Imagine this scene. After millions of lifetimes you finally make it back to the spiritual world. As you approach the gates of Goloka you are asked to wait because Krsna wants to come and personally greet you. You are getting more excited at every moment. You can hardly believe you have finally made it back to your eternal home. In the distance you see a beautiful blue form coming towards you. Finally, after transmigrating through 8,400,000 specie...

“Nish, nish, ram, ram, nish, nish, ram, ram.” Prabhupada once imitated how we sometimes chant without focus, without concentration, without proper pronunciation – how we chant when we don’t feel like chanting. You know the mood behind this chanting; “I have to chant but I’d rather be doing something else.” And in our minds we are thinking, “I can’t wait to get these rounds out of the way.” We all do this. And it can get pretty bad. I know devotees who...

Our false ego prevents us from looking at our own faults. It makes it difficult for us to acknowledge our faults and therefore, instead of being introspective, we see those faults in others. Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Thakur said, “Because I am myself honeycombed with faults, I see the faults of others”. If you spot it, you have got it. In the realm of psychology it is said that if something about someone really bothers you, it’s usually because you have that fault. Of course, we usually don’t accept or acknowledge this. This is a powerful way to understand our...

It’s natural to talk about new year’s resolutions. You might be thinking about doing something you’ve put off or making some changes for the new year. Srila Prabhupada cites Dhruva Maharaja as a perfect example of determination. He says that we should be as determined to be Krsna conscious as Dhruva was to see Krsna. Dhruva was willing to undergo any austerity to see Krsna. We learn from this that there’s a big difference between wanting something and being committed to achieving it. This is the difference between determination in the mode of ignorance and determinati...

There is something I’ve noticed about my japa over the years: Bad habits don’t die easily. Prabhupada said chanting produces more chanting. But the question is what kind of “more chanting” does it produce? My experience is that bad chanting produces more bad chanting. And if the bad chanting goes on long enough, it pretty much becomes a habit. Then bad becomes the norm. Since bad chanting is not relishable, japa tends to take less of a priority in life. It bec...

The sastras are full of stories of forgiveness: Ambarisa forgiving Durvasa, Parikshit forgiving Sringi, Narada Muni forgiving Daksa, Prahlada forgiving Hiranyakasipu, Haridas Thakura forgiving the guards who beat him, Nityananada forgiving Jagai and Madhai, Parasarama forgiving those who stole his family’s kamadhenu cow. Srila Prabhupada forgave anyone who came to him to serve Krsna. And of course Krsna forgives all of us no matter how sinful or blasphemous we were. Sastra implores us to forgive. The Srimad Bhagavatam lists forgiveness as one of the qualities of civilized ...

1. To-do List Japa – Meditating on your to-do and shopping lists, sometimes adding and deleting items between mantras. This may also include mentally balancing your checkbook or mentally going over which bills you have to pay. Caution: This process can cause you to lament about how many bills you have to pay, and thus changing your prayers from “Oh Lord, please engage me in your service,” to “Oh Lord, please add a few more zeroes to the end of my bank balance.” 2. I Hate Him Japa – While...

As it is said, “Pray as if everything depends on God and act as if everything depends on you.” This is what Prabhupada did and Krsna definitely answered Prabhupada’s prayers. Personal responsibility towards preaching is empowering. Prabhupada’s god-brothers went to preach in England in the 1920’s and came back saying that the westerners are too fallen to take up Krsna consciousness. Fortunately, Prabhupada didn’t think this way. He took personal responsibil...

How to Change this Year? You Need to Freak Out! Our cultural conditioning tells us we should make resolutions for the new year. Of course, the perennial problem is that most of us haven't followed through on our previous year's resolutions. And it can even get depressing to think about how many times this has happened. So maybe it is better we don't make any resolutions this year. This way we'll have nothing to lament about in early February when we haven't followed through. Well, actually I think it's a better idea to understand why we don't follow through on our resolutio...

If I wrote an article telling you how to double your money in ten days, would you be interested? Of course you would. Well if I knew how I’d tell you. But I don’t, so sorry. But I can tell you something better. I can tell you how to double your blessings in ten days. Are you as interested?

(The following is an excerpt from an unfinished book about my life in Krsna consciousness. It details the history of how big book distribution began in Iskcon, a history which has not been chronicled in any Iskcon publications. The scene takes place in Vancouver, Canada, November of 1971.) At this time in Iskcon (1971) big book distribution had not yet begun. We only distributed Back to Godhead magazines (BTG’s) on the street. We usually got donation of 25cents per magazine. If we were lucky, we might occasionally get a really big donation...

The reality is that if we don’t become enthusiastic about improving ourselves, we are going to have trouble moving forward. We can lament and feel remorseful about our fallen condition, yet we can be enthusiastic for bhakti at the same time. We see this mood in many of the prayers of our acaryas. On one hand they are lamenting their fallen nature and on the other hand they are expressing a strong hankering to achieve Krsna’s lotus feet. These "negative emotions" can ...

The first thing Srila Prabhupada explained to a friend of mine in their three hour meeting on how to run his business was this: "Don't compromise your principles." Srila Prabhupada often said, "I never compromised my principles. If I compromised I could have attracted more people, but then I would have given them a watered down product that would have neither been genuine nor pure. I was not prepared to compromise my principles even if no one joined my mission." The truth is that many people joined his mission; and they joined precisely because he did not compromise his ...

I once attended a workshop facilitation training in which we were taught that many people will come to our trainings with the mindset of “I already know that.” They explained that they might know of it, about it, or are familiar with it, but they don’t know it unless they live it. So if our audience thinks they already know what we will be teaching, the learning process shuts down for them. So we were taught to joke with the audience by saying, “The three worse words in the English language for learning are, “I know that.” The point of this article is to see how...

How do we maintain self-confidence, yet feel ourselves a fool before our spiritual master? How can we be confident and simultaneously feel unqualified to serve Krishna? Aren’t self-confident people somewhat proud or arrogant? We are ordinary people engaged in an extraordinary process, a process that will make us extraordinary. Thus, our confidence lies not in ourselves, but in the power of the process of bhakti. With Krishna’s divine power and intelligence guiding us, we know we will succeed. ...

1. Preaching without trying to understand people's needs and interests 2. Continuing to speak without determining if people are understanding or accepting what you are saying 3. Not paying attention when people talk 4. Interrupting people when they talk 5. Not letting people talk 6. Speaking in a dogmatic way rather than making a logical and scientific presentation 7. Introducing or speaking elaborately on a very elevated subject that people may not be able to understand 8. Introducing or getting stuck on controversial topics 9. Compromising the truth to speak palatably 10. ...

After reflecting on this exchange, I concluded that Krsna's instruction to, "Just surrender unto Me," is really another way of saying, "Just Do It." Of course, it took convincing to bring Arjuna to this position, and Krsna brought Arjuna step-by-step to the point of accepting His will. Yet, by saying "surrender" Krsna is telling Arjuna to forget the step-by-step process and just go for it. To me, this kind of surrender is like diving into a river on a cold morning as opposed to going in the river step-by-step. The goal is the same, but one takes a lot longer to get to the same place. In other wo...

Can a person with low self-esteem be spiritually advanced? Can a person with healthy self-esteem not be spiritually advanced? Is there an absolute correlation between the two? Yes, to the first two questions. But if one has low self-esteem, it can be an impediment because of the need to pull others down. Of course, high self-esteem doesn't guarantee spiritual advancement, but generally such persons have an easier time confronting and dealing with their faults. I find that many of the devotee’s problems come from not loving themselves, that is they neglect their sadhana ...

Many times Srila Prabhupada said "Love and trust." I think we need a lot more of this. Vengeance, envy, anger,and discord are often higher within religious groups than elsewhere (“We have enough religion to hate, but not enough to love”). We need to be careful about this in Iskcon. Recently I came across this quote. "Religious people often become self righteous, judgmental, resentful, condemning, etc. as they see more faults in man than other's see. Psychologists have noted that piety can easi...

Appreciation only costs you a few words, but what it buys is priceless. When Dale Carnegie said to be appreciated is the greatest human need, those who paid attention found appreciation one of the greatest motivating forces known to man. Years of research has taught us this important lesson: if you don't pay people enough that they feel secure in life, you will get a small percentage of their creative abilities because they are worried about their future. So, it would seem logical that if those people were paid enough, you would tap into their full creative potential. The r...

The Soul is Made of Faith. In this article I use the word belief as “a feeling of certainty about what something means.” I discuss how this feeling of certainty affects the way you look at things, and the way you look at things affects your actions. Therefore, in this sense things are less the way they are and more the way we are. Belief is fundamental to consciousness. In Chapter 17 verse 3 of the Gita, Krsna says the atma is made of faith. If someone doesn’t believe that the atma is made of faith, it just means they have faith (th...

Fault finding is natural for the conditioned soul. We don't have to learn how to do it or take training to get better at it. In fact, for many people it is an addiction which gives them some form of perverted pleasure. We could call this the Ramacandra Puri complex. Ramachandra Puri was a contemporary of Lord Caitanya. He had an intense need to fault find. He took delight in finding faults in others, even where there were no faults. Fault finding was his life and soul. Fault finding can be so addicting that some people have to get their dai...

Let’s start with the good news: we can be Krsna conscious anywhere. And here’s the bad news: there really isn’t an ideal environment for being Krsna consciousness. I hear you saying, “How can you say that?” What about the temple, what about Vrndavana and Mayapura, what about a Rathayatra Festival?” Yes, those would seem to be ideal environments for developing Krsna consciousness. But let me ask you a question: Does everyone who goes to Vrndavana, or a temple, or to a Rathayatra become Krsna conscious? Most people do, but on...