January/February 2019

WELCOME  This issue begins our commemoration of the seventy-fifty anniversary of the launch of Back to Godhead. Srila Prabhupada’s spiritual master had asked him to spread Krishna consciousness in English, and creating the magazine was Prabhupada’s first major attempt to fulfill that request. In this issue we’ve included the opening article of his historic first issue.

Srila Prabhupada would often point out that Lord Krishna’s teachings in the Bhagavad-gita deal not only with spiritual truths about the soul and God, but also about living in the material world. In this regard he would often quote a verse in the third chapter that begins “All living bodies subsist on food grains.” He encouraged his disciples to start farms and grow their own food without reliance on modern agricultural methods that deliver an array of negative side effects. In this issue, Giriraja Govinda Dasa deals with this topic in his article “Food: Grow Local, Be Spiritual.”

Related to subsistence farming is cow protection, a practice Srila Prabhupada envisioned for farms started by his disciples. The first of those farms, New Vrindaban in West Virginia, has followed that practice for fifty years now. In “Bovinely Inspired: New Vrindaban’s Care for Cows,” Satyaraja Dasa presents an overview of their efforts.

Hare Krishna. – Nagaraja Dasa

Departments

From the Editor

Letters

Srila Prabhupada Speaks Out

Vedic Thoughts