hare krishna

Hare Krishna !

Dear ChiefCowpie,

Where are you?

Did not hear from you for quite some time. Hope, you are keeping well. Well, I just wanted to say goodbye for now. Henceforth, for about seven months I may not be able to be in touch with the forum.

I am sure with the contribution of your profound knowledge and insight this thread will keep growing further and be a thread of refuge and solace for so many distressed souls like me.


Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare
Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare.

With love, best wishes and regards,

Kumar.

 

Hare Krishna !

Dear Sleepingjiva,

Well, it is time to say goodbye for now. I shall join regularly after about seven months.

Your last posts re-established your dry honesty and open mindedness. I suppose you were undoubtedly the best chosen to start this thread.

People talk about addiction, it will be such a great problem for me to leave this thread and go away even for a while - such is the addiction that this has created in me. Of course it is only because of the core of the thread that is Lord Sri Krishna, our beloved God.

I am sure, this thread has already set so many people to a halt from the daily mad-rush and rethink about their priorities of life. I am sure so many are already giving a try to check the authenticity of what all have been said so far. We do not realize that when we say some thing to some people, words travel to each one of them with a different meaning and the words strike them in different modes and degrees. Here is a true story :

There was a rich King(Zemindar-a landlord). One day, in the morning, he went out with his people for hunting. It became noon when he along with his people decided to have lunch and take rest by the side of the bank of a river. A farmer also came there to have his lunch and take rest. The King and his people soon fell fast asleep after the lunch. The farmer's daughter as a daily routine had brought lunch box for her father and left.
Her father also fell asleep. That day she came back quite late to wake up her father and to take back the lunch box. She called loudly, "Baba, O baba, please get up, the day is almost gone,the sun is setting and it is getting dark. Please get up, won't you finish your jobs?" The farmer got up and hurriedly started for his unfinished job. The King and his people also woke up. But those words came as arrows and carried different meanings altogether for the King. He started thinking my life is coming to an end, soon the dark period of my life will start but so far I have not done anything to make my living this life significant and all my jobs are pending. The king was pestered by those few words over and over again. He went back to his palace, renounced every thing that he had and went out the same night looking for a Guru.

Yes, brother Jiva, this thread is undoubtedly doing Krishna-seva, it is helping and inspiring people at so many places of this world. Please keep the good job on. Please welcome one and all who come to this thread. Please remember a fisher-man can not live in a florist's room and vice-versa. Things will automatically separate out.


Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare
Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare.

With love, best wishes and regards,

Kumar.

 

WISHING ALL A HAPPY



am still around...just busy

peace out...Hare Krishna, Chief

 

Hare Krishna !

My dear lord, I have never seen anything so beautiful ! Thank you ChiefCowpie.



Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare
Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare.

With love,

Kumar.

 

Hare Krishna !

Dear SvgGrdnBeauty,

Thank you for your beautiful post on Janmashtami.

I just wanted to say goodbye to all. I shall be back again to the thread after seven months. Please continue the good job(Krishna-seva) just the way you are already doing.
One simple thought expressed by a simple line can cause upheaval in our mind and can set us on the right course towards Him. I am sure, this thread is going to continue by His Divine Grace for a very very long time.



Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare
Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare.

With love,

Kumar.

 

Dear Kumar,


I wish you all the best with your job. You will be missed around here, I'm very sure....

ChiefCowPie, thanks for that wonderful picture; it is truly beautiful!


Also, Happy Srila Prabhupada Day (I don't know what else you would call Srila Prabhupada's appearance day in a greeting...)! May we always remember His Divine Grace in our hearts. Jaya Prabhupada!

 

I recieved this in my e-mail from my friend Prtha Deva Dasi:

--------

Yes, the day right after Janmastami is Srila Prabhupada's Appearance
Day. Here's a little about him.


Srila Prabhupada's left India in 1965 to come to the West and spread
Krishna consciousness. No one in India would consider preaching to
us "mleccas" But Prabhuapda did. He withstood two heart attacks on a
ship over here, and took many risks, depending on Krishna.

So before Prabhupada, maybe a handful came here, possibly starting
one or two small temple or even some impersonalist groups, but no one
clarified it is Krishna who is the One God everyone worships
(knowingly and often unknowingly). And no one made devotees of
Krishna Personified. We in the West were still left in the darkness
of ignorance about Who God is. It wasn't until Srila Prabhupada that
people became Krishna bhakta's (devotees) and learned the practice of
Bhakti yoga, rekindling their dormant relationship with Him.

In time Prabhupada opened many temples worldwide. This is due to
empowerment of Krishna, and to the mercy of the pure devotee. It's
even said that Prabhupada was sent by God to fulfill the prophecy of
Lord Caitanya, Who foretold that one day a pure devotee would spread
the Holy Names of Lord Krishna all over the world. Not even another
Vaisnava has done this. We are fortunate to be born now!

Read about various devotees experiences with Srila Prabhupada here:

http://www.prabhupadaconnect.com
----------

Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare!

 

Hare Krishna!


Dear Freinds,

To Kumar - I hope you will be able to stay in touch whilst you're away, I'm sure we are all enriched so much by your posts here - and I for one look forward to your return!
Thanks to Chief Cowpie for the beautiful picture of Sri Krishna, and to Svg Gdn Beauty for the post about Srila Prabhupada's coming to the west. As our freind Kumar reminds us, it's all serving Him! And that is a great thing

Om Namo Bhagavate Vasudevaya!

 

Hare Krishna!


Following on from Kumar's recent post about Krishnaprem and Dilip Kumar Roy, I would like to offer this


Dilip K. Roy would often exchange his views and thoughts on spiritual matters with an English gentleman called Krishnaprem, who resided in Almora. After sending him one such letter, he received a reply which ran thus…



***



Faith and Optimism



“About ‘faith and optimism’ – well, you know who it is that rushes in where angels fear to tread. But still one fool may, I suppose, open his heart to another. Why do you worry over what you can’t accept in your friend Staunch’s robust faith? As I see it, it is not his faith which is the difficulty but the particular mental concepts in which he expressed it. True faith is naked. It is not belief in this or that: it has little, if anything, to do with ‘this or that’. It is a naked smokeless flame that burns in the secret recesses of the heart, weaving the soul and lightening it on its path. The true content of the Flame we cannot formulate in the mind and so we cover it with a painted lampshade and say we believe in this or that, the figures which our minds have painted on the shade. And that does not matter provided we really don't believe that the painted figures are the content of our Faith. They are symbols of it, for even the mind cannot draw a single line arbitrarily but they share in the mind’s error and inadequacy.



“It is this that causes the rationalist to curse so. He is always active demolishing the painted figures of men’s faith and then is astonished to find the faith still there clothed in new figure: ‘Nainam chhindanti shastrani.’



“I have looked in when the weather was darkest and this is what I saw:



“I saw the deep undertone of thwarted desire running fiercely in the psychic sea. I saw it rise to the surface in great waves and the ship of the mind, with cables cut, running before the dark wind. I saw the crew, their fears transformed into panic anger by the contact of the angry waves, seizing axes and hacking away at cordage and masts. I saw them aim their blows at the wonderful compass glowing with light in the centre of the ship but though they destroyed the card they could not touch the luminous needle. Finally they grew berserk and slashed away at the very timbers of the ship and when it sank they floundered in the water cursing and sobbing. And still the compass shone, a needle of flame poised serenely in the dark void above the waters. And when they saw that, they swam towards it and laid hold of it and then I saw that there around them was the ship once more, with all its masts and timbers intact and the dark storm had receded again far beneath the surface of a summer sea. But shame was in the hearts of the crew.



“We should not be worried by the optimist pessimist-business. Optimism is the disposition to think that our wishes will be realized and pessimism the disposition to think that most probably they will not. Neither of them is at all relevant. Not our wishes but Krishna’s will is what matters – and that will be realized, make no mistake about that. How and when is known to Him – not to us.



“This famous civilization of ours and all its treasures of art and literature and science may vanish as did that of Atlantis and yet nothing will have gone, for He is there and all is in Him. As Christ said to the Jews, proud of their descent from Abraham: “I tell you, God, is able to raise up from these stones seed unto Abraham.”



Pralaya-payadhi-jale dhritavanasi vedam

Vihita-vihitra-charitamakhedam

Keshavadhrita-mina sharira

Jaya Jagadisha Hare



This, duly sent up to Gurudev (Sri Aurobindo), elicited the following comment:



“As for faith, Krishnaprem’s meaning is clear enough. Faith in the spiritual sense is not a mental belief which can waver and change. It can wear that form in the mind, but that belief is not the faith itself, it is only the external form. Just as the body, the external form, can change but the spirit remains the same, so it is here. Faith is a certitude in the soul which does not depend on reasoning, on this or that mental idea, on circumstances, on this and that passing condition of the mind or the vital or the body. It may be hidden, eclipsed, may even seem quenched, but it appears again after the storm or the eclipse; it is seen burning still in the soul when one has thought that it was extinguished forever. The mind may be a shifting sea of doubts and yet that faith may be there within and, if so, it will keep even the doubt-racked mind in the way so that it goes on in spite of itself towards its destined goal. Faith is a spiritual certitude of the spiritual, the divine, the soul’s ideal, something that clings to that even when it is not fulfilled in life, even when the immediate facts or the persistent circumstances seem to deny it. This is a common experience in the life of the human being; if it were not so, man would be a plaything of a changing mind or a sport of circumstances. I have, I think, more than once, written the same thing as Krishnaprem though in a different language.



“If you understand this and keep it in mind, Krishnaprem’s experience and the image in which he saw it should be sufficiently clear. The needle is this power in the soul and the card with its directions the guiding indications given by it to the mind and life. The ship is the psychological structure of ideas, beliefs, spiritual and psychic experiences, the whole building of the inner life in which one moves onward in the voyage towards the goal. When the storm comes, a storm of doubts, failures, disappointments, adverse circumstances and what not, the crew – let us say, the powers of the mind and vital and the physical consciousness – begin to disbelieve, despond, stand aghast at the contradiction between our hopes and beliefs and the present facts and they even turn in their rage of disbelief and despair to deny and destroy the structure of their inner thought and life which was bearing on them, tear up even the compass which was their help and guide, even to reject the needle, the great contrast in their spirit. But when they have come to the point of drowning, that power acts on them, they turn to it instinctively for refuge and then suddenly they find all cleared,all the destruction was their own illusory action and the ship reappears as strong as before. This is an experience which most seekers have had many times, especially in the earlier or middle course of their sadhana. All that has been done seems to be undone, then suddenly or slowly the storm passes, the constant needle reappears; it may even be that ship which was a small sloop or at most a schooner or a frigate becomes an armed cruiser and finally a great battleship unsinkable and indestructible. That is a parable but its meaning should be quite intelligible, and it is a pragmatic fact of spiritual experience. I may add that this inmost faith or fixed needle of spiritual aspiration may be there without one’s clearly knowing it; one may think that one has only beliefs, propensities, a yearning in the heart or a vital preference which seem to be temporarily destroyed or suspended, yet the hidden constant remains, resumes its action, keeps us on a way and carries us through. It can be said of it in the words of the Gita that even a little of this delivers us from great danger, carries us to the other side of all difficulties, sarva durgani.”

Hare Krishna!

 

Wow. That was really amazing. Thank you for sharing that BBB. I'm defenetely going to save that.

Hare Krishna!

 

It is only when we know how to love each other that there can be co-operation, that there can be intelligent functioning, a coming together over any question. Only then is it possible to find out what God is, what truth is. Now, we are trying to find truth through intellect, through imitation - which is idolatry. Only when you discard completely, through understanding, the whole structure of the self, can that which is eternal, timeless, immeasurable, come into being. You cannot go to it; it comes to you.

-j krish

 

Well said. Hare Krishna!

 

Hare Krishna!

Thanks for your post Liberation. What you say is true, but consider this - in Krishna Consciousness we seek to 'find out God' through love.To love Krishna, who is the complete whole, is to love all, to serve Him is to be a servant to all.
The false ego has to be discarded - the true Self or Atman or Soul is eternal. It is not that we will at some future time cease to be individuals, but we will be aware of who we really are - spiritual beings in relation to God.
All this, as you indicate, is wholly dependent on God's Grace.

Haribol!

 

Hare Krishna gdkumar, I wish u bonne voyage! We're with u.

 

Hare Krishna!

Dear Freinds,
I'd like to post here these lyrics by George Harrison as I feel they are relevant to some of the topics, sex, alchohol etc. that we've been discussing . Taken from the 'Dark Horse' album.

"Simply Shady"

Somebody brought the juicer

I thought I'd take a sip

Came off the rails so crazy

My senses took a dip

Before the bottle hit the floor

And I'd had time to think

I was blinded by desire

The elephant turned pink



The rest is simply shady

It's all been done before

But it doesn't make life simple

That's for sure

You may think about a lady

Cause yourself a minor war

And your life won't be so easy anymore



No sooner had I sown it

When I began to reap

I was torn from shallow water

And plunged into the deep

And as I started drowning

I clung onto a straw

That somehow kept me floating

While my madness craved for more



The rest is simply shady

It's all been done and more

But it doesn't make life easy

That's for sure



A pebble in the ocean

Must cause some kind of stir

And witnessed by the silence

Will reach from here to there

The action that I've started

Sometime I'll have to face

My influence in motion

Rebounding back through space



The rest is simply shady

It's all been done before

But it doesn't make life simple

That's for sure

You may think of Sexy Sadie

Let her in through your front door

And your life won't be so easy anymore.



Haribol!

 

Hare Krishna!

The First Western Vaishnava



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

BY SWAMI B.V. PARIVRAJAK



EDITORIAL, Oct 17 (VNN) — In his book, Sri Krishna Samhita, Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakur mentioned a scholar, a certain Mr. Norton, who had written something in appreciation of the madhurya rasa as preached by Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. The Thakur praised the scholar and remarked that he was confident that very soon the mellows of madhurya rasa would cross the boundaries of India and many people in the Western countries would turn into Vaishnavas followers of Mahaprabhu.



We do not have any other details about Mr. Norton, if he was himself a Vaishnava or just an Indologist or a philosopher. Surely he had not been chosen by the Lord to reveal the Vrindavan mellows to the Western world. That task, everyone agrees, was left to A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. However, some fifty years before the divine exploit of Srila Prabhupada, by the arrangement of the Lord, a Western sadhu had already come to Vrindavan. His name was Swami Krishna Prema. He was the first Vaishnava from the West, so his case is worth our consideration. His name for the world was Ronald Nixon, a former fighter pilot in the British Royal Flying Corps. Fascinated by the Pali language and Buddhism, at the end of his Cambridge studies, he wanted to find some way of living in India in order to deepen his practice of Buddhism from experienced gurus. In this way, in the early 1920s he accepted a post as Reader in English at Lucknow University. The university's vice-chancellor Dr. Chakravarti, member of the Theosophical Society, kept Nixon in his home, helping him to quickly integrate within the Indian community.



Chakravarti's wife, Monica, was spiritually very advanced. Impressed by her devotion, Nixon accepted initiation from her in 1924. His name became Sri Krishna Prema. Few years later the chancellor, acting as his wife's guru, released her from family ties initiating her into the renounced order of life with the name Yashoda Ma. At Almora in Northern Uttar Pradesh, she built an ashram by the name Uttar Vrindavan. Even if Yashoda Ma was certainly his diksha-guru, Krishna Prema desired to improve his understanding of the Gaudiya siddhanta through a more traditional preceptor. They moved then to Vrindavan where, after several weeks of research, they came in touch with Bal Goswami, a well-known priest of the Radha- raman Temple. Krishna Prema wanted a connection with him, but he had already accepted diksha mantra from Yashoda Ma.



With her consensus it was arranged that Yashoda Ma would first take initiation from Bal Goswami and, as part of the same ceremony, she would formally initiate Krishna Prema into the Gaudiya sampradaya. In this way Bal Goswami became Krishna Prema's param guru and spiritual instructor. Shortly thereafter, Bal Goswami introduced Krishna Prema, the first Western Vaishnava, into the Radharaman Mandir.



The guru had hard times with the temple authorities, who excommunicated him because, according to them, the rules of purity had been violated. This may sound now an extremely conservative attitude, but we should keep in mind that that was the first case of a Westerner turning into a Vaishnava.



At that time the position of Bal Goswami became very precarious. He had accepted a Westerner into the fold of his disciples, and the Westerners (especially the British) were known for their unclean habits, like eating meat, drinking alcohol and above all for being non-Hindus. Obviously Bal Goswami risked his reputation in his attempt to help Swami Krishna Prema.



After some time, by the mercy of Sri Radharaman Dev, another council with all the priests was held in the temple. After due consultation of the Scriptures, the council reached a solution for the case: "Every individual with the required standards of knowledge and cleanliness can be accepted into the sampradaya."In this way all Western Vaishnavas owe a debt of gratitude to both Swami Krishna Prema and Bal Goswami. Swami Krishna Prema was undoubtedly the most important historical precedent for the Western Vaishnavas.



His fame spread far and wide and many Indians accepted him as their guru. Many spiritual leaders went to visit the ashram at Almora to talk with Swami Krishna Prema, who became famous for his philosophical acumen, his rigid adherence to the principles of ashram life and his affectionate dealings towards all.



After Yashoda Ma's death, he took over her ashram until his own demise in 1965. His funeral rites were attended by a large crowd of people and the President of India sent a heartfelt message of condolence to the bhaktas of Almora praising the brilliant personality of Swami Krishna Prema. Some books on his life and teachings have been written recently by Dilip Kumar Roy (Yogi Sri Krishnaprem, 1968) and Narendranath Kaul (Writings of Sri Krishna Prem,1980).

Haribol!

 

thanks BBB for the story of Sri Krishna Prem




chant Hare Krishna and be happy!!!

 

Thanks Chief - Like the article says, Sri Krishnaprem should have a special place in our hearts. Is that him in the photo you posted? (I've never seen a picture of him before)


Hare Krishna!

 

no, it is not him... those are just some very happy sadhus of Vrindaban

 

I was at my friend Ryan's and we were playing music and I was looking at his bookshelf...and I spotted a familiar face...it was Srila Prabhupada! So I looked at the small book called Search For Liberation and it had a picture of Srila Prabhupada and John Lennon on it (Its the entire conversation that they put a piece of in the Chant and Be Happy Book). I asked him where he got it and he said, "::shrug:: I don't know...it was my Dad's...he bought it sometime in the sixties...you want to borrow it?" So, now I'm reading this book...and I was wondering, have any of you heard of it? I figure he probably got it from a devotee on the street...seeing John Lennon on the cover (his Dad's a big Beatles fan...and I'm 90% sure that's probably why he bought it...)...


But anyway, that's about it...I felt like sharing