This video from the “Memories of Srila Prabhupada” series deals with the topic of pancaratrika vidhi and bhagavata vidhi, the rules and regulations of deity worship and Lord Caitanya’s programme of chanting, dancing, feasting and philosophy. Srila Prabhupada explains that you can get along without the pancaratrica vidhi in this age if necessary … Read more
After settling in Oregon with my Godsister Dinatarine, Srila Prabhupada, while pronouncing us ‘independent’ to a concerned Godbrother, at the same time twice rebuked us when we approached him to leave. ‘You westerners are so restless,’ he admonished. ‘Why can’t you remain in the same place? Stay where you are.’ We questioned, ‘But Srila … Read more
There was a rich merchant who had four wives. He loved the fourth wife the most and adorned her with rich robes and treated her to delicacies. He took great care of her and gave her nothing but the best. He also loved the third wife very much. He was very proud of her and … Read more
One time the late Kartikeya Prabhu who was Prabhupada’s servant at the time personally told me the following story.
Prabhupada was staying in Hawaii at the time. One day, Govinda Dasi brought some wheat germ from the market. I thought that the next time Srila Prabhupada asks for halava, I’ll make it from wheat germ and he’ll be so pleased.
One day it was a rainy day. Sometimes when it rained or was cold, Prabhupada asked for halava since the grains and ghee heated up the body. So this particular day he called me and asked me to make halava. I was very excited and went to the kitchen and got the wheat germ and started to make halava.
The whole time I was cooking, I was thinking how pleased Srila Prabhupada would be with this wheat germ halava. This was my whole meditation, how Srila Prabhupada would be so pleased.
Then I offered it and brought it to Srila Prabhupada in his room. I was waiting to see how he would like it. He looked up with a very sour look on his face and said, “Halava means suji (cream of wheat).” With his left hand he motioned saying, “Take this away.” When someone rejects something with his left hand, it is very heavy. So broken heartedly, I took the bowl of halava out of the room.
I was very upset and didn’t know what to do. So I went into the temple and sat in front of the altar before the pictures of Srila Prabhupada and Srila Bhaktisiddhanta. Crying, I began to pray to Srila Bhaktisiddhanta, “I was just trying to please your spiritual son, but somehow he is upset with me. I don’t know what to do. I really only wanted to please him.”
This lecture by Hridayananda Das Goswami is part of the Religions of India series and deals with the Hindu/European issue which transpired during the 19th century.
This film trailer, The Beauty and Design of Butterflies, shows the amazing and wondrous metamorphosis from caterpillar to butterfly thus defying any Darwinian concept.
Another incident that comes to mind was in 1968 or 69. We had a very well attended temple on La Cienega Boulevard in Los Angeles. The devotees went to Griffith Park in Los Angeles and chanted and distributed prasadam. Visnujan had little puppets and we would have puppet shows there and bring people from Griffith Park to the temple. We also went to the meditation room in “The Mystic Arts Book Store” in Laguna Beach. They let us have kirtan there and we would bring van loads of people from Laguna Beach to Los Angeles for the feast. In this way the feast was very well attended.
On this particular day Srila Prabhupada was going to preside over an initiation and a fire yajna ceremony. The temple was very full with people. At that time an Italian film making crew was filming at the temple. If somebody could get that film, it would be a historical piece of footage. A lady named Syama Devi, who was the guru of many Hindus, came into the temple and sat in the back. (Syama Devi now has an ashram right next to the Krishna Balaram temple in Vrindavan.) Her disciples, older Hindu ladies and gentlemen, rolled out a carpet, she sat down on it, and they sat around her while Srila Prabhupada performed the yajna. After Srila Prabhupada finished he sat on the stage. Prabhupada’s Vyasasana was on the stage at the same level as the altar.
Imagine going to bed at 12 am, and while sleeping your body begins to dissolve. At 3 am, your body has become nothing more than a chemical soup. Everything, the brain, liver, kidneys, eyes, ect, everything has dissolved into a soup. From 3 am onwards this chemical soup begins to transform into another organism. At twelve am you are an earth bound catterpillar, at 3 am you are a chemical soup, and at 6 am when you wake up, you are a beautiful butterfly capable of flying some fifty miles in one day. This is explained in a very beautiful way in this 4 minute video on YouTube.
Of course this supernatural event will be explained away, as most things are, by the neo-evolutionists. However the butterfly is only one example of how nature is not an evolutionary, mechanistic process, but a supernatural one.
The woodpecker is an amazing bird. Its chizel like bill hammers the wood at an amazing 16 times per second, or 1000 pecks per minute, a rate of fire faster than a machine gun. Normally, banging your head against a tree all day at twice the speed of a bullet, would induce a cosmic sized headache, followed by brain damage. However, there is a special cartilidge between the beak and the skull which acts as a shock absorber. Woodpeckers close their eyes when pecking as the velocity would pop its eyes out, and so they only open them between pecks.
In contrast to the God of the dark ages, H.H. Hridayananda Das Goswami explains how an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent being can never be controlled, nor influenced by anger.
This 2nd part of a lecture series is an open discussion with H.H. Hridayananda Das Goswami on how and where to place our trust in our daily practice of Krishna consciousness.
