# Back to Godhead Magazine #26 *1992 (02)* Back to Godhead Magazine #26-02, 1992 PDF-View ## Statement of Purposes Back to Godhead magazine is a cultural presentation to respiritualize human society. It aims at achieving the following purposes: > 1. To help all people distinguish more clearly between reality and illusion, spirit and matter, the eternal and the temporary. > 2. To present Kṛṣṇa consciousness as taught in Bhagavad-gītā and Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam. > 3. To help every living being remember and serve Śrī Kṛṣṇa, the Personality of Godhead. > 4. To offer guidance in the techniques of spiritual life. > 5. To expose the faults of materialism. > 6. To promote a balanced, natural way of life, informed by spiritual values. > 7. To increase spiritual fellowship among all living beings, in relationship with Lord Śrī Kṛṣṇa. > 8. To perpetuate and spread the Vedic culture. > 9. To celebrate the chanting of the holy names of God through the saṅkīrtana movement of Lord Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu. ## From the Editor *Māyā’s Hat Trick* Some time ago this item came out from the Associated Press: A man in California was driving to his wedding when suddenly his hat blew off onto the highway. Tucked into the brim of the hat was a one-hundred-dollar bill. So in the middle of traffic the man tried to brake his car and jump out to retrieve his hat. But cruising behind him was a Highway Patrol car, and the officer inside blared to him over the loudspeaker to stay in his car and keep moving. The man obeyed, but at the next exit he turned off to a roadside motel. There he dashed out of his car, climbed a fence, tore across the highway, braving four lanes of traffic, and plucked up his hat. Mission accomplished, he dodged the next oncoming car, only to be hit by another one and killed. Devotees of Kṛṣṇa will be quick to see an analogy. In human life we’re meant to move straight on the road back home, back to Kṛṣṇa. But Māyā, illusion, is so strong that she diverts us. She grabs us by our senses and pulls. “Come on,” she says. “It’s all yours. Go after it, hold onto it, and enjoy.” Māyā’s trick is fairly simple: Get you thinking about something passing till you’re stuck on it, then reel you in. Once the eyes or the tongue or the ears or any of the senses gets fixated on something, that sense starts lugging at the mind, absorbing it in whatever Māyā’s offering at the moment. Then she can carry away our intelligence, and once our intelligence is towed away, that’s it—we’re lost. *Back to Godhead,* therefore, is meant to help us strengthen our intelligence and use it to keep the mind steadily focused beyond the lures dangled by Māyā. With mind and intellect strengthened by spiritual realization, we can control our senses, master our senses, and keep moving steadily toward the perfection of life. —Jayādvaita Swami ## Letters *In the Right Direction* I am very happy that the BTG has begun once again. By its spiritual potency, I think my hard heart has been penetrated somewhat in that I’m finding I want to give some of Kṛṣṇa's money back to Him. I will be sending money on a regular basis. I was initiated by Śrīla Prabhupāda in 1975 and distributed his books for eight years. Now I distribute newspapers every morning. I haven’t done any service since I left in 1983, and I do not live near a temple. I do not use my spiritual name, because I no longer act in a spiritual manner. Sending this money is my first step in the right direction. Currently, I’m working toward a computer engineering degree. After graduating, I would like to find work near an ISKCON temple where I could increase my service and get association with devotees. Possibly ISKCON will have some use for my engineering skills. Respectfully, Dan Richardson Indialantic, Florida *Avoiding Harassment* I would very much like to ask a favor. To avoid any further persecution and harassment, is it possible for you to mail the “Back to Godhead” magazine in an envelope? My mailbox has been vandalized several times, and someone put four bullet holes into the front windshield of my truck. My car has also been pelted with raw eggs as well as vandalized. Thank you for your help! Name Withheld Dallas, Texas Of course! Thank you for staying with us through all that. Other readers: If you’d like to receive your BTG’s in a plain envelope, just drop a note to our Subscriber Service Center, P.O. Box 16027, N. Hollywood, California 91615-9900. It costs us a few pennies more, but it’s worth it to us—we want subscribers, not martyrs. *Complete Lectures are Better* The mood of BTG seems much more authorized now that you are printing complete Prabhupāda lectures instead of excerpts. I feel more satisfied, and I feel that Kṛṣṇa is more pleased now that Śrīla Prabhupāda's mood and personality are being presented, not just quotes and instructions (though these are also important). Kamrā Devī Dāsī Alachua, Florida *Fifty/Fifty* As a parent with two teenage children, and so experiencing the struggle to provide for them, I am sympathetic to Rohininandana’s “Fifty Percent Puzzle” [BTG, November/ December]. But I have a doubt about his conclusion. [Householders, Śrīla Prabhupāda says, should give fifty percent of their money for devotional service. Rohininandana suggested that this means fifty percent of what’s left after expenses.] There’s the old maxim “A job expands to the time allotted.” So also with one’s expenses. Using Rohininandana’s proposed formula, if I have only two dollars left over at the end of the month and give one dollar to Kṛṣṇa, I’m properly situated. How do we factor in the example of Kolavecha Śrīdhara, Lord Caitanya’s childhood associate? He earned his small livelihood selling leaf plates and fruit and was sometimes obliged to live only on meals made of tamarind leaves. But he still spent fifty percent of his income on worshiping the Ganges. Like aiming at offenseless chanting and pure devotional service, better to concede one’s current inabilities and accept these instructions as goals to strive for, rather than create a philosophy of a compromised fifty percent for the guilt-free 90’s. To conclude on an encouraging note: In temples I’ve managed and in my personal life, I’ve always seen time donated to ISKCON’s service as a portion of the fifty percent formula. Working all week at a job and then putting in solid service on the weekends or in the evenings should factor into the equation. Badrinārāyaṇa Dāsa San Diego, California *Badrinārāyaṇa Dāsa is the president of ISKCON’s San Diego temple and a member of ISKCON’s Governing Body Commission.* *Spiritual Falldown* I really appreciated reading the last issue of BTG, as it dealt with a real, very tangible problem in our life as devotees—falldown. Maybe this article indicates that we are mature enough to face and discuss this reality without shunning it out of fear, etc. Thank you for this issue. Smita Krishna Swami Almviks Gard, Sweden Your article regarding “spiritual falldown” addressed the single-most important issue our Society can address today. Balabhadra Dasa Denver, Colorado I’d like to comment on the point that Govinda Vallabha Dasi made. She said, “I mean, okay, I’m fallen, but where do I go from here? Where are we encouraged to speak openly about this?” Recently in San Diego a group of women devotees with the same question have formed a women’s support group. Here the women are able to reveal their minds in confidence and get spiritual support from one another without being judged. It has helped us develop real open relationships with one another. It has helped me overcome the obstacle that Karnamrta Dasa mentioned: “If a devotee’s not introspective enough, if he’s more concerned with what he *should* be than what he actually is, you can have a community of devotees relating to each other in a very superficial way.” If anyone has a question regarding how we formed our support group, please write to: Women’s Support Group 1077 Emerald St., Apt. F San Diego, CA 92109 Bhaktin Kelly San Diego, California I was particularly touched, yes, touched by the article on falldown. I actually felt the heart-depth sincerity of the devotees for each other and the subject. I have been in a bit of an introspective mood here of late and trying to understand better my service to Prabhupāda, my relationship with my Godbrothers, and the eternal nature of both. It really is wonderful to see an ISKCON publication deal with these issues that are at the heart of the devotees’ service and our ability to continue on against all obstacles placed in our path as we try to find our balance in this world. The anxiety, the compassion, the encouragement—it was all there. Keep on with such topics! Caturātmā Dāsa St. Louis, Missouri I would first like to express the appreciation and relief I felt when reading the discussion on “Falldown.” I heard maturity, honesty, humbleness, and compassion (including towards one’s self) in many of the comments. As a good devotee friend and I read the article aloud together, we felt Kṛṣṇa's presence and love very strongly and experienced a lot of healing as we related our lives and observations with what we were reading. However, the “Straight Talk” column really angered and scared me. I was disturbed by the derogatory phrases, sarcasm, and “we vs. them” attitude. I was a fervent “Jesus person” in my teens and twenties and learned through painful experience the results of becoming spiritually enthused by putting down others. Bhakta Vic, I respect your dedication, but please be aware that to be sarcastic and judgmental is abusive to yourself and others. I express my reaction as a kindness, not a criticism, and hope it will contribute to growth. The article on Christ and Kṛṣṇa consciousness was also very much appreciated. Having a Christian background, I have a deep love and respect for Jesus and his teachings. I was happy to see that there is no conflict according to Prabhupāda and that I don’t have to feel guilty or inferior because I learned much of my spiritual teaching from a non-Vedic source. I express my gratefulness for the mercy of God in the many ways He has appeared to us all. Jennifer Eyre Three Rivers, California I was pleasantly surprised to see your discussion on “Falldown from Spiritual Life” in *Back to Godhead.* It has taken many years for devotees to candidly confront the issue of falldown. As a former *sannyasi,* GBC, and even personal secretary to His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda, I would like to help shed some light on the “experience” of falldown. Falldown is real. Falldown is caused by misuse of one’s free will, one’s *choices.* At every waking moment, the *jivatma* [living being] is free to choose to follow the wanderings of the mind and senses or to surrender to Kṛṣṇa. When the pattern of choices is contrary to the interests of devotional service to the Supreme Lord Kṛṣṇa, the regulative principles that tame the mind and senses become progressively more difficult to follow. Knowledge alone is insufficient. One may, in full knowledge of one’s predicament, slip back into the pattern of sense gratification. Having lived outside the movement for fifteen years, I have had many realizations about my life in ISKCON. To begin with, I was very young and inexperienced in so many ways. Although I tried to deal fairly with devotees, I now realize many of my shortcomings. I often regret that as an administrator in the movement I may have stepped on more than a few *bhakti* creepers. [Scripture likens one’s life in *bhakti*, devotional service, to a creeper or flowering vine.] I also regret my inability to be honest, both with myself and with my spiritual master, when difficulties and doubts arose. This happened not from envy but from immaturity and a fear of being a disappointment should one fail to live up to the most exalted standard of pure devotional service. The knowledge and realization that come from devotional service are genuine. They are reinforced from within. Once, however, the service attitude is compromised and replaced by the enjoying mode, one is left with many spiritual signposts or road markers yet has nowhere to go. This is the dilemma of falldown. Your devotional service has had the brakes temporarily put on it, and real spiritual advancement is slow. This does not mean, however, that you forget Kṛṣṇa. It takes many, many years of contemplation to sort out the whole experience. It is natural for some devotees in the ISKCON framework to feel threatened by the devotee who “bloops” or falls down. But I must share with you the perspective of the fallen devotee. I have had the association of hundreds of such so-called fallen devotees over the last fifteen years. A common theme that comes from many of them is that they feel they had been exploited and then rejected. This, of course, has led many to feel somewhat depersonalized by the movement. It is ironic and heartbreaking that the movement which preaches Vaisnava personalism can somehow [sometimes] depersonalize individuals. Some devotees felt that nobody (i.e., no temple administrators) really cared about them, or loved them, but only wanted them for the tasks they could perform for the temple. When the devotee left the movement, the problem was then sometimes compounded by the disregard or disdain that came upon them when visiting the temple following “falldown.” From the harsh treatment they may have received, such devotees even sometimes wondered who had fallen. These are very difficult issues to confront. Alas, you may think I must be some kind of demon to say such things, but I am not. I have simply been observant and am now being painfully honest. For too long, many devotees, such as myself, have waited for the time when we might feel proud to be identified in the community as “Hare Kṛṣṇas.” That time will come when each *bhakta* begins to value each individual he or she meets because that individual is a part and parcel of Kṛṣṇa. It is proper for devotees to engage everyone they can in the service of the Lord, but don’t lose sight of the individual you’ve just engaged. We’re intended to be the servant of the servant of the servant of Śrī Kṛṣṇa. I have nonetheless come full circle. By Śrīla Prabhupāda's causeless mercy, I am again surrendering and engaging in devotional service, also helping to establish an ISKCON-affiliated temple in Santa Cruz, California. Many of us here are older and more emotionally mature, yet we still see many potential problems ahead. Some devotees left ISKCON altogether and have continued in their capacity to render devotional service. I encourage them to find a way back. Share your maturity with ISKCON. This is Śrīla Prabhupāda's creation. The introduction of any new cultural movement must be expected to at times be difficult. Much dirty water has now been washed off the “baby” and can be discarded. But don’t throw away the baby with the bathwater! I try to envision myself sitting before Śrīla Prabhupāda and submissively asking him what he wants of me. It is easy to understand what he wants for me and for ISKCON. As the *jagat-*guru,** he wants Kṛṣṇa consciousness to flourish in every individual and every corner of the world for the pleasure of Śrī Kṛṣṇa. As *guru,* he holds up a standard for spiritual advancement that we might all aspire to. He wants his disciples to fully reestablish their transcendental loving service with Kṛṣṇa in this lifetime. When we alter that standard, then all the potency is lost, for the Vaisnava principle is that service rendered under the guidance of the genuine spiritual master will be acceptable and pleasing to Kṛṣṇa. Kṛṣṇa will reciprocate, and everything auspicious to one’s spiritual advancement will follow. We need to nurture each other along on our spiritual journey. When a Godbrother or Godsister is having difficulty, show concern and help them if you are able and willing. Don’t trample on their delicate *bhakti* creeper. Don’t be indifferent to those who aspire to render some service to Śrī Kṛṣṇa. I hope that those who read this, especially the *bhaktas* who have dedicated their lives to Lord Caitanya’s movement, will take this in the constructive mode in which it is intended. I envision an ever-glorious future for ISKCON, both inside and outside of India, if maturity, honesty, and caring follow from the first twenty-five years of the movement’s growth and experience. Every conditioned soul in the material world is fallen. It is the rule rather than the exception. Those exceptional souls who have at some time in this life sought shelter of Kṛṣṇa and His representative must be treated with exceptional care. Falldown does not terminate one’s devotional service, but rather interrupts it. You must provide encouragement for that service to be resumed. All glories to Śrīla Prabhupāda! Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa Dāsa Boulder Creek, California *Thirst for Kṛṣṇa* While I am not a member of ISKCON, I am a devotee of Lord Kṛṣṇa and was expecting the new BTG to help quench some of my thirst for Kṛṣṇa. To my surprise, there was actually very little about Kṛṣṇa in it. The magazine was primarily concerned with ISKCON as an institution—its problems, goals, activities, etc. While I’m sure these are important issues that deserve a forum, I question whether *Back to Godhead* is the appropriate one. It was my understanding that BTG is geared toward a general audience and that its purpose is to bring its readers close to Kṛṣṇa. To this end, the articles and pictures should relate to Kṛṣṇa—His form, pastimes, great devotees, worship, and so on. Most of the pictures, however, were of the authors of the articles, which is curious considering that Kṛṣṇa conscious philosophy puts no importance on outward appearance. It does not matter what the authors look like. BTG should feature beautiful pictures of the temple Deities and of Kṛṣṇa in His various incarnations and activities. I realize that color printing is expensive, but where else are your readers going to find this nectar? The articles and columns themselves focused heavily on ISKCON members’ dilemmas or on social theory. I believe BTG should focus on Kṛṣṇa. Your articles should serve to help the reader remember Him, should ignite the flame of *bhakti* in the heart. You could have articles discussing His form, qualities and activities, articles examining the finer points of *Bhagavad-gītā* and *Śrīmad-Bhagavatam,* and about the theory and practice of *bhakti*-yoga. Kṛṣṇa is the Ultimate Truth, the meaning of life; no other topic is as fascinating and relishable. Please, therefore, revise your editorial outlook to include more of Him and less of yourselves. Name Withheld Biggs, California Since we relaunched BTG, about a year ago, we’ve purposely been printing articles about ISKCON’s goals, strategies, and struggles. These were topics we hadn’t said much about before, and we figured we ought to. Kṛṣṇa's movement, after all, is dedicated to Kṛṣṇa. So these topics, we think, deserve space too. We believe that many of our readers, even outside ISKCON, will find these topics spiritually important and rewarding. But our main focus in BTG—in fact, our main focus in life—should be Kṛṣṇa's form, qualities, pastimes, and other transcendental features. Thank you for reminding us. We’ll take your words to heart.—JS *We welcome your letters. Send correspondence to The Editors, Back to Godhead, P.O. Box 90946, San Diego, CA 92169, USA.* > Celebrate ### Śrī Gaura Pūrṇimā The Appearance Anniversary of Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu March 18, 1992 For details, call a Hare Kṛṣṇa center near you. ## The Hidden Incarnation *A lecture in Māyāpur on the appearance day of Lord Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu: March 16, 1976* ### by His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami PrabhupādaFounder-Ācārya of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness > itthaṁ nṛ-tiryag-ṛṣi-deva jhaṣāvatārair > lokān vibhāvayasi haṁsi jagat pratīpān > dharmaṁ mahā-puruṣa pāsi yugānuvṛttaṁ > channaḥ kalau yad abhavas tri-yugo ’tha sa tvam “In this way, my Lord, You appear in various incarnations as a human being, an animal, a great saint, a demigod, a fish, or a tortoise, thus maintaining the entire creation in different planetary systems and killing the demoniac principles. According to the age, O my Lord, You protect the principles of religion. In the Age of Kali, however, You do not assert Yourself as the Supreme Personality of Godhead, and therefore You are known as Triyuga, or the Lord who appears in three *yugas.”—Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam* 7.9.38 Here is a specific statement about Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu. Caitanya Mahāprabhu is the Supreme Personality of Godhead, but He’s *channa. Channa* means “covered.” Lord Caitanya is a covered *avatāra*, or incarnation, of the Supreme Lord because He appeared as a devotee. An *avatāra* should be confirmed by great devotees, and their opinions must be upheld by statements in the *śāstra*, the scriptures. Today’s verse is a statement from the *Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam* confirming that Lord Caitanya is an *avatāra*. The Eleventh Canto (11.5.32) gives another direct statement about Lord Caitanya: > kṛṣṇa-varṇaṁ tviṣākṛṣṇaṁ > sāṅgopāṅgāstra-pārṣadam > yajñaiḥ saṅkīrtana-prāyair > yajanti hi su-medhasaḥ “In the Age of Kali, intelligent persons perform congregational chanting to worship the incarnation of Godhead who constantly sings the names of Kṛṣṇa. Although His complexion is not blackish, He is Kṛṣṇa Himself. He is accompanied by His associates, servants, weapons, and confidential companions.” Caitanya Mahāprabhu is also described by Vṛndāvana Dāsa Ṭhākura as *yuga-dharma-pāla,* the protector of the religion for the age*.* Caitanya Mahāprabhu is described here as *channaḥ kalau.* In the Kali-yuga He does not appear directly like other incarnations, such as Nṛsiṁhadeva, Vāmanadeva, or Lord Rāmacandra. He appears as a devotee. Why? Because He is the most magnanimous *avatāra.* People are so foolish that they could not understand Kṛṣṇa. When Kṛṣṇa said, *sarva-dharmān parityajya mām ekaṁ śaraṇaṁ vraja*—“Give up all varieties of religion and just surrender unto Me”—they took it: “Who is this person ordering like that? What right does he have?” That is our material disease. If somebody is ordered to do something, he protests, “Who are you to order me?” This is the position. God Himself, Kṛṣṇa—what can He say? He orders. As the Supreme Person, the Supreme Being, He must order. He’s the supreme controller. He must order. That is God. But we are so foolish that when God orders, “You do this,” we take it otherwise—“Oh, who is this man? He’s ordering like that. Give up everything? Why shall I give him everything? I have created so many *dharmas,* ’isms.’ Shall I give them up? Why shall I give them up?” Therefore the same Lord Kṛṣṇa came again as Caitanya Mahāprabhu. Today is Caitanya Mahāprabhu’s appearance day, so we must discuss this very thoroughly. Rūpa Gosvāmī understood Lord Caitanya’s position. To understand Lord Caitanya we have to go through the *guru,* and Rūpa Gosvāmī is our *guru.* Narottama Dāsa Ṭhākura, who is also our *guru,* has written, *rūpa-raghu-nātha-pade hoibe ākuti, kabe hāma bujhabo śrī yugala-pīriti:* If we want to understand the transcendental position of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, we have to go through the *guru,* the *guru-paramparā* system. Otherwise it is not possible. The whole process is submission. Kṛṣṇa wants this—*sarva-dharmān parityajya.* So if we want to approach Kṛṣṇa, we have to become very submissive. To whom do we become submissive? “Kṛṣṇa is not here. To whom I shall submit?” Submit to His devotee, to His representative. Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu appeared on this day to give mercy to the fallen souls, who are so foolish that they cannot take to Kṛṣṇa consciousness. He is personally teaching how to take to Kṛṣṇa consciousness. And that process is this *kīrtana,* chanting Kṛṣṇa's holy names. In our *Teachings of Lord Caitanya* there is a picture of Lord Caitanya chanting in Prayāg, and Rūpa Gosvāmī is offering his obeisances. That is the first meeting with Rūpa Gosvāmī, and he composed this verse: > namo mahā-vadānyāya > kṛṣṇa-prema-pradāya te > kṛṣṇāya kṛṣṇa-caitanya- > nāmne gaura-tviṣe namaḥ “O most munificent incarnation! You are Kṛṣṇa Himself appearing as Śrī Kṛṣṇa Caitanya Mahāprabhu. You have assumed the golden color of Śrīmatī Rādhārāṇī, and You are widely distributing pure love of Kṛṣṇa. We offer our respectful obeisances unto You.” So this is *channa-avatāra.* He’s Kṛṣṇa, He has come to give you *kṛṣṇa-prema,* but He’s acting like a Kṛṣṇa devotee. This is the meaning of “covered incarnation.” He is not commanding now, “You do this.” Or He’s commanding, “Do this,” but in a different way, because people misunderstood Kṛṣṇa—“Oh, who is this person commanding?” Even a rascal so-called scholar has said, “Kṛṣṇa's demanding too much.” “Sophisticated” persons think like that. But our process is to submit. Unless we submit, there is no hope of advancing in Kṛṣṇa consciousness. That is Caitanya Mahāprabhu’s teaching: *tṛṇād api sunīcena taror api sahiṣṇunā / amāninā mānadena kīrtaṇīyaḥ sadā hariḥ.* If you want to chant the Hare Kṛṣṇa *mantra,* you have to take this principle: *tṛṇād api sunīcena.* You have to become humbler than the grass. When grass is lying on the street, everyone tramples it, but it never protests. And you must be more tolerant than a tree—*taror api sahiṣṇunā.* The tree is giving us so much help. It is giving us fruits, flowers, leaves, and, when there is scorching heat, shelter also. The tree is so beneficial. Still, we cut it down. Whenever I like, I cut it down. But there is no protest. The tree does not say, “I have given you so much help, and you are cutting me?” No. It is tolerant. Therefore Caitanya Mahāprabhu has selected *taror api sahiṣṇunā* and *amāninā mānadena.* The devotee should not expect any respectful position but should offer all respect to anyone. If we acquire this qualification, we can chant the Hare Kṛṣṇa *mahā-mantra* without any disturbance. This is the qualification. Caitanya Mahāprabhu came to teach these principles. He is Kṛṣṇa Himself. Svarūpa Dāmodara, Lord Caitanya’s secretary, has written, *na caitanyāt kṛṣṇaj jagati para-tattvaṁ param iha:* Paratattvam, the Supreme Truth, is Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu. The Supreme Truth is Kṛṣṇa, but Caitanya Mahāprabhu is not different from Kṛṣṇa. Brahman, Paramātmā, and Bhagavān—these are the three features of the Supreme Absolute Truth. > vadanti tat tattva-vidas > tattvaṁ yaj jñānam advayam > brahmeti paramātmeti > bhagavān iti śabdyate “Learned transcendentalists who know the Absolute Truth call this nondual substance Brahman, Paramātmā, or Bhagavān.” The Absolute Truth is one, *advaya-jñāna.* There is no difference. But according to our qualification for understanding, the Absolute Truth appears as the impersonal Brahman, the localized Paramātmā, and the beloved Supreme Personality of Godhead, Kṛṣṇa. If you want to understand the Absolute Truth as impersonal Brahman, you realize that. If you want to realize the Absolute Truth as Paramātmā—everywhere, all-pervading—you can realize Him. And if you want to see Him as the most beloved, then you can also have that. That is the meaning of *ye yathā māṁ prapadyante.* You can realize the Absolute Truth any way. He is prepared to manifest Himself as you desire. Originally there was water all over the universe. So at that time the Lord came as a fish. Similarly, He became a tortoise. Then He became Nṛsiṁhadeva. He became Vāmanadeva, and so on. Don’t think the *avatāra* comes only to the human society. He appears amongst the animals, amongst the insects, amongst the trees. Therefore in the *Bhagavad-gītā,* Lord Kṛṣṇa says, “Among the trees, I am this tree. Among the animals, I am this animal. Among the fighters, I am this fighter . . .” He’s everything, but He points out a few examples. He is prepared to be appreciated by you in any condition of life if you take His instruction on how to realize Him. And if you manufacture your own way, it is not possible to realize Him. But even if you are the most ordinary man, you can realize Him. There is no difficulty. How? Kṛṣṇa says, *raso ’ham apsu kaunteya:* “My dear Arjuna, I am the taste of water.” Now, who does not drink water? Anyone? The animal drinks water, and the human being drinks water. But the animal cannot understand God, although God is there in the water. The man can understand because he is a human being. Therefore a human being is different from an animal. Still, if we are drinking water but we are not realizing Kṛṣṇa, then we are animals. When we drink water we have so many chances to remember Kṛṣṇa. And that is the process of devotional service. *Smaraṇam,* remembering. Every time you drink water and remember Kṛṣṇa, you are in devotional service. Where is the difficulty? But the rascals will not take it. As soon as you drink water and the taste of the water appeases your thirst, if you simply remember, “In the *Bhagavad-gītā* it is stated that this taste is Kṛṣṇa,” then immediately you remember Kṛṣṇa. And as soon as you remember Kṛṣṇa, it is devotional service, *smaraṇam.* Where is the difficulty? Where is the difficulty for becoming Kṛṣṇa conscious? *Prabhāsmi śaśi-sūryayoḥ:* “I am the illumination of the moon and the sun.” Who does not see the sunshine and the moonshine? In daytime you see the sunshine, and at night you see the moonshine. So you can see the sunshine and moonshine and remember Kṛṣṇa's instructions: “I am this sunshine and moonshine.” Where is the difficulty? *Praṇavaḥ sarva-vedeṣu.* Now, you may think, “I’m a learned Vedāntist. Why shall I study the sunshine and moonshine? I shall chant **oṁ*.*” But Kṛṣṇa says, “Rascal, I am this **oṁ*.* You are a big Vedāntist. You chant **oṁ*,* but I am **oṁ*.*” Every Vedic *mantra* is chanted after the vibration of **oṁ*kāra* (*oṁ*). So whether you are a Vedāntist or an ordinary human being who does not know anything, you can realize Kṛṣṇa. There is no difficulty. Kṛṣṇa taught everything for becoming Kṛṣṇa conscious, but still we are such rascals that we could not understand Kṛṣṇa. Therefore Kṛṣṇa came again: “These rascals failed to understand Me, and now I shall teach how to become a devotee of Kṛṣṇa by My personal behavior.” That is Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu. He taught by His personal example. Don’t think that because He’s playing the part He’s a human being like us. For example, someone may be massaging my body and not doing it properly. And I might take his hand and begin to give the massage, “Do like this. Do like this.” That does not mean I am a masseur or I am a servant of that person. Similarly, don’t forget that Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu is the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Kṛṣṇa. You are worshiping Rādhā-Kṛṣṇa, and there is Caitanya Mahāprabhu’s Deity also. Some people protest, “Why should Caitanya Mahāprabhu’s Deity be placed along with Kṛṣṇa?” But they do not know. *Śrī-kṛṣṇa-caitanya rādhā-kṛṣṇa nahe anya.* Śrī Kṛṣṇa Caitanya is Kṛṣṇa. It is confirmed by the *śāstras.* In today’s verse it is said, *channaḥ kalau yad abhavah.* In the Kali-yuga, He does not appear directly as an incarnation like Nṛsiṁhadeva or Vāmanadeva or Lord Rāmacandra, but He appears as a devotee. But He’s an incarnation: Lord Caitanya Mahāprabhu. “Therefore sometimes You are called Triyuga.” There are are four **yugas*,* or ages, but He is known as one who appears in three **yugas*.* Because in three *yugas* He appears distinctly and in the fourth *yuga,* the Kali-*yuga,* He appears as a devotee, He’s called Triyuga. So today is the birthday, or appearance day, of Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu, and this is His birthplace—Māyāpur. It is your good fortune that you are all present here. Always remember Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu and chant *śrī-kṛṣṇa-caitanya prabhu-nityānanda śrī-advaita gadādhara śrīvāsādi-gaura-bhakta-vṛnda.* This will make your life perfect. Thank you very much. ## Lessons from the Road *Preparing for a Pilgrimage* ### by Satsvarūpa Dāsa Goswami I AM PREPARING to go to Vṛndāvana for a pilgrimage. To travel thousands of miles to reach a holy place will take a lot of effort, and to live without the ease of home will take tolerance. The packing alone—the separating out the essential from the nonessential—makes me slow down and take stock of my life. Why am I going on this pilgrimage? I need to remind myself that there is no home in the material world. I need to remember how to use my time well, how to defer the invitation Māyā offers at every second to slip into unconsciousness. I need to remember that Kṛṣṇa is with me now, even in the West, even in my own little life. Going on pilgrimage brings remembrance of Kṛṣṇa. According to *The Nectar of Devotion:* An unalloyed devotee who has developed ecstatic love for Kṛṣṇa is always engaging his words in reciting prayers to the Lord. Within the mind he is always thinking of Kṛṣṇa, and with his body he either offers obeisances by bowing down before the Deity or engages in some other service. During these ecstatic activities he sometimes sheds tears. In this way his whole life is engaged in the service of the Lord, with not a moment wasted on any other engagement. Visiting the holy sites will allow me to immerse my thoughts in Kṛṣṇa's pastimes and offer my obeisances to Him. It will release me from the day-to-day concerns that are background noise in my life. I will be able to move out of my plans for the future into the immediate present, where Kṛṣṇa is with me now. This is the essence of what I hope to achieve during this pilgrimage: to see Kṛṣṇa's presence in the everyday. I want to spend each day learning to depend on Kṛṣṇa, for this is how I can always be with Him. I should not need physical austerity or the objections of others to drive me to Kṛṣṇa's shelter; I should be able to turn to Him in any situation simply because I love Him. We can know Kṛṣṇa in any situation, but we have to ask Him for His association. We do that by praying, by chanting His holy names, and by expressing to Him our heartfelt feelings. We also need the strong conviction that Kṛṣṇa will give Himself to us. That is called *āśā-bandha,* the mood of thinking, “Because I am trying my best to follow the routine principles of devotional service, I am sure that I will go back to Godhead, back to home.” Kṛṣṇa consciousness simply means awakening to what is. Kṛṣṇa wrote in His letter to the *gopīs* that He is never apart from them. He told them not to doubt this existential fact. For us it is easier to realize Kṛṣṇa's presence when we go on pilgrimage, especially to Vṛndāvana, where life is made difficult by the absence of familiar comforts. * * * I am writing this partly to forestall nervousness about going to the *dhāma,* Vṛndāvana, Kṛṣṇa's sacred abode. I can lose my spiritual consciousness just by worrying whether we will ever reach there. I can never have peace in my present material body and mind. Going to Vṛndāvana is not going to change that fact. Therefore, let me abide in Kṛṣṇa by chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa, Hare Kṛṣṇa, Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa, Hare Hare / Hare Rāma, Hare Rāma, Rāma Rāma, Hare Hare. To arrive in Vṛndāvana is a great success. The *dhāma* offers blessings to the pilgrim. But even the preparation and travel to get there is important. The pilgrim is always advancing—advancing toward surrender to the *dhāma* and to Kṛṣṇa. Lord Caitanya taught that while chanting we should think ourselves lower than a blade of grass and should be more tolerant than a tree. Then no one can obstruct us from our constant chanting. To truly approach the *dhāma* we must enter this state of mind. * * * Also we have moved on from our campground in northern France and we are on our way. The internal journey is not a fragile state I will lose at someone’s whimsical words. It doesn’t depend on whether our plane connections go smoothly or I am surrounded by gentle friends or the *prasādam* is hot or the pen refills remembered. These are not what I depend on to practice Kṛṣṇa consciousness. I am going home. I will have to travel so far to recognize that my home is in Kṛṣṇa and that Kṛṣṇa is everywhere. I will have to travel so far to remember that the material world offers no home, no peace, no shelter, no comfort. Whatever comforts I am attached to serve only to strand me in a barren wasteland of godlessness. I will have to travel so far to see that home means chanting sixteen rounds and serving Śrīla Prabhupāda, that home is not a place but a shelter in Kṛṣṇa consciousness. * * * Special among holy places, Vṛndāvana is where Kṛṣṇa chose to appear and perform His pastimes. Srila Prabhupāda encouraged us to go to Vṛndāvana to add depth to our Kṛṣṇa consciousness and bring home the reality of Kṛṣṇa. Devotees from around the world go to Vṛndāvana on pilgrimage. They go to increase their chanting and hearing and remembrance of Kṛṣṇa, and to share their realizations with one another. The sincerity of purpose one finds in these devotees inspires one's own Kṛṣṇa consciousness. As the *Vedas* state, there is no point in going on pilgrimage for relief from sins if one does not associate with saintly persons. The chanting is our way to be with Kṛṣṇa wherever we are in the world. And Vṛndāvana is the best place to go to realize this. In the *Padma Purāṇa* the Lord says: "I am not in Vaikuṇṭha or in the hearts of the *yogīs*. I reside where My devotees glorify My activities." So let me go to Vṛndāvana and chant in the association of my Godbrothers and Godsisters. Let me travel the thousand or so miles to find that Kṛṣṇa has been with me all along. And let me realize while there that I have no home in the material world, no shelter, and no existence separate from what exists in the practice of Kṛṣṇa consciousness. *Satsvarūpa Dāsa Goswami is the author of more than two dozen books, including a six-volume biography of Śrīla Prabhupāda.* ## Lord Kṛṣṇa's Cuisine *Cooking Class: Lesson 1* *The Vaiṣṇava Kitchen: Hands to Work, Hearts to God* ### by Yamunā Devī ONE OF THE MOST MEMORABLE aspects of visiting a temple of Lord Kṛṣṇa is sampling its renowned food—artful Indian vegetarian cuisine prepared and offered for the pleasure of the Deity*.* This food is distributed as *prasādam,* or the mercy of the Lord, and temple visitors who understand its spiritual value feel fortunate to sample even a little portion*.* In India temple cooks are generally regarded as the country’s finest chefs. Aspiring temple cooks apprentice from two to six years. Only at the end of the training is a student allowed to cook in the temple kitchen. While mastery of technique is a prerequisite to culinary excellence, the more substantive merit of a Vaiṣṇava chef—whether cooking in the temple or at home—is purity of the heart, mind, and senses. The standards for cooking at home differ from those in the temple kitchen, yet cleanliness and purity are essential wherever one cooks for the Lord. So I’m beginning this series of cooking classes by discussing external and internal cleanliness as they relate to cooking. *External Cleanliness* Cleanliness is invigorating and purifying. And it’s catching. Cleanliness in the kitchen will filter into other rooms of your house. Your first task is to clean the kitchen from floor to ceiling—every nook and cranny. Clean under the sink; then move on to each drawer, cupboard, and shelf. Thoroughly clean the refrigerator, freezer, oven, and stove. Scrub your utensils and pot bottoms until they sparkle. Wash the floors, counters, walls, and storage containers. As far as possible, this is the way your kitchen should stay. To keep this standard, clean as you cook and avoid leaving clutter and messes while you work. If flour spills into a drawer, clean it before you move to another area. Next, take a look at the organization in your kitchen. Unless you designed your kitchen, you probably want more countertop work space. It’s likely there, but covered by decorative bric-a-brac, storage containers, and small appliances. Move these items elsewhere and clear your counters for working. Keep often-used equipment within easy reach, and less-used wares tucked in out-of-the-way spots. Keep spices, oils, grains, and legumes in well-sealed containers and store them in a cool, dark area for the longest shelf life. Nuts and seeds will last twice as long when kept frozen in zip-lock bags. Sharpen the knives and treat yourself to a new cutting board if you need one. *Internal cleanliness* I recently asked Brahmānanda Dāsa, one of Śrīla Prabhupāda's first disciples, to recall what rules Prabhupāda had given for internal purity in the kitchen. He replied unhesitatingly, “Think of Kṛṣṇa, chant Hare Kṛṣṇa, and don’t taste food while you cook it.” I then asked him how one should make cooking a meditation, or a devotional offering to the Lord. He replied, “Simply remember that the food is for Kṛṣṇa's pleasure.” To think of Kṛṣṇa, you have to read about Him, discuss His teachings, and chant or sing His holy name, alone or in congregation. Try daily chanting the *mahā-mantra—*Hare Kṛṣṇa, Hare Kṛṣṇa, Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa, Hare Hare / Hare Rāma, Hare Rāma, Rāma Rāma, Hare Hare. While you clean the kitchen, for example, try chanting either in a monotone or to a melody. Reading, discussing, and chanting the glories of the Lord is good for the mind, body, and heart. And for a Vaiṣṇava cook, it is the recommended process for internal purification. It gives you insights on how best to please the Lord with your endeavors. Śrīla Prabhupāda established simple guidelines about kitchen standards in the 1960’s through instructions and letters. To establish a Vaiṣṇava kitchen in your home, adopt these attitudes and note the positive effects: “The main thing is that whenever food is offered to the Lord, everything should be respectfully and cleanly presented and prepared.” “Place everything you have made for the Lord on a special plate and offer it with love and devotion. Think, ‘Kṛṣṇa, I have made this for You. Please take it.’ ” “The Lord can eat as many times as you can offer … He is neither hungry nor poor, nor unable to eat, but He accepts everything when such eatables are within the groups of vegetables, fruits, grains, legumes, dairy, etc.” “Hands should be always washed when preparing *prasādam,* and in this way everything shall be prepared cleanly and purely.” “Smelling and tasting of foods being prepared for the Lord should never be done. Become familiar enough with your ingredients so you can calculate the desired outcome. Offer first, taste later.” * * * The recipe this month is a drink for breaking a fast or for taking in the morning upon rising. Śrīla Prabhupāda suggested it in April 1967 for the first ISKCON observation of Lord Caitanya’s birthday—Gaura Pūrṇimā. *Break-Fast Drink* > 1 cup spring water > 3 tablespoons lemon or lime juice > 3 tablespoons maple syrup or raw sugar > barest sprinkle of cayenne pepper Whisk until blended. Serve at room temperature. *Yamuna Devi is the author of* Lord Krishna’s Cuisine: The Art of Indian Vegetarian Cooking *and is a regular contributor to the* Washington Post. ## Science: The Vedic View *Imitators of Life* ### by Sadāpūta Dāsa > Omni: “So then, aren’t you artificial life guys playing God?” > Chris Langton: “Well, yeah, in a way I have to admit it.” * THE DREAM OF CREATING LIFE is hard to resist. For many years, artificial intelligence seemed a sure way to this goal. Researchers at universities like MIT would regularly claim that within ten years computers would surpass humans in intelligence. But decades passed, and by the 1980’s researchers widely conceded that these claims were a bit premature. Then came artificial life. In 1987 a young scientist named Chris Langton, from Los Alamos National Laboratories, put together in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the first conference on artificial life. The essence of life, he said, is organization transforming by rules, so we can study life effectively through computer simulations. Conference speakers offered studies of computer-simulated “organisms” and “ecosystems.” By the widely publicized second conference, in 1990, this new field of scientific study had lots of players. Their idea was to aim for realistic goals and not have to backpedal like their colleagues in artificial intelligence. As artificial life advocate John Nagle put it, “We need to start low. Where do we get off trying for human-level capabilities when we can’t even build an ant?” * Of course, ants are formidably complicated. As Nagle admitted, “We just don’t know how ants work.” * Yet despite the humble start, artificial lifers seem confident that life will one day be embodied in silicon and freed from the constraints of carbon-based wetware. Then evolution will speed along, and human beings will have to confront their evolutionary successors. At the second artificial life conference some speakers gleefully projected that this might occur within a hundred years. We should accept the inevitable, they said, and give up pride in our ephemeral human body. Others expressed reluctance, or even fear. The reasons for celebrating the replacement of human beings by machines, said conferee Michael Rosenberg, “need to be examined.” * The idea that humans may be replaced by superintelligent machines is an old one. So instead of trying to analyze the prospects for artificial life, let me relate some stories from past history. For this I turn to a treatise on machines in ancient India written by a Sanskritist named V. Raghavan. * In Sanskrit a machine is called a **yantra*.* As defined by the *Samaraṅgana Sūtradhara* of King Bhoja, in the twelfth century, a *yantra* is a device that “controls and directs, according to a plan, the motions of things that act each according to its own nature.” * This is close to Langton’s definition of life. And in ancient and medieval India mechanical imitations of life were something craftsmen in fact came up with. Some of their automata were used for divertissements in royal pleasure palaces. These included birds that sang and danced, a dancing elephant, elaborate chronometers with moving ivory figures, and the *gola,* an astronomical instrument with moving planets. The machines were built from common materials in a readily understandable way: “Male and female figures are designed for various kinds of automatic service. Each part of these figures is made and fitted separately, with holes and pins, so that thighs, eyes, neck, hand, wrist, forearm, and fingers can act according to need. The material used is mainly wood, but a leather cover is given to complete the impression of a human being. The movements are managed by a system of poles, pins, and strings attached to rods controlling each limb. Looking into a mirror, playing a flute, and stretching out the hand to touch, give *pan,* sprinkle water, and make obeisance are the acts done by these figures.” * This all sounds quite believable, but other machines described may seem less so. These include robots capable of complex independent action. Many stories in Indian literature tell of a *yantra-puruṣa,* or machine man, that can behave just like a human being. In the Buddhistic *Bhaiṣajya-vastu,* for example, a painter goes to the Yāvana country and visits the home of a *yantrācārya,* or teacher of mechanical engineering. There he meets a machine girl who washes his feet and seems human, until he finds that she cannot speak. * In another account, a robot palace guard stands at the gate with a sword, ready to “quickly and quietly kill thieves who break into the palace at night.” * We even hear of a complete city of mechanical people, presided over by an Oz-like human king who manipulates them from a control center in his palace. * These stories sound like mere products of the imagination, and quite likely this is just what they are. Once one sees a mechanical figure that imitates some human functions, it’s easy to imagine robots with human or even superhuman capabilities. This is what modern advocates of artificial life or artificial intelligence are doing. But unlike the old Indian storytellers, they are seriously intent on convincing people that human beings are simply machines, awaiting replacement by superhuman machines in the future. Ancient Indian thinkers compared the body to a machine. But they understood that a completely nonmaterial entity within the body—the **jīvātmā*—*animates the body, endowing it with sentient behavior. The link between the *jīvātmā* and the body was understood to be the Paramātmā, a portion of the Supreme that stays with each living being. Thus in *Bhagavad-gītā* (18.61) Kṛṣṇa says, “The Supreme Lord is situated in everyone’s heart, O Arjuna, and is directing the wanderings of all living entities. They are seated in the body as on a machine [*yantra*], made of the material energy.” We can’t resist mentioning that Raghavan, the authority on Indian *yantras,* finds the metaphor used in this verse regrettable. He laments that in other countries machines led to a materially focused civilization but in India they only reinforced the idea of God and spirit. Thus, “Even writers who actually dealt with the *yantras,* like Somadeva and Bhoja, saw in the machine operated by an agent an appropriate analogy for the mundane body and senses presided over by the soul.” Or an alternative analogy: “the wonderful mechanism of the universe, with its constituent elements and planetary systems, requiring a divine master to keep it in constant revolution.” * *Sentient Robots* In ancient India, people entertained ideas about advanced mechanical control systems quite different from our modern computerized devices. Let us examine some of these ideas to see if they have any relevance for modern technological thought. It may come as no surprise that control systems in ancient India were used in military applications, where competition is always intense. In the battle between Kṛṣṇa and Śālva, for example, Śālva’s airplane, flown by Dānava soldiers, suddenly became invisible. The technique for invisibility seems not to have blocked the transmission of sound, for the soldiers could still be heard screaming taunts and insults. Kṛṣṇa then dealt with them as follows: “I quickly laid on an arrow, which killed by seeking out sound, to kill them, and the screeching subsided. All the Dānavas who had been screeching lay dead, killed by the blazing sunlike arrows that were triggered by sound.” * These arrows seem similar to modern missiles with infrared sensors and onboard microcomputers that seek out the heat of a jet engine. How did they work? We can get some idea by considering the weapons used by Arjuna. He got these weapons from various *devas,* so they were known as celestial weapons. They worked through the action of subtly embodied living beings whom Arjuna could directly order from within his mind. Here is a description of how Arjuna prepared himself to use these weapons: “And seated on that excellent car with face turned to the east, the mighty-armed hero, purifying his body and concentrating his soul, recalled to his mind all his weapons. And all the weapons came, and addressing the royal son of Pārtha, said, ’We are here, O illustrious one. We are thy servants, O son of Indra.’ And bowing unto them, Pārtha received them into his hands and replied unto them, saying, ’Dwell ye all in my memory.’ ” * This suggests how the sound-seeking arrows could have worked. They could have been guided by sentient living beings linked to controllable mechanisms built into the arrows. This would mean that the arrows would be examples of artificial life. They would in effect be cyborgs, cybernetic organisms—a fusing of living organisms and machines. But unlike today’s hypothetical cyborgs, they would have used features of life that go beyond the realm of gross matter. According to *Bhagavad-gītā,* the body of a living being consists of two components: the gross body, made of earth, water, fire, air, and ether, and the subtle body, made of mind, intelligence, and false ego. The three components of the subtle body are material elements finer than the gross matter we perceive with our ordinary senses. The *jīvātmā* interacts directly with the subtle body through the agency of the Paramātmā. The subtle body in turn interacts with the gross body through ether, the finest of the gross elements. If this is true, it should be possible to create a technology of artificial life that directly takes advantage of the properties of the subtle body and the *jīvātmā.* We suggest that this is the kind of technology used in the celestial weapons of Kṛṣṇa and Arjuna. Just as modern computers make cam-and-gearwheel devices old-fashioned, this Vedic technology would leave silicon chips in the dust. Once developed, it would render gross physical technology—with its imagined super-human robots—obsolete. ## Through the Eyes of Śāstra *ISKCON’S Dharma-Cakra* ### A true story by Ravīndra Svarūpa Dāsa ### PART II: THE JOURNEY ONLY LAST NIGHT I had been led across a Delhi rooftop to a small candlelit room filled with ancient books and burnished *yantras.* There Panditji, the astrologer and seer, had by his occult art pierced the veil of the future and seen a wonder arise, a marvel born from—of all things (I feel compelled to add)—the 1990 meeting of the Governing Body Commission of ISKCON. Toward that very meeting I was now making my way, an embarkation commemorated by the blaze and bake of noon, the shrieking and shaking of jet-tortured air, the reek of kerosene. At that meeting-to-come, Panditji had prophesied, ISKCON’s governors would unite in a newfound harmony of purpose. Out of that spirit would be assembled something Panditji had called “the *dharma-cakra* of ISKCON”; thenceforward, through the operation of this “wheel of *dharma,*” the Hare Kṛṣṇa movement would manifest world-transforming power. Panditji went so far as to specify an exact date, March 7, for the completion of the *dharma-cakra*. A marvel, a world-historical marvel, would be born. It had been a memorable night, but already it seemed far remote, already swallowed up in the dark backward and abysm of time. As I worked my way through the gritty marble halls of the New Delhi airport, the very drag of my baggage, heavy with GBC paperwork, exorcized all prophecy and visions and marvels. That morning in sullen resignation I had reviewed my files: pounds of proposals, reports, complaints, projects in progress—pounds of paper that now condemned me to the overweight luggage line. There I had leisure to ponder this fact: I had enlisted in the Hare Kṛṣṇa movement to become a mystic, a visionary, a saint; now, two decades later, I found myself a religious functionary, an ecclesiastical bureaucrat engaged chiefly in what Max Weber, the renowned German sociologist of religion, had called “the routinization of charisma.” Are wonders born of committees? I thought not. Waiting in line, I realized that my discontent sprang from a refusal of duty. Although last night’s prophecy had cast the coming assembly in a dramatic and glamorous light—endowing it with legendary or mythic proportions—I knew from experience that the reality would be different. An annual GBC meeting was an unrelieved three-week ordeal that could leave one mentally, emotionally, even spiritually exhausted, and I shrank from it. But now, I told myself, it was time to surrender. The meeting taking shape in the womb of the future, the present stalled queue I was stranded in, the great glacial shifts of civilizations carrying us insensibly along—all of it played in concert, being orchestrated and conducted by Kṛṣṇa to His end. Let me just be His willing instrument. I needed to seize, without shirking, the myriad nettlesome details forever springing up, attend steadily to the mundane, unglamorous tasks and worries of a worldwide institution. That was my job. So I became wary of dwelling on Panditji’s prophecy; it presented a temptation to escape into romanticism or historical melodrama. The nuts and bolts of the daily grind required my dedicated attention, and it was wrong for me to devalue them. In divine service, even parliamentary procedure becomes sanctified. In the departure lounge other members of the GBC were waiting, all converging toward our gathering place on the Ganges. As we began to talk easily of topics to come up, the lounge slowly filled, our departure time came and went. We talked and waited, and time passed. Finally, as the sky outside turned smoky with evening, we heard angry yelling erupt in the lounge. A group of gesticulating, screaming businessmen had closed in around a frightened-looking man with shoulder boards on his white shirt, a walkie-talkie clenched in his fist. As the protestors pressed forward, the man kept falling back, so that the maelstrom of agitation slowly traversed the width of the lounge, reached the far wall, and drifted back again, gaining in size and volume all the time. Then the man in the center somehow managed to disappear, and his tormentors dispersed, muttering angrily. I asked several who passed nearby what was going on, but they ignored me. Then the man in shoulder boards was back, and a larger, more voluble and violent mob collected around him. As their fury reached a new high, the beraters switched to English to better convey their contempt and outrage: colonialism’s legacy kept English the preferred language of abuse. Again the mob drifted through the lounge, someone yelling over and over, “You are treating us just like urchins! You are treating us just like urchins!” In time a plane was produced. In the U.S. I had become used to ancient DC-9’s, but here we boarded a dazzling, brand-new, state-of-the-art Airbus 320—a plane that just then happened to be much in the news. Three days before, one of them had plowed into the ground in Bangalore, killing 89. Indeed, after belting in, I opened the *International Herald Tribune* just to encounter an account of this event; it held me fascinated as I waited helplessly for takeoff. I read that a controversy raged over Indian Airlines’ decision to acquire a fleet of the high-tech aircraft. Experts thought the plane far too complex to be properly maintained in India; its electronics had already proven vulnerable to the heat, the dust, the monsoon rains. Its pilots had threatened not to fly it; its engineers had gone on strike for more training. I was not reassured, therefore, to discover, as we taxied toward the flight line, that the signs and lights on the right side of the cabin were dead and the P.A. system stuttered unintelligibly while a succession of baffled flight attendants took turns punching futilely at a control panel all aglitter with little green and red lights. This went on through the whole flight. Watching the staff in their frustration and bewilderment, I became preternaturally aware of the humming and ticking of all the ingenious complications of electronics and machinery around me—and of all the human machinery of neurons and muscle—the network of millions of tiny happenings that had to go on *just so* at every moment to keep our aircraft poised over thirty thousand feet of emptiness. It had to be a miracle. In the same way, the sustained order of the world, the ever-working intricacies of interlocking cosmic machinery, of which this flying plane was one tiny, fragile subsystem, required a constant supervisory sustaining force, required a vast and continuous intelligent intervention—a constant miracle, in fact—to keep going, to keep from crashing instantly into chaos. That vast active living intelligence bore us up at every moment. It sustained the flying aircraft, the orbiting earth, the floating universes. That same intelligence, for all its immensity, could speak to us intimately from within our hearts: friendly, trustworthy, and directly approachable. When you knew that, saw that, then there was no fear. I watched an ignorant flight attendant pound on the beautiful control panel with the heel of her hand; and still the plane flew. After touching down in Calcutta, the plane taxied far too long in the darkness, with no sight of terminal lights swinging into view through the windows. We stopped in pitch blackness. An announcement: while aloft our flight had received a bomb threat and had parked far from the terminal as a precaution. We were to remain calm, gather our belongings, stand in the aisles and, when the stairs were brought up, exit in a swift but orderly manner. The passengers stood for twenty minutes, joking nervously, before the doors cracked open and the humid night air of Bengal swept in. The ordeal was not over. Buses took us on a long ride to the terminal, but our baggage didn’t follow. After two hours of hearing porters and guards respond to all interrogations with “just now coming,” a group of passengers in a very ugly mood began storming airport offices, looking for someone in charge. There was no one to be found. Things were getting tense. Guards nervously shifted their rifles. But finally we were put back aboard the buses and driven to where our Airbus stood like a monument, glowing brilliantly within a circle of floodlights. Groping in the pitch dark outside, I was at last able to retrieve my overweight luggage. In the morning I set out by car on the last leg of my journey. This was a final three-hour obstacle course running north into the remote hinterlands over a narrow asphalt road, squeezed hard on both sides by a dusty, noisy clutter of shops and workplaces set among plant life spectacularly erupting in fountains, sprays, and cascades. The great rulers of this little roadway were the lorries that crowded both lanes. Adroitly darting and dodging in and out among them, my driver pounded the horn in strict obedience to the injunction posted in fancy script across each lorry tailgate: “HORN PLEASE!” The lorries themselves were often works of art, sanctified with images of Kṛṣṇa, Śiva, Durgā, or Kālī, decorated with baroque floral designs of lotus and *tulasī,* protected with painted eyes and swastikas. But they were just as often dangerously overloaded, sagging and listing on their flattened springs, with the huge tarp-covered cargo ballooning far up and out beyond the sides, like monstrous mobile bread loafs. Frequently we passed the scorched and mangled remains of horrendous accidents, so plentiful in some stretches as to make it seem as if the spearhead of a blitzkrieg had just battled its way up the road. We ourselves pressed forward in an unrelieved succession of what seemed to me near misses and hair-breadth escapes; I soon got used to it, and the little jots of adrenalin knocking my body tapered off and stopped. In truth, I liked this ride. Everything heralded arrival. When finally the country began to open itself into wide eye-soothing panoramas of green, I recognized in myself the growing impatience of homecoming. Travel means travail, but arrival makes it worthwhile if you are coming home. And why should I be thinking of Māyāpur as home? I had never lived there. Wondering about that, I kept scanning the road and fields for landmarks. Māyāpur was the center, the hub of the *saṅkīrtana* movement, and I realized that wherever in the world I dwelt or traveled, an invisible line, a mystic cord of memory, stretched back from me to Māyāpur. In some interior spiritual geography of mine, Māyāpur was fixed at the center of the world, even though it was apparently so remote, so isolated from the world’s traffic, so lost among the endless fields of green. Yet from this place five centuries ago Lord Caitanya had sent out His s*aṅkīrtana* party, His preachers and chanters, with a prophecy: “One day My name will be chanted in every town and village of the world.” And so in 1969, in Philadelphia—a good stretch in space and time—I had encountered Kṛṣṇa's new American devotees chanting on a windy sidewalk. I thought about that encounter: A single sight of devotees—their robes and *tilaka* and shaven heads and drums and cymbals and dancing and chanting—and I was struck by an intellectual lightning bolt, seized by the sudden and certain knowledge—almost a revelation—that the world would never again be the same, that everything was utterly changed. Disguised to myself at that time as a graduate student in religious studies, I had become a researcher into the terminal spiritual agony of Western civilization. Now I had been shown a critical clue: Missionaries from India, offering a radically different culture, were able to find a niche in the West’s spiritual ecology. Only a vast cultural shift could have made that possible, a shift on the scale of the Renaissance or Industrial Revolution. It had begun, and it would transform everything. In a flash, I had seen the future, but details had escaped me: I hardly foresaw that two years later I would be robed and shaven and chanting in the streets myself. A radial line had gone out from Māyāpur to Philadelphia; it had touched me, connected me, and in time it led me back to the hub. That first journey was remarkable. Having acquired land at Māyāpur and started construction on a large building—the first in what would be a spiritual city—Prabhupāda ordered in 1974 the first of the worldwide annual pilgrimages to Māyāpur at Gaura Pūrṇimā, the day of Lord Caitanya’s appearance. Every year from then on, Prabhupāda said, devotees from all over the world would gather for a festival, and at the same time the Governing Body Commission would hold its single annual meeting to plan the course of the movement for the following year. The influence of the holy place and time, Prabhupāda said, would purify the deliberations and decisions of the GBC and keep it on track. I remembered that first pilgrimage—how we camped among cement bags and stacks of lumber, grew weak and thin from diarrhea. But tired and sick we found strength to go every day on *parikrama,* chanting and dancing, to the holy sites. It was a landmark occasion. In the last century, Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura had revived Lord Caitanya’s movement, infusing it with preaching power, and had predicted that the day would come when devotees from all countries would converge in Māyāpur and chant “*Jaya Śacīnandana! Jaya Śacīnandana!*” And so we did. On one bright day, a flotilla of wooden boats, wallowing heavily, gunwales dipping in the water, their decks packed with standing devotees, brought us to the far bank of the Jalangi, where the house and *samādhi* tomb of Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura stood. For some time we sat on the outdoor cement platform before the *samādhi*, gazing at his statue while a devotee sang Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura’s sweet Bengali songs. I was surprised then by bliss, being filled, for no reason, by a feeling of peace and security beyond measure. It was as if a cool breeze were blowing from Vaikuṇṭha, the spiritual world, banishing the anxiety of material existence. This sensation grew more powerful. I became aware then of the presence of some vast paternal spirit: peaceful, powerful, and infinitely caring. He gathered us under the embrace of his arm. I was so happy the hair on the back of my neck was standing up. I looked at the s*amādhi* and recognized the presence I felt so powerfully. In fulfillment of the prophecy of Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura we had traveled to this place, and he had come out to greet us. We were all in his personal presence. I looked at the devotee next to me. He was radiant. “Isn’t this amazing?” I said. “Yes,” he answered happily. Remembering this, I eagerly watched familiar places going by, and finally I saw the huge white dome of Śrīla Prabhupāda's *samādhi* rise above the tree line to command the horizon. I had arrived at the center, come back home. Panditji’s prophecy came into my mind. Although I had tried to put it aside, it seemed to have loitered in the wings, casting its peculiar spell. I realized I had been instinctively scrutinizing the scenes and incidents of my journey for some omens, some signs, some hidden indications. The clear indication was—everywhere—Kṛṣṇa: now hidden, now manifest, always present, always working. Now, against all odds, Kṛṣṇa had brought me to Māyāpur, and Māyāpur was on record as a place where prophecies were fulfilled and miracles took place. Śrīla Prabhupāda wanted us to meet here for very good reason. Who could tell what would happen? (*concluded in the next issue*) *Ravīndra Svarūpa Dāsa, ISKCON’s Governing Body Commissioner for the U.S. mid-Atlantic region, lives at the Philadelphia temple, where he joined ISKCON in 1971. He holds a Ph.D. in religion from Temple University.* ## Schooling Kṛṣṇa's Children *An Alternative to Nondevotional Schooling* ### by Śrī Rāma Dāsa HUNDREDS of Kṛṣṇa conscious centers now dot the world, and sincere devotees live in thousands of other communities. Still, ISKCON has only about thirty schools for all its children. In previous columns, I’ve talked about some of the reasons for our slow development in education, as well as plans for growth. But talk of the future does little for parents who must address the need for Kṛṣṇa conscious schooling today. Many parents have given up hope of finding a Kṛṣṇa conscious school for their children and are sending them to nondevotee schools. Judging from letters I receive, quite a few parents find this solution unsatisfying. I don’t blame them. Here’s the biggest secret in the teaching world: The main purpose of education is not to give students knowledge and skills—*it’s to put across to the next generation the culture and values of this one.* That’s why the values and character of the teacher are all-important. In devotional service, association is everything. Lord Caitanya advised devotees to avoid the association of nondevotees. How then can we neglect applying that instruction to our children? Every devotee child has the right to be educated by another devotee. Our duty as parents is to give them that chance. Till we pull together a well-developed ISKCON school system, an increasingly popular alternative is home education. *Who should try home education?* Home schooling is for parents who want to take direct responsibility for their child’s education. The decision often comes down to this: “There’s no Kṛṣṇa conscious school nearby, and I can’t bear sending my child to a school with nonspiritual values. So I’ll teach my kids myself.” If you’re willing to take the steps needed, you can do a good job of teaching—and comply with local laws. But since most of us were educated in institutions, home education paradoxically seems foreign to us. Here are a few concerns, along with some short answers: ### “I don’t have the time.” You’ll have to sacrifice some time. Raising children always takes time and effort. But a good teaching program need not monopolize your time. You can organize teaching to fit your schedule. Parents in the same community may even team up and share the teaching. ### “I don’t have the money.” What you’ll need for home schooling costs less than sending your child to a private school (including most ISKCON schools). Of course, nothing is as cheap as a “free” public school. But there you pay by losing control of your child’s educational destiny. (British readers: What you call a “public school” is what Americans call a “private school.”) ### “I’m not competent.” Many packaged home-school curriculums are designed for inexperienced parents. In the beginning, most parents should probably use one of these. After a few years of experience, you’ll feel confident enough to be more flexible. Don’t be afraid to ask help from those who’ve been doing home schooling longer. ### “I want my child to get a quality education.” A real “quality education” is one that helps your child develop spiritual values and strength of character. It’s one that helps your child become Kṛṣṇa conscious and free from material existence. Apart from that, many home programs are accredited. With some planning and diligence, your child can go on to any program of higher education. ### Where to go from here? Dozens of home-school packages are available, and so are specialized magazines and resource books. Organizations for home-schooling parents exist in many states and countries. For a listing of these resources, along with other helpful information on the subject, please send $3.00 for our bulletin called *Home Education Basics.* Śrī Rāma Dāsa, Chairman ISKCON Board of Education 3764 Watseka Ave. Los Angeles, CA 90034 ## Straight Talk *“I’m Not This Green Hair”* ### by Bhakta Vic 108 *I publish a “fanzine” called* Enquirer*—subculture stuff. This, along with being in the bands Shelter and 108, has rewarded me with a flood of mail—questions about Kṛṣṇa, appreciation of Him, and a few reports on my crass stupidity. Recently there’s been a new brand of letter: kids telling me of their own ecstatic experiences. Here are two of my favorites, followed by a letter about questioning Kṛṣṇa consciousness.* Bhakta Vic, When I was in Florida visiting my parents, I went to your show in Palm Bay, with Zero Tolerance, Edgewise, and Greenday. I bought the *Enquirer* #5 from you. Maybe you remember who I was. I had green and yellow hair in braids and my nose was pierced in the middle. Although I kind of think that, in a way, all this body piercing and hair dying is a waste, I also like the way it looks and whatnot. But get this… I was on the city bus the other day, and this old woman started to go off on me, telling me I was ugly, and an eyesore, and stuff. In any event I would have been polite, no matter how irritated I was, because I feel that these people don’t understand and there is no reason to get angry. Well, I politely told her, “How can you know I’m ugly when you don’t even know me.” She said she could see that I was ugly. So I told her that I was not this body, that I was the spirit/soul, and that she shouldn’t judge me by my looks. She said that I was right and she was very impressed by my knowledge! And imagine, without the *Enquirer* I would have just sat there without that knowledge! Keep up the good work. Sherry Eckhart Dear Vic, Hare Krishna! I was sitting in class the other day, and we were having an in-depth conversation on equality and racism. My class is pretty small, and we get involved in discussions fairly well. Everyone was expressing their ideas and theories, back and forth, back and forth. My teacher was about to express her ideas on the matter when I raised my hand. She said, “OK, Chrissy, what do you feel about this?” I told my class what I had learned about the soul from your examples [she’d just read a pamphlet we put out called "The Core of Equality"]. All of a sudden our raucous class fell silent. I heard people whispering to their neighbors, “Wow, that was deep.” My teacher, who has a Masters in sociology, looked at me and said, “I’m not gonna even bother saying what I wanted to say now. Nothing I could say would express my feelings so clearly as the way you did.” I told them I couldn’t take the credit for this myself. I told them about my involvement in Krishna consciousness. Well, this idea was revolutionary, because I go to a Catholic school. Chris Laraceni Vic, I met you and the rest of the band at the Unicorn show here about three weeks ago. I just finished reading the fanzine I got at the show and now I have a lot of questions about the Krishna religion and the band. [Among them:] Do you ever question your feelings toward the Krishna religion? Genella (Gene) Taylor Milwaukee, Wisconsin Dear Gene, Do I ever question my feelings towards Kṛṣṇa consciousness? Yes. The more questioning the better. Sincere devotees are always questioning. Questioning what? Mainly their own motives for doing what they do. Śrīla Prabhupāda describes doubt as a symptom of healthy intelligence. Naturally in the beginning of your involvement with Kṛṣṇa consciousness you have doubts. These doubts shouldn’t be frowned on or suppressed. They should be brought out in the open and put before others who can help solve them. Kṛṣṇa consciousness is a lot more than a set of feelings or beliefs; it’s a spiritual science. Science means that you can verify the theory by your own direct experience. It’s not blind faith—“Hold your breath and hope; you’ll find out when you die.” It’s not like that. You verify the faith, in this life. Faith can be either blind or reasonable. Kṛṣṇa consciousness grows from reasonable faith and scorns blind faith. Here’s an example of reasonable faith: You have every reason to believe that Hong Kong exists. You may never have been there, but you have faith that it exists. And you have good reason to—you’ve seen pictures of Hong Kong, you’ve read about it in the newspapers, you’ve talked to people who’ve been there, and so on. It’s reasonable faith. It’s not sentiment. Reasonable faith in Kṛṣṇa consciousness increases as you make progress. It’s just like if I gave you directions to get from Brown Deer to Washington, D.C. “Go south till you see the 7-Eleven, then make a left. Soon you’ll see Freeway X. Get on it. Drive till you see a big red house just past the Maryland border… ” At first you may be a little skeptical. But you trust me enough to give it a try. You get out on the road, going south. Hey, there’s the 7-Eleven! You feel more confident. Your faith increases. You go a little further. Sure enough, there’s Freeway X. Now it’s reasonable for you to have more faith in my directions, and eventually, when you get to D.C., your doubts are gone. The same thing happens in Kṛṣṇa consciousness. We have a road map for getting back to our original spiritual consciousness. And the landmarks along the way are elaborately described. As you go along, you find these landmarks, and your faith solidifies more and more. Gradually, doubts diminish, being answered. Finally, in the fully mature stages of Kṛṣṇa consciousness, they disappear altogether. *Bhakta Vic 108 joined the Hare Kṛṣṇa movement about two years ago. He and his band are based at ISKCON’s Washington, D.C., temple.* ## The Land, the Cows, and Kṛṣṇa ### The Origins of Cow-Killing Economics ### by Hare Kṛṣṇa Devī Dāsī ### PART II STARTING AROUND 1840, American farming became increasingly centralized. Replacing oxen with horses freed people to move to the cities to work in factories. And the new city dwellers became consumers for the products they’d once grown. The village miller with his ox-powered grist mill gave way to automated mills in large Midwestern cities. As the mills of the Midwest began selling wastes back to farmers to feed animals meant for meat, the mills and grain companies grew still larger and richer. Grain prices became something for Chicago investors to gamble on. * Better steel-making helped the railroads develop, and refrigerated railroad cars helped great slaughterhouses develop in places like Chicago, St. Louis, and Kansas City. As the twentieth century began, profits from cow slaughter surged. Meat-packers shipped millions of pounds of beef products being exported to Europe. * But the biggest force for cow slaughter was yet to arrive—the tractor. The first big push for the tractor came during World War I when U.S. farmers shipped more than 1.5 million draft animals to Europe for the military. To buy tractors to replace these animals, the farmers took out big loans, risking their land in the process. Within the next two decades, “Gasoline had replaced oats as the main ’fuel’ used in agricultural operations, freeing millions more acres of grainlands for cash food crops.” * Boosting yields with chemical fertilizers and hybrids, farmers began using more land to grow grain for cash. Grain output shot up fifty percent or more. What to do with all that grain? The ready availability of a seemingly inexhaustible supply of cheap corn helped to make the United States a nation of steak eaters.… These steers were truly ‘hides stuffed with corn.’ In a sense, this was and is a wasteful use of grain.… But America had lots of grain, and a food system grew up that made it possible—even economically necessary—to run as much grain as possible through livestock. * But American farmers were still turning out more grain than America or the export markets could absorb. When this made grain prices drop, the U.S. Department of Agriculture was stuck: it had to pay huge subsidies to bail out farmers—and then pay to store the excess grain. Meanwhile, grain firms saw profits dwindling. What could be done? To strategists at the USDA, [and] Cargill and Continental [two multi-national grain firms], the solution to the surplus problem was self-evident. It was to get people in other countries to eat the way Americans did. A global economy in which millions of rice-eaters in Asia were converted to wheat bread was one that absorbed some of the perennial U.S. wheat surpluses. And a food system in which affluent countries bought billions of dollars of U.S. corn and soybeans to feed their beef, hogs, and poultry every year was one that helped the American balance of payments and trade. * In 1954 the U.S. passed a bill, Public Law 480, to get rid of excess grain by turning it into foreign aid. Under P.L. 480, Uncle Sam offered selected countries long-term, low-interest loans with which to buy grain. In many developing countries, this started people eating American wheat instead of locally grown rice and millet. In newly industrialized countries, grain from P.L. 480 put meat on middle-class plates. By 1956, under P.L. 480 America exported half of its output of 295 million bushels of feed grains. * And after 1962, Europe’s Common Agricultural Policy shielded European Community farmers, so about the only grains America could profitably sell in the EC were feed grains, especially soybeans. So feed grains took over from food grains. “Livestock rather than people became the main market for American grain, and soybeans and corn ranked with jet aircraft and computers as the country’s major exports.” * Outside America, as people’s incomes rose, they wanted more meat. “Between the late 1950’s and 1983, total world meat production (by volume) increased about two and a half times.” * Slightly more than half the increase came from poultry and pig meat, but clearly the goal was to eat like Americans—and this meant eat beef. Śrīla Prabhupāda notes, “Modern civilization is centered on animal killing.” * History, in fact, shows a grim picture: the sacred cow killed for the sacred dollar. In the short term, the U.S.D.A. and the large grain companies seemed to have solved their problems. Once again big money could be made selling grain. But long term the effects were disastrous, as we shall discuss in the next article of this series. ## Bhakti-yoga at Home *Dealing with Bad Association at Work* ### By Rohiṇīnandana Dāsa SOMETIMES PEOPLE THINK, “It’s all well for the devotees who live in the temple. They don’t have to spend all day with nondevotees. But I’ve got my job and a house to run. It’s hard to keep up my spiritual practices and feel enlivened about Kṛṣṇa consciousness.” Those of us in this position need to ask ourselves, “So what do I want? Do I want to be Kṛṣṇa conscious or not?” Rough roads never discourage determined travelers. And if Kṛṣṇa consciousness is actually spiritual, how can anything material stand in the way? “If I want to serve Kṛṣṇa,” we can think, “surely I’ll be able to, whatever the circumstances. Arjuna attained perfection by serving Kṛṣṇa even on a battlefield.” So we can progress in Kṛṣṇa consciousness, even if we have to work in materialistic association. But we shouldn’t be reckless. We’re affected by the company we keep. Materialistic consciousness is a spiritual sickness. If I associate intimately with a diseased person, there’s every chance I’ll catch the disease. But if my own health is strong and I don’t get too close, I’m unlikely to be affected. And even if the disease is highly contagious, if I’ve been inoculated against it I should be OK. The practices of Kṛṣṇa consciousness inoculate us against material consciousness. And we can easily implement these practices. We can come at once to the spiritual platform simply by chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa or taking *prasādam.* We may not have the special opportunity to be “hospitalized” in a temple, but we can still conscientiously take our spiritual medicine and get the same benefit. As a good diet, clean habits, a peaceful mind, and regular exercise promote physical health, so a combination of *prasādam,* chanting, prayer, scriptural reading, and other spiritual practices promote our spiritual health. Despite our daily inoculation and our determination to be Kṛṣṇa conscious, we may still find our work a spiritual drain—the stream of endless talk that goes nowhere, the sound system pumping out “sense enjoyable tidings of the flickering mundane world,” the salacious pictures spread on the walls, the cigarette smoke, the canteen, the general tedium, the arduous journey to and from work. Can I change any of this by adding Kṛṣṇa consciousness? A little touch of Kṛṣṇa works wonders, like putting a one in front of a line of zeros. Can I talk about Kṛṣṇa or about His opinions and so add a spiritual dimension to conversations? Can I distribute books to my colleagues? Can I add some transcendental tapes to the repertoire? Can I put up devotional pictures for my sore eyes? Can I campaign for a smoke-free zone around my work area? Or a more wholesome choice at the canteen? Or how about forming a Kṛṣṇa conscious study group? If I’m not in a position to be so assertive, there are still many things I can do. The *Īśopaniṣad* advises us to study the material and the spiritual side by side. In the morning we can study the scriptures, and during the day we can see how the teachings apply. We can consider how, by Lord Kṛṣṇa's mercy, our values have changed. Now we see material life as an abnormal condition. Having to hear useless talk may be a bore and a drain, but it can also solidify our conviction about Kṛṣṇa consciousness. If we’re fixed in the truth, even though surrounded by untruth we’ll be untouched by it, just as the lotus is untouched by the water. We can further enhance our Kṛṣṇa consciousness by taking a *Bhāgavatam* or *Gītā* to work, by going for lunchtime walks to chant on our beads, or by listening to tapes or reading as we travel to and from work. When we try to share the happiness and freedom of Kṛṣṇa consciousness with the people we work with, we should remember that our lives more than our speech will attract them. Often people who know nothing about Kṛṣṇa make tremendous spiritual advancement by their dealings with a devotee. Our sincerity and the strength of our spiritual practice will enable us to help others, no matter how unfavorable the external conditions. We can reach people at work in other ways besides our speech and personal example. We shouldn’t forget or underestimate the power of **prasādam*.* An irate government official in South Africa was once about to deport a foreign Hare Kṛṣṇa devotee, but he changed his mind while eating a Simply Wonderful—a sweet that had been offered to Kṛṣṇa. In the *Caitanya-caritāmṛta,* Śrīla Prabhupāda writes that *prasādam* has the power to turn even demons into devotees. It’s easy to distribute *prasādam* to people wary of evangelistic fervor. We can take biscuits for the tea break, remember birthdays with a *prasādam* cake, or make pies at Christmas. We can offer our garden produce to Kṛṣṇa and give it to friends at work. We’re pioneers breaking new ground. We’re trying to introduce a spiritual culture in a society where spirituality has largely been lost. It’s not surprising there will be difficulties. A sign that our spiritual culture is beginning to take root is that we’re discovering ways to maintain and nurture Kṛṣṇa consciousness in our own lives. If we can’t, or rather won’t, do it, how can we expect anyone else to? As the Kṛṣṇa conscious culture spreads, people will practice devotional service in hundreds and thousands of homes. Only time and perhaps our own timidity separate us from such a happy society. One hundred years ago, Śrīla Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura yearned for the day when people from all classes, countries, and creeds would come together at the holy city of Māyāpur under the banner of Lord Caitanya and chant the holy names. We can share in his vision, and we can work and hope for such an enlightened future in our own hometown. *Rohiṇīnandana Dāsa lives in southern England with his wife and their three children. Please write to him at Woodgate Cottage, Beckley Nr. Rye, E. Sussex TN31 6UH, U. K.* ## PandharpurLand of Lord Viṭṭhala *Devoted pilgrims travel hundreds of kilometers and wait all night to see their Lord for a few moments.* ### by Lokanāth Swami THROUGHOUT the provinces of India, the Supreme Lord is worshiped in various forms. In Andhra Pradesh He appears as Tirupati Bālajī, in Kerala as Guruvāyurappan, in Karnataka as the beautiful Uḍupī Kṛṣṇa, in Gujarat as Dvārakādhīśa and Raṇacora Rāya. And in Pandharpur, the spiritual capital of Maharashtra, the Lord is worshiped as Śrī Viṭṭhala. His devotees also fondly call Him Viṭhobha or Pandurāṅga. Pandharpur Dhāma is located about four hundred kilometers southeast of Bombay. Some call it Bhū-vaikuṇṭha, “the spiritual world on earth.” Others call it Dakṣiṇa Dvārakā, the Dvārakā of the South. The town is located on the western bank of the river Bhīma. Because of the way the river bends as it reaches Pandharpur, it is known there as the Candrabhāga (“crescent moon”). For the devotees of Viṭṭhala, this river is as holy as the Ganges. Along the riverbank are fourteen **ghāṭa*s,* or bathing places. The main one is Mahā Dvāra Ghāṭa. The short street that links this *ghāṭa* to the eastern gate of the Viṭṭhala temple is lined with shops and stalls selling *tulasī,* flower garlands, coconuts, incense, and sweets, all to offer to the Lord. *Temple and Deity Worship* The black stone temple hosts the five-thousand-year-old self-manifested Deity of Lord Viṭṭhala. As one enters through the main door, one sees a Deity of Śrī Gaṇeśa, to whom the Viṭṭhala devotees pray to remove all obstacles to their worship. Across the courtyard, up a few steps, one enters the *darśana-maṇḍapa,* the hall where one can see the Lord. To proceed to the Deity room, visitors queue up through corridors built alongside the walls. Flanking the entrance of the Deity room are huge four-armed statues of Jaya and Vijaya, the doorkeepers of Vaikuṇṭha, the spiritual world. The slightly smiling, blackish-complexioned Deity of Śrī Viṭṭhala is three and a half feet tall. He stands on a brick, His hands resting on His hips. This posture reflects His pastimes in Pandharpur. The *Padma Purāṇa* and the *Skanda Purāṇa* briefly describe why the Lord journeyed to Pandharpur and why He stays there in this form. Once Śrīmatī Rādhārāṇī, Lord Kṛṣṇa's consort in the village of Vṛndāvana, visited Dvārakā, where Lord Kṛṣṇa lived as a king. At that time, Rukmiṇī Devī, Lord Kṛṣṇa's queen, noticed that Kṛṣṇa was dealing more intimately with Rādhārāṇī than He had ever done with her. Upset, she departed for the forest of Ḍiṇḍirvana, near Pandharpur. Lord Kṛṣṇa followed Rukmiṇī to apologize, but His apology left her unmoved. So the Lord moved on to Pandharpur to visit one of His devotees, Bhakta Puṇḍarīka, now popularly known in Maharashtra as Puṇḍalīka. When the Lord reached Puṇḍarīka’s *āśrama,* Puṇḍarīka was serving his elderly parents. So Puṇḍarīka gave the Lord a seat of brick and asked the Lord to wait. The Lord did as told. He stood, lotus hands on His hips, waiting for Puṇḍarīka to return. While He was waiting, Rukmiṇī, having forgotten her distress, came from Ḍiṇḍirvana and rejoined Him. Both of them stayed in Pandharpur in Deity form. To this day the Lord stands on the same brick, but now He’s waiting for all His devotees to come see Him. While waiting, the Lord seems to tell the devotees, “Do not fear. For those who have surrendered unto Me, I have reduced the depth of the ocean of material suffering. See, it is only this deep.” He indicates the shallowness of the ocean by placing His hands on His hips. Elegantly dressed in yellow and other colors, Lord Viṭṭhala wears around His neck a *vaijayantī* garland and *tulasī,* whose aroma permeates the *darśana* hall and the surrounding area. His right hand holds a lotus flower and His left a conchshell. On His chest He bears the mark of Bhṛgu’s foot. His ears are decorated with shark-shaped earrings, and on His forehead beneath His crown is a broad mark of *tilaka.* The Lord’s smile irresistibly enchants His devotees. Each pilgrim who approaches Him gets a glimpse of His peaceful smiling face and considers this the perfection of life. The worship of Lord Viṭṭhala begins with the *maṅgala-*ārati** ceremony at four o’clock in the morning. After *ārati* the Lord is offered *pañcābhiṣeka,* a bath with milk, yogurt, ghee, honey, and sugar water. At some point the bathing is interrupted so that the Lord may be fed butter mixed with sugar candy. A big lump of butter is literally put into His mouth. Then a short *ārati* is offered, and the bathing resumes. After the bath, the Lord is meticulously dressed and profusely garlanded. Finally, He is offered a mirror in which to view His appearance. As a token of His merciful nature, Lord Viṭṭhala allows everyone to watch His bathing ceremony. After this the crowds, till then restrained along the walls of the *darśana* hall, are let into the sanctum sanctorum. Daily, thousands of devoted pilgrims take *darśana* (seeing of the Lord). It is also the unique tradition in Pandharpur that everyone can go up to the altar and touch the lotus feet of the Deity. Some pilgrims even rest their heads upon His feet. But one has to move on quickly. After taking **darśana*,* pilgrims re-enter the *darśana* hall. Looking back, they get a last glimpse of the Lord’s attractive form. In the buzzing atmosphere of the *darśana* hall they fall flat on the floor, offering obeisances. Then, holding each ear with the hand across from it, they turn about, springing up and down on the same spot, begging the Lord to forgive any offenses they may have committed at His lotus feet. One of the pillars of the hall—the Garuḍa Stambha—represents Garuḍa, the eagle who serves as the carrier of Lord Viṣṇu. Pilgrims embrace the pillar, with the prayer that toward the end of life Garuḍa will carry them back to Vaikuṇṭha. On the way out of the *darśana* hall, one sees hanging from the ceiling the famous eight prayers known as *Pandurāṅgāṣṭakam,* composed by the *ācārya* Śaṅkara during his visit to Pandharpur in the eighth century. Each verse glorifies the beauty, qualities, and devotees of the Lord and ends with the refrain *para-brahma-liṅgaṁ bhaje pandurāṅgam,* meaning “I worship the supreme spiritual form of Lord Pandurāṅga.” In the same temple compound, behind Lord Viṭṭhala’s shrine, stands the shrine of Śrīmatī Rukmiṇī Devī, the Lord’s beautiful consort. *Darśana,* offerings, and *āratis* go on all day, except for a short break in the afternoon when the Deities rest. After the last *ārati,* at eleven o’clock, the *pūjārīs* change the Lord’s dress and chant special hymns asking Him to rest for the night. Just as the Lord played the role of father and grandfather in Dvārakā, here too He reciprocates affectionately with His devotees. A famous painting depicts Him in a fatherly mood, carrying several devotees, some on His shoulders, some around His waist, and others holding His finger as they walk beside Him. *Devotees of Lord Viṭṭhala* Some illustrious devotees of Lord Viṭṭhala traveled widely throughout Maharashtra. Their preaching and their exemplary devotional mood left a permanent impression on the people. Their unanimous conclusive instruction to their followers was this: “Go on singing, go on dancing, and when you get to the lotus feet of the Lord, beg for love from Him.” So *nāma-saṅkīrtana,* congregational chanting of the Lord’s holy names, is very popular in Maharashtra. In a letter dated July 30, 1977, Śrīla Prabhupāda encouraged me in this way: “The whole of India and specifically your Maharashtra are enthused with Krishna. Now you have to revive their Krishna consciousness. This is Tukarama’s country, but now they are becoming bad politicians. So revive them by the process of the sankirtana movement.” Saint Tūkarāma was the most famous of all Maharashtrian saints. He lived during the seventeenth century, and over the last three hundred years his devotional influence has been deeply felt by the local people. His poems, the 4,500 verses known as the *Abhāṅgas,* have become part of the public memory of Maharashtra. They are sung in every village and every home. Tūkarāma preached throughout his life, exhorting his countrymen to take to the path of *bhakti,* devotional service. His language was so simple and down to earth that even the most simple villagers understood it completely. He is the main force behind the continuous *kīrtanas* and *bhajanas* performed at the many festivals in Pandharpur. In his autobiography, Tūkarāma says he was initiated in a dream by Rāghava Caitanya Keśava Caitanya. Though not everyone agrees, Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavas (such as the ISKCON devotees) understand this to mean Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu. As Śrīla Prabhupāda comments (*Caitanya-caritāṁṛta, Madhya* 9.282, purport), “The *saṅkīrtana* party belonging to Tūkarāma is still very popular in Bombay. [It] exactly resembles the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava *saṅkīrtana* parties, for they chant the holy name with *mṛdaṅga* and *karatālas.*” They also wear neck beads and *tilaka* similar to those of the Gauḍīya tradition. Tūkarāma Ācārya was a great devotee of Lord Viṭṭhala. As mentioned before, the Deity is self-manifested. That is, He spontaneously appeared, without being carved and installed. Expressing full faith in this Deity of Lord Viṭṭhala, Tūkarāma wrote, “If anyone says that this Deity was once installed, his mouth will be filled with worms.” Saint Tūkarāma sometimes had to suffer humiliation and opposition from envious people, but he always stayed more humble than a blade of grass, thus changing the hearts of his enemies. The saint left for the spiritual world in his selfsame body while engaged in *nāma saṅkīrtana,* chanting of the holy names of the Lord, with the residents of his home village. The villagers attested they saw a spiritual airplane descend and saw Tūkarāma board the plane and leave for the spiritual sky. Another exalted spiritual leader among Lord Viṭṭhala’s devotees was Jñāneśvara, who lived in the thirteenth century. At the age of sixteen, he translated the complete text of *Bhagavad-gītā* into simple Marathi, the language of Maharashtra. His work is known as *Jñāneśvarī.* He attained *samādhi* (passed away) at the age of twenty-one. Also famous is the life of Saint Nāmadeva. Once when Nāmadeva was a young boy, his father, who worshiped a Deity of Lord Viṭṭhala at home, went out, leaving Nāmadeva in charge of the Deity. When the time came to offer food to the Lord, Nāmadeva prepared a plate, placed it on the altar, and sat down, begging the Lord to accept the offering. Following his father’s advice to give the Lord some time to eat before taking back the plate, Nāmadeva left the Deity room and patiently waited, expecting the Lord to literally eat up the food. From time to time the boy would check, but the Lord seemed to be standing still. After quite some time had passed and Nāmadeva saw no sign that the Lord would ever eat, Nāmadeva decided to intervene. Entering the Deity room, he appealed to Lord Viṭṭhala, insisting that the Lord eat right away. And if He wouldn’t, the boy threatened, he would smash his own head against the wall. To the boy’s surprise, Lord Viṭṭhala then took His lotus hands off His hips and physically ate the offering. *Ḍiṇḍi Procession: 200,000 Pilgrims* The most outstanding display of the Maharashtrians’ devotion to Lord Viṭṭhala is the Ḍiṇḍi Yātrā, a pilgrimage on foot that culminates in Pandharpur. It has been performed annually for the last seven hundred years. In fact, every month at Pandharpur on Śukla Ekādaśī (the eleventh day of the waxing moon), a festival is held that attracts a large number of pilgrims. But, four of these festivals are especially large. And the main one, Ḍiṇḍi Yātrā—the huge Āṣādhī Ekādaśī festival—draws a crowd of 700,000 people. As many as 200,000 come on foot. The festival falls during the month of Āṣādha (July) and marks the beginning of Cāturmāsya, the four months of the rainy season. According to the *Padma Purāṇa,* on that day the Lord goes to sleep for four months. When He wakes up, at the end of the month of Kārttika, another festival is held, the second biggest. For each of these festivals, pilgrims come from all the districts of Maharashtra and from other provinces of India like Gujarat, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh. The pilgrims follow in the footsteps of their many saints and spiritual leaders. Many of the pilgrims are *vārkārīs.* The word *vārkārī* combines the words *vāri* and *kārī,* the former standing for the regular trip to Pandharpur, the latter meaning the one who does it. *Vārkārī* thus means “one who journeys to Pandharpur at a specific time in the year.” *Vārkārī*s vow to visit Pandharpur every month, or at least once a year, during an Ekādaśī festival. The *vārkārīs* form well-organized and disciplined processions called Ḍiṇḍis*,* which start off from the birth sites and *samādhi* places of various saints and converge in Pandharpur. The pilgrims travel 150 to 300 kilometers*,* depending on where they start. The biggest of all Ḍiṇḍis is that of Jñāneśvara*,* which forms a gigantic procession. It originates in Alandi*,* near Pune*,* and covers about 250 kilometers in an eighteen-day walk. Some of the smaller groups are on the road for about a month. Many more come by bus and train. The men on the procession, dressed alike in white *dhotīs, kurtās,* and typical Gandhi hats, walk in lines of six or seven abreast. They beat small brass cymbals, called *ṭāl,* in such a perfect rhythm that even when several hundred play, it sounds like one person alone. In the front, several men carry saffron flags. Next, a group of men on each Ḍiṇḍi carry a decorated palanquin (*pālakī*) bearing symbolic footprints (*pādukas*) of the saint they follow. The leader of the group walks at the back, playing the *vīṇā,* accompanied by one or more drum players. Behind the men follow the women, dressed in bright colorful *sārīs.* Some carry *tulasī* plants in decorated pots on their heads. Others carry pots with water to serve their fellow *vārkārīs.* Fifty to five hundred people walk in each Ḍiṇḍi group. Responding heartily to their *kīrtana* leaders, they sing the *mantras* *jaya jaya viṭhobha rukhumāi! jaya jaya viṭhobha rukumāi!* and *jaya jaya rāma kṛṣṇa hari*, interspersed with lively songs glorifying Lord Viṭṭhala. Day after day, undaunted by heat or rain, the pilgrims fill the air with tumultuous chanting. Sometimes they dance and sometimes run, rushing ecstatically towards Pandharpur and their Lord. In the midst of this procession the words spoken by the Lord in the *Padma Purāṇa* come alive: > tatra tiṣṭhāmi nārada > yatra gāyanti mad-bhaktāḥ “O Nārada, I stay where My devotees glorify Me.” Each Ḍiṇḍi is supported by vehicles—trucks and bullock carts—carrying crews ahead to cook and set up tents. When the pilgrims stop to rest and have their meals, each group finds its supporting crew just as calves recognize their mothers in the midst of a herd. No one goes hungry on Ḍiṇḍi. The bigger groups cook in gigantic pots and distribute *prasādam* to anyone who sits in the line. The government supplies water for drinking and bathing. The walkers reach their day’s destination by late afternoon. The convergence of pilgrims, and the symbolic presence of their saints, awakens the sleepy villages with intense religious fervor. In the evening, groups everywhere perform *kīrtana,* and crowds of thousands listen to various speakers, who spice their discourses with songs of the saints, to the tune of musical instruments. These speakers are like one-act players. They entertain and involve their audience, inspiring them to sing along. On Ḍiṇḍi everything is done collectively. Crowds are cooking, crowds sitting in lines for *prasādam,* crowds sleeping side by side, crowds moving around, crowds queuing up for *darśana* in the temples along the way, crowds meeting the calls of nature in the fields.… You’re never alone on Ḍiṇḍi. The dense crowd stretches many kilometers, people walking ahead or struggling in the back to keep up. Many people independently follow the Ḍiṇḍi, carrying their few belongings upon their heads. Some begin walking as soon as they get up, as early as 2 A.M. The main group starts at 6:30. Walking about fifteen kilometers a day, the Ḍiṇḍis finally reach the outskirts of Pandharpur and unite at Wakhari, a small village three kilometers away. On the eve of the Āṣāḍha Ekādaśī, still more people join for the last leg of the pilgrimage. The three-kilometer stretch from Wakhari to the holy town of Pandharpur turns into a river of humanity flowing towards the ocean of mercy at the Lord’s lotus feet. In his writings, Bilvamaṅgala Ṭhākura warns travelers passing through Pandharpur, “Do not walk on the bank of the river Bhīma. A bluish-black person stands there, and even though His hands rest peacefully on His hips, He is expert at stealing the heart of anyone who sees Him.” It seems that the *vārkārīs* carefully ignore Bilvamaṅgala Ṭhākura’s advice. In fact, they are especially eager to meet that person. Upon reaching Pandharpur, the pilgrims take a dip in the Candrabhāga River. Then, carrying the palanquins on their shoulders, they perform *nagara-pradakṣiṇā,* walking a circle around the holy town. The circle complete, they queue up all night at the temple to catch a glimpse of Lord Viṭṭhala on the Ekādaśī day. In the heavy rush, each will get to see the Lord for perhaps a few seconds. For them it will be enough: their souls will be satisfied, and it will have been worth the trouble. *Lokanāth Swami, a native of Maharashtra, grew up near Pandharpur. He leads ISKCON’s worldwide Padayātrās, or walking pilgrimage parties.* *Pilgrims From Abroad* LOKANĀTH SWAMI: Amongst the multitude of pilgrims on Ḍiṇḍi Yātrā, a pilgrimage on foot that culminates in Pandharpur, there are always a few visitors from abroad, their eyes and ears wide open in amazement. In 1989, some fifty fortunate ISKCON devotees, about a dozen of them foreigners, took part in the Ḍiṇḍi with Padayātrā India, our own traveling party*.* All of us were treated nicely, without discrimination*.* Our saffron-robed party sparkled amidst the white *dhotīs* and *kurtās* of the *vārkārīs* (pilgrims to Pandharpur)*.* The Viṭṭhala devotees would greet us Kṛṣṇa devotees with a friendly “Hare Kṛṣṇa*.*” Many people were impressed by our strict following of the Vaiṣṇava principles. The *vārkārīs,* most of them householders, are devoted and very faithful to Lord Viṭṭhala, but for lack of a living example to follow they sometimes still have a few attachments, such as tea, onions, and *bīḍīs* (leaf-rolled cigarettes). So they saw our devotees as real renunciants. *Vārkārīs* would often dive to touch our devotees’ feet. A constant flow of pious souls would encircle the Padayātrā Deity cart, eager for *darśana,* thrusting hands towards the *pūjārī* for *mahā-prasāda* and **caraṇāmṛta*,* the water from the bathing of the Deity. But it wasn’t rare to see a man wearing *tilaka* take off his shoes to receive the sacred *caraṇāmṛta* with his right hand while holding a *bīḍī* in his left. Dr. Thomas J. Hopkins, chairman of the Department of Religious Studies at Franklin and Marshall College, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, relates his experience of Ḍiṇḍi: “Pandharpur is pervaded by much of the same quality of genuine devotion to Kṛṣṇa that you find in a place like Vṛndāvana. There’s a simple, popular movement there [Ḍiṇḍi] which draws people from a very wide range of backgrounds—college professors, professional people, peasants from farms—all brought together in a conscious community of believers. You really see the power of devotion break through all these ordinary barriers of caste and education and bring people together for worship. “When I was there in 1969 during the festival period … both of us Westerners there at that festival were welcomed with open arms. There was no question of separation or difference due to caste or nationality.… The association of genuine devotees can exert a powerful effect upon one’s consciousness. I can still not just remember but almost hear the singing of certain devotees at Pandharpur.” *Iskcon At Pandharpur* ACROSS THE Candrabhāga River, right on the bank, rests a small and peaceful Hare Kṛṣṇa *āśrama,* started by ISKCON devotees from Maharashtra in the early 1980’s. They cultivate the land, keep cows, and during Ekādaśī festivals help serve the pilgrims. The devotees supply Śrīla Prabhupāda's Marathi *Bhagavad-gītā,* always popular. The ISKCON *āśrama* served as host for our Padayātrā’s first visit to Pandharpur, in December of 1984. During that visit, the priests of the Viṭṭhala temple warmly welcomed us and gave us the special privilege of bathing the Deity of Lord Viṭṭhala. We were on a pilgrimage of our own to celebrate the appearance of Lord Caitanya Mahāprabhu five centuries before. So we installed symbolic footprints of Lord Caitanya under a huge *pipal* tree on the ISKCON property, commemorating Lord Caitanya’s visit to Pandharpur. *Caitanya Mahāprabhu’s Visit* LORD CAITANYA VISITED Pandharpur while on a journey through South India, apparently to search for His *sannyāsī* brother, Śaṅkarāraṇya, formerly known as Viśvarūpa. After traveling down the east coast of India through the province of Tamil Nadu and up the west coast through Kerala and Karnataka, Caitanya Mahāprabhu entered Maharashtra. As stated in the *Caitanya-caritāmṛta* (*Madhya* 9.282–283), the Lord went to Pandharpur, where He happily saw the Deity of Lord Viṭṭhala and chanted and danced. In Pandharpur Lord Caitanya met Śrī Raṅga Purī, a Godbrother of His spiritual master, Īśvara Purī. They talked about Lord Kṛṣṇa continuously for five to seven days. Śrī Raṅga Purī recalled that he had once been to Navadvīpa, Lord Caitanya’s birthplace, where he had visited the house of a *brāhmaṇa* named Jagannātha Miśra. Śrī Raṅga Purī remembered the taste of a curry cooked from banana flowers by Jagannātha Miśra’s wife. Jagannātha Miśra’s eldest son had accepted the renounced order. Śrī Raṅga Purī had later learned, he said, that this son had passed away in Pandharpur. Jagannātha Miśra, Lord Caitanya then revealed, had been His father, and the son who had passed away had been His brother. Lord Caitanya stayed four more days in Pandharpur, before moving on. During His tour of South India, Lord Caitanya was constantly on the move, but He stayed in Pandharpur for about eleven days. His pastimes there, and those of His brother, establish yet another link between Pandharpur and the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava tradition followed by the present-day Hare Kṛṣṇa devotees. ## Śrīnivāsa ĀcāryaThe Embodiment of Lord Caitanya’s Love ### by Satyarāja dāsa [From *The Lives of the Vaishnava Saints* © 1991 by Steven Rosen (Satyarāja Dāsa). All rights reserved. Order from Folk Books, P.O. Box 400716, Brooklyn, NY 11240.] *It was the middle of the sixteenth century. Aspiring for perfection in spiritual life, young Śrīnivāsa had tried to meet Lord Caitanya and His disciple Gadādhara. But Śrīnivāsa came too late—they passed away before he could become their student. And so too did the great Rūpa Gosvāmī and Sanātana Gosvāmī. But as Śrīnivāsa journeyed to the holy town Vṛndāvana, Rūpa and Sanātana appeared to him in a dream. Go on to Vṛndāvana, they told him, and learn from the great gosvāmīs Jīva and Gopāla Bhaṭṭa.* ### PART II *Jīva and Gopāla Bhaṭṭa Gosvāmīs* THE WORDS OF Śrī Sanātana and Rūpa somewhat relieved Śrīnivāsa’s heavy heart. He could travel again, and soon he felt the dust of Vṛndāvana beneath his feet. He approached Rūpa Gosvāmī’s Govindadeva Temple hoping to find more solace at Lord Govinda’s lotus feet. As Śrīnivāsa sat before the Deity, Jīva Gosvāmī and his many followers entered the temple. Śrīnivāsa introduced himself, and Śrī Jīva greeted him with warmth and loving hospitality. Śrīnivāsa spent the night in comfortable quarters at Śrī Jīva’s temple, Śrī Śrī Rādhā-Dāmodara. The next day, Śrīnivāsa offered his homage at the tomb of Śrī Rūpa in the temple courtyard. Then Jīva introduced Śrīnivāsa to Gopāla Bhaṭṭa Gosvāmī, who greeted him with kind words and expressed his disappointment that Śrīnivāsa had not arrived sooner, as Rūpa and Sanātana had been anxious to meet him. Gopāla Bhaṭṭa took Śrīnivāsa to his Rādhā-Ramaṇa Temple and asked the Deity there to bless him. Gopāla Bhaṭṭa Gosvāmī and Jīva Gosvāmī gradually introduced Śrīnivāsa to the inhabitants of Vraja. *Narottama and Duḥkhī Kṛṣṇadāsa* Gopāla Bhaṭṭa Gosvāmī initiated Śrīnivāsa and taught him. And as Jīva Gosvāmī was the preeminent Vaiṣṇava philosopher of the period, Gopāla Bhaṭṭa directed Śrīnivāsa to him for higher instruction, all in accordance with the desires of Lord Caitanya and Rūpa and Sanātana Gosvāmīs. The *Prema-vilāsa* states that Śrī Jīva took care of Śrīnivāsa and gave him a thorough spiritual education. Another young scholar, the illustrious Narottama, had been studying under Jīva for one year when Śrīnivāsa arrived in Vṛndāvana. Narottama had been initiated by Lokanātha Gosvāmī, who had sent him to Śrī Jīva for additional spiritual instructions. Then young Duḥkhī Kṛṣṇadāsa came, sent by his *guru,* Hṛdaya Caitanya. The three young devotees studied under Jīva Gosvāmī with the utmost enthusiasm and became his best students. They were widely known as inseparable friends. Jīva Gosvāmī ordered them to study the forests of Vṛndāvana with Rāghava Paṇḍita, who knew all the sacred groves and their significance. Eventually Śrīnivāsa, Narottama, and Duḥkhī Kṛṣṇadāsa were given a special mission. They were to distribute the books of the Gosvāmīs—the *bhakti-rasa* scriptures—in Bengal and other areas. Vaiṣṇavism was widely embraced in Bengal, but literature explaining the Vaiṣṇava philosophy was wanting. Nityānanda Prabhu’s wife, Jāhnavā Devī, had visited Rūpa and Sanātana in Vṛndāvana some years earlier and was well aware of the prolific spiritual literature the Vṛndāvana Gosvāmīs were producing, so she contacted Jīva Gosvāmī and suggested that the books be sent to Bengal. To comply, Śrī Jīva summoned his three best men. *The Mission Begins* In a large assembly of Vaiṣṇavas, Śrī Jīva called forth Narottama Dāsa: “From this day forward, you will be known as Narottama Ṭhākura Mahāśaya.” Then he called Śrīnivāsa: “You will be known as Śrīnivāsa Ācārya.” And finally, Duḥkhī Kṛṣṇadāsa: “Because you have brought so much pleasure [*ānanda*] to Rādhārāṇī [Śyāmā], you will now be called Śyām*ānanda*.” Then Śrī Jīva told them of their mission to Bengal, Orissa, and other provinces of India. Śrīnivāsa, Narottama, and Śyāmānanda did not want to leave Vṛndāvana, but they understood the importance of their mission. They went to their initiating *gurus,* who gave their blessings, instilling in them the necessary enthusiasm for the task. Śrī Jīva began the preparations for the long and arduous journey. These devotees were his best students, and he would spare no pains for their welfare. He had a rich merchant disciple from Mathurā supply a large cart, four strong bullocks, and ten armed guards. The manuscripts—original works by Rūpa, Sanātana, Gopāla Bhaṭṭa, Raghunātha Dāsa, Jīva, and others—were placed in a large wooden chest, which was bolted and covered with a waxed cloth. Śrī Jīva also secured a special passport from the king of Jaipur that his three students would need to show as they traveled to eastern India. Then Śrīnivāsa, Narottama, and Śyāmānanda left Vṛndāvana. *The Journey to Bengal* As they began traveling, Śrī Jīva and several other devotees accompanied them, unable to bear being separated. As the caravan neared Agra, the well-wishers stayed behind. Now the journey was underway. There could be no turning back. After many months, the party reached a small village named Gopālapura, just within the boundaries of the Malla kingdom of Vana Viṣṇupura, in Bengal. When they retired that night, they felt confident that their mission was almost complete. Viṣṇupura is in the district of Birbhum, bounded on the north by the Santhal Pargannas and on the south by Midnapura. The king of Viṣṇupura, Vīrhamvīr, was the leader of a strong group of bandits who were the terror of the adjoining countries. He had employed a large number of thugs and assassins who infested the highways and killed and robbed wayfarers. The astrologers of the court were ever ready to submit to him confidential reports as to what fortunes the stars would grant him if he carried on robberies in particular localities. ### Stealing the Books The king’s dacoits had been following the cart from afar. This cart was especially interesting because the king’s astrologers had said that it held a great treasure. Although the dacoits had been following the cart for quite a distance, they thought it wise to wait until the cart reached their own kingdom. The dacoits saw only fifteen men escorting the cart—ten armed soldiers, two cart men, and three holy men. The band of dacoits, numbering over two hundred, inflamed one another’s imaginations with the astrologers’ words: “This cart is filled with jewels more valuable than gold.” They almost overtook the party in a village named Tamar, but circumstances did not permit it. They followed the party through the towns of Raghunāthapura and Pañcāvati. Finally, in Gopālapura, the party spent the night near a beautiful lake. All fifteen men slept soundly, tired from the journey. When they awakened, their worst nightmare had come to pass: the manuscripts had been stolen. They could not contain their tears. Śrīnivāsa, the leader of the party, advised Narottama and Śyāmānanda to proceed to Bengal and Orissa with the teachings of the Six Gosvāmīs. He would take it upon himself to retrieve the manuscripts. He wrote to Jīva Gosvāmī and told him all that had happened. *The King’s Regret* Meanwhile, as King Vīrhamvīr was rummaging through treasures stolen from various travelers, his servants appeared with the court’s most recent acquisition—Śrīnivāsa’s carefully wrapped chest of “the most precious jewels.” Vīrhamvīr dropped everything else and feverishly unwrapped his latest prize. Having heard the prophesies, he could scarcely imagine what splendors awaited him. In one suspenseful moment, he removed the cloth covering and opened the trunk to reveal—manuscripts. Where was the priceless treasure? Lifting out the top manuscript in disbelief, the king saw the signature “Śrī Rūpa Gosvāmī” written on a palm leaf. When he examined further and began reading Śrī Rūpa’s beautiful exposition of Vaiṣṇava philosophy, he felt something change deep within. He reverentially returned the book to the trunk and retired for the evening, aware of the grave sin he had instigated. ### Śrīnivāsa Appears in a Dream That night, the king had an unusual dream. He saw a beautiful and effulgent person whose body was filled with divine energy. “Do not worry,” the person said with a loving smile. “Soon I will come to Viṣṇupura and we will meet. I will retrieve my manuscripts, and you will be relieved of all sinful reactions. Your joy will be boundless. Know for certain that you are my eternal servant and I am your eternal well-wisher.” The next morning the king awoke and started his life anew, waiting for the day when the mysterious prediction of his dream would come to pass. Meanwhile, Śrīnivāsa Ācārya made his way to the outskirts of Viṣṇupura, where he met a *brāhmaṇa* resident named Śrī Kṛṣṇa Vallabha. The two became friends, and Kṛṣṇa Vallabha invited Śrīnivāsa to be a guest in his home. Gradually, Kṛṣṇa Vallabha realized Śrīnivāsa’s exalted position and surrendered to him as a disciple. In due course, Kṛṣṇa Vallabha mentioned that the king regularly convened a *Bhāgavatam* study group for all who were interested. Śrīnivāsa was curious about the nature of the *Bhāgavatam* presentation and asked Kṛṣṇa Vallabha to take him to the next meeting. *Bhāgavatam Recitation* When they arrived, Vyāsācārya, the court *paṇḍita,* was reciting and commenting upon the *Bhāgavatam*. Śrīnivāsa was unimpressed but said nothing. The next day, they found Vyāsācārya pontificating in the same fashion. After two weeks of the court *paṇḍita,* Śrīnivāsa could not contain himself, and after the meeting he spoke to Vyāsācārya. “You, sir, do not follow the text,” said Śrīnivāsa, “nor are your commentaries in line with Śrīdhara Svāmī or the other standard exponents of *Bhāgavata* philosophy.” Vyāsācārya listened to Śrīnivāsa’s comments but ignored his advice. The king, however, who was nearby, overheard what was said and found it interesting. The next day at the recital Vyāsācārya again attempted to elucidate the esoteric section of the *Bhāgavatam* that delineates Śrī Kṛṣṇa's *rāsa-līlā.* Respectful but firm, Śrīnivāsa interrupted with a question: “Sir, how can you comment on such confidential subjects without referring to the statements of Śrīdhara Svāmī? You are obviously unfamiliar with his work.” Vyāsācārya became angry. He disliked being challenged in front of his sycophantic assembly, who were accustomed only to his peculiar rendition of *Bhāgavatam* commentary. Before another word was said, however, the king began to defend Śrīnivāsa’s position: “How is it that this *brāhmaṇa* scholar finds fault with your explanations? Perhaps your interpretations are questionable.” “Who can interpret the texts better than I?” the arrogant Vyāsācārya replied. “This newcomer is an upstart, and he dares to question me in the presence of Your Majesty.” Then he turned to Śrīnivāsa. “If you are such an authority on the *Bhāgavatam,*” he said, “why don’t you come sit here and explain these verses in a better way?” Śrīnivāsa rose to the challenge. He sang the **Bhāgavata*m* verses beautifully and then commented upon them with great verve and authority. He drew upon existing Vaiṣṇava explanations and yet offered his own unique presentation. No one had ever heard such a masterly enunciation of *Bhāgavata* philosophy. The king encouraged him to go on, allowing him to speak for several hours. When he finished, the whole assembly applauded, ecstatic with Śrīnivāsa’s contagious love for Kṛṣṇa. Vyāsācārya could not believe his ears. He was defeated, but he was happy. King Vīrhamvīr was greatly moved. “No one has ever come to this kingdom and shared so much love and scholarship in the way you have,” he said to Śrīnivāsa. “Please, tell me your name and where you come from.” “My name is Śrīnivāsa and I am a native of this country,” said Śrīnivāsa. “I came here to see your magnificent court and to relish the *Bhāgavatam.*” The king then gave him the best accommodations in the palace and asked him to stay as long as he liked. *The king Surrenders* Later that evening, the king asked Śrīnivāsa to dine with him, but Śrīnivāsa said that he took only one humble meal per day and had already eaten. Nonetheless, Vīrhamvīr encouraged him to have some fruit, and he complied, not wanting to offend his distinguished host. As Śrīnivāsa ate his fruit, the king sat at his side like a humble servant. The king had never felt this way about anyone: Śrīnivāsa was that effulgent person he had seen in his dream—his *guru*—and he wanted to render some menial service. That night, he heard Śrīnivāsa repeating the name of Kṛṣṇa in his room. It seemed as if Śrīnivāsa did not sleep. “Here is a genuine saint,” thought the king. “He is simply absorbed in the name of God.” With this pleasant idea, the king fell asleep, listening to Śrīnivāsa Ācārya’s blissful voice in the next room. The following day in the great assembly Śrīnivāsa again spoke from the *Bhāgavatam.* Once again, the eager, expectant audience relished every word. Śrīnivāsa astonished all who listened. Chroniclers of the event have reported that “even the stone walls of the hall seemed to melt with emotion.” Śrīnivāsa spoke with erudition, sensitivity, and devotion, honoring his Vaiṣṇava predecessors, and everyone present agreed that the wisdom of the orator far exceeded his years. One by one, people came and bowed at Śrīnivāsa’s feet, hoping to become his disciples. Later, the king submitted himself to Śrīnivāsa as a lowly beggar: “You are the real king,” he said, “for you have love for Kṛṣṇa. I am not even worthy to be in your presence.” Śrīnivāsa, with all humility, merely shook his head; he was not able to accept his own exalted position. But the king persisted: “Allow me to be your servant. Please! How can I serve you? My entire kingdom is at your disposal.” “I came from the holy city of Vṛndāvana with a mission from Gopāla Bhaṭṭa Gosvāmī and Jīva Gosvāmī,” Śrīnivāsa replied. “I was to bring their writings to Bengal. But unfortunately this treasure was robbed within your kingdom. If I cannot retrieve these books, I would prefer to lose my life. Can you help me get them back?” The king burst into tears. “A poor worm am I,” he said, “lost hopelessly in this land of birth and death. My own men pillaged for years and years under my order, and then they came upon your party. We were told you carried the greatest treasure in the universe, and we naturally pursued it. I cannot express my sorrow.” Reflecting for a moment, the king said, “But there is a positive side to all of this. Our meeting would not have otherwise occurred. I would commit these sins again and again for but a moment of your association.” Śrīnivāsa laughed and reassured the king that sinful life was unnecessary for attaining his association. Śrīnivāsa then forgave the king for all his sins and asked him to sin no more. *The Books Are Safe!* The king led Śrīnivāsa to the room where his treasures were kept, and Śrīnivāsa saw the trunk with the Gosvāmīs’ literature. Śrīnivāsa felt ecstasy and took the garland of flowers from his own neck and placed it on King Vīrhamvīr. Śrīnivāsa asked the king to bring him *tulasī* leaves, flower garlands, sandalwood paste, and other items to worship the sacred books. The king brought everything, and his own initiation ceremony followed. By reciting into the king’s ear the *mahā-mantra*—Hare Kṛṣṇa, Hare Kṛṣṇa, Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa, Hare Hare / Hare Rāma, Hare Rāma, Rāma Rāma, Hare Hare—Śrīnivāsa initiated him. According to the *Prema-vilāsa,* Śrīnivāsa gave him the name Haricaraṇa Dāsa. Jīva Gosvāmī later showed the king special mercy by writing a letter in which he renamed him Caitanya Dāsa. The king’s wife, Queen Sulakṣaṇā, and their son, Prince Dhārī Hamvīr, also became Śrīnivāsa Ācārya’s surrendered servants. The queen’s initiated name is unknown, but the boy was named Gopāla Dāsa. Kṛṣṇa Vallabha and Vyāsācārya also became dedicated disciples. *Viṣṇupura as a Vaiṣṇava Center* The initiation of the king and his loyal subjects was an important event in the history of the Gauḍīya tradition. Viṣṇupura soon became a great center of Vaiṣṇavism. In all of India, only in Vana Viṣṇupura did Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava culture and art develop without foreign or distracting influence. Even the Muslim intrusion was minimal. Consequently, the architectural and sculptural art of Bengal, from the beginning of the seventeenth century onwards, is nowhere found in such abundance and in such pristine form as in the Vaiṣṇava monuments of Viṣṇupura. This is one of the many virtues of royal patronage. King Vīrhamvīr reigned from 1596 to 1622 and in that time wrote many songs in praise of Kṛṣṇa, Lord Caitanya Mahāprabhu, and Śrīnivāsa Ācārya. Much of his exquisite poetry can be found in the *Bhakti-ratnākara* and the *Pāda-kalpataru.* The king’s beautiful voice, reflected in his literary work, helped him in his mission of spreading Vaiṣṇavism throughout his domain. Śrīnivāsa had thus accomplished his mission in Viṣṇupura. He wrote to Jīva Gosvāmī that not only had the books been retrieved but the main bandit, a king, had taken up Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism. All of Vṛndāvana rejoiced and sang the glories of Śrīnivāsa Ācārya. King Vīrhamvīr and his entire kingdom were now converted to Vaiṣṇavism, and Śrīnivāsa was developing an important center there. (*concluded in the next issue*) *Satyarāja Dāsa is a disciple of Śrīla Prabhupāda and a regular contributor to* Back to Godhead*. He has written several books on Kṛṣṇa consciousness. He and his wife live in New York City.* ## “I Have No Capacity to Repay You” *Śrīla Prabhupāda placed great spiritual value on the sometimes crude paintings of ISKCON’s first artists.* ### by Yadurāṇī Devī Dāsī TWENTY-SIX SECOND AVENUE, New York City, 1967: Govinda Dāsī had recently painted Śrīla Prabhupāda's quarters—blue walls with gold borders. His desk was his trunk from India. He sat on second-hand mats donated by his disciples. Prabhupāda showed me a beautiful print of Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa with the eight principal *gopīs,* standing together in the moonlight in a garden in the Vṛndāvana forest. He wanted me to copy the scene onto a large canvas. Prabhupāda told me that the *gopīs* in the picture had Bengali beauty because they’d been painted by a Bengali artist. The flowers at Kṛṣṇa's feet didn’t seem very clearly painted to me. They looked like colored blobs. I asked Prabhupāda what kind of flowers I should paint. “You can take any flower and transport it to Vṛndāvana,” he answered. “What color should I paint Kṛṣṇa's eyes?” I asked. Sometimes we read that Kṛṣṇa's eyes are red. “They are *reddish,* reddish black,” he said. “It’s stated that Kṛṣṇa is the color of a fresh rain cloud, but exactly what color is that?” I asked. “They say that Kṛṣṇa is the color of a fresh new rain cloud… ” Prabhupāda began. Then he lowered his head a little and covered his face with his hand. Bringing his hand down slowly and lifting his head, he said in a muffled and innocent voice, “But I do not know what color He is.” Of course, he did know. He was seeing Kṛṣṇa personally—face to face at each moment—but he was so humble. Prabhupāda also told me to make Kṛṣṇa a little shorter than He was in the Bengali painting, where He was much taller than Rādhārāṇī. Prabhupāda also said that in the original, Kṛṣṇa looked “a little fatty.” Later in Boston I worked on the painting, a 4' by 5' canvas. When I was about half done, Śrīla Prabhupāda arrived. After his evening lectures he would invite some of the leading male devotees to his quarters. He didn’t invite me, and I wanted to see him, so I was envious and a little angry. But I remembered Prabhupāda saying that he is present when we serve him. So I ran over to the painting, confident that if I became absorbed in service I would have his association. As I painted I prayed to the *gopīs* in the painting to make me a pure devotee. After his month-long stay in Boston, Prabhupāda went to Montreal and asked me to send the painting there. When it arrived, Prabhupāda wrote me, “The picture which you sent to Montreal is well-received here, and everyone is speaking highly of your painting capacity, and I am so pleased to see the picture. You have improved very much in your painting capacity also by serving Krishna so faithfully by the talent which Krishna has endowed you with. Yesterday there was a meeting of the Indians, and all of them spoke very highly of your picture. Please try to paint the following pictures in quantity, namely the ’Mohan Madhuri’ which you have sent here in Montreal, that is to say, Rādhā and Krishna with the 8 principal *gopīs;* the Samkirtan picture of Lord Caitanya; and Pañca Tattva [Lord Caitanya and His four main associates]. These pictures should be popularized in our movement and try to paint them very nicely. I am anxious about you because you are conducting one of the important departments of our activities, namely painting of pictures, and this will make your life successful.” Months later, on August 31, 1968, Prabhupāda arrived in New York. A devotee called us in Boston saying, “Prabhupāda would like to see you.” So we all went down to New York. On the next day, the New York devotees, Boston devotees, and guests were in the temple with Prabhupāda. He began talking to me about the Mohana Mādhurī painting—right in front of everyone. “That painting you did of Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa and the *gopīs* is so nice… ” Then, after a short pause, he said, “I have no capacity to repay you.” I was bewildered, amazed, flattered, and flustered. His words reminded me that Kṛṣṇa had said the same thing to the *gopīs* when He was leaving Vṛndāvana to go to Mathurā. Yet I knew that by his mercy Prabhupāda had dragged me into some semblance of devotional service. There was no credit on my part. “And if you preach,” he continued, “then everyone will be happy.” Then he turned to all the *brahmacārīs* and said, “You should not see these girls as objects of your sense gratification; you should see them all as associates of Kṛṣṇa.” A year or so later Muralīdhara Dāsa in California wanted to do a painting of Rādhā-Kṛṣṇa with the *gopīs* for the Los Angeles temple. He wrote to Śrīla Prabhupāda to ask his permission. Prabhupāda replied, “You have mentioned a picture of Krishna and the Gopis, but Krishna and the Gopis without Radharani cannot be. If you mean to say the picture of Rādhā-Krishna and the 8 Gopis, then that is all right. I do not know what is this Krishna with the Gopis. There are many unauthorized pictures painted by so-called imaginative artists, but we don’t want such pictures in our temples.” The next year, when the Boston temple moved to North Beacon Street, I did another painting on the same subject. I thought it was technically better, but my consciousness was much worse. After I’d completed the painting and devotees showed it to Prabhupāda, he commented, “Why has she painted this in such haste?” Because I had not taken less time to do the painting, I could understand from Prabhupāda's comment that he could read our consciousness when he saw our work. My first painting of Rādhā-*Kṛṣṇa* and the *gopīs* was later printed in Prabhupāda's *Kṛṣṇa* book. *Yadurāṇī Devī Dāsī is project head of CIVA (Cultural Institute for the Vedic Arts), which is producing Kṛṣṇa conscious picture books and comics.* ## Śrīla Prabhupāda Speaks Out *How Can There Be Peace?* *This exchange between His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda and some of his disciples took place in Geneva, Switzerland, on June 2, 1974.* Disciple: Śrīla Prabhupāda, in a recent study by U.S. agricultural officials, they found that it’s uneconomical to eat meat. It takes so much energy and man hours to raise and transport and slaughter the cows that it’s very wasteful. Śrīla Prabhupāda: Wasteful, yes. Therefore I say they have no brain. They are all rascals. Rascal leaders. A little labor in agriculture will be sufficient to produce the family’s food stock for the whole year. You work only three months, and you get sufficient food for your whole family. And in the remaining nine months, you chant Hare Kṛṣṇa. But these rascals will not do that. They will work hard like asses simply for eating. *Nūnaṁ pramattaḥ kurute vikarma yad indriya-prītaya āpṛnoti.* They will not accept an easy life. Disciple: In that agricultural report it said that if people were to eat all the grains they give to the cows and animals, they could get twenty times more calories than by eating meat. Śrīla Prabhupāda: Yes. Wrong civilization, rascal civilization. And this is due to this rascaldom called nationalism—“This is my land.” At any moment a person will be kicked out by death, but still he claims, “It is my land.” *Janasya moho ’yam ahaṁ mameti.* This is the illusion. Nothing belongs to him; still he is fighting, “This is mine. This is mine.” “I” and “mine”—identifying oneself with the body and wrongly conceiving that “This is mine.” This is the basic principle of a wrong civilization. Nothing belongs to us. I have come here to Switzerland. Suppose I remain here for one month and I claim, “Oh, this is mine.” What is this? So, similarly, we come to this world as guests. We come to the womb of a mother and live here for seventy years or so. And we claim, “This is my land.” But when did it become yours? The land was there long, long before your birth. How has it become yours? But people have no sense. “It is mine—my land, my nation, my family, my society.” In this way, they are wasting time. These things have been introduced by Western civilization. In the Vedic civilization there is no such thing as nationalism. You won’t find it there. Have you seen the word “nationalism” in the *Bhagavad-gītā*? No such thing. Nationalism is the idea of tribes. In Africa there are still groups of tribes. Nationalism is the most crude idea of civilization. It is nothing but developed tribalism. Modern man is not advanced in civilization. This nationalism is another form of tribalism, that’s all. Disciple: Today, so-called civilized people are actually just cannibals because they maintain themselves on eating the cow. Śrīla Prabhupāda: Yes. And they are suffering. Therefore you’ll find that in recent history, every twenty-five years there is a big war with mass slaughter of people. Nature does not tolerate animal slaughter. Now India has learned to slaughter animals, imitating the Western countries. And now there is war between India and Pakistan. During two wars between Pakistan and Hindustan, millions of people were killed unnecessarily, without any gain. Disciple: Just recently India exploded an atomic bomb, and now Pakistan is hurrying to get an atomic bomb also. Śrīla Prabhupāda: Yes. This is going on. Disciple: The Indian government promised that nuclear energy would be only for peaceful purposes. Śrīla Prabhupāda: No, what do they know about peaceful conditions? They are all rascals. They do not know what a peaceful condition is. The actual peaceful condition is described in the *Bhagavad-gītā:* > bhoktāraṁ yajña-tapasāṁ > sarva-loka-maheśvaram > suhṛdaṁ sarva-bhūtānāṁ > jñātvā māṁ śāntim ṛcchati “A person in full consciousness of Me [Kṛṣṇa], knowing Me to be the ultimate beneficiary of all sacrifices and austerities, the Supreme Lord of all planets and demigods, and the benefactor and well-wisher of all living entities, attains peace from the pangs of material miseries.” This is peace. Unless there is Kṛṣṇa consciousness, where is peace? There cannot be peace. All rascaldom. *Na māṁ duṣkṛtino mūḍhāḥ prapadyante narādhamāḥ.* These rascals and fools—*māyayāpahṛta-jñānā*—have lost all knowledge. How can there be peace? Their endeavors for peace are all useless. ## Every Town & Village The worldwide activities of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) *World News* ### United Kingdom The High Court has turned down an appeal to let people keep coming for worship and festivals at ISKCON’s Bhaktivedanta Manor. Unless reversed, the decision means the Manor will have to close its doors to the public after a grace period of two years. The Manor is the site of the oldest Hindu shrine in the UK. In response, the Manor has taken its case one step higher, to the Court of Appeal. Will the Court hear the case? As this magazine goes to press, we’re still awaiting word. If the Court agrees, they’ll hear the appeal about six months from now. The two-year grace period begins only after all appeals have been decided. About 250 schools have invited Hare Kṛṣṇa devotees to visit Religious Education classes this year. ### North America Kṛṣṇa steals butter and gives it out to the monkeys in a new book for children, *The Butter Thief,* by Chris Murray and Kim Waters Murray. Lots of colorful pictures. Published by the Bhaktivedanta Book Trust. Forthcoming from the BBT: *Prayers of King Kulaśekhara,* a twelfth-century south Indian text, translated, with commentary. Begun by Śrīla Prabhupāda, completed by his disciples. ### Europe *Bhagavad-gītā* in Gaelic is waiting to be published. The translation is done. Funds are needed for printing. If you’d like to help, write: Svarūpa Dāmodara Dāsa, Corneenflynn, Glenevlin, Cavan, Republic of Ireland. Swedish devotees have opened a second Hare Kṛṣṇa restaurant in Stockholm. Hungarian and British devotees will tour Hungary again in October. On their previous tour, last September, they held festivals in fourteen major cities. Average attendance: 750. Budapest: 2,200. A Bulgarian edition of the *Kṛṣṇa* book has been printed in Sofia, and ten thousand Romanian books have been sent to Timisoara, in western Romania. ### Commonwealth of Independent States Seventeen thousand Russians mailed in to buy *Bhagavad-gītā* in response to a newspaper item. Last summer a weekly newspaper, *Arguments and Facts,* ran a letter from someone who’d seen ISKCON’s subway posters for the book. What was the *Gītā* about, he wanted to know. The paper ran a reply by Kṛṣṇa Kumāra Dāsa, president of ISKCON’s Moscow temple. Result: In the space of a month, 17,000 people wrote in to order books. Even months later, orders were still coming in—hundreds a day. The next Russian book has gone to press—*Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam*, Second Canto. Shoppers at Moscow’s GUM department store bought fifty thousand to a hundred thousand Kṛṣṇa conscious books every week last December. Devotees sold the books from twenty-five tables in the store. Russian TV has been broadcasting the glories of Kṛṣṇa. In December came a 45-minute film called “Devotees,” in January a film on the saint Haridāsa Ṭhākura. TV ads for *Bhagavad-gītā* have shown nightly. Two hundred Moscovites a day enjoy meals at Cafe Govinda, a *prasādam* restaurant stall at a suburban Moscow train stop. Fifteen kids in Moscow now attend *gurukula,* a Kṛṣṇa-centered school. Classes are held in two rented rooms in a school two blocks from the ISKCON temple. There is talk of starting *gurukulas* in Armenia and Ukraine. Devotees in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, have purchased a two-story building downtown for an ISKCON temple. ISKCON now has two temples in Yerevan—one downtown, the other on the outskirts. The money for the new center was given by Harivilāsa Dāsa, an American devotee of Armenian descent. Devotees in the former Soviet Union are waiting to see how the breakup of that nation will affect them. ### Australia A “family reunion” will bring together devotees from the early days of the Hare Kṛṣṇa movement in Australia. It will take place in Melbourne in May, to mark seventeen years since Śrīla Prabhupāda opened the Melbourne temple. “We’re going to search out and invite all of Prabhupāda's disciples and churn the nectar of his activities here in Australia,” says Śubhalakṣmī Dāsī, coordinator for the event. “We hope to attract devotees from all over.” For more information, contact Śubhalakṣmī Dāsī or Kūrma Dāsa at ISKCON Melbourne, P.O. Box 125, Albert Park, Victoria 3206. Phone: (03) 699-5122. Kids up to fourteen can attend ISKCON’s school at Murwillumbah, New South Wales, since the government okayed two more grades. ### The World Diverse cities celebrated the Festival of the Chariots during the last few months. Among them: Tokyo, Berlin, Paris, Kiev, Rio de Janeiro, Povoa de Varzim (Portugal), Durban (South Africa), and Chandigarh (India). *Māyāpur-Vāndāvana News* ### Māyāpur ### 25th Anniversary Celebration Distinguished guests and ISKCON members came to Māyāpur in November to celebrate ISKCON’s 25th anniversary. High-court judges, central government ministers, and members of the West Bengal legislature spoke to crowds in praise of ISKCON. Among the speakers: Mr. Pranab Mukherjee, Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission of India. The celebrations took place for a week, during the Rāsa Pūrṇimā festival. ### Three-State Tour Some sixty devotees toured Assam, Orissa, and West Bengal, holding nightly programs in major towns. The tour started in November and went on for ninety days. It was sponsored by ISKCON Māyāpur and Nāma Haṭṭa regional congregations. Attendance: up to 20,000 people a night. ### Yearly Worldwide Gathering Devotees from around the world will gather for ISKCON’s annual Māyāpur-Vṛndāvana festival. It takes place this year from March 3 through March 31. New this year: One week on foot visting holy places in the Māyāpur area. ### New Press Rolling The press is installed and rolling at the new Bhaktivedanta Book Trust building. ### Construction The first phase of a new guesthouse should be finished at the end of February. Now a new residence is going up for unmarried men. And about twenty new dwellings are being built for householders at the *gurukula* school. ### Second Electrical Plant A second electrical plant to power the Māyāpur project should be ready in April or May. ### Vṛndāvana ### Memorial to Śrīla Prabhupāda Nearly Done The *samādhi* shrine where Śrīla Prabhupāda's body lies is at last nearly done. The scaffolding is down, and gleaming marble covers the shrine, inside and out. Left to complete: final work on lighting, grills, gates, and a few extras here and there. Embellishments can still be added, say the local managers, depending on how much money is on hand. The s*amādhi* stands in the entrance courtyard of the Krishna-Balarām Temple. The courtyard’s front wall, sealed while the s*amādhi* was going up, will be rebuilt with a newly designed gate. ### “Save Vṛndāvana” Campaign Begins Plant trees and protect Vṛndāvana—this was the message as devotees and dignitaries gathered to launch the “Save Vṛndāvana” campaign. The campaign aims at restoring and preserving the natural beauty of Vṛndāvana, which is being spoiled by pollution, misuse, and neglect. The campaign is being sponsored by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). The director for the project is ISKCON devotee Ranchor Dāsa. Among those on hand to launch the campaign were Dr. Karan Singh, former central government minister and ambassador to the U.S.A.; Saksi Maharaja, member of Parliament for the Mathurā district; and Mr. Hari Krishna, the Mathurā district magistrate. Vṛndāvana lies within the district of Mathurā. Local schoolchildren planted more than a hundred trees. National TV broadcast highlights of the program. The campaign will plant trees and train the local people on how to care for the Vṛndāvana environment. ISKCON has donated the land on which the first trees are being planted, by the pilgrim path near ISKCON’s Krishna-Balarām Temple. The campaign was launched on November 21, the appearance day of Vṛndā Devī, the goddess who presides over the Vṛndāvana forests. ### Advanced Courses Well Attended About 170 devotees took part in the fall sessions of ISKCON’s Vaiṣṇava Institute for Higher Education. The Institute, which offers advanced training for ISKCON devotees, began a few years ago with hardly thirty students. ### New Places to Live Construction has started on householder dwellings being built by the Māyāpur-Vṛndāvana Trust. The first thirty units should be done in twelve to eighteen months. ### Upcoming Events On March 3 residents of Vṛndāvana celebrate Śiva Rātrī by visiting the temple of Gopīśvara (Lord Śiva) and praying for devotion to Lord Kṛṣṇa. On March 18 Vṛndāvana celebrates Holi. People throw powdered dyes here and there—watch out! April 17 marks the full-moon night for Kṛṣṇa's springtime *rāsa* dance at Govardhana Hill. Toward the middle of March, summer comes in, and Vṛndāvana gets *hot.* It stays hot till June, when the monsoons arrive. *Padayātrā* ### Padayātrā India From Dvārakā, in Gujarat, on the shore of the Arabian Sea, the Padayātrā heads for the Gujarati city of Ujjain, east of Ahmedabad. Ujjain is where Lord Kṛṣṇa attended school as the student of Sāndīpani Muni. The Padayātrā devotees will arrive there for the Kumbha Melā festival in mid-April. Next they’ll walk on to Jaipur, in Rajasthan. They plan to reach Jaipur in May, then trek up to Badrinath, in the Himalayas. ### Padayātrā Europe Starts again in May. Route: Southern France, Spain, Portugal, and Italy. In July the devotees will halt for two weeks in Barcelona during the Olympic Games. ### Padayātrā Australia On January 13, devotees started walking from Brisbane to Sydney. They’ll reach Sydney on March 18, the appearance day of Lord Caitanya. ### Padayātrā Fiji Devotees went on Padayātrā in mid-January, starting on the island of Veti Levu and ending at Lautoka. ### Padayātrā Malaysia In the course of a two-week Padayātrā in December, devotees held Festivals of the Chariots in two cities—Penang and Kulim. Theme for the Padayātrā: “A Pilgrimage Against Drug Abuse.” ### Padayātrā Philippines Started January 2 from Manila and walked throughout the island of Luzon. *Prasādam* for 4,000 people a day. Theme: “Steps Toward Peace and Progress.” For more information about Padayātrā, write to: International Padayātrā M-119 Greater Kailash 1, New Delhi 100 048, India Phone: 641-3249 or 641-2058 Padayātrā America P.O. Box 3991, La Mesa, CA 91944-3991 Phone (7am–9pm), Fax (9pm–7am): (619) 463-0168 Padayātrā Europe Bhaktivedanta Manor, Letchmore Heath, Watford, Herts. WD2 8EP, England. Phone: (09) 2385-7244 ## Project Profile HERE’S A Kṛṣṇa conscious project you might like to support or get involved in. We’ll tell you what the goals are, who’s involved, what’s going on, what’s blocking the way, and how you can give a hand. ### Project *The Bhaktivedanta Archives.* ### Headquarters ISKCON’s New Dvārakā Community, Los Angeles, California. ### Project Leaders Raṇajit Dāsa (books, photo archives), Ekanātha Dāsa (digital audio tape, Śrīla Prabhupāda Tape Ministry, compact disks), Dulāla Candra Dāsa (computer infobase, photo scanning), Viṣṇu Mūrti Dāsa (Manager of European Division). ### Goals To preserve Śrīla Prabhupāda's recorded words and the photo, film, and video images of him. ### Details The Bhaktivedanta Archives began in 1978. Starting with original reel-to-reel tapes from the Golden Avatar studios and other sources, it collected Śrīla Prabhupāda's recorded lectures and conversations—two thousand hours’ worth. Now available from the tape ministry: 711 sixty-minute tapes. For preservation and further mastering, these are being re-recorded on digital audio tape. In the early 1980’s devotees transcribed the tapes and filmed the transcriptions on microfiche. They also made fiches of Śrīla Prabhupāda's letters. The Archives is publishing this material in books. The following are available: *Collected Lectures on Bhagavad-gītā As It Is* (seven hardbound volumes), *Conversations with Śrīla Prabhupāda* (thirty-seven soft-bound volumes), and *Śrīla Prabhupāda Śikṣāmṛta,* a compilation from Śrīla Prabhupāda's letters (three hardbound volumes). Tapes of Prabhupāda's singing are being re-mastered onto compact disks. Eight disks are now available. Computer technology has enabled the Archives to put Śrīla Prabhupāda's books, letters, and talks into a single database for research by scholars and devotees. In 1992 the Archives will start digitizing its photographic collection as computerized data, a superior way to preserve photos for publication. ### Plans The Archives wants to further develop the research database for CD-ROM and establish a memorial museum and library for the original photos, tapes, and other materials from Prabhupāda's life. ### Obstacles A shortage of people and funds. ### How you can help Take advantage of the storehouse of transcendental knowledge available in the Bhaktivedanta Archives. Order Śrīla Prabhupāda's tapes, compact disks, and archival publications. For computer-assisted research, consider the complete infobase of Śrīla Prabhupāda's teachings. For information, please contact: The Bhaktivedanta Archives P.O. Box 34453 Los Angeles, CA 90034 Phone: (310) 559-2143 Fax: (310) 559-0935 The Bhaktivedanta Archives P.O. Box 351 Borehamwood, Herts. WD6 1SW England Phone: (0923) 852289 ## Increasing Our Dependence On Kṛṣṇa *Raising kids and realizing Kṛṣṇa—do they go together?* ### by Cintāmaṇī Devī Dāsī “ONE WHO CANNOT deliver his dependents from the path of repeated birth and death should never become a spiritual master, a father, a husband, a mother, or a worshipable demigod” (*Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam* 5.5.18). As a parent I often wonder if I am up to the task. After all, full engagement in devotional service is the only way to become free from the cycle of birth and death. Prahlāda Mahārāja instructs us in nine methods of devotional service: “Hearing and chanting about the transcendental holy name, form, qualities, paraphernalia, and pastimes of Lord Viṣṇu, remembering them, serving the lotus feet of the Lord, offering prayers to the Lord, becoming His servant, considering the Lord one’s best friend, and surrendering everything unto Him (in other words, serving Him with the body, mind, and words)—these nine methods are accepted as pure devotional service” (*Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam* 7.5.23) Any devotee parent will attest that practicing these methods becomes so much more difficult when one has children. Sometimes devotional engagements seem impossible. During the *ārati* service in the temple, my attention is always with the children—what are they up to now? I can’t absorb myself in the *kīrtana* anymore. I’m just trying to stop Madhva from creating havoc, I’m getting him endless glasses of water or snacks, or I’m feeding baby Rādhikā. *Bhāgavatam* class? Tougher to attend. *Japa* … after every other *mantra* I have to speak to the children or do something for them. And if they happen to both fall asleep at the same time, I’m so tired out that I have to struggle not to snooze. I’m surprised I don’t fall back into the whirlpool of material life myself, what to speak of saving my children. Yet many parents do maintain their spiritual lives. Even single parents, for whom the problems are compounded, have proven it’s possible to stay in devotional service and bring up children as devotees too. Often such parents seem even more fixed in devotional service than childless devotees who don’t struggle with the same impediments. “Well,” I moan to myself, “the parents who manage must be superhuman. They obviously don’t need to eat or sleep, and they’re immune to mental and physical exhaustion.” But in more honest moments I have to admit they’re people not much different from me. So what’s the secret of their success? Well, I’m hardly in a position to give definitive answers, but I’d like to share some thoughts and realizations about Kṛṣṇa conscious parenting. The first is that being a parent is as much devotional service as being a cook, book distributor, manager, or gardener, if we do this service for Kṛṣṇa's pleasure. That is to say, our motivation should not be just to equip our children for material life but to help them become Kṛṣṇa's devotees so they need never again take birth. Like any service, parenting has its austerities and its advantages. Its austerities we know too well. So now, what are its advantages? The adage “Man proposes, God disposes” seems to hold one essential ingredient for success in spiritual life: If we really want to surrender to Kṛṣṇa, He’ll help us. Why should we doubt it? After all, He is fulfilling the desires of even the materialists who don’t worship Him, so why shouldn’t He fulfill the desire of someone who wants to surrender to Him? The problem is we don’t want to surrender to Kṛṣṇa, because that means giving up our illusory independence and sense gratification. Having children has helped me in two ways to strengthen my desire to surrender. First, now I’ve directly seen how painful and hazardous is birth. Even if by good *karma* we’re born healthy into a caring family, we’re still forced to suffer the agonies of cholic, teething, and nappy rash. Tame stuff, you might think, but not if you’ve ever had children and seen how acutely they suffer. For a child, something with an innocuous name like “nappy rash” can seem as painful as third-degree burns. And that’s only the beginning. As a parent you become mindful of the dangers facing your child—from electricity, bleach, and cars to deranged and evil-minded people. These dangers await a spirit soul born into the best circumstances. What if you’re born to people who don’t want you or can’t take care of you? Phew! It’s surprising anyone gets through childhood alive! As a baby I was blissfully ignorant of these dangers, but now as a parent I see what it means to be a baby. From this vantage point I know: *I don’t want to ever take birth again.* The thought of taking birth again scares me. This fear helps my spiritual life, because now I can more feelingly pray to Kṛṣṇa to help me surrender to His lotus feet. I know that though I’m weak Kṛṣṇa is strong, and if I really want to get out of the material world He will help me. Besides fear for myself, my love for my children also keeps me praying to Kṛṣṇa for help and makes me more alert to how He is helping me. When I look at my defenseless children, I naturally think, “How can I protect them from the troubles that await them in life? Maybe by good schooling or good money.” But who am I kidding? How will these protect my kids from war, depression, or cancer? I know in my heart that the only thing that can save my children in any circumstance is knowing how to take shelter of Kṛṣṇa. If we can remember Kṛṣṇa, then we can transcend even the pain of death, what to speak of other difficulties. In short, I know that if I really want to help my children, I have to help them become conscious of Kṛṣṇa. To do that, I too have to become Kṛṣṇa conscious. After all, you can’t give what you don’t have. Children are sensitive to hypocrisy. You can’t tell them “Chant Hare Kṛṣṇa, offer your food to Kṛṣṇa, don’t take drugs or have illicit sex” unless you practice what you preach. If we want our children to be devotees, we have to teach by our own example. To me this is a powerful reason to set the best example I can and to pray constantly to Kṛṣṇa to help me do better. I don’t want these children to suffer in ignorance and be forced to be born again. Since I love them, I want to help them get out of the material world. When I was childless I didn’t feel the same urgency to become Kṛṣṇa conscious. I’ll do my best, I thought, but if I don’t make it in this life, there’s always the next, or the one after … But now, though my material load makes devotional life harder to practice, I feel more urgency. I really have to pray to Kṛṣṇa to help me—and to give me the intelligence to recognize how He is helping me. I have to try to be serious. If I do this, I know He will help me, because that’s His promise. “Those who always worship Me with exclusive devotion, meditating on My transcendental form—to them I carry what they lack, and I preserve what they have” (*Bhagavad-gītā* 9.22). Also, feeling more dependent on Him forces me to remember Him more, which after all is the essence of devotional service: “Kṛṣṇa, the origin of Lord Viṣṇu, should always be remembered and never be forgotten. All the rules and prohibitions in the scriptures should be servants of these two principles” (*Padma Purāṇa*). So, fellow suffering parents, don’t give up. Keep trying. And if you have any doubts, realizations, or stories about how to cope, please write and share them with the rest of us. Hare Kṛṣṇa. *Cintāmaṇī Dhāma Devī Dāsī, an Iranian raised in England, holds a joint honors degree in philosophy and politics from Bristol University. She joined the Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement in 1980. She and her husband have two children and run the Manchester ISKCON center, which they opened in 1986.* ## Hare Kṛṣṇa Hare Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa Hare HareHare Rāma Hare Rāma Rāma Rāma Hare Hare IN INDIA there are sacred places where *yogīs* go to meditate in solitude, as prescribed in the *Bhagavad-gītā*. Traditionally, *yoga* cannot be executed in a public place, but for *kīrtana*—*mantra*-*yoga*, or the *yoga* of chanting the Hare Kṛṣṇa *mantra*: Hare Kṛṣṇa, Hare Kṛṣṇa, Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa, Hare Hare / Hare Rāma, Hare Rāma, Rāma Rāma, Hare Hare—the more people present, the better. When Lord Caitanya Mahāprabhu was performing *kīrtana* in India some five hundred years ago, He organized in each group sixteen persons to lead the chanting, and thousands of persons chanted with them. This participation in *kīrtana*, the public chanting of the names and glories of God, is very possible and is actually easy in this age, whereas the meditational process of *yoga* is very difficult. It is specifically stated in the *Bhagavad-gītā* that to perform meditational *yoga* one should go to a secluded and holy place. In other words, it is necessary to leave home. In this age of overpopulation it is not always possible to find a secluded place, but this is not necessary in bhakti-*yoga*. In the *bhakti-yoga* system there are nine processes: hearing, chanting, remembering, serving, worshiping the Deity in the temple, praying, carrying out orders, serving Kṛṣṇa as a friend, and sacrificing for Him. Out of these, *śravaṇam *kīrtana*m*, hearing and chanting, are considered the most important. At a public *kīrtana* one person can chant Hare Kṛṣṇa, Hare Kṛṣṇa, Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa, Hare Hare / Hare Rāma, Hare Rāma, Rāma Rāma, Hare Hare, while a group listens, and at the end of the *mantra*, the group can respond, and in this way there is a reciprocation of hearing and chanting. This can easily be performed in one’s own home with a small group of friends, or with many people in a large public place. One may attempt to practice meditational *yoga* in a large city or in a society, but one must understand that this is one’s own concoction and is not the method recommended in the *Bhagavad-gītā*. —Śrīla Prabhupāda