In Srimad-Bhagavatam culture, there is not such a breakdown between prosaic reality and poetic metaphor. Actual reality is far more enchanted and magical and strange than our modern scientific, mechanistic, deracinated conception. Things that we think of as concepts -- like fear, love, intelligence, decay and so on -- are actually living beings who can interact with other, similar beings. The universe is full of demons, demigods, ghosts, goblins, sages, yogis, siddhas, gandharvas, caranas, apsaras, humans, animals, plants, and all kinds of mystical beings....
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- 29 Mar 2024 -- 5,626 views
Lord Krishna’s deluding potency, works with certain energies that have the capacity to make material life seem like normal life. As we go about our everyday activities in the material world, we are continuously confronted with the normality, or normalness, of material existence. In other words, we are constantly bombarded with the notion that material life, with all its mundane rationality, constitutes normal life and that this world is where we belong. As Srila Prabhupada affirms, however, ma...
- 29 Mar 2024 -- 2,304 views
In the Ramayana, Rama was chasing the golden deer and realizing that it was a demon in disguise, He shot it down. The demon died calling out to Sita and Lakshmana mimicking the voice of Rama. Sita panicked while Lakshmana remained calm. When Lakshmana didn’t budge even an inch to help his brother, Sita insulted him, mercilessly assassinating his character. Though hurt very deeply, Lakshmana paused to ponder over the sudden change of conduct and vocabulary of his s...
- 29 Mar 2024 -- 4,459 views
In this way, we can begin to understand that devotional service ultimately brings us to the level of being able to see Lord Krishna directly. It is by this method that numerous other saintly sages and yogis have come to be able to directly see the Lord. The point to remember is that the more spiritual we become, the more we can perceive that which is spiritual. The more purified our consciousness is, or the higher the vibrational level upon which our consciousness functions, the more we can see and enter into that higher level of existence or reality. It awakens our transcende...
- 26 Mar 2024 -- 7,683 views
“Srila Prabhupada stressed the urgency to surrender to Krishna. Every line of his books, every sentence of his tapes, you would hear him urgently, just pleading with you and me, to take Krishna Consciousness seriously. Death, tragedy can come at any moment. And the greatest tragedy is that our faith is stolen away by maya and her various representatives which can come in many forms. There is no comfortable position when we are secure in material existence. We ar...
- 26 Mar 2024 -- 10,780 views
Yogapitha is the actual site of Lord Caitanya’s appearance. In 1893, Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakura established this site. He personally collected funds to purchase this land and built a small temple here
...- 26 Mar 2024 -- 5,442 views
The seventeenth-century mathematician/philosopher Blaise Pascal formulated a pragmatic argument for justifying belief in God. Which is worth the risk of error, Pascal questioned, belief or non-belief? It is wise, he said, to “wager” on the existence of God, for the alternative, to put one’s faith in faithlessness, is an inferior bet. And, more, if one believes in God but is eventually proven wrong, one loses nothing. But if one believes and is proven right, one ...
- 23 Mar 2024 -- 3,250 views
I was born and brought up in a Hindu family in Delhi, and we used to go to various temples and offer prayers before the gods. Two questions, however, always tickled my mind: Why do we worship so many gods, and who is the real God? As I never got answers to my questions, I considered all the gods equal, and in my teenage years all religions and faiths became one for me. Be it Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Islam, or Christianity, all pointed towards one God. ...
- 23 Mar 2024 -- 3,099 views
We are constantly accepting service from the Supreme Controller. When we will instead try to serve that Being, everything changes.
...- 23 Mar 2024 -- 5,042 views
Spiritual wisdom is not just a spare wheel in our life. When things don't work then we will go to temple or we will pray to God. We keep it like a spare wheel. But if we make spiritual wisdom as the steering wheel of our life, we make it pivot by which we shape our decisions then we will find that whatever life sends our way we will be able to bring the best out of it. In life good and bad things will anyway happen. But with BG wisdom, we can bring best out of the good and also of the bad. That is what Arjuna did, he was devastated at the start, but by the Gita wisdo...
- 21 Mar 2024 -- 4,201 views
To spread Krishna’s teaching abroad required someone who was both an exemplar of the Bhakti tradition yet flexible enough to adapt its teachings to a world governed by science and technology. Abhay had that balance: a devotee raised in strict Vaishanva fashion yet also educated in chemistry and economics, a person with his feet on the ground and his heart surrendered to God. He had no pretenses about being sent by Krishna, but his determination to do what his guru h...
- 21 Mar 2024 -- 2,915 views
According to the shastra, the way to counteract the very deeply strong tendency for possessiveness in the grihastha life is to giving charity to the Vaishnavas and the brahmans, to the mission of the guru. According to the shastra, the first fifty percent you have give it to your guru’s mission. And then whatever else you have, maintain, that is the ideal standard. You never be possessive if you do that, because the first priority with whatever you get goes to Guru and Krishna. You cannot do fifty percent; you should aspire to come as c...
- 21 Mar 2024 -- 7,488 views