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Bhakti Yoga-Devotional Service to the Supreme Lord Sri Krishna

Bhakti Yoga-Devotional Service to the Supreme Lord Sri Krishna
Gopis performing Devotional Service to the Lordships Sri Sri Radha Krishna

Looking for strength

 
 

Sent to you by dinesh via Google Reader:

 
 

via kksblog.com by hina on 10/10/11

(Kadamba Kanana Swami, Helsinki, Finland, 2011)

I have one more thing to say about men and women. A lot of fuss has been made about women wanting to be equal to men. But in most cases, the truth of the matter is that men have become equal to women – that's actually the situation. That's actually where we are at in society.

In a sense that men are also weak, and they are also inclined towards the senses and not inclined towards a higher goal. The men are supposed to be strong by saying:

"No!"

By going for the spiritual goals in life, but the men are very weak, and the whole culture is like that. Everyone is a slave to the senses, and everyone is full of good intentions but cannot live up to it, because this is the situation. When we take to spiritual life, then we fix ourselves:

"Yes I'm going to do this".

And we don't do it, because as we are getting confronted with the three modes of material nature – we find ourselves weak, because we find that we do not having enough strength to do so! So men are meant to be strong but in this age the men are also weak! That is why I said:

"When we say men and women become equal".

Yes, that has already happened – the men became like the women. So that is the whole population, which is very much inclined towards the mind and the senses – that is the situation.

Therefore, we see now that sometimes some women are spiritually stronger than men, where the wife is the driving force in the family and the men is sort of flaky, and half there by not following all of the principles……….falling back into smoking dope. I know so many cases like this, but the truth of the matter is that, that is Krishna's arrangement, and Srila Prabhupada is making a point here:

"Because women were especially created by the Lord to give service to men!"

A woman is looking for strength in a man. A woman wants to feel protected, and wants to feel supported and is looking for a man who is actually stronger than she is, since then she will actually feel inspired and follow the man…………and together she can also do it. Therefore, in the Bhagavatam it is stated:

"If one wants to be husband, then one has to be of a very high calibre. One has to be practically as good as a spiritual master".

So where do we find such husbands? Mostly the husbands are struggling and weak, then the women become restless and not satisfied. We don't understand these things when we come from the west. We don't understand that deep down there is this expectation, since the woman expects the man to spiritually be the example. That is the kind of man that she really wants – a the first class man!


 
 

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Steve Jobs 1955-2011

 
 

Sent to you by dinesh via Google Reader:

 
 

via Indradyumna Swami's Facebook Notes by Indradyumna Swami on 10/5/11

 "I didn't have a dorm room," he [ Steve Jobs ] said in his Stanford speech, "so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned Coke bottles for the 5-cent deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the seven miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on."

 

"He returned to Silicon Valley in 1974 and took a job there as a technician at Atari, the video game manufacturer. Still searching for his calling, he left after several months and traveled to India with a college friend, Daniel Kottke, who would later become an early Apple employee."

 

[ Steve Lohr, The New York Times,  October 5, 2011 ]

 

As devotees, we are greatful for his Apple creations which in so many ways facilitate our services to Lord Krsna.

 


 
 

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The Most Chaste

 
 

Sent to you by dinesh via Google Reader:

 
 

via Indradyumna Swami's Facebook Notes by Indradyumna Swami on 10/9/11

"Sita first placed a straw between her and Ravana, as a symbol of her unwillingness to contact him directly. Then she gently replied, 'You should withdraw your mind from me and remain contented with the numerous consorts you already possess. You will never be able to have me, just as a sinful man fails to achieve perfection. I was born in a noble family and was married according to religious principles. I will never do anything contrary to righteousness, and there is no hope of your ever gaining my favor.'"

 

[ Sita, wife of Lord Ramacanda, from Sundara-kanda, Ramayana ]

 

Sita devi, the wife of Ram.


 
 

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[New post] Lady of the Lake

Lady of the Lake

by jahnavi

After the Kirtan festival ended I got to stay an extra day at Ananda ashram. I grabbed the opportunity for some extra lake time. To sit, to chant, to think, to play violin, to sail across - there's nothing like a good lake!

Every time I come to one, all my lake memories float up - fishing for tadpoles after school at Bhaktivedanta Manor; skimming flat stones across Bala Lake in north Wales as bats screeched overhead; swimming in lily filled Canadian ones on the Krishna youth summer tour; early morning talks with dear friends before the water, blanketed with summer mist in upstate NY.

The one here took me back to Vrindavan - to Govinda Kund, the sacred lake where Sri Gopal would visit Madhavendra Puri, a great saint. Acting like a normal village boy, he would bring him nourishing pots of milk, saying 'No one goes hungry in my village!' It's a story I have always loved - so sweetly illustrating Krishna's loving kindness and totally personal care.

I experience that care every day. Somehow no matter how confused I get about whether I'm doing the right thing in the right way, I continue to learn and be blessed. I spoke to a new friend about this today who shared with me that she has learned to appreciate those blessings especially which come in the form of the hardest life lessons - those which strip you from your husk and mash you, because as she put it - 'You are worthy - you are meant for something great so your struggles must be great. Krishna only sends you what he knows you can handle.' Knowing the life she's had, it was humbling to hear and I can only hope that I can reach a similar point of gravity and gratitude as I traverse my own path.

This is my new lake meditation.

20111010-215131.jpg



--
Yours
Dinesh
Blog:http://dinesh-krsna.blogspot.com


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No one before you has ever seen this Universal Form of Mine-Lord Sri Krishna


Bhagavad-gita As It Is | Part [BG.11.32] 

TEXT 48:

na veda-yajnadhyayanair na danair
na ca kriyabhir na tapobhir ugraih
evam-rupah sakya aham nri-loke
drashtum tvad anyena kuru-pravira

 

TRANSLATION:

O best of the Kuru warriors, no one before you has ever seen this universal form of Mine, for neither by studying the Vedas, nor by performing sacrifices, nor by charity, nor by pious activities, nor by severe penances can I be seen in this form in the material world.

 

PURPORT:

The divine vision in this connection should be clearly understood. Who can have divine vision? Divine means godly. Unless one attains the status of divinity as a demigod, he cannot have divine vision. And what is a demigod? It is stated in the Vedic scriptures that those who are devotees of Lord Vishnu are demigods (vishnu-bhaktah smrita devah). Those who are atheistic, i.e., who do not believe in Vishnu, or who recognize only the impersonal part of Krishna as the Supreme, cannot have the divine vision. It is not possible to decry Krishna and at the same time have the divine vision. One cannot have the divine vision without becoming divine. In other words, those who have divine vision can also see like Arjuna.

 

The Bhagavad-gita gives the description of the universal form. Although this description was unknown to everyone before Arjuna, now one can have some idea of the visva-rupa after this incident. Those who are actually divine can see the universal form of the Lord. But one cannot be divine without being a pure devotee of Krishna. The devotees, however, who are actually in the divine nature and who have divine vision, are not very much interested in seeing the universal form of the Lord. As described in the previous verse, Arjuna desired to see the four-handed form of Lord Krishna as Vishnu, and he was actually afraid of the universal form.

 

In this verse there are some significant words, just like veda-yajnadhyayanaih, which refers to

studying Vedic literature and the subject matter of sacrificial regulations. Veda refers to all kinds of Vedic literature, such as the four Vedas (Rig, Yajur, Sama and Atharva) and the eighteen Puranas, the Upanishads and the Vedanta-sutra. One can study these at home or anywhere else. Similarly, there are sutras-Kalpa-sutras and Mimamsa-sutras—for studying the method of sacrifice. Danaih refers to charity which is offered to a suitable party, such as those who are engaged in the transcendental loving service of the Lord—the brahmanas and the Vaishnavas. Similarly, "pious activities" refers to the agni-hotra and the prescribed duties of the different castes. And the voluntary acceptance of some bodily pains is called tapasya. So one can perform all these—can accept bodily penances, give charity, study the Vedas, etc.—but unless he is a devotee like Arjuna, it is not possible to see that universal form. Those who are impersonalists are also imagining that they are seeing the universal form of the Lord, but from Bhagavad-gita we understand that the impersonalists are not devotees. Therefore they are unable to see the universal form of the Lord. 

Translation and commentary by His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada


--
Yours
Dinesh
Blog:
http://dinesh-krsna.blogspot.com


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