Heliodorus was a Greek ambassador to India in the second century B.C. Few details are known about the diplomatic relations between the Greeks and the Indians in those days, and still less is know about Heliodorus. But that the column he erected at Besnagar in central India about 113 B.C, is considered one … Read more
Krishna consciousness: Hindu Cult or Divine Culture? This question is increasingly being asked not only by devotees but also by spiritual seekers of all shades and colours and even by so called ordinary people. The media has also shown some interest recently. This important question needs to be answered especially in the light of the … Read more
As Vaisnavas, we have a rare opportunity to understand how world events are ultimately shaped. The cause of all causes is not just that events are taking place in Kaliyuga, or that it’s a demoniac culture, but that there’s an asiddhantic philosophy behind all the action. As devotees, we’re able to identify what that … Read more
(Early Notes Toward a Rhetoric of Consciousness).
When I was teaching in gurukulas, the students would occasionally find out that another child didn’t like one sort of food or another and would tease them: “Eww—you don’t like mangoes? That means you don’t like Prabhupada and Krishna!” These eight- or nine-year-olds were probably joking, or half joking, to the extent that kids are capable. But when adults insist in the rudest language that other devotees who don’t share their opinions on one detail or another regarding devotional practice or association are faithless, or even demons, they are not joking. And it’s not funny.
Rather, they are simply demonstrating a narrow-minded attitude and cramped thinking discouraged by Srila Prabhupada himself. Unfortunately, we see a great deal of such narrow-mindedness in discussions among devotees over the course of our association, both face to face and in online discourse. I have found it to be perhaps the most discouraging, most corrosive attitude among devotees. I believe it would immeasurably improve the quality of devotee association, and perhaps even the devotees’ preaching efforts, if, rather than seeing other devotees of Krishna in such a pinched, miserly way, we tried instead to imbibe and exhibit the kind of broad, generous vision of others that Srila Prabhupada himself exemplified.
July 10, 1975, it was a beautiful summer day. Although i was an exuberant twenty-year-old, i had no qualms about staying indoors on this occasion. I was being initiated into the ancient tradition of Krsna consciousness by my spiritual master, His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, the founder-acarya of the International Society for Krishna … Read more
2000 years ago, the Greek ambassador to India “Megasthenes” travelled throughout India recording his observations. The following are extracts taken from his book “Indica”.
“India has many huge mountains, abounding in fruit trees of every kind, and many vast plains of great fertility, beautiful, very much alike, and intersected by a multitude of rivers. The greater part of the soil is under irrigation, and consequently bears two crops in the course of a year. It teems with animals of all sorts, beasts of the fields and fowls of the air, all of differing degrees of size and strength.
It is prolific besides in elephants which are of monsterous bulk, as its soil supplies food in unsparing profusion, making these animals far exceed in strength those which are bred in Libya. The inhabitants in like manner, having abundant means of subsistence, exceed the ordinary stature, distinguished by their proud bearing. They are also found to be well skilled in the arts, as might be expected of men who inhale pure air and drink the very finest water. And while the soil bears on its surface all kinds of fruits, underground, it also has all kinds of metals, for it contains much gold, silver, copper and iron in large quantities.
In addition to cereal, there grows throughout India, much millet, which is kept well watered by the profusion of river streams, and much pulse of different kinds, as well as rice, and many other plants, useful for feed which grows almost spontaneously. It is accordingly affirmed that famine has never visited India, and there has never been a scarcity in the supply of nourishing food. For since there is a double rainfall in the course of each year, one in the winter season, when the sowing of wheat takes place, and the second at the time of the summer solstice, which is the proper time for sowing rice, sesame and millet, the inhabitants of India almost always gather in two harvests annually, and even if one crop fails, they are always sure of the second crop.
The fruits are of spontaneous growth, and the esculent roots which grow in marshy places and are of varied sweetness, afford abundant sustenance for man. The fact is almost all the plains of the country have a moisture which is alike congenial, whether derived from the rivers, or from the rains of the summer season, which are want to fall every year at a stated period, with surprising regularity, while the great heat which prevails, ripens the roots which grow in the marshes, espescially those of the tall reeds.
My dear Lord, one who earnestly waits for You to bestow Your causeless mercy upon him, all the while patiently suffering the reactions of his past misdeeds and offering You respectful obeisance with his heart, words and body, is surely eligible for liberation, for it has become his rightful claim. (Srimad Bhagavatam 10.14.8)
“The key word here is responsibility. Conditioned souls are lazy. They have an inborn tendency not to accept responsibility. Specifically there is a tendency in the conditioned soul not to accept responsibility for his spiritual growth, for improving himself. A person may be busy, busy, busy, doing so many tasks, putting in a 70-hour week, … Read more
“The idea of an organized church in an intelligible form, indeed, marks the close of the living spiritual movement. The great ecclesiastical establishments are the dikes and the dams to retain the current that cannot be held by any such contrivances. They, indeed, indicate a desire on the part of the masses to exploit … Read more
“…the so-called religious system, they also think like that. Just like the Christians. They go to church, “O God, give us our daily bread.” So this bread-supplying business is like that: “God simply supplies bread and we eat and we enjoy.” Similarly, the Hindu system also there is: “O God, give me some money. … Read more
