{"id":6968,"date":"2009-02-22T08:16:19","date_gmt":"2009-02-22T07:16:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/?p=6968"},"modified":"2009-02-22T08:18:49","modified_gmt":"2009-02-22T07:18:49","slug":"apocalypse-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/?p=6968","title":{"rendered":"Apocalypse NOW!"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Jagabandhu das<\/strong><\/p>\n

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NEW YORK (Reuters) – Renowned investor George Soros said on Friday the world financial system has effectively disintegrated, adding that there is yet no prospect of a near-term resolution to the crisis.<\/span><\/div>\n

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\nSoros said the turbulence is actually more severe than during the Great Depression, comparing the current situation to the demise of the Soviet Union.<\/div>\n

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\nHe said the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in September marked a turning point in the functioning of the market system.<\/div>\n

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\n“We witnessed the collapse of the financial system,” Soros said at a Columbia University dinner. “It was placed on life support, and it’s still on life support. There’s no sign that we are anywhere near a bottom.”<\/div>\n

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\nHis comments echoed those made earlier at the same conference by Paul Volcker, a former Federal Reserve chairman who is now a top adviser to President Barack Obama<\/a>.<\/div>\n

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Volcker said industrial production around the world was declining even more rapidly than in the United States, which is itself under severe strain.<\/div>\n

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\n“I don’t remember any time, maybe even in the Great Depression, when things went down quite so fast, quite so uniformly around the world,” Volcker said.<\/div>\n

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(Reporting by Pedro Nicolaci da Costa and Juan Lagorio; Editing by Gary Hill)<\/div>\n
\nWhen I read the above article first thing this morning it inspired me to think of Srila Saraswati Thakur’s bold declaration that there is no scarcity of anything in this world but Hari-katha or Krishna Consciousness. With Krishna Consciousness comes the penetrating awareness that what we really have here is a resource management problem. In a God-centered society all resources are considered God’s property to be responsibly distributed with fair consideration of all inhabitants under the beneficent guidance of good leadership. It’s because of rampant greed and exploitation that this historic economic imbalance has occurred resulting in disparity for many (if not most) of the world’s citizens. Proper God conscious\/God-centered resource husbandry as demonstrated by Daivi-varnashram is the real solution.<\/p>\n

But at the same time we might also consider that it’s as if all the world’s collective good karma has just ran out resulting in the end of the world as we know it. Maybe the end of the world as we know it would be ultimately good, although very bad at first as many people (Westerners especially) have mostly enjoyed nothing but a contrived, artificial affluence for the past sixty odd years (resulting in things like the great American obesity “epidemic’) and have grown very soft “living it up” in the lap of modern relative luxury. Subsequently, many lack the “sand”\/”spine”\/character\/substance or fundamental human decency necessary to endure severe hardship in the way that our predecessors did when they pulled together to face the Great Depression. <\/p>\n

In their desperation to obtain and retain life’s basic necessities people won’t have time to ponder philosophical conundrums like who gets to be a spiritual leader or what are the soul’s ultimate origins as they struggle to not starve to death (or not be murdered for what little food they do have). In the cities it will be worse. Much worse. <\/p>\n

I remember from the 1960’s how my Ukrainian grandmother’s entire backyard in urban Edmonton was still a working vegetable garden established during the Depression, with her basement a root cellar used to preserve pickled vegetables from her own garden. Nowadays a very high majority of the population don’t even know how to prepare their own food from scratch, what to speak of growing it first. And never mind about relying on the modern wonder of refrigeration. Things might get real bad, real fast for a populace completely ill-equipped to deal with having to endure immediate severe hardship quite possibly unlike anything in our modern world history as Mother Bhumi purges all the artifice with the help of the Devas.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\nSrila Prabhupada’s vision of Varnashram-dharma\/self-sufficient farm communities has never been more pertinent. Money may not be worth the paper it’s printed on. As if giving opportunity for a new economic system to spring up like a phoenix from the ashes of utter economic collapse. One based on land and cows. And honesty & integrity. With economic exploitation minimized not by government mandate\/intervention but rather by individually awakened spiritual conscience and genuinely compassionate concern for the world around us.<\/div>\n
\nI don’t live my life as an alarmist but I think I’ll be putting in a vegetable garden this spring. And feeding the hungry where I live, starting with the local senior citizens center in Fort White. At least. I’m glad to live right across the street from a spring fed river in case I don’t have the electricity required (when the power grid dies) to run the electric pump on my well. Although apparently my four inch well (which can irrigate ten acres) can be retrofitted with a hand-pump. And we can cook just fine over an open fire (so long as we still have food to cook and wood for fuel) as we learned in the hurricane season of 2004. 
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\nIn the 80s, after “Hands Across America\/USA for Africa,” my wife and I became very involved in feeding the poor and homeless in downtown Oakland, California\/USA: doing all the collecting\/cooking\/serving\/cleaning while living in a tiny studio apartment. We’d spend all morning at the local driver’s license bureau with our handwritten photocopied fliers raising a dollar at a time before we took our collection to buy beans and produce to take home for preparation in our ancient Saab (which eventually became an ancient Peugeot). For nearly two years we were allowed by God’s Grace to feed an average of a hundred people a night, seven days a week before Providence made other arrangements. Our good friend Gurudas eventually filmed us for a San Francisco Bay area public television special on homelessness. In the late 90s, we did a similar program in Gainesville, FL\/USA. During the time the Lord allowed us to do this service we learned many things about compassion. Along with learning to respect the inherent dignity innate within all souls. Regardless of how materially down and out they might appear. As we kneeled before them serving them anand\/kichuri from our five gallon buckets assuring each that they were “very welcome” as they thanked us, we could feel that in some measure their despair was relieved and their greatly diminished self-esteem restored.<\/div>\n
\nIt seems to me that Srila Prabhupada’s own vision of massive prasadam distribution is now extremely timely as the entire world marches towards total economic collapse, famine and starvation thereby giving previously unseen opportunities for his real followers to at long last redeem their unfortunately less than flattering public impression (as perceived in America at least). The devotees would become known as heroes to the masses who they work hard to save from the brink of starvation. “I really like them Hairy Krishna people. Cuz of them my family didn’t starve. Don’t know what we woulda dun without em.” The atmasphere would be filled with the people in general praising the “Krishna’s” for their selfless efforts on behalf of God, Guru and all humanity. And the temples would erupt like golden volcanoes of prasadam showering profuse blessings on all the lands for everyone’s real benefit. At last.<\/div>\n
\nWhat follows is an excerpt from a letter by His Divine Grace which to me at least addresses his real vision for his temples and Who it is that really manages temples that are true to such an extremely vast conception of Divine Mercy, while also not tolerating false egotistical nonsense masquerading as real Krishna Consciousness. <\/div>\n
\n“Please accept my blessings. Now you must arrange in each temple there must be sufficient stock of prasadam<\/i> for distribution. You can keep first-class cooks, two or three, and they should always be engaged. Whenever any guest comes, he must get prasada. <\/i>This arrangement must be made, that the cooks prepare ten-twenty servings at a time, of puris and sabji, and you can add halavah and pakoras, and the visitors must be supplied immediately. Whenever a gentleman comes, he must be served. As the twenty servings are being distributed, immediately the cooks prepare another twenty servings and store it. At the end of the day, if no one comes, our own men will take, so there is no loss. You cannot say, ‘It is finished. It is not cooked yet. There is no supply for cooking, etc.’ This must be enforced rigidly. The temple is managed by Srimati Radharani, Laksmiji; so why should there be want?<\/b> Our philosophy is, if anyone comes, let him take prasada<\/i>, chant Hare Krishna and be happy. Everything is being supplied by Krishna, Krishna is not poor, so why should we deny them? This should be done at any cost. There is no difficulty, it simply requires nice management. At the end of the day you may sell or give away. If we believe that Krishna is providing and maintaining everyone, then why should we be misers. This means losing faith in Krishna and thinking that we are the doers and suppliers. We are confident Krishna will supply! Let the whole world come, we can feed them. So, please, do this nicely, begin at once.” (Srila Prabhupada letter to all ISKCON, 1-18-1977) \n<\/div>\n
\nThere’s werk ta be dun! And a whole world of hungry people just waiting for them “hairy Krishna fellers and gals” to help Krishna feed them all. Let’s get to it! Now is the time for Love! And more than ever before there’s no time to waste. For everyone’s sake.<\/p>\n

Humbly,<\/p>\n

Jagabandhu das<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Jagabandhu das<\/strong><\/p>\n

There’s werk ta be dun! And a whole world of hungry people just waiting for them “hairy Krishna fellers and gals” to help Krishna feed them all. Let’s get to it! Now is the time for Love! And more than ever before there’s no time to waste. For everyone’s sake. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6968"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6968\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}