The reawakening

(Kadamba Kanana Swami, 26 December 2017, Govinda Valley, Australia, Initiation Lecture)

Krsna has a deep personal relationship with every living entity and he is conscious of every thought the every living entity has – just imagine that! Krsna is unlimitedly great in this aspect. And so, Krsna enters into a deep personal relationship with every devotee and can become attracted and captured by their loving service. This is called sri krsna-akarsani – to attract Krsna by devotional service. This is our aim: to go deeper into devotional service and attract Krsna.

Krsna states in the Bhagavad-gita that by remaining covered by his illusory energy, people will not be able to see him in this material world. Therefore, there is sometimes doubt or strong opinions where some may say, "He is an old man with a beard." Once a professor referred to Srila Prabhupada as "dogmatic" for saying that Krsna is God. The professor was of the opinion that we should be more universal to all religions and not become narrow-minded; this is what he meant by dogmatic. In response, Srila Prabhupada said, "Why is he so dogmatically saying that Krsna is not God when he has never seen God?".

Ultimately, one has to see the Supreme Lord but because of the cover by the illusory energy, we have forgotten our origins, our connection with Krsna. Even if we remember a little, by some mercy or have some knowledge, it is still very incomplete. We are not seeing Krsna face-to-face. So, our purpose is to reawaken our natural love for Krsna and to restore our original relationship with him; to dedicate our lives in service to Krsna, so that we can attract him. Once that is happening, we naturally become more and more attached to Krsna by hearing, chanting and serving him. This is completely natural because Krsna is not an ordinary person!

The article " The reawakening " was published on KKSBlog.

A friendly movement

(Kadamba Kanana Swami, 18 October 2017, Melbourne, Australia, Srimad Bhagavatam 4.3.17)

ISKCON has to be a very friendly movement. A very accommodating movement that is ready to give everyone a chance; ready to not find fault in others. To not find fault in others is hard. We may catch someone lying and say, "He is a liar! Shame! This person needs to be rejected!" Well, have we ever lied? Never, ever? That is a lie! So yes, even if we catch someone lying, it does not mean that that person has some weakness. It does not mean that we can say, "This person is a write-off! I do not want to deal with such people!" Because then, we cannot deal with ourselves either. We are all fallen. We are all simply here by the mercy of great devotees and by the mercy of Lord Krsna.

But then, "How do you correct someone?"

Chanakya Pandit has mentioned that you cannot correct anyone unless you are in a senior position to that person. And even when you are in a senior position to that person, you cannot correct them unless you have a heartfelt friendship with them. If you are not senior and do not have a heartfelt relationship, then you do not correct them. Instead, you go to someone who has that relationship and say, "Well, these things are going on. I do not know what to do, but if you think something should be done…  I just want you to know." That is all!

It is not that we go around, "That is not really right, Prabhuji. That is not our standard… That is very offensive!" Through this, we just create a movement that nobody wants to be a part of it for a long time. If it is fine to tell everyone off then we cannot live in such a movement for a long time.

We need a movement which is based on deep friendship and deep appreciation. We do not need a boarding school. If we create a movement which is like a boarding school where everyone is looking at everyone else like, "Prabhuji, are you doing this correctly? That should go over there!" Then, in one's mind, one may start to think, "I want to break loose. I want to run free. I want to go."  

We become split personalities in such an environment. We have a façade and the façade is all external rules, regulations and standards. And behind the closed curtains, the real self comes out. No, we do not want that. We want a very mature movement. A movement with deep friendships amongst everyone. And then, we help each other and we realise, "Today I help you and tomorrow you help me."

The article " A friendly movement " was published on KKSBlog.

A vaisnava's security is his goodwill!

(Kadamba Kanana Swami, 01 April 2014, Cape Town, South Africa, Evening Lecture)

We may think, "What about my security? I need some security; like a little money in the bank, a credit card maybe. You know, just in case, something happens. Need to be prepared. What about my security?"

But a vaisnava's security is his goodwill; his goodwill with the people. That is the best security because goodwill goes much further than the bank. You know, the banks may say, "Well, sorry!"  If you have maybe 150 000 and the bill is 160 000. The bank is not paying the extra 10 000. No way! But goodwill, oh, goodwill can pay anything. Yes!

"A million? Alright, what to do. We'll pay." Goodwill is like that because goodwill has a heart and the bank has no heart; that's for sure. The bank is just cold, making profit and impersonal. So what kind of security is that?

You know, plastic! Plastic money, plastic card and one day, there might be no money in the bank! It happened already, in some places there was no money in the bank. People went to the bank to take their money and the bank had no money. What do you do? Put your money in the bank all this time and when you want to take it out, it's not there! So what kind of guarantee is that? But goodwill will never be depleted. So this is really how the vaisnava community functions, away from this artificial society which is based on impersonal security.

Insurance!? Previously, again goodwill was the insurance. When relationships were there, that was the insurance. It still works for many people in the world. The family is your insurance and life was going on as much it is going on now. It is not like, "Oh my God, before we invented insurance, life was so terrible. People were dropping dead like flies, left and right! Serious! Imagine – they were depending on their friends and family and maybe even on the village! That must have been terrible!" No, it worked fine! It helped also to have good relationships.

In countries where the government took over – an interesting country is Sweden because it has a very socially supportive structure, a socialistic structure actually. Basically the idea is the state takes care of everything. So family is something that is really not relevant. You rely on the state and not on your family. Therefore people don't really want families.They want to minimize families – less family and more state; everything comes from the state. It's interesting how it really works like that. The state is very benevolent, gentle and always provides. No problem! Everything provided by the state. But you know, everything is impersonal, very impersonal in such a condition.

In a family situation, everything depends on relationships. So vaisnavism depends on that, depends on service, depends on giving people something valuable, giving them valuable knowledge so that they become indebted. Giving them valuable support, giving answers, real answers…  It works, there is no difficulty at all in maintaining in such an environment and yes, that is how the world should be. The world should not depend on an artificial, global economy and so on. No need for families to be spread out over six countries; every family is sort of going that way these days. A relative in one corner, a relative in another corner. What a weird world? Strange!

Just a village – everyone in the village and then, it all is simple because there are relationships and relationships become important. It's like when you live in a city, it doesn't really matter because people are just faces. You don't know them. There are all these faces of people you don't know. So it's just endless faces, meaningless faces. But living in the village, you know everybody and well, you have to live with them, so you, you know, you better invest in the relationships so that it works. So that is actually the natural way of life.

The article " A vaisnava's security is his goodwill! " was published on KKSBlog.

The holy dhamas

(Kadamba Kanana Swami, 14 November 2017, Mayapur, India, Nectar of Devotion Seminar)

In the Nectar of Devotion, Chapter 13, we are talking about residing in Mathura dhama or Mathura mandala which refers to the holy dhama of Vrindavan. Mayapur dhama is non-different. "So this attainment of transcendental loving devotional service to the Lord is the goal of life and it can be achieved very easily for one who lives in Mathura mandala even for a few seconds."  EVEN FOR A FEW SECONDS! Just see all the benefit we are getting by being part of this Movement and understand why Srila Prabhupada wanted to develop projects in these holy dhamas where we could stay.

Of course, the Navadvipa Dhama Mahatmya is pointing out that in the age of Kali, Vrindavan will become less and less manifest and Mayapur will become more and more manifest – not that it is any less transcendental; Vrindavan will stay equally transcendental but less manifest to the perception.

So gradually that will happen; materialistic society will enter into the layer that is covering Vrindavan – the layer of yoga-maya, the illusory energy. That layer then becomes polluted and then that layer which covers the dhama is less transparent. The dhama itself, of course, cannot be touched by anything material or by Kali-yuga but the dhama will be less visible. But still, we appreciate it.

It used to be so nice… When I went to the Krsna Balaram mandir, it was so nice. We had neighbours on either side and then on either side of that was open space. Across the road was a big park. After us, basically, Vrindavan would end. Then at the back was Raman Reti – you could see sixty peacocks in Raman Reti. There were even peacocks on the side of the road. The road was small and there would be one car a day going by. There were no scooters, nothing like that. Cycles and tongas, horse carts with wobbly wheels and tiny little horses, that was it.

In Loi Bazar, the shopkeepers would be sleeping. If you wanted to buy something, you had to wake them up. That is how it was. A totally different Vrindavan than what it is now. What can I say? There were no Western things. And there were not all these other people; just people who were coming for a yatra, for a pilgrimage. There were no hotels and guesthouses. There were ashramas. People would stay in ashramas. There was no television so in every house, at night there was kirtan. If you just walk to anywhere in Vrindavan at night, there was kirtan.  Forty years ago – a different time. So now, I can see how Vrindavan is becoming more covered; like Yamuna, little bit polluted and so on. What can we say? But Mayapur will become more and more manifest.

The article " The holy dhamas " was published on KKSBlog.

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