Friends of the BBT Newsletter – June 07

In this issue…

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Spotlight

A Free Ticket Home
by Madhava Smullen

When Mahat Tattva dasa noticed book distribution decline in the nineteen-nineties due to a lack of full-time temple devotees, he didn’t despair.

Instead, he looked around him to see what other religious organizations were doing. What he found was that most of them didn’t have many monks either –their book distribution was done by congregational members. And very successfully, too.

“If they can do it, why can’t we?” Mahat Tattva asked. ISKCON certainly had enough householders and congregational members who wished they could distribute Prabhupada’s books, but did not have the time to do it the classic way due to their busy schedules.

Mahat Tattva had an idea that would allow them to distribute books with minimal time and effort. In 1999, he founded Sastra Dana at the ISKCON temple in Los Angeles. Literally translated as “The gift of scripture,” the premise of Sastra Dana was simple: Devotees would purchase sponsored BBT books, and make them available to the public for free.

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News in Brief

New Lord Rama Title for BBT India

The BBT at Juhu Beach has printed a new title: Rescuing Sita, the Wife of Lord Rama –with never-before-published artwork of Rama’s pastimes, originally commissioned for the Glory of India Museum in New Delhi.

The books consists of the two chapters about Lord Ramachandra’s pastimes from the Ninth Canto of Srimad
Bhagavatam and is 150 pages long.

The book is for mass distribution outside Asia, especially in the West, where people are not well acquainted with the history of Lord Ramachandra, though it will also be distributed in India and Asia.

Mayapura Study Retreat

How would you like to study the Bhagavad-gita under learnedteachers in one of the holiest places on Earth, Sridham Mayapura?

Well go ahead and book your tickets. Because Bhagavata-pravesa, an extension course of the BBT’s Sanskrit School, Srimad-Bhagavata Vidyapitham, is accepting students now. For eight months, you can learn basic Sanskrit using Srila Jiva Goswami’s grammar, and study the Bhagavad-gita with purports by Srila Prabhupada, Bhaktivinoda Thakura and Baladeva Vidyabhusana.

And it’s all free!

If you render a little service to the Mayapur mission, prasadam and accommodation are thrown in too. To find out more, download the prospectus for Bhagavata-pravesa 2007-2008.

Brihad Bhagavatamrita Audio Books

The BBT is meeting the ever-increasing demand for audio books, with a new audio version of Sri Brihad-Bhagavatamrita. The trilogy follows the gripping spiritual journey of Gopa-Kumara as he tries to develop his relationship with Krishna. Originally written by Sanatana Goswami, this inspiring story of devotion has been translated and commented on by longtime Sanskrit scholar Gopiparanadhana Dasa.

Production began in early 2006, when Kesava Bharati Dasa Goswami auditioned for narrator and secured the role. This will be good news for the many devotees who enjoyed his absorbing readings from the book.

The audio book will appear on three MP3 CDs, and is expected by summer 2008.

People Profile

No Excuses:
Radhanatha Dasa

When Radhanatha Dasa joined ISKCON in 1975, it was with the same simplicity and clarity that keeps him going today, no matter what the world throws at him. While working for his father’s steel company in Pennsylvania, he bought Srila Prabhupada’s The Perfection of Yoga, and immediately went to stay the night at the temple advertised on the inside cover. And when a devotee showed him a picture of Krishna with a cow, something inexplicable immediately welled up inside him. “This is God!” he decided, excitedly.

Quitting his job to travel with the Radha Damodar Sankirtana Party, he sold Prabhupada’s books simply because he liked selling things. But four years later, he had acquired a deep understanding for the philosophy, and his book distribution service was cemented for life.

It was this philosophical understanding that would help Radhanatha when his strength, resolve, and the very foundations of his faith were tested.

“One day, as usual, I was doing sankirtana,” he says. “As I was thinking how much I loved being part of the Hare Krishna movement and never wanted to leave, extreme pain suddenly shot up my legs, and I had to sit down. I couldn’t move for two days after that.”

Radhanatha was diagnosed with Ankylosing Spondylitis, a rare and extreme rheumatic condition that calcifies the joints until movement is extremely difficult.

Undaunted, he continued to distribute books, using a cane.
But a few years later, in 1999, a life-threatening operation to replace his hips and knees went wrong, and Radha-
natha’s legs became infected. To save him, they had to be amputated.

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Looking Death in the Eye
by Vijaya Dasa

I was distributing books in Greece on a street full of restaurants. People sat at tables all the way down thesidewalk, talking and laughing.

In the midst of the merriment, I noticed a Romanian woman watching the scene with a disturbed look on her face. I walked over to her and asked her what was up. She told me that the old man she had been nursing for the last three months had just died an hour earlier, while looking her right in the eyes.

She had looked death in the eye, and now all she could see was everyone trying to enjoy despite being surrounded by so much suffering. I explained the soul and reincarnation to her, and told her how material enjoyment is useless in comparison with spiritual happiness. Gratefully, she bought a book from me.

I was grateful too. For a brief moment, I had seen the temporariness of this phantasmagorical world through the eyes of another soul.

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