The Bhaktivedanta Academy Gurukula In Mayapur is already around 90% self sufficient in food production. Now with the development of the Varnasrama College we aim to teach self sufficiency in other areas of life. Our first project is to work with the boys to create a timber frame house based on a vernacular found across South East Asia. Why Timber Frame? Back in the 70’s and 80’s many trees were planted in Mayapur to be used as cash crops. One of the species, that thrives in frequently flood...

Maharaja has won the hearts of thousands, if not millions, all over the world because of his capacity to connect at the level of the heart with people. That is not a skill we get genetically or learn by some self-help training. We can form heart-to-heart connections with others only when we have genuine respect and concern for them. And Maharaja has always had that in abundance, even from his pre-devotional days. I remembered an incident during his spiritual search. A sadhu had ser...

At the battlefield of Kurukshetra, Arjuna put aside his weapons and with tears in his eyes looked at Krishna expecting compassion. But in return he got chastisement. Tears of sorrow did not impress Krishna but rather it displeased him. If a child refuses to appear in an exam then his mother won’t be sympathetic although her child may give several reasons for not giving the exam. Mother being the best well -wisher of her child knows how important exam is for her child’s career. ...

An Istha ghosti is a wonderful opportunity to understand the hearts of the devotee. We express our feelings, and give suggestions to improve our divine service and to increase our sense of belonging in our devotional community. The essence of everything is serving and doing things for Krishna with love, attention, care, respect, concentration and helping others to know their best friend. If people are ready to listen we can tell them directly about Him. Those who aren’t ready to h...

Hare Krishnas don't have to believe in God. We know who God is, what He looks like, what He wants, why and how He created the world and who and what the soul is. This info is available in the Bhagavad Gita. Bhagavad Gita is the only book in the world in which someone claiming to be God, describes in detail about Himself, the soul and Nature and how they inter-relate. Also, we don't have to believe in Evolution or Darwin's theory, as there is no empirical evidence to support that theory. In...

It is sometimes said that Srila Prabhupada built a house in which the whole world can live. Inspired by this idea, I would like to suggest a three-storey house model as a reflection of the nature of ISKCON. The idea is grounded in the Bhagavad-gita and is designed to offer a supporting framework for the sankirtana movement, as well as to further the ongoing discussions of implementing varnasrama within ISKCON. The house described here has three storeys, each having fundamental distinctio...

This paper proposes that eight positive emotions: awe, love (attachment), trust (faith), compassion, gratitude, forgiveness, joy and hope constitute what we mean by spirituality. These emotions have been grossly ignored by psychiatry. The two sciences that I shall employ to demonstrate this definition of spirituality will be ethology and neuroscience. They are both very new. I will argue that spirituality is not about ideas, sacred texts and theology; rather, spirituality is all about e...

When I entered the spacious temple and looked to the right, I was stunned on seeing the huge and extremely beautiful deities of Radha-Madhava, with four sakhis on each side gazing at the perfect beauty of Lord Madhava and Srimati Radharani and very eager to serve Them. The temple was full of devotees offering ghee lamps, an act that symbolizes how our heart burns in separation from Krishna. My family and I also got ghee lamps and offered them to Radha-Madhava and the eight sakhis. ...

To see the true value of the Vedic social system, we need to understand it in its original form. Thinkers throughout history—from Plato to Locke to modern political theorists—have always discussed the ideal form of social organization. Vedic literature also addresses this question and presents as the ideal the social system known as varnashrama, which divides society into four varnas, or occupational groups, and four ashramas, or stages of life. The four varnas are brahmanas (...

By participating in other religious and cultural realities, we break from the mundane and open up the possibility of enchantment. It is the unknown of the festival that beckons to outsiders—the potential for the experience of the ephemeral, the surreal, the transcendent. Tens of thousands of young adults, mostly in their teens and twenties, clamor toward the stage at the spring Festival of Colors in Los Angeles. From a panoply of backgrounds and cultures and beliefs (or no beli...

I was born with a congenital heart deformity that doctors said would probably not allow me to see my fifth birthday. My parents gave me the name Chandrahas, "one whose laugh is like the moon," but sadly they found few reasons to smile in my childhood. When I was around one, learning to walk in our middle-class house, I suddenly collapsed to the floor, never to walk naturally again. My parents, Ramachandra and Sunanda Pujari, had already had me vaccinated against the dreaded polio ...

During his childhood, Sri Jiva Gosvami only enacted the pastimes of Sri Krsna and Balarama. He did not play any other games. He had very nice deities of Krsna and Balarama. Every day he was decorating them, doing srngara, offering worship, offering bhoga and, with concentrated attention, without even blinking his eyes, he would look at the beautiful form of Krsna and offer dandavat pranama to Him. While he was studying, he was thinking of Sri Sri Gaura and Nitai. Once...

There’s no doubt that protecting cows was very close to Srila Prabhupada’s heart. In a series of Back to Godhead magazine articles in the mid 1950s, he was already envisioning a community where residents lived a simple life and protected cows. Soon after registering ISKCON in New York in 1966, he began requesting his disciples to start a rural community, asking them to call it “ISKCON-Nagari or New Vrindaban.” And when Hayagriva Das, Kirtananda Swami and a handful of other devotees ...

I think there is some reason for optimism for the future of ISKCON now, but I think it will not be a opulent Deity worship centric future. I think it will take the form of a Resurgence, going back to basics. Resurgents will be decentralized, independent, light on assets, based in RVs or rental housing. No heavy overhead or labor demands for opulent Deity worship. They will make pilgrimages to existing temples, and encourage others to do so, but not try to emulate them. Rent an apartment, get a ...

Today in the news I noticed that this last Thursday the famous Jazz legend, Natalie Cole passed away. She was the daughter of the famous singer Nat King Cole. I had a short, but memorable, meeting with her some years ago at the airport in Zurich Switzerland. When Krishnakund and I were visiting Budapest Hungary (in 2012?) I noticed during some of our drives around town some posters advertising a concert by Natalie. I don't usually notice such posters, but somehow these caught my eye. A few days...