DIY Kartik Lamps (Album of photos)
Kurma Dasa: Fed up with dripping paraffin wax all over the floor from nasty cheap candles?......

Kadamba Kanana Swami: In the Bhagavad-gita 10.35, Krsna says that of all the months, “I am marga-sirsa,” which is a name for the November-December period. It is said that before Krsna, first comes Radha… Radha-Krsna, Radha-Syam, Sita-Rama, like that. First the consort of the Lord is mentioned. Therefore the month of Kartik, which comes before this month of marga-sirsa, is a month of Radharani. It is a month when we are meditating on pure devotional service because she is the proprietor of pure devotional service! No compromise at all, ...

Ananda Vrindavaneswari Devi Dasi: As my bare feet hit the cold marble floor of the altar during the early morning service hours I whispered, ‘Oh, so cold!’. My fellow pujari turned and smilingly whispered back, ‘Austerity!’ It wasn’t the first time I was reminded that there is a sweetness to doing something difficult for Krishna. Actually, it’s only by intentional practices that we can begin to access spiritual tastes and emotions that are less obvious and more refined.

Lecture by HG Narayani Devi Dasi at ISKCON Alachua

A very nice explanation about the 3 levels of happiness and their symptoms by HH Gopal Krishna Goswami

Kripamoya Das: Krishna is the Original Soul. If they were able, all souls could trace their ultimate origin to Krishna, the origin of everyone and everything. Just as the body has a soul within, so the soul also has a soul. The Soul of the soul is known as Atma-atma. But this Soul is never trapped or compromised as the individual soul is. This Soul remains ever free and above all. He is therefore known as the Over Soul or Superior Soul, or Supersoul, the Param-atma.

Srila Prabhupada: People are running around–“Oh, I am the manager. I am the factory owner. I am this. I am that. We know his politics, we have to defeat our competitors.” All these things are created just like a man creates a situation in a dream– svapna–drastur ivanjasa.
So when someone asks, “When did we come into contact with the material nature?” The answer is that we have not come into contact. By the influence of the material energy, we THINK that we are in contact. Actually, we are NOT fallen. We cann...

Sacinandana Swami: Why bother? Considering how short life is, why should we bother about taking care of the different aspects of health? In the Sri Caitanya-siksamrta (chapter 2.1, p. 67-68) Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakura explains why: “If people do not follow these rules [regarding health of body and mind], they cannot pass through life smoothly. […] One will not be able to take the mind from material thoughts and direct it to thoughts of God. As a result, sinful thoughts and an atheistic attitude will dominate the mind. Finally, a person will ...

Kavicandra Swami: Yesterday was a wake-up call day. I was asked to “bless” two cremations. Both were for elderly matajis who were serving up until the end, in spite of infirm bodies. The devotees, of course, were there and chanting. When we arrived at the second one the crematorium was so crowded that everything was behind schedule, so due to another temple program, I was not able to stay.
For the soul, there is neither birth nor death.

Meditation and Chanting Go Together.
In the Gaudiya way of bhakti, you offer everything to Krsna, the good, the bad – your life. You share everything with someone you are close to, the barriers are low, close friends are intimate. In bhakti this is called mamata, a strong sense of ownership, or relation to the Lord, that “He is mine and I’m His”. This type of love can be attained by two types of devotional service, as it is stated by Narada Muni in Sri Brhad-bhagavatamrta: “One develops that love by practicing the devotio...

Srimad Bhagavatam class by HG Daivi Shakti Mataji at ISKCON Vrindavan.

Srimad Bhagavatam class by HG Hansarupa Dasa at ISKCON NYC Brooklyn Temple

Mayavadis are those who consider the forms of the Lord to be temporary and made out of matter.

After stealing butter one day, Krsna allowed mother Yasoda to catch Him and bind Him to a grinding mortar. Thus by His own arrangement He was then ready to fulfill the words of His great devotee Narada Muni. Narada had cursed the two brothers Nalakuvara and Manigriva to become twin arjuna trees in Nanda Maharaja’s courtyard, but Narada had also promised that one day they would see the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Krsna, face to face.

Srimad Bhagavatam class by HG Svavasa Prabhu at Iskcon Los Angeles

When we are good at something, we can easily spot others’ weaknesses in that area. For example, if we are good at language, our attention automatically zooms to others’ grammatical shortcomings.
Still, when people have an ability deficiency – they are tone-deaf – we learn to live with it. But when they have a behavioral deficiency – they are forgetful, untidy or unpunctual – we often find that intolerable. We feel that they could easily improve if they would just try.

Srimad Bhagavatam class by HH Bhakti Chaitanya Swami in Mayapur,

“From his front room at 6 Sita Kanta Banerjee, Abhay conceived, wrote, edited, and typed the manuscript for a magazine. He designed a logo, a long rectangle across the top of the page. In the upper left-hand corner was a figure of Lord Chaitanya, effulgent with rays of light like rays from the sun. In the lower right were silhouettes of a crowd of people, in darkness but groping to receive light from Lord Chaitanya. And between Lord Chaitanya and the people, the title unfurled like a banner— BACK TO GODH...

Srila Prabhupada: The materialist thinks that persons engaged in Krishna consciousness are crazy fellows wasting time by chanting Hare Krishna, but actually he does not know that he himself is in the darkest region of craziness because of accepting his body as permanent.

I have a little story about the time I distributed a Bhagavad-gita As It Is to the then-future Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau and his fiancee Sophie-Gregoire. They married in 2005 so it must have been a year or two before that when I met them.The Montreal Hare Krishna devotees from the ISKCON community of Sri Sri Radha Manora were doing Harinam Sankirtan, the congregational chanting of the Hare Krishna mantra in a parade down trendy St. Laurent Blvd. The parade was commemorating the celebration of “India Independence Day” Each ethnic ...

Visvambhara Das: Some time ago l met a family in Uxbridge. After they received a Gita from me, they said, “Our son Kesava received the same book 3 months ago from an Italian priest called Raffaele from Watford mandir. Kesava was on a wheelchair. When he came home, he was reading it every day”.

“What’s that?” I asked. “I-S-K-C-O-N,” he spelled the letters out.
“ISKCON—International Society for Krishna Consciousness.” Then he laughed. He was obviously having fun.
It was also in early August that we began attending the early morning meetings. None of us had ever gotten up before ten or eleven in the morning, but the magnetism of Srila Prabhupada drew us out of our dark Mott Street dens at 6:30 and down from fifth-floor apartments into deserted Lower East Side streets.

Sunday Feast lecture by HG Dravida Dasa in ISKCON San Diego Live TV

Sacinandana Swami: When we start our devotional practices it is possible to keep them up for a while out of a sense of duty. For a while it is possible to practice devotional service mechanically out of a sense of “I have to do this.” But in the end we are not machines! We cannot practice for a long time, if we only do it mechanically, and not experience the taste of it. We can only continue steadily if we get a genuine taste for it - the sweet and relishable taste of bhakti.