namahatta.org - Congregational Development Ministry

Article Source

This article has been imported from another website via it's XML-feed.

Date: 

3 days 18 hours ago

Original article: 

http://www.atmayogi.com/node/861

This week the ISKCON New Govardhana farming project in Australia received organic certification from the national Organic Growers Association. After several rigorous inspections, the farm was granted a certificate of compliance which allows all fruit and vegetables grown to carry the official OGA logo.

Commitment is an essential feature of all devotee relationships, especially the marriage relationship.

All of us have ups and downs, periods of craziness, and periods of clarity. Of course, as we become purified, situated in goodness and, ultimately, transcendental, we fluctuate less and less in our mood and character. But while our material conditioning still has a grip on us we experience periods of more or less Krishna consciousness.

This been said, devotees who have seriously committed themselves to applying the process have in effect declared, by this demonstration of commitment, that they deeply value purity of heart and aspire for it themselves. When a person shows such commitment and dedication, Krishna takes a personal interest in them and is committed to them in return. As devotees we must do the same for each other.

Article Source

This article has been imported from another website via it's XML-feed.

Author: 

Madhava Gosh

Date: 

2 weeks 18 hours ago

Original article: 

http://walkingthefenceline.wordpress.com/2008/06/20/bahulaban-herd-out-for-a-str...

[Video about a Buddhist couple's marriage experiment inside.]

Article Source

This article has been imported from another website via it's XML-feed.

Date: 

10 weeks 2 days ago

Original article: 

http://www.atmayogi.com/node/733

It's me, leading a discussion on "The Real Cost of the Necessities of Life".

I'll be using these two articles:

• Walking to the shops ‘damages planet more than going by car’
• Why walking to the shops might not damage the planet "more than going by car" after all

...In a study involving Dutch, American and Kurdish students, psychologists in the Netherlands found that...young people invariably considered [their] potential mate's attractiveness the most important quality, whereas parents uniformly paid more attention to the suitors' social background or group affiliation -- race, religious background and social class...

...Parents and offspring clash, the researchers argued, because their genetic self-interests, while overlapping, are not identical.

I actually wrote this article 9 years ago, in 1999, so times were changing then and have continued to change since then…. Although some aspects of it are dated, when I found it in a box of old papers I thought enough of it was still relevant to feel inspired to share it. :-)

[Comment to his own post on www.dandavats.com]

From the Article:

Similarly, men have to a large degree lost the good quality of their greater capacity for intelligence and retained a superiority complex through social conditioning. Along with this is a concomitant lack of humility that characterizes all interactions in Kali-yuga; this is the age of quarrel and misunderstanding.

Amongst all this, men have insisted that women live up to the Vedic standard of submission, chastity, and obedience, without insisting that they themselves live up to the terms of their varnasrama contract: providing protection, well informed level-headed guidance, and support. Varnasrama is a social contract—all parties have to fulfill their obligations under the terms of the agreement.

I am starting to spread the news, promoting the concept of if you aren’t a vegan, and you drink milk from commercial sources, you are contributing to a system that slaughters cows. To offset that, you need to donate regularly to cow protection programs.

Visitors to my blog may have noted that I have added a widget in my sidebar where the connection to my fundraising page for GEETA ( an organization that protects cows) can easily be gotten to. GEETA is one of many cow protection programs that will accept your donations.

Article Source

This article has been imported from another website via it's XML-feed.

Date: 

38 years 27 weeks ago

In a discussion with professors from the University of Durban (Oct 8, 1975) Srila Prabhupada proclaims “forget religion.” Prabhupada wants the discussion to revolve around very practical and scientific principles. He goes on to say that “knowledge of God should be (have a) practical application in life.” The idea of presenting the practically of Krishna Consciousness was one of the reoccurring themes in his converstaions.

So in a world that has indeed forgotten religion, or distorted religious principles, the preaching, more and more, has to make Krishna consciousness relevant to people’s lives in a practical way. And maya, in serving the devotees, is more and more turning the materialistic culture topsy-turvy and thus giving devotees the opportunity to offer solutions.

The article that I linked to the other day, Why I changed my mind about Water Fluoridation poignantly illustrates the dynamic that I described in my 2006 article What's really going on?

Most people are innocent and easily mislead. They in turn mislead others. A "conspiracy" doesn't require people to keep a secret, it just requires them to truly believe in what they are doing, even though it's wrong.

by Karnamrita dasa

There are different opinions regarding social issues or philosophy among devotees. Any perspective, side of an issue, or point of the Krishna conscious philosophy can be carried to an extreme in relation to others.

I tend to be on the middle of most issues, much to the chagrin of those who strongly advocate different perspective or causes. I do have strong opinions on certain issues, yet I am usually not on the front lines of confrontation. Ideally, even when I disagree I try to see the other perspective, and understand why the person holds the conviction they do.

by HH Jayadvaita Maharaja

Twenty years ago, no one gave a damn. You could gum up a river with factory sludge, chop down rain forests wholesale, spray fluorocarbons into the air like a kid sprinkling confetti, and no one would say boo.

No longer. Grade-school kids want to grow up to be ecologists. New York tycoons sort their trash to recycle. Rock singers play concerts to save prairies and wetlands. Political candidates tell us they’re worried about the fate of the three-toed baboon.

Caring about the environment helps you feel good about yourself. At the supermarket you choose paper instead of plastic. You write your thank-you notes on cards made from ground-up newsprint and cotton waste. You chip in a few dollars for Greenpeace. Hey, you care about the earth. You’re a righteous human being.

 

Krishna doesn’t just love milk, Krishna loves cows. So how does he feel if we are offering him grocery store milk that is laden with antibiotics and growth hormones—milk that comes from cows that are abused and mistreated and finally sent to the slaughterhouse?

To give milk the cow must be pregnant and then have a calf. On both organic and non-organic farms, cows are kept continuously pregnant. On non-organic farms mother cows are treated like machines, chained by their necks in concrete stalls for months at a time, their udders are swollen so large that they sometimes drag on the ground. Cows give milk for the same reasons humans do—to feed their babies. To keep milk production high, cows are kept pregnant by artificial insemination and their male calves are taken away at 1-2 days old and chained inside cramped dark crates to be killed for veal. The milk meant for them is what we buy on the grocery shelves. They are not even given a chance to drink their mother’s milk.

Hare Krishna. Please Accept my worthless obesiances at your feet. All glories to ISKCON’s Founder-Acarya, His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Srila Prabhupada.

I am writing this article in response to Karuna Prabhu ’s “Varnasrama,” and to a number of VAD related articles that appeared on dandavats.com. Rather than just write a comment, I have decided to write a quick article instead.

I first heard the Vrndavana Varnasrama Morning Walk Tapes (1974) when they first arrived from India. At that time I was working with Krishna Kanti Prabhu in the Golden Avatar Studios, and when the tapes arrived I had the service of opening them, placing them on the tape deck, and making master copy duplicates. As I did this, I was the very first to hear those tapes. (By Krishna’s arrangement, those were the first and last tapes that I performed this service on; I joined the BBT Art Department immediately afterwards).

“Cows constitute the stay of all creatures. Cows are the refuge of all creatures. Cows are the embodiment of merit. Cows are sacred and blessed and are sanctifiers of all. One should never, in even one’s heart, do an injury to cows. One should, indeed, always confer happiness on them.”

The above and following excerpts are from an article entitled, “Milk in the Age of Convenience.”

“As with all great treasures, milk comes with certain caveats. As our society further distances itself from nature and turns gradually more synthetic, these caveats turn into dire warning signals. A look at milk’s qualities as expressed in the magnificent Ayurvedic text, the Caraka Samhita, shows the potentiality of both misuse and overuse…Sattva is a state of lightness, equanimity, clarity, and, in this case, fortification, strength and vitality. Tamas, on the other hand, reflects dullness, confusion, sloth, and in this case, the process of compromising its quality, leading to ill health and the potentiality of allergies. But what exactly is “compromised” milk?

by Mantrini devi dasi

The North American Grihastha Vision Team (GVT) held their annual meeting in Prabhupada Village, North Carolina, the last week of April. The 12-person team reviewed their year's accomplishments and planned for the coming year. The future plans include rolling out a new schedule for the four-day VTE Grihastha Training Course, "Strengthening the Bonds that Free Us" (The next training will be held in Alachua, July 13-15, 2007, contact: gvisionteam108@yahoo.com), the development of one-day "mini" courses on such topics as Parenting, Finding a Worthy Partner, Communication Skills, and Problem Solving Skills; and expanding the organization to include interested persons as Grihastha Vision Team "associates."

Formed four years ago, the GVT is a group of devotees who are either registered counselors or have training in marriage education/preparation. It is the mission of the North American Grihastha Vision Team to support, strengthen, educate and enliven the individuals, couples and families who are or will be involved with the grihastha ashram. The GVT works with ISKCON temples throughout North America.

From Kripamoya Prabhu's blog, The Vaishnava Voice.

...

If we truly believe what our founder-acarya has told us, then we will view his movement - our movement - as a body which can bring about a spiritual revolution in human society. Nothing less. And that means our marriages must be revolutionary. Our marriages must be seen not only as our commitment to each other but as an offering to others who are yet to join us. When people see happy couples and happy families they will want to join us. If we have made a sacred and God-witnessed commitment to marriage then we must learn the scientific principles of how to create an enduring, unbreakable partnership. We must discuss our marriages, honour them, and do everything to support and protect them. We must speak up when we see couples in difficulty, help them, and never, ever, suggest the easy way out. The rewards for us all are enormous: emotionally, socially, and spiritually. And your great-grandchildren – and the future devotees of ISKCON - will thank you from their hearts.

By Madhava Gosh

If you drink factory milk, you drink its karma. There are some fancy rationalizations floating around to justify doing so, but if it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, it is a duck. You are responsible for your actions. Offering it to the spiritual master, who has mandated cow protection, and thinking that he is some karma filter that will make it all okay, is lame, IMHO. I don’t think you can ignore his instruction to protect cows, and then expect him to cover for you when you don’t. If you drink milk without protecting cows because of cost or inconvenience, then you are supporting factory style production, and all that that entails. Therefore you are seeing those cows as separate from Krishna.

Lecture by HH Radhanath Maharaja At the Wedding of Bhavatarine and Govinda Ghosh Govardhan Puja, New Vrndavana, October 25, 2002

... In 1969 when Prabhupada was here in New Vrndavana, he performed a marriage. And in his lecture he spoke something that fascinated me a lot. He explained how the duty of the husband and the wife were to dedicate each other to make their partner happy. Because Prabhupada said without happiness there cannot really be a growth of bhakti. It is actually the responsibility of husband and wife to keep each other happy in devotional service. ...

Marriage - considered as a legally sanctioned union of one man and one woman - plays a vital role in preserving the common good and promoting the welfare of children. In virtually every known human society, the institution of marriage provides order and meaning to adult sexual relationships and, more fundamentally, furnishes the ideal context for the bearing and rearing of the young. The health of marriage is particularly important in a free society such as our own, which depends upon citizens to govern their private lives and rear their children responsibly, so as to limit the scope, size, and power of the state. Marriage is also an important source of social, human, and financial capital for children, especially for children growing up in poor, disadvantaged communities who do not have ready access to other sources of such capital. Thus, from the point of view of spouses, children, society, and the polity, marriage advances the public interest.

But in the last forty years, marriage and family have come under increasing pressure from the modern state, the modern economy, and modern culture. Family law in all fifty states and most countries in the Western world has facilitated unilateral divorce, so that marriages can be easily and effectively terminated at the will of either party. Changing sexual mores have made illegitimacy and cohabitation a central feature of our social landscape. The products of Madison Avenue and Hollywood often appear indifferent to, if not hostile towards, the norms that sustain decent family life. New medical technology has made it easier for single mothers and same-sex couples to have children not only outside of marriage, but even without sexual intercourse. Taken together, marriage is losing its preeminent status as the social institution that directs and organizes reproduction, childrearing, and adult life.

By Vyapaka dasa

Dedicated to practically exploring Srila Prabhupada's instructions on simple living and high thinking. If we need inspiration, let us think of Srila Prabhupada's devotion and determination to serve his spiritual master as he boarded the Jaladutta — though he was penniless, of an advanced age and uncertain as to his chances of success — still he forged ahead.

By Jaya Sila das.

This document, located here, was brought to my attention via email. Apparently it was used to accompany a VIHE- or MIHE-course about the grihastha asram, but will be useful in itself, containing hundreds of quotes from Srila Prabhupada's lectures, letters, and talks.

 

Most devotees' lives and views on devotional service change as their ashram changes. When several devotees pass through ashram changes at approximately the same time-or even if one respected devotee within a temple changes his ashram-a temple can become affected.

"My parents are hopeless! They will never change. What is the use of associating with them?" Try to remember your own beginning steps in Krsna consciousness. Did you accept everything at once? You were young, curious, and you wanted to join the movement. Your parents are older, more fixed in their ways, and above all, they didn't make a decision to join!

By Hari-sauri dasa

In the introduction of Sri Isopanishad there is a statement by Srila Prabhupada that says that women are less-intelligent. So I distribute books. I sometimes meet ladies and they ask what actually, you know, sometimes they are immediately intimidated and they start to argue, that you say we are less-intelligent. So what would be the best way to address such issues?