Throughout most of the world, religious organizations have primary and secondary schools where students can gain knowledge and experience of their tradition in the context of academic learning. Whereas in some countries nearly all schools are religiously based, it is far more the norm in most nations for various religious denominations to have schools side by side with secular educational institutions. Some countries, such as New Zealand and the Netherlands, offer a wide range of support, inclu...

“My parents had eight kids, so we didn’t really go out to eat – my mother just cooked constantly to feed us all,” she says. “So being around it all the time, I started cooking myself when I was a little kid. I baked my first brownies at the age of seven.” But with all that good old-fashioned home cooking, Dharmakala never tasted anything quite like the Sunday Feast at the Hare Krishna temple in Ocean City, Maryland, in 1972 – “It was totally out of this world,” she says. And i...

The Srimad-Bhagavatam mentions that Lord Balarama visited Kanyakumari in the course of His pilgrimage. Lord Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu also visited Kanyakumari during His South India tour. In the year 1510, Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu came to Kanyakumari. In Vrindavana, in the forest of Bhandiravan, there is a murti of Sridama. When Krishna and Balarama were leaving Vrindavana, Krishna told Sridama that He will be back in few days and Sridama said that he will wait. Under a banyan tree, in the forest...

As we entered the Pacific Coliseum, Mahesh Prabhu and I headed for the floor, our saffron bags filled with books, magazines and incense. The crowd was obviously excited as we gradually walked to the front of the stage distributing our spiritual goods along the way. "Hare Krishna" people shouted. Many of George's fans knew that he had an affinity towards our movement, so they were very friendly and supportive. When the concert began, George appeared on stage wearing a number of badges with spiritua...

In recent times, many attempts to bring science and religion together have been motivated from the impersonalist and voidist philosophical stances. Buddhism is a philosophy of voidism while Advaita Vedanta is a philosophy of impersonalism. On the face of it, there is tremendous synergy between science and these ideologies of formlessness because science too tries to describe the ultimate reality as a formless vacuum. In both cases, forms are emergent rather than fundamental properties of nature. How...

The scripture tells a story of a cruel hunter named Mrugrari who used to rejoice seeing suffering of helpless animals and birds. He used to half kill them and then enjoy seeing them suffer and die. When sage Narada saw the suffering beasts and birds, he was aghast. Why don’t you just kill them completely, he asked? Mrugrari replied smilingly, “Because I enjoy seeing them suffer and die”. Narada understood that his cruelty is going to cost him dear, the hunter is going to get a terri...

The law of karma in Vedic philosophy (and indeed in numerous Eastern religious philosophies) is a moral law that judges a person's actions. All judgments are based on whether an act is right or wrong, and these judgments are in turn based on comprehending the meanings of actions. For instance, before you can judge whether an act of shooting is right or wrong, you must first comprehend a physical sequence of events as "shooting", which itself requires associating meanings with facts. If meaning...

And especially what was also very, very satisfying to me was seeing that not only we are preserving the parampara by manifesting these three symptoms but that these events are also wonderful opportunity for distributing Srila Prabhupada’s books. For me that is the icing on the cake. That makes it so sweet. These events are very, very good opportunities to inspire people to want to know more about this. And therefore these are very, very, good opportunities for making Srila Prabhupada’s books ...

WE CROSS Oxford Street with five mrdanga drums, two loud and deep African drums, karatala cymbals, an accordion, and an electric guitar. Our chanting party consists of over a hundred members, from so many countries and ethnic backgrounds that the diversity is startling. There are men in dhotis, in suits, and in jeans, women in saris, colorful dresses, and subdued business clothes. We race or dance down the street, singing as fast as we run, churning up waves of spiritual joy. The lead singer we...

The first thing to be recognized in Gaudiya-Vaishnava philosophy is that Krsna is Reality. Srimad Bhagavatam states that there is a reality which is also the Absolute Truth. That reality is, however, understood in many different ways. Indeed, Srila Prabhupada writes at the beginning of Srimad Bhagavatam that the concept of Absolute Truth and the concept of God are not on the same level. The concept of God is like the driver of a car who controls the car, but this concept does not explain how the car...

Even when living entities harbor inimical desires towards Shri Krishna, He satisfies them. Shri Krishna’s arrangement of male and female prototypes in the material world creates an illusion of genuine relations between two different energies. And through the interaction of male and female entities other bodies take birth. The material world mimics (or reflects in a perverted sense) the spiritual world wherein there is constant interaction of Shri Krishna with His innumerable liberated servant...

In 1981 devotees posed for a photograph that appeared in a publication called The Wonderful World of Hare Krishna in Australia. A sankirtana party of approximately 40 devotees clearly showed the Sydney Opera House in the background. The Opera House has become a worldwide symbol for what Donald Horne in his 1964 book called The Lucky Country. On Saturday, 20 August 2016 devotees of ISKCON will perform sankirtana inside this iconic structure. Srila Prabhupada’s singular fault, according to Sril...

If you think strongly enough, you will be forced by science to believe in God: Lord Kelvin There is a perfect brain behind all the natural physical laws: Albert Einstein This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being...This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all, and on account of His dominion He is to be called Lord God, Universal Ruler: Newton God is the...

After the publication of paper ‘Life and consciousness – The Vedāntic view’ in a hardcore Biology Journal Communicative & Integrative Biology (Volume 8, Issue 5 – Publisher: Taylor and Francis) it has stimulated a lot of interesting discussions among prominent scientists worldwide. This important service by Srila Prabhupada’s Scientific Sankirtan party must be very pleasing to Srila Prabhupada. I am receiving regularly these interesting ongoing ‘Science Religion’ dialogue and I want...

Visiting the inconspicuous Matchless Gift storefront that at first glance had nothing spiritual to recommend itself drove home like never before Srila Prabhupada’s pragmatism. As I contemplated how the surroundings had been squalid and sordid during the days of the counterculture, it struck me how revolutionary Prabhupada had been. Starting amidst the most impure of circumstances, he had by the potency of bhakti not only purified many people here, but had also made this place the starting ...

I was sad to see that none of the ancient glory of Vrindavan remains. The sacred Jamuna River was dry and polluted, as was the entire city. Vrindavan is no longer a "van," so the hogs have been displaced into the city and the legendary peacocks of Vrindavan are no more. Hogs, monkeys, cats, dogs, and even cows drank from open sewers that lined the unmaintained, bumpy streets that surrounded Vrindavan's dilapidated ruins. Mountains of trash were thrown by the side of the road, giving off an intense...

One day in April, 1966, someone broke into Srila Prabhupada's room on Seventy-second Street and stole his typewriter and tape recorder. As Prabhupada returned to the building, the janitor informed him of the theft. An unknown burglar had broken the transom glass above the door, climbed through, taken the valuables, and escaped. As Prabhupada heard the details of the crime, he became convinced that it was the janitor himself who had broken in and stolen his things, and that the man was now...

Saksi Gopala Temple is a very important temple located almost midway between Jagannatha Puri Dhama and Bhubaneswar, in a town called Saksi-gopala, about 20 km west of Jagannatha Puri Dhama. The Saksi-gopala Deity here, being 5000 years old, is an exceptionally special one. It is said that Vajranabha, Lord Sri Krishna’s great-grandson, installed two Gopala Deities in Vraja Mandala namely Saksi-gopala and Madana Gopala (Madana Mohana). The Saksi-gopala Deity is the life-size Gopala Deity who wa...

Accepting that it is your fault that you are fallen into the cycle of birth and death is what surrender is all about. It is only by accepting this that we can sincerely accept the Lord's help in getting ourselves delivered from this fallen state. Logically, if it is not your fault, then you are not really fallen. Just like, if you end up in prison for a crime you did not deliberately commit (maybe you were just a victim of association, but you personally did not intend harm), then you are not reall...