Everybody has found their way to the Internet; practically every belief, interest, desire, and product has some representation on the Web. It is therefore not surprising that Gaudiya Vaishnavas have also made their way into the online village. After all, with a spiritual aspiration culminating in a bucolic life, one would expect us to gravitate towards village settings, and in this case—for better or for worse—we have. The prospect of Gaudiya Vedanta circulating throughout the global village and thereby reaching people of every background is wonderful. Such an opportunity woul...

We are opposed to the atheists alone who live and enjoy for themselves. Those who are anxious for the blessing of God are our brothers in faith, whatever error there may be in their ideas and forms of worship. Love of God, however misdirected it may be, does by force of its own natural strength, rise higher and higher in the scale of spiritual progress. Its want is the degradation of the soul alone. Those who do not love God have an opposite course from us and are obje...

Srila Prabhupada recommends that we prepare ourselves for death by training our minds to constantly remember the Lord and His holy names. We should become capable of continuously remembering the Lord, even amidst the disturbances of a rapidly deteriorating body. Such training includes chanting the holy names in our minds, a practice that comes easily to one who has practiced attentive chanting throughout his or her life. In his purport to Srimad-Bhagavatam 1.18.4, Srila Prabhupada writes: By scientific adoption [of the process of de...

His words hit me like Indra’s thunderbolt and sent my mind and heart reeling. They haunted me throughout the week and into a new month. So powerful! A not so gentle reminder that diksa is bound by space and time, but siksa is not! Srila Prabhupada said, Real thing is bhakti. What you can offer to Krsna? Everything belongs to Krsna. What you have got? What is your value? And what is the value of your things? It is nothing. Therefore real thing is bhaktya; real thing is your FEELING. "Krsna, kindly take it. I have no qualification. I am most rotten, fallen, but [weeps] I have brought t...

The consciousness of the gopis is exemplary.The entire day they think of how to serve Krishna. Their minds are not focused on material desires or selfish delusions. When they meet amongst each other, instead of going on about themselves, they constantly glorify the Lord and teach His message without discrimination. These are indicators of those who have surrendered themselves to God. Their actions, thoughts and words are never independent of the Lord.

My father, perhaps despairing of my dreams of the East and of becoming an artist, urged me to try for officer selection for the British Army, enticing me with stories of travel, adventure, and a decent salary to boot. To my surprise I passed the entrance exams, and before I knew it I was attending a Sixth Form boarding school for potential officers, located in a wonderful old English stately home. My mind kept returning to those initial strong impressions I had when ...

When it comes to humanity’s conception of God, it seems that each religion and culture describes the character of God differently. In some we find God described as an angry and jealous God. Or we find the God of the Old Testament of the Bible with lots of rules but little mercy. Or in other religions we read about a God who is heartless to any nonbelievers, even if they merely lack understanding. In other cultures, God recommends killing all that do not wish to surrender to the local faith. Others may describe that there is a just and loving God watching over you. So, what are we...

This is the point in time when the Hare Krishna devotee shines a torchlight of knowledge into the darkness. Krishna has arranged the stage and the spotlight. The vicious virus is yet another 9/11, a pause, of silence in which the conditioned soul can hear the chanting of the holy names, the transcendental sounds of the Gita and Bhagavatam, come into contact with the pure devotee. Let us use our intelligences to take advantage of this Golden opportunity. Maybe our message can go viral.

Smiling in which the teeth are slightly visible is called hasita smiling. One day Abhimanyu, the so-called husband of Radharani, was returning home, and at that time he did not know that Krsna was there. But Krsna immediately changed His dress to look exactly like Abhimanyu and approached Abhimanyu's mother, Jatila, addressing her thus: “My dear mother, I am your real son Abhimanyu, but just see — Krsna, dressed up like me, is coming before you!” Jatila, the mother of Abhimanyu, immediately believed that Krsna was her own son and thus became very angry at her real son who was comin...

This material world is always an extremely difficult place to be in with danger at every step. But sometimes we may feel a little bit comfortable and then sometimes, due to different circumstances, it can seem more difficult than ever. Now the world is terrified by the threat of a worldwide pandemic. However, as Srila Prabhupada says…. “This is the way of materialistic life: not being satisfied by the absolute necessities of life, people ambitiously create extra demands, and their illegal desires are checked by the laws of nature, or the laws of God, appearing as famine, war, pes...

When the media assault our eyes with images of half-naked bodies, lawmakers fight back with anti-obscenity laws, and the media complain that the government is policing personal morality. "Who are you to restrict our sexual enjoyment?" cry the libertines. "Ubiquitous sexuality," say the cultural conservatives, "degrades society." Everyone cherishes the right to enjoy life, and libertines, to defend themselves, appeal to this right. But could they be defeating the very purpose they clai...

The last month has been a rollercoaster journey. For over 40 years I have spoken about the harsh reality of life in lectures, funeral sermons, congregational gatherings and personal meetings. Now I am facing those same realities in my own life. It is not an easy pill to swallow. The Bhagavad-gita explains that we are spiritual beings on a material journey. This life is simply a chapter, and according to the spiritual consciousness we develop now, the rest of the sto...