Krishna Conscious family life is consistent with the teachings and example of Srila Prabhupada, which must be applied with consideration of time, place and circumstance. In the field of grihastha life, one should take into account the local culture with-out compromising Srila Prabhupada's teachings. One should not attempt to simply transpose practices from one culture to another without understanding the principles and values. underpinning them.

The Brahma-vaivarta Purana describes a beautiful story of a brahmana in South India who wanted to offer sweet rice (khir) to his Deities but couldn’t afford the ingredients. So he decided to offer the sweet mentally. In deep meditation, he collected all the ingredients and cooked it. After the preparation was ready, he wanted to cool it down before he offered it to Krishna. After a while he touched his finger to see if the sweet rice had cooled down. It was still hot, and to his surprise his fing...

In the beginning, when my Guru Maharaja ordered me, I thought it that 'I shall first of all become very rich man; then I shall preach.' (laughs) So I was doing very nice in business. In the business circle, I got very good name, and with whom I was dealing business, they were very satisfied. But Krishna made so trick that He broke everything, and He obliged me to take sannyasa. So that is Hari. So that I had to come to your country with only seven dollars.

Srila Prabhupada: You have asked about the specialness of the month of Karttika, and the answer is that it is a special inducement for persons who are not in Krsna consciousness to perform some devotional service. For persons who are doing nothing in Krsna consciousness, it is an indirect inducement to take to devotional service in earnest seriousness, every moment is Karttika. In this connection, there is a good example that sometimes a store gives a special concession to attract new customers. Bu...

Of all the sixty four arts practiced by the gopis and in the vedic culture, among the topmost if not _the_ topmost, is singing. Krishna learned how to sing in the _kula_ of Sandipani Muni. Students of Indian classical music now spend twenty or thirty years learning how to sing. It is not a question of simply mouthing the words even though "loud and clear" (although that, by itself, is not completely devoid of merit). It best requires some bhava, devotional emotion (which one can h...

We sometime use the term "conditioned soul" without full awareness of the mystery it denotes.The soul is ontologically distinct from matter, yet conditioning is a material phenomena. However, as preachers, we must consider an individual's conditioning in order to guide them in pursuing Krishna Consciousness. Therefore we must have sufficient intelligence to consider conditioning without identifying with it.

I was doing some work at my home, and I was listening to some Srimad Bhagavatam lectures giving by His Divine Grace Srila Prabhupada. Srila Prabhupada told a humorous story about a rabbit that killed a lion. It was so transcendentally pleasing that I thought I would share this nectar with all the assembled devotees on this world wide web site.