Driving an automobile in the service of the Lord (dasyam) is equal to performing any other service in bhakti-yoga such as sravanam, kirtanam, distributing books, offering arati to the deities, managing a temple, etc. Sri Daruka, Sri Hanuman, Sri Garuda and other devotees are famous for rendering the service of transporting the Lord from one place to another. Srila Prabhupada wanted devotees to drive carefully and he censured careless driving on several occasions. If we ignore his request and the laws governing safe driving, we are spiritually and materially at faul...

Those of us who appreciate the magical potency of what Srila Prabhupada gave us know that a miracle of colossal historic importance occurred in the late 1960’s. At that time His Divine Grace came and ignited a worldwide spiritual revolution that has no historic equivalent. Those of us who were blessed to become his disciples all got an opportunity to be part of this extraordinary moment in history. Yet time is gnawing away at all of us every day. One by one we...

Open Letter to Greta Thunberg. Dear Greta! I am your fan, therefore I want you to know how we see and handle the problem of environment protection and climate change. Doctors say that healing is at its best when the cause of the illness is removed, not just the symptoms get mitigated. As you know, carbon and methane emission are not the deepest cause of our ills. These are but some of the symptoms. They show what happens when masses of people succumb to materialistic life. This simplistic world view says that human life has no higher purpose and we can only become happy if we agitate o...

About the Vrindavan days from my book "By his example". The entourage included the Maharaja of Bharatpur, two queens, the prince, various relatives, zamindhars (landowners loyal to the king), agents, a doctor, and eight soldiers dressed in Jat military uniforms, part of the Maharaja’s private army. Twelve servants carried the supplies and the largest incense sticks I have ever seen. These sticks were twelve feet high and thick as a python. Servants, beautifully dressed in long, silk robes, carried ...

I remember years ago my sister arguing with my mum and dad. "How can we eat animals? Isn't it cruel?" Don't be silly, she was told; they are meant to be our food. What else is the point of their existence? But the Vedas tell a different story. Like any human, animals are living beings in this world trying to enjoy. Just our bodies differ, but our basic desires are the same. We all want happiness. Sometimes, due to the nature of our desires, we may be obliged to accept an animal body. In ...

We sometimes think of ourselves as being good adjudicators of who is serious in Krishna consciousness, and who is not. Who is pure, or not. Expecting that “More people will leave Krishna consciousness than stay,” we easily become proud of being one of the “privileged few” to remain. Being of the surprising few and rationalising this way is certainly premature, and signals immediate complacency. The adage, “It is how you finish that counts; not how you start,” usually escapes our attention when we think of how and why so many devotees leave Krishna consciousness. Ar...

Worse than being alone is to be with a person who doesn’t like you; too many people have experienced the anguish and chaos caused by an incompatible marriage. Such travesties are systematically avoided in Vaishnava culture because, besides training and restraint in behaviour prior to marriage, all care is taken in matchmaking: “Formerly, boys and girls of similar dispositions were married; the similar natures of the boy and girl were united in order to make them happy.” (SB 3.21.15) “The central idea is that if the boy and girl were on an equal level the marri...

Srila Prabhupada wanted us to set up ISKCON as an almost self-contained, devotional society, with our own schools, farms, economy, and social system. So far we have not completely realized that ambition, though there are some very good schools and options for those who want to live a life of 'full-time' engagement in ISKCON. But we also have large 'outside congregations' of devotee (like myself) who have our own jobs, careers, and community engagements.

Einstein, Emerson, Thoreau, Huxley, Hesse . . . I was amazed that this list an intellectual who’s who from recent world history was actually a list of thinkers who had appreciated the Gita. As I had been born and brought up in India, the place where the Gita was spoken millennia ago, I was familiar with it as an ancient Hindu text. I had even memorized some of it for verse recitation contests. But I had no idea that its contents were of interest to the modern mind, much less praised by ...

The Divine Form. "Then, as if by divine providence, an art college friend, upon returning from a visit to Bangkok, gave me some rice-paper rubbings taken from bas-reliefs of divinities of the temple of the reclining Buddha. Although I didn't know it at first, the images depicted the pastimes of Lord Ramachandra. I immediately appreciated the combination of delicate exquisiteness and divine irresistible power that Ramachandra personified while upon His chariot, bow drawn, ready to slay His evi...

Once there was a sage who lived by the banks of the Ganges River. The sage spent much of his time in meditation and he understood the difference between that which is ‘sat’ (eternal) and that which is ‘asat’ (temporary). Now he was destined to live until all the hairs on his body fell off. He is described as a ‘hairy’ sage. And only a single hair fell off during a life time of Brahma (which is millions upon millions of years). So this sage was going to...

Would Krishna Consciousness have even developed in quite the same way in the UK without George’s support? Krishna devotees cannot fail to acknowledge the pivotal role the ‘spiritual Beatle’ played in nudging Eastern philosophy irreversibly towards the mainstream. And would George have had the same effect in promoting Eastern belief-systems had he been part of a less prolific pop group? The important thing to remember is that George Harrison was never about self-aggrandizement. George used whatever talent, ability and impact he had in the same way that any other Hare Krishna devotee w...