case, then He is not very great, is He?

Kalki will apppear at the end of Kali Yuga as clearly written down in the Mahabharata and various Puranas.

 

He will *not* come whenever he likes. If that were the case why did Vyasa explicitly say Kalki will come at the end of the Kali Yuga?

 

If he will come whenever then Vyasa was wrong. Vishnu does not break his own rules. What he has said in scriptures is what he will do. His most recent avatar was the Buddha and the next avatar is Kalki.

If Srila Prabhupada (Bhaktisiddhanta) was willing to bring in meat for guests accustomed to eating meat, why would he or his disciples object to using the term "Hindu" to attract favorable persons to Krishna Consciousness?

When we have been granted some realization, we see everything as the mercy of the Lord (even being eaten by that tiger). Until then, we are stuck in polluted, relativistic thinking.

By chanting the names of the Lord sincerely, we can clean the dust-covered mirror of the mind.

As John Lennon said, "There's no problem, only solutions."

And here is the problem.

 

The fact that you are seeking mercy from the Lord means the Lord does not have mercy on you right now. Why does the good kind Lord not have mercy on you? What crime did you commit? Or what was the crime of the deer being hunted down by a lion in Africa as we speak?

 

So by default the Lord does not have mercy on people. Apparently they have to to some religious practice and work on it dilligently till death if it is a Western religion or if it is a eastern religion like Hinduism or Buddhism which supports the concept of reincarnation, they will have to work on it for several lifetimes over and over again. And then one morning (no telling when) the Lord will suddenly turn merciful. If not, keep doing more of the same awaiting that morning.

 

What is good about this? The whole concept is fundamentally negative and taxes ones credulity to a severe extent. Not to mention that it reduces the Lord to the level of a whimsical human who has more power than he deserves.

 

Cheers

I missed this reply somehow.

You assumed I was talking about you as the kshatriya and me as the Brahmana. Actually, I was speaking hypothetically.

However, isn't there the story of the great king (can't remember his name) who gave some cows to a brahmana? One cow wandered off and back into the herd of the king. The king accidentally gave the same cow (along with others) to another brahmana. When the first brahmana took offense, wasn't the king quite humble, perplexed and concilliatory in his response? Doesn't this story reveal the attitude of the pure kshatriya to the Brahmanas?

it is not a lecture. it is sharing my understanding with fellow Vaishnavas. You have your guru and he is the one giving you lectures. the kshatriya example is just one of the possible options - if you are a brahmana then you need to follow the brahminical examples.

 

as to the kshatriyas taking guidance from brahmanas - it is on as needed basis, and kshatriyas make sure that brahmana is actually experienced in the area of the required advice. on top of that, I have no kshatriya responsibilities here

What is needed is the mercy of the Lord.

The rest was good, but this says it all.

The Lord is fully present in His Holy Names.

Science can never hope to capture the Lord.

Regarding dinosaurs, also to be mentionned that in all the christian books, bible,... it is mentionned about dragoons which have been slain by Saints. St Michel killed a dragoon, St George also defeated dragoons with his sword. I believe dragons were in fact what we see as the pterodactyl of prehistoric times.

Did you know, there's a difference between a dragon and a dragoon?

From Wikipedia:

Dragoon is the traditional name for a soldier trained to fight on foot but who transports himself on horseback, in use especially during the late 17th and early 18th centuries.

Hey, I grew up loving Asterix the Gaul!!!! You can't tell me the French don't have a long and illustrious history stretching back into antiquity!!

Beeing a french, I don't believe french culture is very old like the other ones you mention (Indians or Chinese, Mayas,...). Maybe you can talk about Celtic civilization but that's all... French really were born around the 15th century AD according to me. Or from the Westphaly treaty in 1648 wich shaped Europe as it is now, and limited some kind of hexagonal frontier limits for France as it is today...

 

Not so far in the past for dragoons existence, I think there are also stories of dragons slain around the year 1000 AD and even after... Watch through your window, who knows you'll maybe see one flying by héhé...