Yajigrama is a tiny village 4km from Katwa, viz. 1 hour from Navadvipa town or 2 hours’ drive from Mayapur via road trip. Katwa is where Lord Caitanya Mahaprabhu took sannyasa from Kesava Bharati. Yajigrama is important place connected with many most wonderful pastimes of three Vaishnava stalwarts - Srila Narottama Das Thakura, Srila Shrinivasa Acharya and Srila Ramchandra Kaviraj. After the disappearance of the manifest pastimes of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu, Nityananda Prabhu and their associates, Srila Narottama Das Thakura, Shrinivasa Acharya and Sri Shyamananda Prabhu, under the instr...

Right then and there, I decided that I wanted to feel what they were feeling. It was the real thing—everything I had heard and read about chanting while growing up as a devotee, yet which evaded me as if it were a myth—here it was as clear as day right in front of me, in real live human beings. In a matter of seconds, all my cumulative desires, aspirations, ambitions, priorities and hierarchies faded into the pale, replaced unequivocally by this overbearing drive t...

One aspect of the Vedic culture—knowledge of the future—may seem at first glance to contradict free will, but this is not so. In fact, St. Augustine’s explanation of this phenomenon in relation to the omniscience of God parallels the Vedic understanding. Others had argued that if God already knew what we were going to do, that would prevent us from having free choice; we could not help but act in the way God had foreseen. In response, Augustine explained that God’s vision of the future does not cause anything to happen. Rather, it is akin to human vision of the past. W...

Hence, although the situation seems to be very gloomy in this dark age of quarrel and hypocrisy, and people in general are ignorant and averse to spirituality, still there is a ray of hope in the form of chanting of the holy names of the Lord, which can not only counter all the ill effects of Kali Yuga, and relieve one of the pangs of material miseries, but also make one situated in the perfect stage of pure love (devotional service) with the Lord. Chanting the holy nam...

Looking at the ruins of what we’ve been calling until recently Western civilization, I can say that the mankind is illogical and irrational. Led by misguided and selfish leaders, people themselves planned and led their existence to its end, such as we knew it. How come we got here? Couldn’t the ruination of our world be prevented? Couldn’t any of the world leaders  remember the bitter lessons of the millenary  bloody history of mankind? And why the progress of material science and modern technology, which reached unimaginable levels, didn’t help human beings...

Love is our innermost longing. Gita wisdom declares that our longing for love is best fulfilled when we learn to love Krishna. Let's understand this central Gita teaching in five parts: Loving Krishna enables our love to break free from all limitations, Krishna is eminently lovable, Krishna loves all of us impartially, Krishna's love for us is unconditional and Krishna engages his omnipotence to help us when we choose to love him.

“We say God’s on our side but the more important question to ask is are we on God’s side…” (George Washington) Democracy is supposed to be ‘by the people, of the people, and for the people,’ but I fear it may soon be redefined as ‘buy’ the people, ‘off’ the people, and ‘far’ (from) the people,” exclaimed Suresh, a 25-year-old man I met while returning to the temple from an outstation program. He was disappointed that India, the world’s largest democracy, recorded just 35-50% polling in the recent elections. Suresh also noted that over 150...

On Friday, January the 4th in 1891, Hindus who were bathing in the sacred river Yamuna witnessed an amazing scene. A ship with the name of an unknown language approached. In the morning mist, surrounded by armed soldiers, a young light-skinned man in an officer’s jacket, looking, however, not belligerent came ashore. The stranger was the crown prince Nicholas, soon to be the future last Russian emperor. The small town of Vrindavan, 80 miles to the south of Delhi, ...

While Lord Krishna enjoys the informality of intimate dealings at home with devotees who are in the mood of family and friends, in the office of creator Lord Maha-Vishnu attracts worshipers who prefer a God primarily endowed with grand, omnipotent, awe-inspiring features. Maha-Vishnu’s caliber is inconceivable. To illustrate, the Bhagavad-gita and other texts say that not only are we not alone in the universe, but the universe itself is not alone. Past the enormously distant shell of our own universe are an uncountable number of others....

In all relationships we find some element of dependence. However the dependence is voluntary. The desire for freedom or independence remains ingrained within us. It may not be a physical struggle against slavery. It may be our financial or physical constraints, relationships or just plain boredom etc, but the quest for freedom continues to haunt us. We have human rights and laws to protect them. We have the United Nations and many organizations dedicated to preserving peace. We have lotteries and casinos feeding off the hope...