An offering to His Divine Grace

Dear Srila Prabhupada

Please accept my humble obeisance. All glories unto your divine Lotus Feet.

Every year on this day of your auspicious appearance, devotees around the world meditate and thank you for the sacrifice you performed for the sake of the lost souls seeking pleasure in this world. If you did not take the pains to travel to the West, preach tirelessly, write volumes of books, build temples, conduct festivals, and give personal instructions to your disciples, today, we would not have the luxury of a global Vaishnava community who are connected with one another either in person or virtually – Thank you very much!

I am happy that I am still chanting, reading and doing some service trying to please you. When I got introduced to Krishna Consciousness, I was doubtful if this is just a phase in my life. I was doubtful if my attachment to you and your words was simply a passing cloud. After all these years, I am happy that I am still chanting implying that perhaps it is not a phase and perhaps it may be something substantial. Having said that, I am still in a phase in my Krishna Consciousness where I ebb and flow with the highs and lows of my life. It is my desire that I am steady in my Krishna consciousness regardless of these high and low points. I submit unto you please accept my services though it may be of idiosyncratic nature.

Pride and anger are two pillars leading to the nether worlds. As long as one harbors such feelings it is not possible to understand sublime truths. In Chaitanya Charitamrta (Adi 1.55), you say that “The development of submissiveness is the cause of proportionate spiritual realization, by which one can ultimately meet the Supreme Lord in person, as a man meets another man face to face”. Living in a place where devotee association is few and far between can promote independence and not submissiveness. Independence is a breeding ground for pride leading to anger. Dear Prabhupada, please always guide me from within and through your books to tolerate the urges of my mind which I sometimes feel is my worst enemy. In the past year, there were many incidences which I could have averted despite outside provocation but because of inherent pride, I became angry and engaged in combative behavior. This, you have said, is on the bodily platform. Going forward, I pray unto you to give me the strength to overcome this elephant like disease of competitive pride and anger.

In the past year, I have tried my best in my capacity to share the word of Krishna to others. I have tried my best to be more introspective with respect to my own sadhana. Going forward, given my limitations, I want to continue to share and introspect. By giving I receive. I hope you were pleased with whatever little sharing and introspection I did in the past year. Please bless me in my attempt to share and introspect more as I get older.

I cannot say this enough and perhaps I will say this till the sun burns out. Without you and your divine instructions, I would be like a ship without a rudder lost in the vast ocean with timingila like fishes ready to gobble me up. It was by your mercy, and blessings I was able to steer this lost ship in a direction where there is hope and freedom. Hope towards an ageless life and freedom from the miseries of life. It does not stop there- you have given us a road map where beyond hope and freedom, we reach the shores of service and bliss – service towards the Supreme Being who is blackish blue in complexion like the rain cloud with lotus like eyes, reddish lips and curly hair. By serving Him unconditionally, one regains His original position of blissful self. What more can we ask for?

Thank you Prabhupada for not only picking me up from the quagmire of this world but also teaching me to clean my act and march towards that Supreme Being. For this I am forever indebted. A debt I can never pay back!

On this divine appearance day of yours, please accept my prostrated dandavats at your divine lotus feet.

Your servant aspiring to be insignificant
Ananda Jagannath Das

Hare Krishna

what is shanti or peace?

God is great, and we are most insignificant servant of God. Our business is to give service to God. When you come to this stage, then there will be shanti. Otherwise there is no possibility of shanti....He knows, "Krsna is there. Whatever I need, He will supply." And Krsna said, yoga-ksemam vahamy aham, tesam nityabhiyuktanam: [Bg. 9.22] "Those who are constantly engaged in My service, I take care how to supply their necessities of life." Then why shall I disbelieve Krishna if I am Krishna conscious? Let me do my duty as servant of Krishna, and whatever necessities are required, He will arrange for them. If you become confident about this thing and completely engage yourself in Krishna consciousness, that is the stage of shanta

- Srila Prabhupada, Dec 30 1974

Patience, confidence, and enthusiasm

As devotees, we should know our limits of spiritual purity. We should not imitate pure devotees in terms of eating, sleeping and other mundane bodily functions. Srila Prabhupada enforced minimum rules such as four regulative principles, chanting 16 rounds and honoring prasadam. If we practice this sincerely and diligently, we can advance towards Krishna. But out of false-pride and duplicitous nature, if we make a show of advancement of sleeping irregular hours, eating little, engaging in bhajana etc, then such show will eventually pull us down. Therefore we have to be humble in progressing towards Krishna.

What does that mean? It means we have to wait till Krishna allows us to get to the next level of purity whatever it may be. We have to perform to our current capacity with sincere diligence and wait for Krishna to give us confidence within us to go to the next level. Either that or we advance purely based on our attachment to our Guru. This is not so common. Intense attachment to Guru can enable one to disband material hankerings instantly and take up to deep levels of Krishna consciousness.

However, those who are not at that level of attachment can however practice vaidhi bhakti gradually till they receive higher taste from Krishna and in that way progress towards spontaneous bhakti. But for all of this to happen, we have to acknowledge our insignificant nature, and in that mood practice our sadhana (whatever we have committed to) strictly every day and beg for Krishna’s mercy to make progress towards Him.

Patience, confidence and enthusiasm is the key.

Hare Krishna

The One who has seen the truth!

There are two things (1) external (2) internal, also called form and substance. Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati maharaj also calls it morphology and ontology. But anyways, anything we do in this world, we have to understand these two factors (external and internal). Pure devotees of the Lord do not show discrimination between external and internal. Because there is no discrimination, there is no duplicity of thought and action. Hence when they say Krishna is God, surrender unto Him. We accept it as it is - as there is no duplicity.

On the other hand, the educated class of this world take professional training to be politically correct externally (in the name of efficient management) while harboring conflicting internal thoughts. So duplicity is a great quality for a material person. Duplicity and hypocrisy leads to quarrel which we experience in abundance today.

One should not hear about the subject matter of God from such duplicitous persons even if he is a popular religious figure. Search and seek out a person whose external and internal behavior is identical and hear about God, such a person can impart knowledge as he has seen the truth. There is no other path to understand God!

Hare Krishna

Practical religion

The problem with mainstream religion such as Hinduism, Christianity, Islam and Judaism is that at some point the practitioner has to give up rational thinking and just start to "believe". Rational thinkers including the empirical ones have a field day with such dogmatic belief. Actually, there is lot of unverifiable dogma in science too that forms the very basis of modern science. So there is dogma in both except in science belief or as they call it assumptions only form the basis for a theory but in religion the whole experience is on the mental platform (dogmatic) with no verifiable experience. Therefore as science is advancing especially through tech trinkets or science fiction gadgets, religion is losing its value.

Another reason I think religion is becoming less of a reference point in modern day living is because it has no practical relevance to people. For example what does religion have to say about social ills such as poverty? Is there a strategy to use religious values as espoused in popular scripture to solve poverty? How about household problems such as divorce or domestic violence? Do we have religious solutions? Rarely you will find a pastor or priest heading a panel dealing with social, political or economical problems. So mainstream popular religions are happy just to use God in manner of "belief" versus "non-belief". Beyond this there is little religion can offer to society today. I agree it is important to "believe" in a life beyond life as it provides some hope for the after-life but if mainstream religion does not offer real-world solutions confronting households and society at large, then religion will simply become a hobby of sorts or merely armchair philosophy.

Bhagavad Dharma, on the other hand as enunciaed by modern day saint Srila Prabhupada, provides us with practical methods or strategies to deal with mental, physical and spiritual problems on an individual level, community level and or global level. If we adopt the methods given by Prabhupada rest assured our social, economic and political problems can be solved and simultaneously cultivate our dormant spiritual attraction for God.

Below is a statement that provides a glimpse into the magnanimous thought of Prabhupada and how he saw Bhagavad Dharma's capacity to change the entire world.

"Human society, at the present moment, is not in the darkness of oblivion. It has made rapid progress in the fields of material comforts, education and economic development throughout the entire world. But there is a pinprick somewhere in the social body at large, and therefore there are large-scale quarrels, even over less important issues. There is need of a clue as to how humanity can become one in peace, friendship and prosperity with a common cause. Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam will fill this need, for it is a cultural presentation for the respiritualization of the entire human society" - Srila Prabhupada

We only have to accept his words and practically apply it in our lives.

Hare Krishna

Grazing and climate change

If we stop animal slaughter on a mass scale, if we go back to our roots of simple life, then it is doable, our planet can return to its pristine self and serve mankind with glory.

Hare Krishna

Decline in married first time mothers

According to a recent report by the Census, in the US, there is a rapid decline in marriage rates among first time young mothers less than age 23 indicating that more and more young women are delivering babies outside wedlock. The purple line represent married women - it has dramatically dropped from 63% prior to the 1990s to 24% in 2012. The blue line are young moms cohabitating. Cohabitation is a sociological phenomenon on the rise in the US where man and woman just live together as mates without any commitment. Another reason as to why divorce rates are reducing because more and more are cohabitating. The pink line is much more disturbing in that these women neither cohabitate nor marry but get pregnant nevertheless. They are most likely women with unplanned pregnancies. In other words, they have sex without any intention to get pregnant but get pregnant anyways. This group of women most likely perform abortion as they feel pregnancy is a burden on their life.

So why is this important, you ask? When we live our lives solely to satisfy our sensual organs, honestly, the line between man and beast disappears!!

Arjuna argued with Krishna that he will not fight the battle of Kurukshetra. One of the reason he gave was that by killing many men in battle the family tradition will be destroyed thus giving rise to unwanted children who then will destroy all community and social welfare projects. Arjuna gave such astute responses to Krishna that today after 5000 some years we can see the impact of unwanted pregnancies. The Govt ends up spending billions in social welfare and still most of these children are growing with mental and physical challenges. What to speak of spiritual acumen?

Krishna Consciousness is simply not a sectarian religion based on dogmatic beliefs. It is intended to respiritualize the entire human society providing solution to all problems of life. Sex no doubt is very enticing thus sex is a multi-billion dollar industry. Every aspect of our modern life is filled with sexual innuendos. This is not surprising. However, we can change this obsession with sex.

By simply chanting the Hare Krishna Mahamantra, we can turn to our lighter side- our spiritual side. Life will be much more simpler, much more happier!

Chant Hare Krishna and be happy!

Hare Krishna