Forgiveness involves our cultivating virtue independent of the other person, whereas trust is our reciprocation conditional to that person’s cultivating virtue. By carefully understanding the difference between the two, we can transform unfortunate episodes in our relationships into spiritual growth opportunities at least for ourselves – and possibly even for the other person. We needn’t make our forgiveness conditional to the other person’s seeking it, but we should certainly make our trust conditi...

Have you ever worked for someone who doesn’t have time for you? Krishna is the controller of everything, but He has all the time in the universe for you. And not only for you but for me too. That’s the beauty of Krishna. He is with all of us individually. Because the Krishna conscious person is regulated in his work, speech, sleep, wakefulness, and other bodily activities, he or she experiences no misery. This is practical. If someone undergoes some sort of stress...

What if the soul is the body’s source of life and consciousness, as the sun is the universe’s source of heat and light? What if life doesn’t come from a perishable, chance combination of material elements? As a photojournalist exploring Mumbai, these musings coaxed me from blaring car horns and teeming streets to some curious transcendent possibility. The mythical, irrelevant idea of jivatma began delicately to undermine what had been for me a lifetime of hidden hopelessness: what’s t...

I made all my own decisions, I was my own man, but I was also unhappy. I wanted to break away completely from the material world. I wanted God in my life. I want to try it, I thought. But what if I failed? What will I have to give up? I was really scared now. I will have to give up rock and roll and I will have to follow rules and regulations. But deep down inside, my hearts said try it. Scared I was but I took a few steps. And wow, it worked, kind of. I didn't become a saint and I didn't see the white light but I did begin to feel an inner p...

Parallel with the emergence of the ID movement other groups of scientists with roots in Vedic philosophy have developed similar design arguments. One such group of scientists are centered around A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami (1896-1977) who himself was a strong critic of materialistic views including Darwinism. In 1973 he founded his Bhaktivedanta Institute (BI) which attracted scientists such as chemist Dr. Thoudam Singh and mathematician Dr. Richard L. Thompson. Already in 1976, Thompson stated, referring to the newly discovered bacterial flagellum: ”We’d like to argue that the chance a...

The question is this: Does God choose certain individuals or groups for salvation? In other words, are there chosen people? And, alternatively, are certain persons selected for condemnation? The technical term for the matter under discussion is predestination, a word which implies that our final destination, be it heaven or hell, is programmed into our souls from the beginning of our existence. Thus the question of predestination is closely connected with the concep...