The Karthik month is a very busy month for most Malaysian devotees. While getting the family together daily to offer ghee lamps to our sweet Lord Krishna, devotees in Malaysia has, over the years, introduced various preaching methods to extend the opportunity of offering ghee lamps to the general masses. Like every year, the month-long festival was launched in Sri Jagannath Mandir Kuala Lumpur on Sunday, 25 October 2015. Under the leadership of Sri Jagannath Mandir , Kuala Lumpur ...

The first day of the Yatra to Ramapuram village had been very smooth with the support of so many devotees and it being native village of Sripati prabhu. The next day was not expected to be smooth; the battle was now on foreign turf. Most of the city devotees had returned the previous night to resume their regular city lifestyles- working for corporate companies or businesses. However, their hearts and prayers were for the devotees left behind trying to fulfill the desire of their acarya....

BBT India organized a two-day conference on book distribution on 21st and 22nd October, 2015 at ISKCON Govardhan Eco Village, Wada. This was a pioneering attempt to help book distributors in West Indian Divisional Council (WIDC) become more organized and inspired for the upcoming Marathon. The event was inaugurated by HG Gauranga Prabhu (WIDC Chairman and ISKCON GBC Member) and HG Vaisesika Prabhu (ACBSP) with the blessings of HH Gopal Krishna Goswami Maharaja, HH Jayapataka Swami Maharaja, HH Loka...

The Nusantara Culture Parade on Sempiro (a week stay in Probolinggo, East Java, Indonesia) attracted many people to come and participate. They came with their culture and in various types of costumes. Surya Narayana prabhu and his wife (disciple of H.H. Subhag Swami Maharaj) and Karabhajan prabhu, who resides in Probolinggo continually do sankirtan in Probolinggo to attract the Lord to come to Probolinggo. They were eagerly that there were would be a ratha yatra in probolinggo. They used all ...

On the 30th of July, 2015 at a prestigious new concert hall built recently in the very heart of downtown Vilnius, Radhanath Swami shared stories from his autobiography “The Journey Home”. The luxurious hall provided a perfect venue for an evening of spiritual wisdom, where Radhanth Swami shared experiences from his journey from suburbs of Chicago to mystical India. Radhanath Swami was joined on stage by popular Lithuanian musician and songwriter Amberlife (Edgaras Lubys) who performed li...

Soon after the inauguration ceremony Sri Govind Gau Gram Prachar Yatra team moved towards their first village - Ramapuram (in Kodad, Nalgonda), thus also taking Srila Prabhupada’s and Caitanya Mahaprabhu’s dream closer to reality. The first target was Ramapuram as that happened to be the village of HG Sripati prabhu. A small caravan of cars carrying cheering devotees followed the Sankirtan bus with enthusiasm. There were about 30 devotees moving along in three different cars and many ...

One of the major highlight of Kartik in Vrindavan is, of course, the parikramas, or pilgrimages. Every year, ISKCON guru Lokanath Swami heads up the massive Braj Mandala Parikrama, which drew 1,500 devotees last year for its 25th anniversary, and is expecting a similar attendance this year. Participants travel by foot from holy place to holy place in and around the town now called Vrindavan for the entire month of Kartik, camping in tents or sleeping in local school buildings. Rising daily at...

They wear special cloth, prepare foods only eaten on these rare days, and congregate in mass around a few exceptional people that are taking part in a ceremony lasting over 3 hours. All the while they chant two and three word phrases together in cadence, which creates and encourages a collectively desired experience. I remember 4 years ago, when we first began regular harinama's at the football games. A rag/tag group of us led by me, a 2 year old bhakta at the time, were chanting with some reg...

On the auspicious day of Dwadasi, October 25, 2015 in the attractive precincts of Sri Sri Radha-Madanmohan temple, Hyderabad, the inauguration ceremony of the Yatra was conducted. The Yatra team had readied one Sankirtan bus with Sri Sri Jagannath Baldev Subhadra. Since it was Srila Prabhupada’s desire to travel to villages in a vehicle, he is also present in his deity form besides the Lordships. A simple program was conducted at 9 in the morning amidst the enthusing crowd of devotees. HG...

During the month of Kartik, many devotees assemble from various parts of the world to Vrindavan in order to recharge their spiritual battery. Parikrama allows an opportunity for devotees to nourish their bhakti through the medium of visiting various places of pastimes of the Lord, hearing of those pastimes from senior devotees and serving the vaisnavas. With this in mind, HH Subhag Swami Maharaj organised a series of programs in different places across Vraja during this holy month. In preparatio...

It was a little scary to be honest. Hundreds of desperate people surrounded the van. The first task was to get people to make a queue which needed all hands on deck, and our team sprung to action. Soon we were distributing delicious rice, subji, cake, apple pie, apples and oranges. We were going as fast as possible as it was important to keep up the momentum , if we spaced out the volatile situation could kick off. Desperate suffering people were pointing to their muddy feet , broken shoes and sa...

The summit was inaugurated by the honorable Union minister for environment, forests & climate change – Sri Prakash Javadekar. In his voluble keynote address, the minister stressed that it was possible to achieve economic progress while taking practical mindful measures to improve the environmental situation without sacrificing one for the other. He made noteworthy reference to ISKCON s initiative in pioneering a conference in the beautiful...