Dear devotees, Please accept my humble obeisances All glories to Srila Prabhupada Please click the link below to see the latest updates from the temple construction at ISKCON Salem. Hare Krishna! Your servant, Gaura Bhagavan DasaContinue Reading
In 2001, Sripad Jayadavaita Swami gave a lecture series titled “Food for Death”, which is still available on his website at http://www.jswami.info/seminars#food and which examined how prasadam distribution seen by the public as ordinary welfare work affects ISKCON’s core values. Sripad Bhakti Vikasa Swami in his 2011 lectures titled “Some Concerns About ISKCON” and “Further Discussion on Concerns About ISKCON” addresses the same issue Jayadvaita Swami addressed but in a more generalized context that includes other welfare initiatives.[1] Bhakti Vikasa Maharaja in his lectures also addresses what he identifies as fundamental, philosophical differences that have emerged within our society.
As far as social welfare is concerned, the lectures of both Swamis make a common point: the time and resources devotees increasingly give to indirect preaching in the form of welfare work, at the expense of direct preaching, reflects ISKCON’s growing acceptance of karma-kanda as a part of its core mission and, hence, core values.Continue Reading
In 19th and early 20th century America, the term “shotgun wedding” connoted a man being forced at gun point (usually by a shotgun) to marry a young woman. What typically occasioned the marriage was that the man got the girl pregnant and had no intention of marrying her, and consequentlyContinue Reading
This is a short film sponsored by Elon Musk, founder of the SpaceX and Tesla companies. It is a fictional depiction of what technology is likely to produce in the not so distant future. The point is valid that all the technologies for such a thing to come about exist.Continue Reading
There is a wave of incrimination in the United States against powerful men in politics and the entertainment industry and who are being publicly accused in very large numbers of being raped and molested. But then something that no one could have predicted happened. It was a pre-Twitter, pre-internet, highlyContinue Reading
As followers of Śrīla Prabhupāda, we have been taught that service to the instructions of the guru (vāṇī) are given more importance than service to the form of the guru (vapuḥ). All of Śrīla Prabhupāda’s followers know this. However, sometimes according to personal taste or circumstance, we may focus moreContinue Reading
Group Think The most important thing one needs to establish quickly when whipping up a good conspiracy is to get as many people on board as fast as possible. Marketing specialists refer to those people who are the first to rush out and try something new as “Early Adopters”. SocialContinue Reading
Baffle them with Cow Dung That is indeed a very tragic scenario… but despite all the hyperbole, pages of so-called testimonies, dramatic stories to track down hearsay rumors heard by children who disappeared in Mexico, pages of audio charts, medical history, and tangential stories about Chandra Swami, Napoleon, Blanch TylerContinue Reading