Thursday, March 29, 2007

New Vrindaban's Best Kept Secret (Part 2)

By Bhakta-Chris

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the perfection of life

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the mode of goodness

Srila Prabhupada lays out the bare facts very clearly: “Men do not understand that because they unrestrictedly kill so many animals, they must also be slaughtered like animals in big wars….In the West, slaughterhouses are maintained without restriction, and therefore every fifth or tenth year there is a big war in which countless people are slaughtered even more cruelly than the animals.”

Cow protection has always been and will always be one of the most fundamental tenets of Prabhupada’s mission. By leading the mass of the bovine population to the slaughterhouse, we not only cause incredibly serious environmental effects, but karmic reactions that send our earthly planet into an apocalyptic tailspin.

To be Krsna conscious and to not have any interest or desire to engage in systematic protection of the world’s cow population is to be missing a big part of the point. If you don’t believe me, ask Balabhadra, our ISKCON Minister of Cow Protection and Agriculture, or Madhava Ghosh, or any senior devotee with a little dung permanently stained into their pants. They will give you candid and inspiring information that will help you to see Mother Cow in a way you never have before.

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mmm…

New Vrindaban is much more than just the temple itself. In fact, if you listen close enough, you may hear Radha Vrindaban Chandra whisper that their favorite part of New Vrindaban is the cows. If you’re visiting or living here and haven’t had the chance to visit the Goshalla, with the shining faces of our bull calves Kesava and Madhava and their esteemed mothers Tulasi and Ganga, you are in for a real treat. The kind of love and affection a cow can give you is something very special in this material world. The true essence must be experienced. For more information on the important need of cow protection, please check out www.iscowp.org.

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Srimad-Bhagavatam Meditation: 1:10:4

Once a week, I will be sharing a meditation on a verse from the ripened fruit of the tree of Vedic knowledge: the Srimad-Bhagavatam, translated and with commentary by His Divine Grace Swami Srila Prabhupada.

I humble request you to first read today's verse, from Canto 1, Chapter 10, Verse 4..."Departure of Lord Krsna for Dvaraka."

kamam vavarsa parjanyah
sarva-kama-dugha mahi
sisicuh sma vrajan gavah
payasodhasvatir muda

During the reign of Maharaja Yudhisthira, the clouds showered all the water that people needed, and the earth produced all the necessities of man in profusion. Due to its fatty milk bag and cheerful attitude, the cow used to moisten the grazing ground with milk.



In Prabhupada's commentary, he says that "the basic principle of economic development is centered on land and milk." This is the very foundation of our Krsna conscious motto of "Simple Living and High Thinking." All of our farm communities strive to live wholly by this ideal. The earth provides all we need naturally, especially when we are aligned spiritually with the dictates of the Absolute Truth. But, as individual spirit souls who have a tendency to want to believe that we are the Absolute Truth, we misuse our God-given free will and are always attempting to live in a world that is bigger, better, and faster.

No matter how much you and I love our MP3 players, they are not essential to our survival. This can be extended to any technological or extraneous mechanical device, even this very computer. The Internet can be a wonderful communication tool, but if some crafty Korean hackers yanked the whole show down this afternoon, your physical survival would most likely not be threatened.

It is this drive to create artificial comforts and standards of sense gratification that distracts us from true realization of the nature of our self, and of how we can relate in the best possible way to all the souls who surround us as well. I'm certainly no luddite, but the future of humanity depends of finding a balance between the land and the mechanical invention. Right now, the see-saw is leaning heavy in the direction of the machine, and the machine might just want to eat us whole.

Getting to that correct balance means first and foremost respecting those cheerfully fatty cows. Prabhupada pulls no punches when he says "Why should men kill cows for their selfish purposes? Why should man not be satisfied with grains, fruits and milk....Why are there slaughterhouses all over the world to kill innocent animals?...Is this humanity? Are not the animals of a country citizens also? Then why are they allowed to be butchered in organized slaughterhouses? Are these the signs of equality, fraternity, and non-violence?"

Have you ever seriously asked yourself these questions before? The answers that are provided with some good old-fashioned thinking will hopefully enlighten you well beyond what you choose to put onto your dinner plate. There are deep environmental and spiritual benefits that come with a conscious change to a vegetarian or vegan diet.

No less an authority than Albert Einstein says that "nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet."
Becoming a vegetarian is, from my own personal experience, one of the most rewarding choices you can make in your personal practice of existence.

We have to listen to more than just our guts. I pray than anyone who reads this can at least try to understand your own individual responsibility to your own health, and the health of all living entities that surround you, including animals big and small. The happiness you will feel is guaranteed to help you see reality much clearer than you ever have before.

Check out the Veggie Hub (www.veggiehub.com). They'll explain it much better.




Tuesday, March 27, 2007

"There's something up there, Mulder"


When I was a wee young child going to the Harper Woods Public Library, I would instantly head right to the beginning of the Dewey Decimal System and check out all of the books on UFOs, Bigfoot, and the Loch Ness Monster.

I have always been and still am very much fascinated with such paranormal subjects, which push the limits of human experience, thought, and belief in many challenging and exciting ways.

So, this blog will feature, along with my many devotional experiences in Krsna consciousness, different interesting articles and news from the paranormal world.

First in line is a recent article from the Arizona Daily Star, in which former Governor of Arizona Fife Symington admits to having been an eyewitness to one of the major UFO sightings of the past 20 years, the Phoenix Lights.

One of the most powerfully empowered gurus in our tradition, Bhakta Tirtha Swami, also had a keen interest in the subject of UFOs, and he wrote about them at length in his excellent book Spiritual Warrior I: Uncovering Spiritual Truths in Psychic Phenomena.

In this tome, B.T Swami says very clearly that spiritual advancement means coming into tune with realities far beyond the mundane newspaper-cheeseburger-football game paradigm we currently live in. And one of those realities is the fact that we are being visited, altered, and even aided by beings who originate from places very very far away from this earthly realm.

The "little green men" piloting these UFOs may actually be very spiritually advanced entities who have come to Earth at this time to aid us in the many vast societal and cultural changes that loom in the decades ahead.

B.T Swami says that "this is one of the most incredible times to be a part of this universe...You also have purposely taken birth at this time on this planet to be a part of this unfoldment. We encourage you to align yourselves with people and practices that will raise your consciousness and that will harmoniously align you with the universe and God."

In case I haven't mentioned it yet, an open mind is required at this particular corner of the blogosphere. In case you haven't noticed it as well, the foundation of our so-called "advanced" civilization is crumbling faster and faster by the day. We need to look to the past and to the future in order to find the solutions to the mess we have made. As they used to say every Friday night on Fox, "the truth is out there.."

Sunday, March 25, 2007

New Vrindaban's Best Kept Secret (Part 1)

One of the extra benefits of living in an ISKCON farm community, alongside the whole blissful daily practice of getting one step back closer to Godhead, is the many earthy service opportunities.
Before I came here, I had some semblance of an idea of what I was getting myself into, and a big part of that semblance was some serious association with my favorite animal species, the cow.

As Old Man Winter recedes, and it becomes less of an austerity to just simply step outside, I have found some very important time to do some serious cow seva, whether it's finding just the right "sweet spot" in the art of scratching our adorable bull calves Kesava and Madhava, or in joining our dearest Caitanya Bhagavat Prabhu in his daily seva amongst our herd of bovines in and around the ISCOWP barn.

First, let's meet some of our friends...

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Balarama

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Bhima

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Gita

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Caitanya BhagavatMore...

Caitanya Bhagavat has been taking care of our sublime collection of our ISCOWP family for many months now, and its one of the best services he has personally ever been a part of. Therefore, he makes it quite a joy to be with him, even more so than usual, which is saying a whole lot. As Prabhupada and Lord Caitanya have said, the cows live completely in the mode of goodness, and anyone who takes care of them is promoted to the mode of goodness.

Caitanya Bhagavat is a living example of this fact, and much more. He has such a transcendental lila with our four-legged friends that one who serves with him in this manner does nothing but strive to come to that same platform of soul-affirming association. He's a real inspiration.

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Real love

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Working the hay

More to come Thursday...