Everyone

In March 2010 Radhanath Swami asked a group of young men – some his disciples, some soon to be – to move from ISKCON’s Sri Sri Radha-Gopinatha temple in Chowpatty, Mumbai, to Govardhan Ecovillage, 108 kilometers from Mumbai, to develop a farm project there. It was his ardent desire to fulfill the dream of his beloved guru, His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, by developing this farm community centered on spiritual principles.

Bhakti-yogis practice nine processes of devotion: hearing about the Lord, chanting about Him, remembering Him, worshiping Him, serving Him, making friendship with Him, praying to Him, offering everything to Him, and serving His lotus feet. Followers of other types of yoga, on the other hand, often practice three processes, known as shravana, manana, and nididhyasana.

The spiritual odyssey of Walther Eidlitz (1892–1976), an Austrian writer, poet, and Indologist who became a devotee of Krishna in the 1930s, is remarkable, to say the least. Decades before Srila Prabhupada’s success in establishing ISKCON, incorporated in 1966, Eidlitz was one of the few beneficiaries of Gaudiya Vaishnavism’s initial mission to the Western world.

Endeavoring for happiness and attempting to avoid suffering are natural. Often, however, we don’t get the happiness we expect, and we can’t escape suffering despite our determined efforts. When our seamless plans lead to tragic results, when our good deeds performed with integrity end in tremendous tribulations, we naturally feel confusion and bewilderment.

In an extended allegory in the Fourth Canto of Srimad-Bhagavatam, time is personified as a king named Candavega, meaning that he moves “violently and quickly.” He is figuratively described as having 720 soldiers – the days and nights of a year – that relentlessly attack. The main character in the allegory is Purañjana, who represents each of us – the spiritual being encased in a material body.

Two words often used by scriptures and saints to describe this world are “contamination” and “fire.” We suffer the contamination of the external impurities of earth, water, air, and so on that constitute our material body, and we suffer from internal impurities such as lust, anger, violence, and hatred. Our body, mind, and intelligence all are contaminated to various degrees.

[Excerpted from Chasing Rhinos with the Swami, Volume 2. Copyright 2019 Samuel Paul Speerstra (Shyamasundar das). Volumes 1 and 2 are available from the Krishna.com Store and the author’s website: www.chasingrhinos.com.]

How do you feel when someone in a position superior to you often intervenes to correct your decisions and actions? Do you get frustrated when your choices and opinions are not appreciated, but altered? Would you love to have a guide who allows you to operate with freedom and doesn’t interfere with your autonomy?

Human society has always felt the urges to pursue advancement of knowledge, make fresh discoveries, and disseminate the knowledge gained. In bygone cultures guided by sagacious leaders, people were encouraged to satisfy such urges not through unending innovations and electronic wizardry, but through exploration of the spiritual dimension of life.

The word empower comes from the Old French prefix en-, meaning “in, into,” and the root “power,” meaning “ability, strength, might.” This sense of the word – “[placing] ability and strength in” – is found in an important verse in the Chaitanya-charitamrita (Antya 7.11), by Krishnadasa Kaviraja Goswami: