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Krsnanatha

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Everything posted by Krsnanatha

  1. 1.) Watch this short video. <o:p></o:p>http://www.videokarma.com/todays-video/2007/2/1/stars-and-planets-in-scale.html 2.) Remember that the all the innumerable material universes combined are but a spark of Krsna's splendor.<o:p></o:p> 3.) Now, attempt to think your body, mind, intelligence and false ego are somehow special, important or consequential in some material way.<o:p></o:p> Gaura Haribol!-<o:p></o:p>
  2. How did the devotees pass through all those multiple armed check points? Somehow I can see the devotee driving the van waving his hand at the Cop/National Guardsman/Fema Lackey and saying, "We are the people who you are supposed to allow in." (Translation: "These are not the Droids you are looking for.") The response... Cop/National Guardsman/Fema Lackey, "Uh...of course you are. Hey, men! Move those Barriers and let these people in!" Krsna the Mystic of all Mystics!
  3. Thank you Guestji. I am glad to see updated info on the Krsna.com site although I was of course hoping to find the devotees have been evacuated. All prayers that the devotees and the Lordships of New Orleans are somehow out of the way danger.
  4. I have been looking since the beginning of this crisis on the official ISKCON website ISKCON.com and found nary a mention that two Hare Krsna temples are in dire, life threatening trouble. Is it that these are not ISKCON temples that there is nothing about this disaster posted in the "News" section of that site?
  5. I was surfing the Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com) and entered “Krsna” in the search vehicle to see if there would be some reference to movies with Krsna or Hare Krsna mentioned. There is a documentary by Robert Downey Jr. called “The Last Party”. It is a video collage’ about the 1992 presidential election. In the “Thanks to” section of the credits Downey thanks “Lord Sri Krishna”. This seems a rather specific acknowledgement from someone not generally known to be a devotee of Krsna. Robert Dowey Jr.'s expression of gratitude not just to the generic expression "God" but to "Lord Sri Krsna" caused me to wonder how many other famous people may be out there who have, through a variety of channels, gained an appreciation for the books of Srila A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, the devotees of Krsna and/or Vaisnavism in general. Such people may not be inclined to attach themselves publicly to the Hare Krsna movement since unfortunately, to the mainstream American public (i.e the consumers who write famous people's paychecks), the Hare Krsnas are viewed as followers of some invented, mysterious cult as opposed to being adherents of an ancient philosophical system embraced by somewhere near a billion people world wide, (what to speak of some of the deeper thinkers the world has managed to produce such as Thoreau, Emerson, Einstein, Ghandhi... ect). Out of an understandably founded fear that their professional lifes might be negatively affected by being publicly connected to the Hare Krishna movement such individuals quietly keep such venerations a personal and private matter.
  6. This was little more than a mad magazine moment amongst friends. I am sorry the satire flew passed you. I no longer have Hitler's birth certificate, I sold it to an anonoumous purchaser at auction, (at an healthy profit I will add.) I do have a pair of Hitler's gym socks from when he tried out for the "Ubber-Motherland, Little League, Combined Basketball, Genocide Tournament". (Oddly he failed to make the team...go figure? I was later told he got bounced because he was too short at the time to drop the poisin gas pellets into the feeder.) These cotten artifacts are currently on E-Bay and the bidding is fierce so get busy bidding. Hope this helps your grade.
  7. There is the verse in Srimad Bhagavatam which states that places of pilgrimage are the result of saintly souls appearing there. (Canto 1, Part Three, Chapter 19, Text 8). While you may plea in humbleness that you are not a saint this verse also refers to "Great minds and thinkers" which I can attest you show the symtoms of. Go and give what you can. The persons we grew up with are somehow plucked from the countless trillions of souls in the universe so there must be some past connection (former family members, friends...even former foes.) Go and give some chance for someone(s) to become as fortunate as you have been. This was an instruction I received from one of my Siksha Gurus. I had offered some thanks to him for his guidance and kindness toward me. His response was: "Please, simply do what ever you can to make others as fortunate as you feel you have become." Gaura Haribol, Gaura Haribol, Nitai Gaura Haribol!
  8. I read the Nixon quote and imagined Tricky dressed out in the Pope uniform...I couldn't help but image other celebs in equally incongruent social costumes... Martha Stewart in a N.Y. Giants football uni...shoulder pads, hands taped and all...Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich at center court waiting for the opening jump as the starting center for the L.A. Lakers...Donald Rumsfeld decked out as a Las Vegas show girl...Mr Pres. George Bush in sannyasi cloth, delivering a sunday feast lecture...his danda wrapped in camoflage colors...Osama Bin Laden wearing a Mr Rogers sweater taking the kids on a tour of a honey factory...Rush Limbaugh dolled up as...a doctor shopping, drug seeking, junky... uhhh...never mind.
  9. In a previous discussion on this forum I brought up the hypocrisy of the Pope eating meat and drinking booze. I also asserted that he is moreless a victim of the deviation within the Catholic tradition which allows such activities. Srila Prabhupada and every other Vaisnava Saint has pointed out such indulgences are extreme impediments to genuine spiritual advancement. The current Catholic tradition unmistakabley disagrees. To his credit he has remitted his entire life to God within the tradition as he has been made to understand it which is absolutely no small accomplishment. I am quite sure the Pope is beyond sincere in his pursuit of spiritual life as he has been taught by the Church. You are quite right he has been a powerful and ceaseless voice of opposition towards other types of horrors within human society. The problem is clearly one of institutional approval of such behavior, not of the Pope being in possession of bad character. Nevertheless there is no escaping the reality that he is the face of the modern Catholic tradition and one cannot ignore his apparent inability to see, on his own, evilness where it resides within his own house.
  10. I wonder what brand he likes best...maybe "Holy Stoly".
  11. I recall reading an interview some years back in which Pope John Paul II mentioned that his favorite meal would have to include vodka and the most reprehensible and barbaric of corpulent foods, veal. I am not inclined to feel the Catholic cultural tradition in it's current administrative form is qualified to identify such specific detail as the identity of some alleged "Anti-Christ". The current Catholic Church is by plain admission implicated in one of the most simple evils to identify...the slaughtering of God helpless lower creatures...and the subsequent comsumption of their flesh for the base delights of the tongue. Ultimately given the hellish condition the Earth planet is sliding towards, any thoughtful person, no robes, no title nor any position in some worldwide religious institution required, could rather easily assert that some serious demoniac element has taken up residence on the planet. Such an observation seems to me to be a pretty wide and easy net to cast.
  12. I complete concur. Although time is a prized commodity, when we hit a point where it is too troublesome to take the 2.7 seconds it takes to type the name Srila A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada or the name of any other saint worthy of notation or discussion some important type of consciousness has been disposed of. I remember many years ago at LA temple it became briefly fashionable amongst some in the community to greet people with the phrase "H-Bol, Prabhu". I always thought the folks inclined to abbreviate the Lord's Holy Name down to a single "H" sound were serving out some notably distinct punishment. Oddly enough I also recall many of the same retailers of this "H-Bol" utterance had plenty of extra time to speak at length of the fault's ISKCON and managed to do so using no abbreviations whatsoever.
  13. Quite a beautiful gem you have found and sent here. Thank you Prabhu.
  14. I recall Sripad Bhakti Guarava Naragashingha Maharaja once told a story about Srila Krishna dasa Babaji Maharaja. Srila Krishna dasa Babaji Maharaja was known to chant bhajan or japa almost every waking moment of the day. Once some of Srila Prabhupada's devotees went to see Babaji Maharaja. At some point he was asked "Babji Maharaja, how many rounds do you chant?" He reportedly laughed a bit and replied "That is simply ahankara!" (false ego). And dropped the subject. I felt the purport of such a statement to be not to get too caught up in some numerical formula for grading one's attachment to Krsna I mean not to minimize the concept of a sixteen rounds of japa. Simply said, I find in this (Western) World composed of 99.99% non-vaisnavas, I am pleased to be in the company of anyone who is merely thinking about someday chanting the Maha Mantra.
  15. My wife and I gave a friend who is a bit new to Krsna Consciousness a Tulasi mala as a Christmas gift. The other day she called and asked if it would be proper to wear it on her wrist as she has a small baby who was showing some inclination for grabbing it and she was concerned he might accidentally break it. My thought was “Utility is the principle.” If this adjustment would allow her to continue to wear Tulasi beads better she does it in this manner than take them off. I agreed this would be fine without excessive deliberation on the subject.
  16. Recently seen bumper sticker: I'm not a vegetarian because I feel sorry for animals... I'm a vegetarian because I hate plants.
  17. So far 45,000 souls bashed from their bodies and counting. Roughly the same number of traffic fatalities in the the U.S. every year. Roughly the same as 15 Twin World Trade centers crumbling, in one fell swoop. Yamaraja and his assistants must have had to put in some overtime that day.
  18. Sounds like somone's down in Arkansas City selling some really strong LSD.
  19. I came across a bizarre bit of trivia yesterday. While at a Doctors office catching up on my reading of six month old magazines a factoid in the US News and World report shocked me. It stated that for one gallon of gas to be produced 100 tons of plant matter had to decompose under the weight and heat of the planet's crust for the millions of years that it takes to transform into what we call crude oil. A full 200,000 lbs. of rotted vegetation to make one gallon of gas. The article went no to say that at current rates of consumption of petroleum the world consumes the equivalent of our entire planet’s plant population decomposing into crude oil every year. Such a strange reality, the basis entire basis of the world’s economy is primed by countless billions of tons of rotted plant bodies compressed over millions and millions of years into a sticky flammable tar-like substance. And even more human society has sucked literally a small ocean of this stuff out of the ground and then scratches it’s collective scientific head when statistics prove a distinct increase in earthquake activity worldwide. Scientists are smart enough to manipulate the material elements and phenomenon of this planet to the most miniscule degrees but miss out on something so common sense as “I wonder what will result from our vacuuming billions and billions of gallons of this liquid out from below the surface of the Earth?”
  20. I was surprised to see this odd combination of nazi tatoos mixed with the Maha Mantra. The chap did look vaguely familar. (Maybe he's a former temple president from the Aryan Nation triangle in the states of Montana/Idaho/Wyoming) I am sure his current living circumstances have significantly altered his present physical appearance. (Not including his jail tatoos.)
  21. I cannot tally all the various times that something has happened in the toil I call my existence which at the time felt like some tragedy ranging from severe to mild which later proved to be the best possible change of direction for my betterment in Krsna consciousness. Srila Sridhar Maharaja has been quoted as saying nothing bad can happen to a devotee. If we look just a bit beyond the immediate and the various arrangements we may be inclined toward and attempt to orchestrate we will see the shining face of Krsna peeking out from behind the screen with our highest interests always in mind. He constantly shifts the pieces of our little chess board with no apparent regard for what we want the rules to be. We must accept that Krsna is the autocrat of autocrats and he does to the devotee only that which will pull them closer to the shelter of service motived towards His lotus feet. It is said that Krsna answers all of our prayers and wishes, it's just that sometimes His answer is "No!"
  22. Priita Mataji such a nice painting! All our nice Christian brothers and sisters should immediately be sent copies. All respects and good wishes to all the souls who wander within this sanga. I am in all of your debt for the wisdom and comfort I gain upon my every visit here. Jaya Sri Radhe! Jaya Sri Krsna! Jaya Vaisnava sanga!
  23. In the fall of 1983 I found myself out on the road on traveling sankirtana. I was teamed with two very nice devotees who were senior to me in every sense, age, experience, association ect... We had been traveling since August and it was now December. I had not stepped foot in an actual temple since we stopped off in late September at the St. Louis temple. We had been told that the then Guru/GBC would be visiting the temple so we headed our van off to Missouri to hear a class or two and to get “fired up” to continue our travels until the end of the Christmas Marathon. After a brief stay in the company of Their Lordships Sri Sri Krsna Balarama and Their kind servants, back to the road we went. Our travels took us to numerous cities and towns all across the Midwestern and Southeastern states. The selection of these locations was predicated on a general plan based upon being in a particular area scheduled to host a weekend college and/or professional football game. By the sheer numbers of people in attendance these football venues greatly increased the amount of Laxmi which could be collected. As time passed I found myself increasingly unhappy. I had joined the temple to get the association of the saintly beings dwelling within those confines and to get relief from the constant engagement of material society, not to be tossed into a van and made to go out and sell books and collect money for months on end. It was hard. No temple, no Deities, no steady morning program. Sleeping in an unheated van night after night when the temperatures would regularly dip into the low twenties. The lack of sleep from the cold reminded me of a novel I had read as a teenager, “One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich” the tale of life in a Soviet prison camp in the post World War Two communist gulags. Our daily breakfast was a block of cream cheese, a couple of cups of trail mix and orange juice, not horrific but a bit tiresome after the third or fourth week (or month). There was no lunch and dinner prasadam was typically boiled vegetables in a sour cream sauce, rice and halvah. Oh, how I lived for that evening dose of halvah. The heat from the buttered grains would pacify me as we read Bhagavad Gita together before taking rest. Our camps were typically anywhere and everywhere, from actual campgrounds to simply parking in the vastness of a Midwestern farm field. Staying in a hotel was never considered, it would be a waste of Krishna's Laxmi. One morning in mid December we were camped in a field somewhere in the midst of the nowhere, corn producing regions of Iowa. The temperatures that night had fallen into the teens. As I exited the van in the wee morning hour to take my bath it was snowing and the wind was blowing hard enough that my gamcha was flapping in the wind like the flag over Iwo Jima. I walked flashlight in hand to an irrigation faucet in the middle of this barren field. As I made my way, the ice and snow covering the ground transmitted the pain of coldness into my feet like the claws of a panicked cat. As I filled the empty water jug from the spigot I thought how much I wished I could be taking a warm shower. I actually said to myself “Krishna, I would give anything for some warm water right now.” As I poured the water over my head the strangest sensation occurred, due to the relative warmth of the water in comparison to the swirling snow, the air temperature and the wind chill factor, the water felt quite warm. Krsna was kindly granting my petty little wish. These were the rough times, not to be confused with the sum total of my experience, as there was an undeniable degree of accord to be found along this trail of austerity. While my life of physical comforts was greatly diminished during these times there was also the kind rewards which austerity brings. The internal comforts that come from being forced by circumstance to ignore the trivial pleadings of the animate corpse and the concomitant detachment which saturates one’s existence. Nevertheless there is always the mind. That subtle mechanism of preservation which is always proposing that one’s material condition could always be improved upon. The mind endlessly presents scheme upon scheme to the intelligence, a constant, sometimes relentless stream of proposals of how the senses could be countersigned by a variety of adjustments. If I could simply eat more, or sleep more, or if I was warmer, or had a girlfriend or went to see some films ect...I would find myself in a much greater position of satisfaction. The happiness, which derives from being forced to ignore such pleadings, to the point where the mind eventually gives up it’s petitions, is hard to communicate. I acknowledge that many readers of this account have found similar experiences through a variety of personal sacrifices and share this conclusion. For me these austerities delivered theory from the pages of the Sastra and created a relevant world where the collisions between material desire and the will to resist produced the benefits voiced by the outspoken saints. In my neophyte condition I was both completely attracted and utterly repelled by these internal psychological struggles. Much like the swimmer who at first finds the water uncomfortably cold but who after perseverance to remain can hardly be dragged back to shore. Then there were the practical activities of the day. The time spent distributing books and collecting Laxmi. The mapping of the city or town by the senior man and the assignment of spots for book distribution. On a typical day I would be dropped off around Ten AM at a shopping center or a mall. I would find a near by pay phone, record the number and make a timed schedule for the devotee driving to call me periodically during the day in case any need for adjustment to plan occurred. I would then generally assess the location’s security means or lack there of. This was commando activity. We were not legally allowed to distribute books in these places as they were nearly always private properties and our commerce was not typically welcome. As I began to approach people exiting the stores a steady awareness was paid to cart boys and other store employees who seemed to be taking any notice of my activities. Generally a blase turn of the head and a timely meandering in an opposite direction was enough to throw an interested party away from taking to much notice of my activities. Sometimes even if found out the store manager would be kind enough to allow you to stay apparently ignorant of or in defiance of typical store policy. When confronted I was vague about the activity at hand i.e. “Oh me? I’m just a volunteer passing out these nice books to people who are interested.” “What are the books about?” “Oh these books encourage people about the value of embracing higher education.” I would tell them I was a student teacher volunteering that day to distribute information that stressed the importance of pursuing such higher studies. Most of the employees wouldn’t question too much beyond this broad presentation, what reasonable person could rationally find fault with a volunteer teacher taking some time out to encourage people to appreciate the importance of higher learning? In fact most of the people who I encountered probably realized that it was their own lack of determination in the field of studies which had them in their current position, chasing shopping carts or had kept them confined to a check out stand for the previous twenty years of their lives. What was generally not revealed to them was the specific goal of these “higher studies”, one of the most provoking and polarizing of subjects in American society; God realization. Most people of course would assume the pursuit of “higher education” to be the indulgence in the various material sciences which not only produce a deeper understanding of the causes and effects of the world around them but that knowledge which could be exploited in some manner for making money. All of these statements on face value were absolutely true but would probably not be considered so from a Western mindset. Sometimes people knew exactly who we were. We were not volunteers or teachers or students out making some small attempt to improve human society but members of some army of mindless cult robots, manufactured at some cult compound sent into the community to seek money and fresh fodder for the cult machine. We were seen as a threat, a gang of hoodwinkers meant to rob the good Christian folk of their money and even worse their offspring. In some of the smaller towns when word got out at a shopping center or mall that one of these robots was being detained either by a store employee or a local law enforcement official locals would gather to stare as if they were trying glean some tell tale sign of what a person who has lost their mind and free will to the dictates of a cult looked like. I will tell more of these travels in the future. In the meantime I would truly love to hear from others out there who played out similar Sankirtana experiences. In the meantime I remain your servant, one small Krsnananatha dasa, a dirty soul striving to become purified. Thank you all for your kind attention.
  24. I misspelled this word menstruation, but I hope I still managed to get the general point of the story across. I apologize, my proof reader was one vacation when I dropped that post in.
  25. I agree Shiva Prabhu, constructive assessment is not bad. I in fact am guilty of such constructive expression in my post as I make some complaint towards persons inclined to speak negatively towards a well documented servant of Mahaprabhu. If per chance we were made aware of a person who while donned in the clothes of a renunciate, was inclined to wandering about with a danda in one hand and a bottle of Merlot in his other hand, it would of course be a public service to warn others whose innocence might be exploited. This would be not blasphemy but well-grounded, well based concern, but this occasion is in my evaluation far from such a situation. We have in Sripada Swami Tripuari Maharaja, a servant of Mahaprabhu, a disciple of Srila A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada publishing a record of his realizations which are the result of Guru Kripa. I cannot fathom such a work manifesting otherwise. Best for those not inclined to appreciate such expressions, as you have so suitably stated to “Leave well enough alone.” To decide not place ones eyes upon such writings is not a crime. To attack such expressions in the public province... no good can be gained. Of this even my small brain is convinced.
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