We are celebrating !

The Mind

- Plutarch - "The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled."

Radhanath Swami said....

Me trying to run!

Here is a teeny weeny picture of me trying to run in the Bupa marathon....!

Me, Sonia and Uma raised over £1,000 and I raised my blood pressure.... hee hee !

My wonderful Guru Maharaj at ISKCON-LONDON

Here are some pics of my wonderful spiritual master when he came to give class at ISKCON London on Friday 7th August.

I missed his class as I was cooking Krsna's breakfast in the Deity kitchen and this was then offered to Maharaj.

READ EVERY DAY !

Letter to: Satsvarupa -- Los Angeles 16 June, 1972

You mention you like to speak now very often, but the first business should
be to preach to the devotees. It is better to maintain a devotee than to try
to convince others to become devotees. It is the duty of the GBC to maintain
the devotees, keep them in the highest standard of Krishna Consciousness,
and give them all good instruction, and let them go out and preach for
making more devotees. Your first job should be to make sure that every one
of the devotees in your zone of management is reading regularly our
literatures and discussing the subject matter seriously from different
angles of seeing, and that they are somehow or other absorbing the knowledge
of Krishna Consciousness philosophy. If they are fully educated in our
philosophy and if they can get all of the knowledge and study it from every
viewpoint, then very easily they will perform tapasya or renunciation and
that will be their advancement in Krishna Consciousness. So first thing is
to instruct all of your temple presidents and the other devotees to read
daily, just as we have done in our morning class in Los Angeles. You may
remember that we were reading one sloka each morning in Sanskrit and
reciting it altogether and then discussing it thoroughly by seeing different
new things. So you introduce this system and train the devotees first. Don't
be too much concerned for the time being with nondevotees, now we must
fix-up what devotees we have got in the knowledge of Krishna Consciousness,
then we will succeed. What good are many, many devotees if none of them are
knowledgeable?

Check this out

http://radhakrishnarecords.com/

Rough Stones

I find that spiritual life is like a rollar coaster ... sometimes you are on a high and sometimes you are on a major low !

Srila Prabhupada said that if you want to smooth out rough stones you have to bash them together, similarly in devotional life we find we are sometimes bashed together by our devotee peers ... and it confuses us and hurts us and makes us want to run a mile... but we must know that Krsna is arranging for our rough edges also to be smoothed out so our nice and shiny true selves can burst forth.

Happy Appearance Day !

Today is the Appearance day of Lord Balaram.

He is the original guru known as adi guru.

We can pray to Him for spiritual strength.

He is very merciful and protective.

We are very fortunate as we have Lord Balarama on the altar at ISKCON London.

The picture above was taken today ... doesn't He look lovely??

Lord Balarama ki jay !!

Who is Lord Balarama?

*****************
The Supreme Personality of Godhead, Krishna, is the fountainhead of all
incarnations. Lord Balarama is His second body. They are both one and the
same identity. They differ only in form. Balarama is the first bodily
expansion of Krishna, and He assists in Lord Krishna's transcendental
pastimes. He is the source of the entire spiritual world and is the adi-
guru, the original spiritual master.

He assumes five other forms to serve Lord Krishna. He Himself helps in the
pastimes of Lord Krishna, and He does the work of creation in four other
forms called the catur-vyuha (four armed) forms known as Vasudeva,
Sankarshana, Pradyumna and Anirudha. He executes the orders of Lord Krishna
in the work of creation, and in the form of Lord Sesa He serves Sri Krishna
in various ways. In all the forms He tastes the transcendental bliss of
serving Krishna. No one can approach Krishna without first getting the
mercy of Baladeva.

Envy

Envy

Do you suffer from envy?

Isn't it horrible?

It is like a cancer that just spreads all over you and makes you feel
glum and moody and lonely and bitter and ... ooh!!!

A horrible emotion.

We learn from the scriptures that it is due to envy of Krsna that we
find ourselves in this miserable world and that we find ourselves just
chewing the chewed life after life due to our stubborn pride of not
being able to latch onto Krsna and His loving service.

I have heard from senior devotees that if we praise and glorify the
person we envy this serves to mitigate our horrid cancerous feelings
towards them.

I tried this several years ago and even though it was the most painful
thing I have had to do it did actually work !

Spiritual life is such a challenge as it shakes our very core of who we
are and makes us unearth so many unpleasant attributes in our hearts
which we would much rather remain hidden from others and from us.

Krsna Consciousness in this respect soon separates the men from the mice
(so to speak !) .

It is tough but also the rewards are sweeter.

Chanting Hare Krsna attentively roots out this evil trait - envy -
unlike any other method.

Better to root it out rather then feeding off it.

Oohh !!!

My Guru Maharaj is coming !!

My Guru Maharaj is coming to the UK on Wednesday 5th August and leaves on 7th August in the evening.

Sooooo excited man !!

Instilling a Desire to Change

"Totally without hope one cannot live. To live without hope is to cease to live. Hell is hopelessness. It is no accident that above the entrance to Dante's hell is the inscription: "Leave behind all hope, you who enter here."

Fyodor Dostoyevsky