namahatta.org - Congregational Development Ministry

As I sat overlooking the small Welsh Valley village were I live one thing occurred to me the importance of BOXES in our lives.

We live in a box, and we watch or listen to a box.
We then get into a box, this takes us to work we like to call it a car or public transport.

We work in a box or use boxes for work, surrounded by boxes that contain instruments for us to use or boxes to help us produce write or communicate.

Prayer

I throw myself down in my chamber, and I call in, and invite God, and his Angels thither, and when they are there, I neglect God and his Angels, for the noise of a fly, for the rattling of a coach, for the whining of a door.

John Donne (1572-1631)

Love

To fall in love is to create a religion that has a fallible god.

Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986)

Romeo:
What shall I swear by?

Juliet:
Do not swear at all;
Or, if thou wilt, swear by thy gracious self,
Which is the god of my idolatry,
And I'll believe thee.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

Austerity

The greater the pain, the greater the gain.

(pleeon kopos, polu kentos)
Ignatius of Antioch (35-110)

by Kaunteya das

With this post I officially inaugurate a campaign against the overusage of the word ‘wonderful’ in the Krishna consciousness movement.

The term is so ubiquitously presented, so monotously applied, that such prodigality defeats the very purpose and intention of the adjective, that is, to point out how special a person or behavior is.

Every devotee is wonderful. Every culinary preparation is wonderful. Every service in wonderful… If everything is wonderful in one sense nothing is really wonderful. Does everything really warrant an intense condition of wonderment?

Commitment is an essential feature of all devotee relationships, especially the marriage relationship.

All of us have ups and downs, periods of craziness, and periods of clarity. Of course, as we become purified, situated in goodness and, ultimately, transcendental, we fluctuate less and less in our mood and character. But while our material conditioning still has a grip on us we experience periods of more or less Krishna consciousness.

This been said, devotees who have seriously committed themselves to applying the process have in effect declared, by this demonstration of commitment, that they deeply value purity of heart and aspire for it themselves. When a person shows such commitment and dedication, Krishna takes a personal interest in them and is committed to them in return. As devotees we must do the same for each other.

The weekend went great, wonderful harinam, temple programs, and lots of devotees going out on book distribution. For me the big realization came while I was offering guru-puja at our Saturday morning program.

The conch shell is not an easy one to blow and even on a good day it doesn't sound that great. And not being used to this conch shell and not wanting to embarrass myself in public I was a little nervous, but almost without effort three beautiful crisp clear tones emanated from the conchshell

I have found mys self thinking I'm too busy to serve krishna. I mean I chant my sixteen rounds every day, and the days I don't, I make up for them the very next day. I read Srila Prabupada's books regularly, wether it's ten minutes or two hours, there's always some time in the day to read a little.

The service I'm talking about is getting out there and spreading Krishna's names, pastimes, and glories to the rest of the world.

I visited the Museum of Tolerance a couple weeks ago (an outing we went on at my place of employment). The lessons taught were valuable and heart touching. The museum showed examples in history in which outer bodily distinctions like race, religion, gender, culture, and handicaps turned people against each other, like in the holocaust and segregation in America. Spiritual life is one solution to such problems, because the goal of real spiritual life is to become free from bodily designations—to not see ourselves and others as black, white, male, Christian, Hindu, teacher, lawyer, etc. but to know and see the essence of each person as a spirit soul.

Where Have all the Hippies Gone?
by Dulal Chandra dasa

Namaste.

The other day, while filling up at the gas station, I had to ask myself, “Where have all the hippies gone?” You know that “we’re not going to take it” generation; the ones who left home, left school, and every other material security to stand in front of national guard troops placing flowers in the barrels of guns to stop a senseless war and a corrupt administration. It seems that the generation of change has now given up the fight for what’s right, abandoned their rebellious natures and are now willing to be pushed around by both corporate America and a government gone wild.

The Vedic injunction is that one see women other than one’s wife as mother, which means that one should see all women as objects of service as opposed to objects of sense gratification. But those aspiring after pure devotion service aspire to an even higher standard. They aspire to treat all women, including their wife, as a objects of service.

Once a sincere young couple visited Srila Gaurakisora Das Babaji Maharaja and asked for instructions in how to progress in spiritual life. Babaji Maharaja, seeing their sincerity, blessed them with instructions in spiritual life. He told the husband that he should cook for his wife, serve her prasadam, and only eat after she is satisfied. This was an incredibly revolutionary statement, given that cooking for her husband, serving him, and only eating after he had eaten was practically the main duty of a wife within the Vedic context. And this was in the early 1900’s when the culture of India was still very conservative in regards to traditional roles for men and women.

Hare Krishna.
Well, I visited two different "mental health patients" today in two different types of locked facilities. One in a locked hospital - no escape, no way out, has to stay there until they determine he is ok to move on to another place.
The other in a jail/prison for the mentally ill who committed some kind of crime. Even more locked up, less priveleges, and when visiting we had to speak over a phone facing each other by the window - no physical contact allowed.

Several days a go I received an e-mail giving a small quote from one of Srila Prabhupada’s letters it is as follows:

31 December, 1970

Surat

Isn’t it amazing how we look back and admire of think things were better?

Recently the BBC posted an article on the old BBC Micro Computer, Yes I remember using one in school. The first floppy disc drives that were amazing considering we had up till then used audiotape.

This sound of the Lord is identical with the Lord, as we have tried to explain by the nondual position of the Lord. The material existence of our present status is full of fear. Out of the four problems of material existence, namely the food problem, the shelter problem, the fear problem and the mating problem, the fear problem gives us more trouble than the others. We are always fearful due to our ignorance of the next problem. The whole material existence is full of problems, and thus the fear problem is always prominent.

One of the most peaceful and "enlightening" jobs I have had is the simple job of baby-sitting. It is simple enough that one does not have pressure or stress to be something they are not, but to be free to laugh, dance, sing, and play with the children.

We all have struggles; every single one of us. And we are suffering through them, constantly in battle with maya. She is always testing us, even when we least expect her to. She wants to make sure that we love Krishna enough to resist the temptation she has laid out before us.

Krishna lives in there (in the heart), and He guides us to happiness and service! We are like a team, one wise man once told me, when we go out there to do God's work in this world, it's teamwork—us, Krishna, and whoever else comes our way— all working together to bring peace, happiness, and God consciousness here on earth, and to unite all souls in a common love!

Yesterday my heart told me, "go on harinam," my mind said, "don't do it," but my heart was all into it. Luckily a dear friend, Syama Priya, gave that extra push needed to go out the door.

You never know how much that person will appreciate the book you offer them, or what it will mean in their lives!

The other night, as I was entering into the grocery store to buy some staple foods, I was feeling disappointed that I had not distributed any books that day. I had one book in my purse, so I desparately reached in and handed it to the first man I saw exiting the grocery store and asked, "would you like a book about meditation?"

Preaching and Leadership, at their essence, are the same thing. It's influencing others to change their actions and align them with a mission. A preacher is a natural leader.

The old way of preaching and leading is basically to bully and coerce people into doing something. You know, it's essentially standing on a street corner and yelling at people that they must "turn or burn."

Unfortunately, this style of leadership and preaching is not very effective. It might make the preacher or leader feel good, feel that they are doing something, but it won't have much of an impact in making positive change. Generally what happens to a person who takes this approach is that their circle of influence shrinks, and they end up becoming more and more bitter.

I wrote an article, Beyond Conservative and Liberal three or four years ago explaining that devotees are neither "conservative" or "liberal". Take a look at it.

Krishna asks us to see the world is many different ways—for example: in terms of the three modes of material nature (tri-guna-mayi), the eight separated elements (prakrtir astadha), the two energies (para and apara-prakrti). Acaryas teach us to see three types of people (demoniac, devotee, innocent), three types of devotees (kanistha, madhyama, uttama), two types of devotees (saragrahi, bharavahi), two possible applications of any thing in bhakti (anukula, pratikula).

There is a useful saying: "Never ascribe to malice what can be explained by incompetence".

Napoleon Bonaparte is often credited with coining this phrase.

I've found it useful, and I try to live my life by it. I believe in giving people the benefit of the doubt.

Over the past couple of years, however, I come to some further realizations. I'm going to work on a series of articles laying them out this year.

Tuesday, 13 November, is Srila Prabhupada’s disappearance day from this mortal world and his return into nitya-lila. It is the thirtieth anniversary. Wow—that is close to half my life! How things have changed for me, in the lives of so many devotees present then, and in the movement.

For a documentary on yoga in America, my partner and I recently interviewed renowned cardiologist Mehmet Oz. “If you come to me with a heart condition,” he said, “and you expect me to cure you, but then after the operation you go back to your old habits or you don’t exercise or you don’t do yoga, then all that I’ve done is palliate your problem. You’ll be back with the same problem again, expecting me to fix it. The bottom line is that if your heart doesn’t have a reason to go on beating, it won’t.”