All of us—husbands, wives, mothers, fathers, children, students, and teachers—have duties, and sometimes we begrudge the performance of our duties because we think their execution will impede our personal happiness. But duty is duty, and duty must be done. Even in the cold of winter, one must bathe. And even in the heat of summer, one must cook. "

We, as conditioned souls, tend toward impersonalism. Every conditioned soul has two conditioned tendencies: one is toward sense gratification, and the other is toward impersonalism. So we carry impersonal conceptions with us even when we come to devotional service, and our impersonal conceptions may influence us to deal in impersonal ways even though we know in theory that we all are eternal persons and that Krsna is the supreme eternal person. Still, in practice we may tend to act in impersonal ways, because we may still have impersonal ideas that devotees s...

Lord Ramacandra was the eldest son of Maharaja Dasaratha, and He was loved by all of the citizens in the state. According to the Vedic system, when one reaches a certain age he retires from worldly duties and responsibilities and devotes himself fully to God consciousness, or Krsna consciousness. Maharaja Dasaratha wanted to retire as king and install his son, Ramacandra, as his successor. But on the eve of Rama's coronation, because of some past events, Maharaja Dasaratha was obliged to ask Him to go into the forest in exile, to fulfill a promise that the ki...

Sri Hanuman, a great devotee in the form of a monkey, prays, “Since Lord Sri Ramacandra is the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Vasudeva, He is not attached to anything in this material world. He is the most beloved Supersoul of all self-realized souls, and He is their very intimate friend. He is full of all opulences. . . . “One cannot establish a friendship with the Supreme Lord Ramacandra on the basis of material qualities such as one’s birth in an aristocratic family, one’s personal beauty, one’s eloquence, one’s sharp intel...