New Vrindaban's Best Kept Secret (Part 2)

By Bhakta-Chris

the perfection of life

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.

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.

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...

Balarama

Bhima

Gita

Caitanya Bhagavat

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.

Real love

Working the hay

More to come Thursday...

Hit the Asphalt!

Being an aspiring celibate monk in the Gaudiya Vaisnava (Hare Krsna) tradition, I often get the impression that people have no idea what I actually do. What exactly does actual spiritual life look like, sound like, taste like, and feel like. Actually, I'm not sure. I'll think I'll try to figure it our after I get up from my nap....we do arise at 4am in these parts.

To give you, dearest reader, a small example of this devotee life, I present a photo essay of our journey northwards to Pittsburgh and Michigan that occurred last weekend (3-16 to 3-20-07). I traveled with my fellow former Michigan homeboy and good neighbor Caitanya Das, along with His Grace Yugal Kishore Das, one of New Vrindaban's most delightful traveling salesmen, engaged in the helping spread the marketplace of the Holy Name. Also repping the New Vrindaban contingent in Detroit this weekend was Her Grace Mother Malati, who is one of the original Western disciples of our Hare Krsna movement and of the man himself, His Divine Grace Srila Prabhupada. Caitanya and I were mainly traveling doing college programs of musical meditation (kirtan) and spiritual discussion, while Yugal and Malati were in Detroit to preside over a Deity installation at the local home of one of our congregation members.

So, with my whole life being experimental, I'm gonna throw up a bunch of pictures here so you may get some kind of jist. I've been told by knowlegable sources not to overload on the photography, because it overloads the load time for people of lesser CPU capacity. To those people, all I can say, like the human beings will say, is "sorry." Please enjoy to the best of your capacity anyway...

Caitanya Das prays for rain

A neon kirtan for the neon age, live from the University of Pittsburgh


Yugal Kishore dresses and bathes the New Arrivals

Our man Bhakta Joe Swift doing what he does best.

Back to the roots...a college program-East Quad-U. of Michigan-Ann Arbor


"Take the pacifier out of your mouth, and just fill your mouth with harinama instead.."





Detroit Rock City!

The kindest enlightenment from Her Grace Mother Malati.


Heating up the asphalt and catching a cold-Kirtan at Michigan State University

The ideal way to end the trip-organic raspberry popsicles.

His Divine Grace A.C Bhaktivedanta Swami Srila Prabhupada-ISKCON Devasadan-Detroit