Spirit Matters

The Yoga of Ecology

2010-02-19T08:00:00.000-05:00

Progressive. Environmental. Spiritual

The Yoga of Ecology is a collection of inspiring and action-packed resources for the spiritually-inclined eco-activist. Alongside our collection of timely and practical articles, we offer a deeper perspective on our collective ecological crisis.

It is a perspective rooted in time-tested, traditional wisdom that challenges us to remove the pollution within ourselves to truly remove the pollution from our external environment.

The Yoga of Ecology connects the internal environment of our self with the external environment we earnestly seek to preserve and make whole again. We have to realize that our ecological situation is one that is deeply personal.

To contribute with articles or your own perspectives, contact the editor Chris Fici at nvclub108@gmail.com

Ecology of The Heart

2009-09-14T08:00:00.001-04:00

by Palak Shah

It’s the question that drives me. It always has and always will. And it drives me toward true realization of my self. It's a natural calling that I have cultivated ever since I could think. For so long I was confused about who I was and what I was to do in this world.

If I had to pinpoint one moment where this inner journey began, it would be when I tried to convince my grammar school friends that the ant they were about to crush under their feet was ‘God’ or maybe a god or maybe one of God’s blessed creatures.

I didn’t really know and I didn’t have much of a chance to explain my confusion since they were still rolling in laughter. I was embarrassed but amazed that I was bold enough to say what I felt. I inherently believed that the ant had a purpose and that it deserved to see it through. I was a critical player in this ant’s environment and I had a choice to be a constructive or destructive piece in it’s universe.

I wanted to be constructive; a conduit for its journey. This experience gradually opened up in me a yearning to know more and be more than I was. I believed my journey culminated when I came across the deeply profound spiritual teachings of A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami in college.From these teachings I felt I got a deeper balance that has endured in my life.

After all, I survived childhood. I overcame the trappings of college life. I made my way into a decent career. I married a good woman. I even found spiritual fulfillment. Not a bad shake out of the quagmire of existence, especially at 31. Sure I could be richer, better looking, taller, more athletic, more popular, and have better digestion. But other than that, things are pretty good.

Yet I am afraid about something. What’s the deal? Why am I so afraid? Where’s the balance I thought I discovered? What is gnawing at my insides? Maybe too many bad headlines. Maybe too many doomsday movies. Maybe the economic pendulum is swinging way too fast. Maybe…I just can’t seem to get a grip on it.

And that is scaring me more than anything else. It’s coming from so many directions. But my thought process refuses to stop there and be satisfied with that. My incessant hunger to get to the root of my pre-midlife crisis melodrama usurps any gravitational pull to stick to the status quo. What is messing with my internal stasis?

I got a clue one fine Monday morning as I was headed to work. Like most mornings, as I was rushing down the stairs, strapping on my shoes, and grabbing the car keys, I hurried out the front door. I opened the back door of my Honda Accord and left my things in the back seat. Settling into the driver’s seat, I realized I still had to wait for my wife to come. I thought to myself, “Ok, you’ve got a few minutes to relax.”

But as I situated myself, I was feeling unusually uneasy. And I was uneasy about feeling uneasy since this was a pretty typical weekday morning. It definitely wasn’t the breakfast because I didn’t have any as I usually don’t so early and I certainly wasn’t feeling sick. So while I was introspecting on the source of my psychological nausea, my attention shifted towards steering wheel. I noticed it was made of leather. I thought, “Hmm, some poor cow probably suffered a lot so that I can have this nice steering wheel.”

My thoughts continued towards the other facets of this contraption. The tires, windows, door knobs, engine, seats. What did it take to make this car? The emissions from the multitude of cloth, steel, glass, plastic, and rubber factories required to produce every inch of this car would be astronomical. I started to feel guilty.

Growing up, I was always taught to have a grateful attitude, as so many are much less fortunate than myself. As I explained before, life is pretty good. But for the last post-college decade, I am observing gradually and increasingly that I am somehow and in some way I am responsible for the lack of good fortune for many of those less fortunates.

How did I come to this? Why is this true? Well, the statistics are out there. Article after article highlighting how our planes, trains and automobiles are killing this planet. How my consumption is unsustainable for billions of its human and non-human citizens. My mind was wandering to every facet of my life – my home, my work, my play.

Ok, I get it. I am becoming an eco-activist. Al Gore is my eco-shepherd and I love to garden. Right. Right? I care about what we have done and are doing to nature for the sake of a ‘better’ life. However I was being nagged by a pain that went deeper than the soil of the Earth. I wasn’t satisfied with just being Green. It somehow seemed to address only the external problem even though it is such a massive one. My intuition told me to dig deeper. I haven’t hit the root yet.

I knew this was getting philosophical. And if you know me, I have a penchant for metaphysical conclusions and assertions. But unlike other times when I try to intellectualize the problem to simply understand it better, this time I was feeling something. My Honda’s steering wheel made me cringe and squirm in my seat. It was an emotional and painful burst that swung through my body. But WHY?

As my wife got into the car, I continued to behave as if it was just another morning and drove off. But my mind was back there, immersed in those few moments of deep contemplation. After some time, prayer and introspection, it hit me that this whole matter was getting awfully personal. And there it was.

It was personal. A clear connection between my needs and the impact those needs were having on every facet of this world illuminated before me. I didn’t want to say it. I didn’t want to think it. I didn’t want to believe it. But, I was responsible. In playing my role as a trusted consumer of all that can be mined, manufactured and consumed, I was an active participant in the transformation of the planet and its citizens.

Now, many would argue that this ‘transformation’ is a good thing. A progressive step in evolutionary chain of being. Survival of the fittest. However, the statistics say otherwise. And so does anyone looking at the reality of it all will say otherwise. While Al Gore and eco-activists make strides to reshape the way we consume, I wonder how I got into this bubble in the first place. How is it that it took so long to notice that my behavior has such a direct and indirect influence on so much of this world?

While on one hand I am quite eager to unravel this mystery right away, I am also quite satisfied. I’ve ventured into myself in a meaningful way to begin mapping out the blockages to deep, spiritual fulfillment. And ultimately that is what I truly want. That is what I am chasing endlessly and sometimes fruitlessly through my TV, my MP3 player, my car, my friends, my family, my life – a communion with creation. Therefore, I am grateful for the introspective question that is like a spotlight on these profound experiences that unveil a beautifully challenging reality. And this is but only the first leg of an exciting journey.

Palak Shah contributes for us as the eco-columnist of the Spirit Matters staff.

A graduate of Carnegie Mellon University, and currently a recruiter for a major IT consulting firm, Palak is always on the hunt for a good discussion on philosophy, the human condition, and society's spiritual evolution.

Make The Most Of It

2009-09-11T08:00:00.001-04:00

by David Jenkins

Sometimes life puts you somewhere you never thought you would be. Sometimes you look back and think, "How did I get all the way over here?" Life has its twists and turns, no doubt, and even a boring guy like me has had his fair share. I'm guessing that it's probably safe to assume that maybe you've had yours. My parents split up when I was young, which was probably unexpected, but being three years old I don't remember much.

The Atlanta Falcons lost in Superbowl 33 to the Denver Broncos, which is something I definitely didn't expect (I lost fifteen bucks on that game). And, for the past four and half months, I've been living in New York City on the top floor of a six-story building in downtown Manhattan next to a tattoo parlor, which I guess on my list of places I thought I would be in life is somewhere near the bottom.

Not that I don't like New York. In fact, I love it. It's just not somewhere that as I looked ahead in life that I was planning to be. And depending how you look at, or rather depending on how I look at it, that can be a good thing or a bad thing.

Throughout my small journey, I've found that simply trying to eliminate all the twists and turns in life is not the key to peace and satisfaction, because life by it's own nature is a windy road. Somehow or other it seems that the joy of life can be found along those twist and turns, and for me, I've found it through the people I've met along the way.

My road starts back in Whittier, California, which is the home city of our former president Richard Nixon. In fact, my high school prom was at the Richard Nixon Library, where his childhood house is still available for tours. Whittier is right on the border line of L.A and Orange County, so technically speaking, I lived in the unincorporated district of L.A. county, which I always translated as "nowhere land."

While growing up, my sister and I lived with our mom who ran a public day-care center from her home, so I was always around other kids and people. I'm not really sure what it would have been like growing up with a dad in the house, but my sister and I got along well enough and our mom loved us enough that I was happy with just the three of us.

I even remember crying once at the thought that my mom would remarry and disturb our little world that I had gotten used to. All the while, the 15-20 other kids in the house definitely gave a bit of life to the whole scene. We lived right next door to the elementary school and only a few blocks from the junior high school, which I walked to and from each day with my best friend Chris Taylor as we carried our tenor saxophones that we borrowed from the school's music department.

Chris's mom actually used to drop him off everyday next door at our neighbor's house, who also ran an at-home day care center, but as we started to become good friends, we convinced his mom to start dropping him off at my house.

Chris and I would have breakfast together, watch an episode of Mighty Max, and then head out the door. Throughout elementary school, we went through phases of pogs (remember pogs?), marbles, Marvel comic cards, Magic the Gathering, and eventually degraded ourselves down to Garbage Pail Kids. Chris didn't get so in to marbles, but everything else we did together.

In junior high, as I mentioned, we both played the tenor sax, which means that every day during fourth period we got to sit next to each other and envy the alto sax players who always got the better parts and and burst up laughing as we compared the trombone player behind us to the sound of Chewy from Start Wars. It wasn't the nicest thing to do, but it was an honest observation of what she sounded like. (If you're reading this Denise, I'm sorry if we ever made you feel bad).

High school came up quickly around the corner for both of us, and as most of us have probably experienced, we don't always keep the same friends throughout our school years. Somehow or other, we had different schedules and started to move on with our own lives. We kept in touch, but not so often, and as far as I know, Chris is still living in Southern California working at a home loan office and making plans for his future dream to host his own late night T.V. show. He would be the perfect guy for the job.

As for me, I've somehow or other found myself clear across the country right in the heart of the big city. I make weekly trips down to Chinatown to buy groceries, stand in line every day to use the bathroom while my other roommates brush their teeth, and utilize the moments I have in between to connect in a personal way with the people around me who make my life meaningful.

If the truth be told, pogs were never really that fun to play with, Magic cards were always too complicated for me, and Garbage Pail Kids weren't really that funny (O.K., maybe some of them were). What made everything worth doing, and still makes it worth remembering, is the fact that it was something I got to do with another person.

My friendship with Chris, as well as many others, have helped me discover that the real reason why something in life becomes meaningful, is because there's someone there to share it with, either big or small. I've never been able to tell myself a good joke, surprise birthday gifts to myself are never the same, and playing a game of solo freeze tag gets boring really fast. Life just isn't the same by yourself. We really need each other to experience it, or at least I do.

The activities themselves can in a way be seen as a medium through which I've gotten to know and spend time with others, and that's where the real meaning, sustenance, and stability of my life can be found. When I look at it through that lens, all the twists and turns of my life just become details to decorate and frame the real painting which is the relationships with all the people I've met along the way.

So I do my best to make the most of it. In a city of over 8 million people where I'm constantly bumping in to, stepping over, and stacking myself on top of everybody else, the more friends the better. Or, at least, the closer I can come to the friends I already have, the better I can ride smoothly throughout each day, and try to live a more meaningful life.

David Jenkins (Doyal Gauranga Dasa) is a monk and vegetarian/vegan chef who runs weekly cooking seminars and meditation classes at Columbia University and New York University

Welcome To Our Country

2009-09-08T08:00:00.002-04:00

By Christopher Timm

It was at the peak of a sweltering-hot summer afternoon when our party of seven arrived at the New Delhi train station, headed north for cooler climates. The heat and humidity was so intense that we all sat down on the platform. Just standing is a work-out in that kind of heat. Added to the temperature was a hefty dose of culture shock for most of our party. I guess I forgot to mention things like stray cows walking down the train platform when I prepared them for the journey.

After a few minutes, our guide came over to me and spoke confidentially in my ear, "We weren't able to get tickets for this train," he said, "so I'm going to go see what I can do. If the train arrives before I return, just get on and get off at the Hardwar station." I looked at him blankly. Our flight had been delayed one day from the States—which is why he had no tickets—but if we missed another day it would upset our entire schedule. We had to catch this train.

He smiled and did the traditional Indian head wag. That's a thoroughly Indian gesture midway between yes and no that is as versatile as it looks: one can use it to mean yes, no, please, thank you, or I'm going out to play cricket now. Then he disappeared into the crowd. I looked at the students who had flown over with me for the excitement of visiting India, their foreheads sweaty and their eyes wide open, as they watched men with piles of luggage stacked on their heads, walking by with half-naked children tugging at their shirts. The adventure had begun.

Fortunately, our guide reappeared just as the train was pulling in. He corralled us into a car and had us stuff our bags into the little space between the train car and the bathroom. "No luck?" I asked, putting two and two together. "No problem," he replied, "I'll find us seats later on." Desperate not to delay our journey any longer, we squeezed tightly together as the other passengers pushed past us into their cars.

When the train departed, our anxiety broke and we began to laugh: At least we're going somewhere! After time, we discovered that our compartment's door could be swung open, giving us a nice breeze and a view of North India's lush landscape. Little by little and one by one, our guide found seats here and there throughout the train.

Still my mind kept churning about those tickets: What will happen when I run into the conductor? What if one of our party, separated from the rest, has a bad experience? I'm supposed to be a monk escorting students on a spiritual journey to India and now look what I've done! I stow away our whole party in a reckless moment for the sake of keeping a lousy schedule? Because a guide who I just met—and who was ready to abandon me a minute ago—says it's ok? They don't throw stowaways in jail, do they? After all, it is a third world country. The mind conjures up all kinds of scenarios when it wants to.

I tried to chill out a bit and just before we reached our destination I got my answer. The conductor came in and sat behind me in an empty seat. He made notations in a large book and conversed with the man next to him. Suddenly he turned to me and said something in Hindi. His manner was grave. Especially grave. Hindi can be a very grave language. "He wants your ticket" a man next to me explained. I thought for a moment and felt around my pockets for a slip of paper I knew I didn't have. "I'm with a group of others," I said, trying to find the American equivalent of that all-purpose Indian head wag. I was getting more concerned by the moment. Especially as I realized that saying "I'm with a group of others," was about to bring our whole party into the mix. I waited anxiously as it was translated back to the conductor.

The conductor blurted something out in a serious voice and then, suddenly, a smile filled his face. A few people around laughed and he turned back to his conversation. Just then the train pulled into our station and I gathered my things gratefully and went to make sure the rest of our little band had made it off the train as well.

When we got into the cab, one of our party, Arthur, shared his experience on the train. For me, his story has become an iconic description of the culture of India. A few minutes after our guide had brought Arthur to his seat, a gentlemanly-looking man came and squeezed in next to him. He spoke English, so they chatted. His new friend welcomed him to India and inquired about his origin. "Welcome to our country," the gentleman said, "You are our guest, If there is anything I can do for you, please let me know."

After fifteen minutes of talk about Arthur's travel plans, the conversation turned to the gentleman's business. Gradually, it was revealed to Arthur that he was sitting in this gentleman's seat! Horribly embarrassed at the mistake, Arthur got up to leave, but the man insisted, "No, I want you to sit there, please!" When Arthur protested, the man persisted, "You are our guest. Please, be comfortable!"

As the rest of our visit unfolded, we were forced to tolerate many of the disturbances all travelers from the West experience in India: Having to argue over the price of everything you buy; enduring the driving etiquette that, when someone goes to pass your car, they hold their horn down constantly from the time they decide to pass you until they are 100 yards ahead of you. I could go on but it would just convince you of how little I've been able to integrate the point I now wish to make.

At such times, I often remembered the incident on the train: The conductor cutting slack to a traveler who was obviously bewildered by the Indian Railway system; the passenger who took pleasure at giving up his seat for a guest. Again and again in India I saw this ethic of selflessness and tolerance manifest in moments where lower responses could easily be defended. I saw that in a land where there is so much potential for disturbance, this society has learned to accept such things graciously.

Swami Prabhupada, the founder of the Hare Krsna movement, once said that a person's greatness is shown in their ability to tolerate provoking situations. What character it shows when even strangers sacrifice for one another happily! How your heart melts toward such people! And so far as I could see, the deeper the relationship was, the deeper the willingness to sacrifice. And as beautiful as this was to see, it also shed light on a much less palatable truth, as I saw my own short-tempered responses to the little struggles that country threw my way.

If my own trials weren't enough to see the contrast, fate handed me the perfect moment when I returned to the States. Landing in Newark with two overweight bags, I hadn't anticipated the $3 charge for a luggage cart. I had no American cash on me and as a monk I have no credit card. After a few minutes of struggling with my bags, I turned to an attendant who stood nearby, supervising the scene.

I explained to him my plight and with lightning speed he shot back the classic, rhetorical question in his New Jersey accent, "So what do you want me to do about it?" I waited for a moment to see if he followed it with a smile. It would have been so charming, wouldn't it have been? Of course, he didn't. As I tried to absorb the blast of Americana that just hit me, I thought: "Welcome to our country." What an irony. I just left a rich heart in a poor land and found a poor heart in a rich land.

Christopher Timm (Radha Vallabha Dasa) is a monk and filmmaker whose forthcoming documentary "Today We Have The Power" chronicles the spiritual aspects of contemporary activism.

Disease

2009-08-27T08:00:00.000-04:00

by Dr. William H. Deadwyler

Dr. William H. Deadwyler has a Ph.Din religion from Temple University, and is a leading member of the main ecclesiastical board of the International Society of Krishna Consciousness.

An initiated disciple of A.C Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, he has served his mission since 1971

For more of his writings, check out www.soithappens.com

The heroes of my youth were the great healers of humanity. While it’s true that in those days I could be seen with other American boys paying homage to the likes of Elvis Presley and Joe DiMaggio, I rendered them only lip service. My real—if somewhat secret—devotion was reserved for a pantheon of great medical pioneers like Edward Jenner, discoverer of the smallpox vaccination; Robert Koch, who identified the tuberculosis bacillus; and Ignaz Philipp Semmelweise, who crusaded to save women from childbirth infection by teaching doctors to disinfect their hands. I avidly studied the life stories of these saviors and dreamed of becoming like them by slaying some modern scourge—leukemia, say, or coronary thrombosis. In my eyes there was no higher calling than to wage war on behalf of humanity against disease and death.

I entered college intent on medical studies, but a little over a year later abandoned that aim. I had not been fatally disheartened by my encounter with other pre-med students, profiteers eager to mint gold from disease. A book, rather, had destroyed my vocation and my faith. Mirage of Health: Utopia, Progress and Biological Change is a pioneering study of medical history written in the late fifties by a physician named Rene Dubos. His conclusion devastated me: Progress toward some utopia of health is an illusion. Disease will never be “conquered.” Disease is so inescapable a part of our human condition that today’s remedies inevitably become the agents of tomorrow’s ills.

Using an abundance of historical evidence, Dubos shows how the diseases we suffer from arise out of the complex social, political, and economic dynamics of our particular society; as society changes, our ills change with it. Some diseases fade away, and others, out of the inexhaustible bounty of material nature, rise to take their place.

In modern industrial societies, as Dr. Dubos points out, we no longer suffer and die from smallpox, typhus, typhoid, diphtheria, and the other microbial plagues of the past. We have made “progress”: We suffer and die instead from cancer, coronary heart disease, emphysema, and mental disorders (with their attendant drug abuse and suicide).

According to Dubos’ analysis, even my boyhood heroes, those unswerving foes of deadly microbes, had little to do with the disappearance of infectious diseases. These afflictions were retired mainly by the social and economic reforms that followed industrialization. At the same time, that same process was ushering in a whole new set of scourges. And even those old diseases are by no means “conquered,” Dubos warns. They are merely held at bay (at a high price), and they can reenter human history any time the conditions are right.

I was undone by Dr. Dubos’ lesson. Medicine at once underwent a catastrophic devaluation in my eyes. I wondered why that should be. Dubos, of course, never claimed that medicine was useless, a waste of time. True, it may not save humanity, but it can save humans. That ought to be enough, I argued with myself. I could still live by ideals, modest though those ideals might be. Surely, real heroism lies in doing humbly what little good one can, without some fantasy of wide-screen, Hollywood heroics, soundtrack booming in the background. Be realistic: There are no saviors of humanity, because humanity will not be saved, and that’s that.

Still, I could revive no enthusiasm for medicine. The truth of the matter was that at heart I badly wanted to be saved from disease and death altogether, and I had possessed a real faith that scientific progress would, at the end of its struggle, win just that for all of us. To me it had been a foregone conclusion that through science and technology nature would be eventually conquered and tamed, made entirely serviceable to us, and we would live without worries in a man-made paradise on earth. Although I had never spelled out this conviction to myself, it had insensibly become my true faith, my religion.

How was it a religion? Religion and science—like faith and knowledge—are supposed to be opposites. Yet somehow science itself had become a religion—call it “scientism”—an ardent faith that progress in science and technology will so improve upon man and nature as to rid earthly life of all ills. This religion was—and still is—the true faith of America, the spiritual motor that drives its enterprises.

Where had I absorbed this religion? I had bowed before no altar, recited no creed, sung no hymns, enacted no rites. However, this religion does not need special buildings or ceremonies. As the true religion of America, it is woven completely into the fabric of life. I had absorbed it all along from my parents and teachers and friends, from the Cub Scouts and the Boy Scouts, from museums and theme parks, from My Weekly Reader and Reader’s Digest and Life and Post and Popular Mechanics. I had soaked it in from “Meet Mr. Wizard” and the unending iteration of corporate commercial slogans (”Progress is Our Most Important Product” and “Better Things For Better Living Through Chemistry“), from the biographies of my medical heroes, not the least from my hoard of science fiction paperbacks. The faith that formed America was a creation of the so-called Enlightenment of the eighteenth century. Eager to extend Newton’s success in describing nature in rational, mathematical form, a coterie of European thinkers battled to dethrone traditional religion and morality and replace them with empirical science and natural reason as the valid guides for human activity.

Unenlightened and superstitious Christians believed in a future millennium, a thousand-year kingdom of God on earth that would start with the prophesied second coming of Christ. That belief had to go. Yet the savants of the Enlightenment replaced it with their own secularized faith, their man-made millennium: Steady progress in science and enlightened reason would gradually bring the natural and human world totally under rational scientific control. Nature and society will be consummately engineered. Free from drought and flood, poverty and crime, disease and even death, man will have established on earth the kingdom of God—without God.

This was my faith, and I had lost it. Science would not save us; there was no “progress.” That explained my strong reaction to Mirage of Health.

In the years since I read that book I have come to recognize the striving for release from material nature, the struggle against disease and death, as profoundly and essentially human. It’s a struggle we cannot avoid. Even though we may be unwaware of it, it drives and shapes our lives. For this reason, even popular culture is about serious things. It is not mere whimsy that leads people to describe Joe DiMaggio as a baseball “Immortal,” or makes them believe that Elvis Presley could not possibly have died. Operating with more sophistication, Enlightenment thinkers set themselves against religion, but they merely replaced salvation through Christ with salvation through science. They could not free themselves from the desire for transcendence, the urge to go beyond the limits of nature into everlasting life.

We are all transcendentalists at heart. The problem is that most of us are foolish ones, whose various schemes for liberation are doomed from the outset. We persist in worshipping idols and gods that fail. We engineer projects for salvation that only increase our bondage. Nature can send mile-high sheets of ice flowing over continents and level cities with a twitch, yet we embark on a quixotic war to conquer her. An anthill has as good a shot at it as “advanced civilization.” Or consider this: Survival is the primal urge of life, and for millions of years all organisms have struggled for survival, just as we now struggle. Now, look at the record. Where are the winners? In all of history, has anyone survived?

The death rate is one hundred percent. It is a foredoomed attempt, but we cannot help ourselves. We must be transcendentalists, but what makes us invest and reinvest in foolish, impractical schemes? Let me suggest the reason. At the root of our foolishness lies a dumb insistence in trying to actuate a self-contradiction, make real an absurdity: We want to transcend material nature, become free from her control, while at the same time we want to continue to enjoy and exploit her.

This was the answer I discovered. After my crisis of faith, I studied philosophy and religion for years; it was, in effect, a quest for successful transcendentalists. And I thought that I had finally discovered them at the vital center of the great spiritual traditions of the world. In spite of their differences in culture and style, they seemed unanimous in this: They agreed that to succeed in transcendence we must become free from the mentality of enjoyment and exploitation.

All of them recognized the systematic endeavor to gain mastery over the mind and senses, to extinguish material desires, as necessary for real salvation or liberation of the spirit. These successful transcendentalists understand very well that material nature binds and controls us precisely through our desire to enjoy and exploit her. That desire is, therefore, our ultimate disease. Cure that disease, we shall become free from disease and death altogether.

Eight years after Dr. Dubos destroyed my faith in material progress, Srila Prabhupada initiated me into the path of bhakti-yoga, transcendental devotional service. I was attracted by the magisterial way Srila Prabhupada exposed what he called “the illusory advancement of civilization.” On the street a Krishna devotee had handed me a tract containing these simple but impressive words of Srila Prabhupada:

"We are trying to exploit the resources of material nature, but actually we are becoming more and more entangled in her complexities. Therefore, although we are engaged in a hard struggle to conquer nature, we are ever more dependent on her. This illusory struggle against material nature can be stopped at once by revival of our eternal Krishna consciousness."

Srila Prabhupada hadn’t done the research of a Dr. Dubos, but somehow he understood it all. His clarity astonished me.

Attacking the idols of scientific progress and other ersatz religions, Srila Prabhupada did not compromise in presenting the truth—if we want transcendence, we must become free from material desires. He was the only contemporary transcendentalist I’d encountered who did not offer any cheating religion, an accommodation with material ambitions for cheap popularity among the foolish.

My heroes still are those saviors who wage war on behalf of humanity against disease and death: Srila Prabhupada, Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura, Srila Rupa Goswami, Thakura Haridasa, Madhvacarya, Narada Muni and many others form my pantheon. These heroes have won the war against death because they have mastered the actual science of transcendence and delivered it to humanity.

In the meantime I credit Dr. Dubos with a good deal of prescience. Events have proven him uncannily accurate. Even as researchers in high-tech laboratories feverishly sought the “magic bullet” to destroy cancer, a brand-new plague erupted, surprising almost everyone. Studies predict that Acquired Immunity Deficiency Syndrome will have claimed about 400 million lives by the middle of the next century.

Like horror films that spawn even more ghastly sequels, some old-fashioned diseases have begun staging spectacular revivals: A new, drug-resistant version of Koch’s bacillus threatens a tuberculosis epidemic in North America, where a remake of the scarlet fever microbe is implicated in a run of deadly cases of sudden, massive septicemia. Pediatricians report a steady rise in children with chronic bronchitis and asthma, apparently the result of pollution. Indeed, a family of new afflictions of the immune system, all apparently related to man-made chemicals in the environment, has led to the establishment of a new medical specialty called clinical ecology. Some studies show that in the industrial nations up to forty percent of all diseases are “iatrogenetic.” That means “caused by physicians.”

In Pittsburgh recently, a man survived seventy-one days on an implanted baboon’s liver, which was still in good shape at autopsy. Transplant technicians are planning farms where genetically engineered animals will grow crops of organs for use in humans; biomedical engineers are machining body parts out of space-age plastics and microchips. They’re promising immortality by the end of the next century.

Conducting From The Heart

2009-08-23T08:00:00.000-04:00

Conducting From The Heart

by Aditi Sriram

In his autobiography The Journey Home, Sri Radhanath Swami writes about his struggle with two inner voices, one from his mind and the other from his heart. They push and pull him towards yogic gurus, geographical adventures, mental purgings and diligent observation. He demonstrates repeatedly that when his mind seeks an answer, he is befuddled with the choices before him, but when his heart seeks a truth, Krishna responds with a sign.

The mind can only respond based on the way it has been conditioned, but the heart knows what is pure, since it houses the purest entity in all of us – our soul. Hearing a beautiful song fills the heart with peace and stirs the soul; a person can immediately sense when his heart is happy. But the mind is much more analytic, weighing the attributes and drawbacks of every situation, factoring in external reactions to internal choices, and is thus diluted in its stance.

Sitting in Lincoln Center, watching the London Symphony Orchestra tune their instruments, I am impressed by each musician’s independent talent. But the majesty of a symphony lies in musical collaboration. The individual instruments play their prescribed parts, but the conductor leads the entire operation. Valery Gergiev, a large, spirited Russian with wisps of hair that he whips back and forth when he moves, charges the performance with life: sweeping his arms over the stage, he offers it to something higher and larger than himself and the music on the page. He is the heart in this act, and his musicians the limbs that he breathes life into. Compared to the heart, the mind is limited by its functional capacity – a violinist can only play a violin and not a trombone – but the conductor rules over all the instruments, like the heart over the mind, to produce divine sound and generate divine thoughts. As long as the musicians follow their conductor and the mind surrenders to the heart, harmony reigns!

In this way, Service and Humility are born out of the heart. The mind may think it understands these attributes, but its comprehension is limited. The mind can just as easily convince a person to be lustful as to be respectful, or to continue eating when one feels full. A group of musicians could play their instruments together and produce a beautiful sound, but they are truly flawless only when they are led with conviction, by someone wholly convinced of the cause and effect of that music – and that is where the conductor is crucial. If the heart is the primary voice, it will always be the song leading the step.

Service, if done sincerely, never gets tiring: the heart knows infinity and the most intimate loving exchanges when it is engaged in its rightful service, so how can it feel anything other than bliss? A teacher loves teaching her students, day after day; a Broadway performer repeats the same lines and songs every night and a devotee serves the Lord as his servant without any doubt. Without a contented heart, the mind can provide only temporary guidance and stability, since it relies on the external for value and action. The heart meditates on the internal, the divine, and finds uninterrupted love.

The closer one becomes to God, the smaller, meeker and more insignificant he feels on Earth, even as his followers exalt him. This paradox seems to highlight the stark contrasts between the fame and conditioning of material life and the simplicity and single mindedness of faith – how wrongly we are going about Life and Love on earth! Mother Teresa exclaims that when her beloved leprosy victims see Jesus in her, it is a “miracle,” absolving herself of any ownership of such praise. She defines service by example, noting that there is no hierarchy in service: it can only be real when it is done with humility.

The orchestra accelerates over arpeggios and punctuates the air with vibrant, resonant sounds. My eyes are on each musician, and I nearly forget Gergiev! In fact, he is turned away from this audience, for his job is not for show or for praise. He serves his musicians and he pampers every musical note, cherishing each moment. Hearing the pristine music, the conductor is humbled – those are the fruits of his labor, not the subsequent applause. Gergiev keeps the tempo of the orchestra; he is their pulse, their heart, beating before them in their mind. And with eyes only for his musicians, it is clear who he serves.

The heart speaks the transcendental language of Love. Throughout his journey, Sri Radhanath Swami witnesses yogis, devotees and passersby moved to tears by some divine feat. Great gurus and meager followers are never shy to express their happiness with tears, which spring naturally to their eyes and flow like the rivers that led Sri Radhanath Swami to his guru. Tears are the universal sign of humbled bliss, grateful joy, earnest appreciation, and they come to Gergiev as well – his eyes mist and beads of sweat drop from his face as his orchestra comes to the resounding conclusion of the symphony. He has completed his musical journey, just as Sri Radhanath Swami has found his true inner voice.

Graduating from Columbia University in 2007, Aditi Sriram works as a consultant in New York City. Her spiritual heritage and contemporary search for truth has led her to the fountain of Vedic wisdom.

Matchless Gifts Conscious Arts: The Website

2009-08-20T08:00:00.000-04:00

Our community crew of activist artists, of spiritual seekers, conscious and expressing on the cusp of the soul, of self-realization, with vital words, songs, tricks, beats, and rhymes, have created their own web page, a hub of all they do and all that is to come.

Click here to check out the website of MGCA (Matchless Gifts Conscious Arts)

Check out their other media and spiritual spices below:

http://www.reverbnation.com/mgca
http://www.myspace.com/consciousarts
http://www.myspace.com/sanghakirtan
http://www.myspace.com/relsbeats

A Very Different Source

2009-08-19T08:00:00.000-04:00

Excerpted from "Searching For Vedic India" by Devamrta Swami

A worldwide teacher of timeless Vedic wisdom, Devamrta Swami is a Yale graduate whose ability to share spiritual wisdom is immediate and profound

For more, check out www.devaswami.com

The exactitude of physical arrangements in the universe awes contemporary thinkers. To uneducated eyes, the properties of the universe and their interactions may appear arbitrary. But scientists know that the constants of the cosmos reveal an eerie precision that is quite startling. What we take as incidental conditions just happen to be minutely right for life.

Just consider what are deemed the four fundamental forces of nature: electromagnetism, gravity, and the strong and weak forces in the atom. Scientists are sure that any slight variance in them would render the universe - as we know it - impossible.

In the Vedic universe, just as variables of matter are micro-adjusted to a wondrous precision, so the reactions to consciousness are also minutely calibrated. The Vedic vision acknowledges a universal law of justice, exactly balancing the actions of consciousness with their consequences. Hence we should not anguish over why bad things happen to good people, or good things happen to the bad.

The sages of the Vedas urge wise persons to verse themselves in what is appropriate and inappropriate action - not according to their own intuition, but in line with the authorized texts of universal law. Consciousness is both causal and accountable.

We might consider: If the movements of matter in the environment cause such precise reactions, what about the movements of the most crucial ingredient in the ecosystem-consciousness? What are the natural reactions to the proper and improper use of consciousness? Who are the scholars who have catalogued the consequences of consciousness in its affair with matter? Where is the knowledge system to inform and guide us about the whole of existence, not merely the inert, insignificant energy of matter?

The Vedas hold that consciousness indicates the presence of the superior, spiritual energy. Therefore, without denying the implications brought on by the reactions of the inferior, material energy, the Vedic vision sees the actions and reactions of consciousness as paramount.

The Vedas certainly do not deny the field of material reaction; rather, they simply urge us to concentrate our major attention on the spiritual energy. Without contact with spirit, matter is inactive. Therefore spirit matters most, and the pollution of consciousness is recognized as the deadliest environmental problem.

From the Vedic perspective, just the concession that modern brains have endowed matter with inconceivable mystic potencies is a great step forward. The world can only benefit from a fair comparison between the two metaphysical views: modern materialistic science and the ancient spiritualistic science of the Vedas. Then we would probably want to consider: Where's the best bet?

Should we passionately throw all our support behind inanimate matter, or should we calmly investigate a hunch that consciousness - completely resistant to material dissection - may signal the reality of a spiritual energy, with its own appropriate laws of nature?

The Vedic literature reminds us of the havoc we bring down upon ourselves by not seeing the whole picture of the cosmos. This cosmic entirety includes consciousness and its laws. Without knowing the Complete Whole, all our best efforts at compassion, love, and humanitarianism are rendered utterly inadequate.

The Vedic literature says we need knowledge - full comprehension of the complete scene we call life and universe. Otherwise, our response - based on limited and incomplete knowledge of the cosmos - will actually harm, not help. Real human life is described as a quest for all-inclusive knowledge, a ready acquaintance with all the factors at work in the biosphere or the cosmos. Like the grand movements of underlying tectonic plates, the consciousness laws of nature - though we are oblivious to them - produce monumental effects.

Today's pundits put forth “laws of nature”. In this way they acquiesce to the reality of something ultimate ordering cosmic phenomena. But if we moderns cannot vault over the chasm between physical processes and consciousness, we will find that same insurmountable gap frustrating our versions of the “laws of nature.”

Eluding our attempts to discern overarching laws regulating everything in the universe, consciousness roams on its own - unexplained and unaccounted for.

The Vedas firmly tie consciousness to a spiritual energy, emanating from the Supreme. Tracking consciousness to its source in this way opens up an exciting realm of transcendental knowledge and experience. The ultimate causative principle that underlies reality is presented as a singular yet infinite self-conscious being, Krishna.

Full of limitless knowledge, pleasure, and potency, Krishna emanates matter, as well as minuscule subjective selves. These tiny, finite selves - in minute quantity - possess the same self-conscious, spiritual nature as the unlimited Krishna.

Decades ago, the Nobel Laureate and patriarch of modern physics Niels Bohr concluded:

“We can admittedly find nothing in physics or chemistry that has even a remote bearing on consciousness. Yet all of us know that there is such a thing as consciousness. Simply because we have it ourselves. Hence consciousness must be part of nature or, more generally, of reality, which means that, quite apart from the laws of physics and chemistry as laid down in quantum theory, we must also consider laws of quite a different kind.”

To that fine summation, we might add “We must also consider an ultimate source of quite a different kind.”

The Man Of The Hour

2009-08-16T08:00:00.000-04:00

by Chris Fici

Chris Fici is an aspiring monk/writer. He is a member of the Bhaktivedanta Ashram, located in The Bhakti Center, East Village

We are surrounded by the echoes of the words and deeds of the great spiritual leaders of our time, such as Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi and other souls small in stature but great in heart. Hearing them, we seek proper guidance onto the path to push through the various storms that await us in our drive for the dawn of a new day

You can taste this desire, this urge, in the dust storms and mad beats and disguises at Burning Man. You can feel it in your head, the pushing of a new consciousness that may just keep life pulsing and grooving on this big, blue globe. You can see it in the dirt in your fingernails, returning back to the land, sustainable and organic, free from the chemical nightmares of corporate agriculture.

Spiritual leaders arise out of this mulch, dirt, sweat, blood and tears. How do we know who is genuine? How do we take advantage of our own inherent gifts of leadership to guide and shape the future we desire?

In his book Leadership For An Age Of Higher Consciousness, His Holiness Bhakti-Tirtha Swami, one of the leading modern teachers of the timeless art of spiritual devotion known as bhakti-yoga, speaks to the spiritual leaders of today when he writes:

“Many disturbances in the world are caused by a failure to seek unity with those who seem different. In your role as leader, the more you can identify common ground with others, the less you will be subject to conflicts caused by superficial differences.

Universal principles can help you discover the common foundation shared with others by reminding you that everyone originates from the same source and is seeking to return to the same home with God.”

We now look towards the halls of Washington D.C, not with the usual cynical disdain, but with a potent curiosity, anticipation, and even reverie at the ascendancy of Barack Obama to the American Presidency.

We wonder if he can rise above the ferocious fray of world politics as it is and provide the real inspiration for true happiness that his image and persona have implied and promised from the day he began his campaign.

To do this, he must fully embrace his spiritual side, and lead with all the courage, wisdom, and humility at his disposal. Even further, he must rely on the time-tested example of the great teachers and spiritual guides that have come before him. He cannot change this mess alone. We cannot change this mess alone.

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The demand for authenticity is high for any leader, most of all for someone guiding us from an elevated platform of higher consciousness. As we understand from the timeless wisdom of the Vedas, a true leader must carry with him a humble, genuine plan of action that guides his/her peoples towards the ideal conditions of life, based on the liberty of the soul, and true justice and protection for all living entities.

This is an extra, immense burden that the spiritual leader carries, but it's one that can bring the most sublime and lasting results, as Bhakti-Tirtha Swami describes in his pleas to the spiritual leader:

“Too much is at stake for you as a leader to limit your view to the horizons of your personal, organizational or national agendas...The increasing interdependence of all forms of life on this planet requires a broader perspective that looks outward to embrace the entire globe, forward in time for future generations, and inward to honor the Lord in your heart.”

There is clear evidence that President Obama is approaching his current gig with a little more thought in mind than just the usual blend of bad cocktails lobbed at him by lobbyists and corporate heads. Throughout his campaign and ascension to the presidency, Obama has consistently called upon the American people to absorb themselves in the classical spiritual values of service, humility, and responsibility.

Carrying a statue of Hanuman with him for luck and wisdom, having been exposed to the Bhagavad-Gita as a child, and stressing interfaith community and communication in his messages of prayer, Obama is bringing a fresh consciousness to one of the most stale and musty environments in the world-Washington, D.C.

In an excerpt from his memoir The Audacity of Hope, President Obama shares his own realizations about the importance of the spiritual foundation in our progressive thoughts and actions when he writes:

When we abandon the field of religious discourse--when we ignore the debate about what it means to be a good Christian or Muslim or Jew; when we discuss religion only in the negative sense of where or how it should not be practiced, rather than in the positive sense of what it tells us about our obligations toward one another; when we shy away from religious venues and religious broadcasts because we assume that we will be unwelcome--others will fill the vacuum. And those who do are likely to be those with the most insular views of faith, or who cynically use religion to justify partisan ends.

Imagine Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address without reference to "the judgments of the Lord," or King's "I Have a Dream" speech without reference to "all of God's children." Their summoning of a higher truth helped inspire what had seemed impossible and move the nation to embrace a common destiny.

To make his image a reality means Obama will have to accept and express another attribute of the spiritual leader, which is the ability to dole out healthy doses of "tough love." After all, to call on an increased mood of service and sacrifice, along with the sweet sauce of humility, in today's "me-first" social climate can't be done with gentle hands and words. Bhakti-Tirtha Swami explains:

"Although truth can be painful, sometimes the desire to attain a higher good will require leaders to face unpleasant realities and act forcefully. Indeed, love is merely sentimental unless it is based on honesty. Leaders need a high level of knowledge, skill, and discernment to express their love appropriately according to the circumstances...At times, a leader may demand difficult sacrifices from others for their own well-being...Leaders must deliberately choose to maintain a level of consciousness that gives priority to what is best for others regardless of outward appearances."

This is Obama's challenge. Behind all his moves, policies, and speeches must be this sense of selfless love, the very heart of genuine spirituality. A love that is not some amorphous, impersonal, hippy-dippy romantic fling, but that which is deep, unyielding, challenging, and rewarding.

In order to change the course of our collective situation from one of impending catastrophe to one that reflects and expresses our aspirations for a world that reflects the best and deepest of our hearts, President Obama must lead the difficult charge to change our climate of life from one of selfish, destructive consumption to one selfless, beautiful sacrifice. To me, this is the measure of whether his messages of “hope” and “change” actually bear any fruit.

Whether we voted for him or not, whether we have an interest in his politics or not, President Obama's ability or inability to bring these higher values into his higher office acts as a reflection of our contemporary counter-cultural revolution, and its success or lack thereof in making our relationship with this planet more sustainable and spiritually connected.

It is also our duty to push the President and any spiritually-minded leader to live up to these high ideals. In the creative cauldrons of our own life experiences, we must demand a new and improved standard for those who run the show. To a man and woman, we are sick of the ultra-rich, ultra-removed personalities who try to rob of us of our heritage and birthright as spiritual beings meant for restoring our relationship with the Divine.

Our service to President Obama must be to keep him at this elevated level, for him to keep his foundational promises but also to make sure he is always looking deeper, to God and to the light and powerful inspiration that comes from Him which guides anybody, anywhere, at anytime, through the darkest hours.

B.T Swami lays it down for Obama and for all of us as spiritual leaders when he writes:

"Learn to love everyone dearly and allow this love for others to radiate through you. As you let the energy of love vibrate around you, all who align themselves with you will contract this contagious, sublime state and spread it enthusiastically to others."

This article is also directed at you, for although you may not be living in the White House, you too have the chance to make a deep, profound, and positive impact on yourself and those around you by stepping up to the plate, with your own divine energies of inspiration and guidance in your hands.

We lead by selfless loving exchanges, and we create real hope and change this way. Take it out of your minds, put it in your hearts, and create the vital action now, from Washington to your own concrete jungle.

The Empowered Servant-Leader

2009-08-13T08:00:00.000-04:00

The Empowered Servant-Leader

by Bhakti-Tirtha Swami

excerpted from his two-volume book Technologies For An Age of Higher Consciousness

The Servant-Leader

Dasanudasa: I like to think of a true leader not simply as a person who leads but as a servant-leader. In Sanskrit, a servant is called dasanudasa, literally “a servant of the servant.” He sees himself as a caretaker rather than a proprietor or dictator. Instead of waiting for someone else to do the needful, a servant-leader will step to the front and do it himself, especially when the people's welfare is at stake.

When a servant-leader is served, he himself becomes a better servant. The more influence and facility a servant-leader has, the more he uses them to give back to the people. A servant-leader is aware of what is going on around him. He also is persuasive, sharing his ideas with others and building stronger communities.

Ten Essential Technologies For Empowered Servant-Leadership

The metaphysical technologies listed here are simple yet profound tools that you may want to incorporate into your leadership style. To reap the greatest benefit from these principles, you can include a meditation on these ten essential technologies for empowered leadership in your daily regimen.

1. What of It? What For? So What?

This meditation is designed to help us realize that many illusions can influence us or enslave us. Leo Tolstoy once wrote about a transition is his life when he began to question everything, despite his great success. Following Tolstoy's example, in this meditation envision yourself as possessing great material abundance such as exorbitant wealth, worldwide fame, vast knowledge, or dazzling beauty.

Consider each of these areas in turn, and others if you wish, realizing that it cannot be the ultimate goal of lie. Ask yourself the questions, “What of it?” “What for?” “So what?”

2. Not This Body

This reflection helps us realize that we are more than just the physical body. Therefore, we should not overreact or be overly attached to material stimuli. The exercise consists of saying attentively: “I have a body-but I am not this body.”; “I have a mind-but I am not this mind”; “I have a job-but I am not this job”; or “I have a house-but I am not this house.” Insert any problem into this meditation to help yourself release any attachment to temporary phenomenon.

3. The Other Person's Point Of View

This practice helps us become more sensitive to another person's perception of the situation, particularly during interpersonal conflicts. Choose a conflict that has been troubling you. Write a letter to yourself as if you were the opposing party trying to convince yourself of the opposite point of view. Employ this letter-writing technique for any conflict.

4. Seeing The Divine Everywhere

This contemplation helps us give more of ourselves to others and receive more love from people in general. Practice seeing everyone as an energy of the Divine

5. Everything Has A Purpose

There are no coincidences. Because the universe is controlling higher agencies, each encounter has come to us for a particular reason. We are subject to a spiritual law similar to a law of physics: every action produces a corresponding reaction. Therefore, we can try to discover the lesson in every occurrence.

The exercise is to turn negative events into positive ones and positive events into even better ones. If we learn from all events, then everything that happens can become a positive occurrence because we have become wiser.

6. Accountability

The knowledge that we are monitored by the Divine will encourage us to live more righteously in order to be rewarded rather than punished. The exercise is to imagine that we are always being looked after by the Divine's presence

7. Call For Love

This practice helps us appreciate the many forms in which a call for help can come and reminds us to always examine ourselves to see how we have helped others. The exercise is to see all interactions as either a giving of love or a call for love.

8. Love In Action

This technology helps us shower everyone and everything in our environment with vibrant love. The exercise is to see ourselves as embodiments of love in action.

9. Near Death

Imagine that your doctor has just informed you that you have a serious disease, and that you are going to die in three months. If this were your fate, how would you live each of your last days differently?

This reflection helps remind us that we can never be certain how much longer we will remain in this material body. Therefore, we must not procrastinate or have a weak link of priorities. Important things-essential things-must be done now!

10. A Second Chance

We must live each day in readiness to depart if our appointment with death arrives. The exercise is to imagine that you are dying right now, and can see what you are leaving behind and the effect that your death will have on others. What are your last thoughts? What are your regrets? What things have you left undone? You should do these things today.

Get Down To The Soul

Our basic thesis is that true (and mature) servant-leadership is impossible without embracing a deeply developed form of universal spirituality. This is so because the mature servant-leader is a natural philosopher and spiritualist: these highly evolved components are as fundamental to his or her way of being as food is to any other living organism.

A true servant-leader assesses the primary needs of his dependents and compassionately serves them. For this to occur, the servant-leader must have a profound understanding of the highest good, which necessarily goes beyond mere material requirements.

Ultimately, a servant-leader focuses on our identity as spiritual beings, as people who undergo material experiences even though, at their very core, they are beyond matter. Thus, the mature servant-leader must assist in servicing the soul, the real identity of each and every individual. It is the soul that is the highest expression of humanity and mature servant-leadership has little meaning without recognition of this.

For more from Bhakti-Tirtha Swami, including lectures and his books, check out his website at www.btswami.com

Spiritual Leadership and The Enron Debacle

2009-08-07T08:00:00.000-04:00

Spiritual Leadership and The Enron Debacle

By Satyaraja Dasa (Steven J. Rosen)

Steven J. Rosen (Satyaraja Dasa) is an initiated disciple of His Divine Grace A.C Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. He is also the founding editor of the Journal for Vaisnava Studies and associate editor for Back to Godhead magazine.

He has published twenty-one books in numerous languages, including the recent Essential Hinduism (Rowland and Littlefield, 2008) and The Yoga of Kirtan: Conversations On The Sacred Art of Chanting (Folk Books, 2008).

Several years back, I wrote a book on the life and times of Bhakti Tirtha Swami, an ISKCON spiritual master and close friend who passed away after a prolonged battle with cancer. In researching the swami’s life, I found his perceptions of “spiritual leadership” to be among his most significant contributions. Although he lectured and wrote extensively on topics ranging from mysticism and bhakti-yoga (the science of spiritual devotion) to leadership in the modern age, it was this latter subject for which he primarily became known.

Ken Shelton, editor of the professional journal Executive Excellence, said, “his work on leadership sets a new standard, expressly because it explores the spiritual dimension in ways that popular gurus like Stephen R. Covey, Kevin Cashman, and Ken Blanchard have not done.” And The Honorable Pierre Admossama, retired Director of the UN International Labor Organization, called the swami “an example in the truest sense of global principle-centered leadership.”

In essence, Bhakti Tirtha Swami’s teachings on leadership are based on those of the Vedic literature, harkening back to the principle-centered techniques of God-conscious kings, such as Maharaja Yudhisthira and Lord Rama. Basically, the techniques focus on ethics and morals, about putting the other person first, and about humility. Overall, it is leadership with God in the center, showing how to manage one’s kingdom, work environment, family, and life from a spiritual point of view. Since these principles were already found in the Vedic literature, what the swami really offered in his books were “modern technologies,” or practical applicative methods that modern readers could then use in their daily lives.

This came home to me just several months after writing the book. A then current issue of TIME Magazine (June 5, 2006) reported on an event that screamed for the swami's teachings. In an editorial about Enron, “the world’s leading energy company,” onetime Enron VP, Sherron Watkins, “blows the whistle” on an establishment that used to be her bread and butter.

But what could she do? History was already dubbing the Enron debacle as “the 9/11 of financial markets.” This is corporate criminality at its worst. Even while the company was going down, its leaders assured all involved that there was nothing to worry about — but thousands eventually lost their jobs, over 21,000 employees lost their pensions, and numerous investors were taken for a ride, ending up in the poorhouse.

In early 2001, it seems, Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling, Enron’s longtime leaders — and the leading criminals in our story — unveiled a new mission statement; they wouldn’t settle for being billed “the world’s leading energy company.” They wanted to be “the world’s leading company.” Period. They were fast-paced, inventive, and on their way up. And they had no scruples whatsoever.

Watkins met with Lay on August 20 of 2001 to apprise him of Enron’s shady accounting and general deceitfulness in relation to its contemporaries. But her words fell on deaf ears. He already knew everything she told him, but was playing dumb. The organization was moving full speed ahead, even if countless people suffered as a result. That’s all he cared about. Here were leaders whose only principle was greed. For them, the principle of making money, it might be said, was principal.

With narcissism and fraud as Enron’s leaders’ only real legacy, they stand a long distance from the principle-centered leadership of Vedic monarchs, especially as espoused by Bhakti Tirtha Swami. In fact, Watkins articulated the problem much in the same way the swami would have, perhaps because of her Christian background. All spiritual knowledge comes from the same source, recognizes the same basic truths: “We want honest leaders,” she says, “who are decisive, creative, optimistic and even courageous, but we so easily settle for talk that marks those traits instead of action. Worse, we often don’t even look for one of the most critical traits of a leader: humility.”

Her words reminded me of Srila Prabhupada. Once, when a young hippie had attended a few Sunday feasts in the early days of the Krsna consciousness movement, he noticed that, when devotees became angry, they would say to each other, “Just chant ‘Hare Krsna.’” On one particular occasion, Srila Prabhupada was in attendance, and he had become angry about something. Seeing this, the young hippie naturally turned to Prabhupada and said, “Just chant ‘Hare Krsna.’” As the guru, Prabhupada could have become aggravated with the hippie; he could have ignored him, waving him off as little more than a nuisance. But, no. Prabhupada showed a wonderful sense of humility: he simply put his hand in his bead-bag and started to chant ‘Hare Krsna.” He knew the hippie was correct.

Another incident involves Srila Prabhupada at an airport, when numerous devotees came to greet him as he was about to board a plane. Apparently, his many disciples were blocking the aisles while enthusiastically chanting the holy name. To accommodate the airport custodians, who were having difficulty navigating their way around the devotees, one leading disciple stepped up on a seat and announced that all the devotees should move to one side. Upon hearing the announcement, the sea of of devotees shifted to a particular part of the lounge — including Srila Prabhupada. “Oh, you don’t have to move there, Srila Prabhupada,” said the devotee with the loudspeaker. “But I am also a devotee,” said Srila Prabhupada. This is humility.

“A humble leader,” wrote Watkins, “listens to others. He or she values input from employee s and is ready to hear the truth, even if it is bad news. Humility is marked by an ability to admit mistakes.

“There is no humility in either Skilling or Lay,” she concludes. “By ‘taking care of himself,’ Lay violated one of Jesus’ leadership lessons, found in Mark 9:35: ‘If anyone desires to be first, he must be last of all, and servant of all.’” Krsna consciousness teaches nothing if it does not teach how to be a servant — a servant of both God and humanity.

This is Bhakti Tirtha Swami’s main thesis — that we must learn to value the “servant-leader.” In corporate lingo, it’s the one who clearly demonstrates that the interests of the organization and its customers, employees and investors come first, not his own. As Watkins says, “Humility is a critically important trait in leaders. We have to ask ourselves, Is our society cultivating humility? Do we exhibit that trait individually and collectively as a nation? Will we stop and learn from the Enron lesson in leadership failures, or will we just shrug our shoulders and thank God we’re not Ken Lay?” By following the example of Srila Prabhupada, we can learn to live according to principles and qualities that could have saved Enron -- as well as many who suffer through these touch economic times. This includes humility, and so much more.

The Drum Major Instinct

2009-08-04T08:00:00.000-04:00

Excerpts from a sermon by Rev Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, spoken at the Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta, Georgia on February 4, 1968

Let us see that we all have the drum major instinct. We all want to be important, to surpass others, to achieve distinction, to lead the parade. Alfred Adler, the great psychoanalyst, contends that this is the dominant impulse. Sigmund Freud used to contend that sex was the dominant impulse, and Adler came with a new argument saying that this quest for recognition, this desire for attention, this desire for distinction is the basic impulse, the basic drive of human life, this drum major instinct.

We begin early to ask life to put us first. Our first cry as a baby is a bid for attention. And all through childhood the drum major impulse or instinct is a major obsession. Children ask life to grant them first place. They are a little bundle of ego. And they innately have the drum major impulse or instinct inside them.

Now in adult life, we still have it, and we really never get by it. We like to do something good, and we like to be praised for it. Everybody likes it, as a matter of fact. And somehow this warm glow we feel when we are praised or when our name is in print is like the vitamin A to our ego.

There comes a time that the drum major instinct can become destructive. And that's where I want to move now. I want to move to the point of saying that if this instinct is not harnessed, it becomes a very dangerous, pernicious instinct. For instance, if it isn’t harnessed, it causes one's personality to become distorted. If it isn't harnessed, you will end up day in and day out trying to deal with your ego problem by boasting.

And then the final great tragedy of the distorted personality is the fact that when one fails to harness this instinct, he ends up trying to push others down in order to push himself up. And whenever you do that, you engage in some of the most vicious activities. You will spread evil, vicious, lying gossip on people, because you are trying to pull them down in order to push yourself up. And the great issue of life is to harness the drum major instinct.

The drum major instinct can lead to exclusivity in one's thinking and can lead one to feel that because he has some training, he's a little better than the person who doesn't have it. Or because he has some economic security, that he's a little better than the person who doesn't have it. And that's the uncontrolled, perverted use of the drum major instinct.

But that isn't what Jesus did; he did something altogether different. He said in substance, "Oh, I see, you want to be first. You want to be great. You want to be important. You want to be significant. Well, you ought to be. If you're going to be my disciple, you must be." But he reordered priorities. And he said, "Yes, don't give up this instinct. It's a good instinct if you use it right. It's a good instinct if you don't distort it and pervert it. Don't give it up. Keep feeling the need for being important. Keep feeling the need for being first. But I want you to be first in love. I want you to be first in moral excellence. I want you to be first in generosity. That is what I want you to do."

And so Jesus gave us a new norm of greatness. If you want to be important—wonderful. If you want to be recognized—wonderful. If you want to be great—wonderful. But recognize that he who is greatest among you shall be your servant. That's a new definition of greatness.

What I like about this perspective is that under this definition of greatness, everybody can be great because everybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You don't have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don't have to know Einstein's theory of relativity to serve. You don't have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve. You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love. And you can be that servant.

The Perfect Guide

2009-08-02T08:00:00.001-04:00

Excerpts from a 1966 East Village lecture by His Divine Grace A.C Bhaktivedanta Swami Srila Prabhupada, the world's most learned and profound exponent of the art of bhakti-yoga

By nature we are destined to follow some kind of leadership. Nobody is independent. And we are trying to join some group according to the similarity of thought and propensities. There are different kinds of association, various associations such as mercantile association, bankers' association, lawyers' association, and there is a leader. That is nature's way.

Now, the supreme leader is Sri Krsna, but we do not know that the supreme leader is the Supreme Divine Being, or Krsna. So we are informed of this in the Vedic literature, and in the Bhagavad-gitä also, the same thing is confirmed, that

ye yatha mam prapadyante

tams tathaiva bhajamy aham

mama vartmanuvartante

manusyah partha sarvasah

As all surrender unto Me, I reward them accordingly. Everyone follows My path in all respects, O son of Pṛthā. Gita Chapter 4 Verse 11

Especially Krsna mentions the manusya. Manusya means the human being. The human being is especially mentioned here because the human being is considered the highest perfectional stage of the living condition, and especially the human being has the prerogative to understand the supreme leadership of Sri Krsna. The animals cannot understand it, nor people who live in an animalistic way.

Therefore everyone is following the leadership or the representative of the leadership. So suppose a political leader or religious leader is there, and thousands of people are following him. What is confirmed in the Bhagavad-gitä, is that they are invested with certain power of Sri Krsna. So everyone is following directly or indirectly the supreme leadership of Krsna, and the perfectional stage of accepting that leadership is when we accept Sri Krsna as our direct leader.

This is the science of Krsna. So simply by knowing this science of Krsna, if we can get liberation from these material miseries of life, why should we not try for this? Let us try for Krsna consciousness. It is a very nice subject matter and very easy. You simply come and hear nice music and singing. And beginning with music, ending with music, some distribution of prasädam, with nice palatable dishes for eating, and everyone will like it. So Bhagavad-gitä says, su-sukham: "This is a process is very palatable and very pleasurable and very easy." And still, you get Krsna. It is the easiest process, with a most pleasurable and happy mood, and still you get the Supreme.

It is stated in the Bhagavad-gitä, once you begin, even one percent you can realize, and that will never be lost. That will remain a permanent settlement. Now suppose if you are trying for your BA examination, or you have passed your BA.examination. Now, with the end of this body, your qualification as graduate of Columbia University or any university is finished. Now your life begins in another body, and you have to acquire knowledge again to become qualified to graduate. But this knowledge is not like that.

Because it is spiritual knowledge, absolute knowledge, it goes with you, with your spirit. Because whatever you have learned, that remains an asset, and you will get another chance of a human body to begin from where you have ended in this life.

We are already under the control of some leadership. That is a fact. Why should we not take exactly, directly, the leadership of Krsna? This is the process. If you have got any doubt, that "Why should I take the leadership of Krsna?" the answer is there in the Bhagavad-gitä. This is the real study of Bhagavad-gitä. In the Bhagavad-gitä the Lord says that

sarva-dharman parityajya

mam ekam saranam vraja

aham tvam sarva-papebhyo

moksayisyami ma sucah

Abandon all varieties of religion and just surrender unto Me. I shall deliver you from all sinful reactions. Do not fear. Gita Chapter 18 Verse 66

"Just give up everything, and just be surrendered unto Me. I shall give you all protection." So instead of accepting so many imperfect forms of leadership, let us accept the leadership of Krsna and make our life perfect. That is the whole philosophy.

That is the real aim of life, and Lord Krsna is personally teaching this in the Bhagavad-gitä. Why should we not take advantage of this? We should not refuse. We can refuse because we are individual souls with independence. If you like, you can refuse, but we should not refuse.

We worship leadership—why? Because we want something from that leadership. So it is possible that if we worship other demigods, we can get some temporary relief from our distress, but if you take to Krsna, then the relief is permanent, and we can give up this body and go directly to the spiritual kingdom to be associated with Krsna.

Big Bellies and Transcendence

2009-07-31T08:00:00.000-04:00

By Raghunath Das (Ray Cappo)

I sat there dumbfounded. Blown away. An "ah-ha" moment had just manifest. It may not seem like a lot to you but those few words changed my view of reality. Twenty years ago I sat in an North Indian yoga ashram and a Swami spoke to me. "You are not your body. You are not your mind. You are not your false ego. You are a spiritual being that has a body. You have a mind. You have a false ego that you project. You are just witnessing them.”

That little nugget of wisdom changed me and has proved to be a powerful tool for living at peace in a hectic city.

To this day when I teach yoga classes in New York City I paraphrase that quote at least once a class. It was etched in my mind that morning. Since then I've actively and eagerly studied every ancient book on yoga philosophy and yogic lifestyle that you could imagine. Most of them start with a similar introduction, "We are spirit embodied in matter.”

But we're American! We tend to take bits and pieces of the ancient culture that appeals to us and ignore the rest.

"Let's face it," one student said to me half seriously, "all the spiritual stuff in yoga, the chanting the breathing just can't make my big belly go away!” He was right. The mantras and breathing may not work on your belly or ass.

And NO, strangely enough, the ancient sages of India were NOT interested in six-pack abs or a firm butt. Go figure! (But they did have them!) They were in the transcendence business. The toned body is just a nice side benefit. And this is where those words of wisdom come in to play.

What does that mean, anyway? Transcendence? Next time you're holding a pose in your yoga class-and that stinging feeling starts: Your arms start to burn, your sweat drips from your brow and chin, your legs wobble like at the epicenter of an earthquake, and your mind tells you to quit. It's at that time this quote, this mantra, this affirmation kicks in.

In your mind proudly declare: "I'm not this body! I'm not this mind, I'm not these senses.....I'm not the stinging of my thighs! I'm something spiritual. I am divine." At that time yoga begins. When I want to come out of this asana (position), yoga is beginning. That's when I am called to transcend my mind and my body. I am asked to find my peace in more subtle places, underneath my senses and mind; to use my breathing, mantras and affirmations as my tools.

Take this little quote off the mat and into the world and you’ve got another incredible gift. I’m not the mind. Have you ever been in a place in your life where everything is perfect? Finances. Career. Relationship. Home. Perfect. Yet you are miserable for some reason. Call your mantra. “I’m not the mind.” One of my students told me the first time she heard me say this in class that it changed her life as she was struggling with depression. “It made me realize,” she confessed, “that this thing I’m going through is not even me. It’s just my mind.”

It’s true! I always use the example of a pit bull. You can train those tough dogs to be sweet – super sweet! You can also train them to cause havoc and terrorize. The mind is the same way. It can be trained to serve you or you can be a slave to serve it. Has your mind ever caused you havoc or terror like that pit bull? Mine has. Thank God I’m not the mind.

How about “we’re not the false ego?” Now in our culture when we say somebody has a “big ego” the yogis would consider this the “false ego”. We do have a real ego. This is described as our real genuine self. This is the beautiful part of you that people authentically love. The false ego is what I present to others in hopes that they think I’m cool. The false ego, when exacerbated, has people calling me pretentious. Fake. Inauthentic. In the age we live in, there’s a tendency to be very insecure. A natural “false ego” arises as a protection mechanism against pain. We don’t want to be vulnerable. We’ve been hurt. We don’t want to cry. We don’t want to let people in. I project myself a certain way hoping you don’t discover the real me. You may not like me.

But as we advance in yoga our inner self starts to shine through. We feel safe. Grounded. The false ego melts. We learn to be soft-hearted. We lose the competitive edge. What other people think of us is none of our business. Even if we are not in stellar shape we become aloof to public opinion. We actively search out relationships, friends and communities where we can be vulnerable, open and genuine. You’re not the false ego. You’re something divine. Isn’t that great news!

Experiment on yourself today with this simple meditation. Not the the body - I have a body. Not the mind - I have a mind. Not the false ego - I have an ego. I am Divine. When things get tough, and they will, because that’s part of being in this world, can you transcend?

RAGHU'S MINI-BIO

ex-punk, ex-monk, yogi, husband, father to four, inversion ambassador. detox junkie. evolution assistant. coalesced by kirtan. cacao consumer. reciter of Gita. animal friendly. transcendence in training. full contact fighter. devours durian. likes to chant. likes a challenge. servant of the servants. harmonium hugger. conscious of Krishna.

www.raghunath.org

The August Issue Is Here!

2009-07-28T08:00:00.001-04:00

In living color!

The Spirit Matters staff is proud to present our August issue, fresh off the presses and ready to hit the streets and hearts of the people of New York City.

As you can see, our August edition focuses on the spiritual capabilities of a certain individual currently residing in Washington-a President who for once actually reflects and represents, in many ways, the progressive aspirations for a more just, whole, spiritual planet.

Inside, we examine his chances to become a real servant-leader, based on the inspiration of such great difference-makers as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr and Bhakti-Tirtha Swami.

And we've got so much more from our Spirit Matters writers, movers, and shakers to inspire you in your spiritual lives.

Special thanks to Gabriel Leavitt for designing the awesome and provocative cover, and to all those who donated their time and money to make this issue happen.

The foundation of what we do comes from what we offer here at The Bhakti Center here in the East Village of NYC. The rewards of a daily yoga sadhana, the soothing and soaring sounds of kirtan, and the consummate cuisine of the vegan and vegetarian worlds are what we offer and plan to offer in the weeks and months ahead.

We're getting our roots in the ground and we hope you'll be a part of our loving community.

We'll be posting all the articles from our August issue, and much more, here on the online edition of Spirit Matters in the coming weeks, so stay tuned.

For your own personal copy of our August issue, visit The Bhakti Center, at 25 1st Ave in the East Village of Manhattan during our Tuesday spiritual get-together, every week at 7pm, or you can find a copy in your local cafe, coffee-house, bookstore, yoga studio, etc!

Living For Yesterday

2009-06-06T08:00:00.001-04:00

Living For Yesterday
by SriKalachandra Das

For more, click here to check out Matchless Gifts Conscious Arts (MGCA)

Her eyes seem so transparent
where have you gone
lost in a network of thoughts
thinking so long

swimming in an ocean of flaunts
the same old song
and your proclamation staunch
to budge you would be wrong

Some stay in the dark
living for yesterday

Some take movement
with direction
with great care
to make ends meet
but to reject
your reflection
and plug your ears
when eternity speaks

To what
do we give our attention
to what
do we sleep
so much gain to mention
but what do you keep
what do you keep

Some stay in the dark
living for yesterday

The time is now
use your plow
and sow them seeds
grow them trees
that reach the clouds

Its the art of allowing
a satisfied battle cry
so alive
when you're devout

And the flute will lead you to a land
where every walk is a dance
and every word is a song

Radha's Lover

2009-06-04T08:00:00.002-04:00

Radha's Lover
by Laura Fay Lewis
(C) 2007

For more, check out Matchless Gifts Conscious Arts (MGCA)

Inspiration comes

from all

the most interesting places

when you least expect it

a vision in surrender

The breeze

of subtle exchanges

and the light of life

the spark

the call of the wild

blue skies

Forever means more

than birth and death

it just goes on like a river

and flows without our control

we keep looking for answers

and don't know our own soul

Love is the answer

absolute truth

is contained

in the mind of every living thing

it's there

the soul

invisible yet

connected to the heart

This continues to surprise me

when I am close

to falling

Krsna says

I will quench your thirst

and fullfill your desire

no need

to look for answers

on life's highwire

Transcendental kiss

is the sweetest

nectar of devotion

like a mother's love

unconditional

a safe place to rest

when one is weary

of life's infernal lessons

and the ocean of mercy

cleanses us

we can be free

to take birth

as someone new

even in this lifetime.....

Golden Moonrise

2009-05-31T08:00:00.000-04:00

By Chris Fici

Consider this: Hundreds of thousands of people, five hundred years ago, the streets of Navadvip, West Bengal, a torchlight procession, drums thundering, feet and hands in a wild, transcendent, eternal, ecstatic dance, marching to the Chand Kazi's estate, marching with one purpose in mind, to have the exalted and inspired right to chant the names of the Divine to their soul's content. This is no regular protest, not your ordinary rebellion. This is the spiritual revolution, its thunder resounding throughout the dance steps of our history

The revolution must take place in men before it can be manifest in things.

Graffiti written during a French student revolt, May 1968

The sacred and the profane. Two dogs barking in our hearts, demanding our attention. Which one do we feed? In our constant struggle to define a blissful, loving state of humanity, we do most anything and everything to attract and achieve liberty, justice, and equality on this globe so blue. How do we achieve a real revolution? How do we go beyond the “meet the new boss, same as the old boss” syndrome.

We get a clue from that torchlight parade of the ecstatic chanters and dancers, the sankirtana party, from the streets of Navadvip, led by the great spiritual inspiration of the saintly, supreme activist Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu. The spiritual predecessor of such great personalities as Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Mahaprabhu's mission was to freely give us what we have forgotten, the connection to our higher self, our identity as eternal spirit soul, beyond this temporary suffering body, to each and every living entity, without discrimination, through the vessel of the chanting of the Divine Holy Names, the maha-mantra, the Hare Krsna mantra (Hare Krsna Hare Krsna Krsna Krsna Hare Hare Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare)

In our temple here in the East Village, we carry those still-lit torches, trying our humble best to carry the message of Mahaprabhu forward in these post-modern, hodge-podge times. The message can be boiled down to this:

We know our human condition, our human society, desperately needs change, and is on the cusp of an upheaval that could either liberate us or destroy us. To make that collective decision for our future, we have to change our heart first, before we can change any external situation. We must clean the dust off our souls and find the internal strength that is the essential foundation to our external battles against the oppression and injustice of this world.

This chanting of the maha-mantra, Mahaprabhu's great weapon of redemption, stands, in our own experience as his devotees, as a very direct and very easy way to bring the spiritual revolution to our hearts and to the world. All we can ask of you, when you see us on the transcendent parade in these very streets of NYC, is to give us the chance, give it a try, give it your heart....

Rebellion without truth is like spring in a bleak, arid desert.

Kahlil Gibran, The Vision

The real revolution of our times must have a spiritual foundation. It must begin not with impulsive violence, or posturing of conceit or and hypocrisy. We must fight the oppressor within our own heart first. To do otherwise, as the ordeals of our history have shown us, leads to disappointment and failure for ideals both lofty and sincere. What our planet, what our people need now, first and foremost, is an internal revolution, a revolution of the heart and soul.

If we want to clean up our environment, and the cultural atmosphere we live in, we must begin by tending to our own internal environment, our own internal atmosphere. This is the first and most fundamental step.

When Mahaprabhu's ecstatic parade came to the house of the Chand Kazi, the despotic ruler threatening to smash the drums of the sankirtana revolution, he simply offered his saintly personality and his firm grasp of the universal truths of the spiritual heritage we all share. By his logic and his clean, clear heart, Mahaprabhu convinced the Chand Kazi to allow the chanting of the Holy Names to be free and available to all. No need for guns, hateful rhetoric, or political intrigue. Just soul.

This may sound naïve, too soft in the gut, as ifnd asking to be beaten and bullied by the big schoolyard kids with their missiles and gold. However, the challenge remains dangling for the hardened cynics to answer. Like the succulent ghee that comes from clarifying butter, the impurities in our own heart must be removed to give us the chance to win our countless external battles for truth and well-being for all.

This search for real truth, for internal depth and meaning, for the right to think for ourselves and to live in a world based on justice and equality, leads us to a deeper questioning of the fundamental nature of reality. What does our spiritual nature have to do with all of this fussing and fighting, pleading and demonstrating?

Why did we feel an urge to restore our relationship with the Divine as a way to take part in this vision of a better world? The more we think about it., the more we understand that we must put our souls into the fight, that we must rely not only on each other, but on the spiritual energy that surrounds us and pervades us.

Our people power needs this boost, a very real boost that must be experienced and put into practice. The internal, transcendental strength it gives us is the power and the fearlessness we must wield against an all-pervading culture of greed and selfishness that threatens to devour our every waking and dreaming moment.

In every sense, fighting for change in this world is such a great struggle. It takes great intelligence and perseverance and internal strength to bring real light into the darkness of our times. This light is something we can constantly access if we turn inwards, and try to personally become, to the deepest part of our being, the change and restoration we wish to see in this world.

From In the canyons of Manhattan, to the agricultural, sun-baked horizons of India, as the voices of shattered discontent rise from the streets of Greece and England t, oin the brave blogosphere of democratic hopes in China, and the still simmering realities of ghetto strife in Detroit, Los Angeles, and Paris, the plea for the birthright to the human vision and our spiritual heritage rises up beyond stereotype and stagnation into the ethers of our daily lives. It demands to be answered.

As the humble practioners of the lifestyle of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu, we answer by loudly chanting the Holy Names. It is what we do, with all of our honesty and sincerity, our offering to the tidal wave of change on the horizon. All we can ask of you, when you see us on the transcendent parade in these very streets of NYC, is to give us the chance, give it a try, give it your heart....

***
Consider this: NYC, Lower East Side, a March night with spring sneaking in, drums thundering, feet and hands moving in the ecstatic, transcendent trance dance, marching in the concrete canyons, selflessly giving the gift of the Holy Name.. Hare Krsna Hare Krsna Krsna Krsna Hare Hare... The STOMP sign on 2^nd Avenue coincidentally announces ussays...but we were already there. Black, white, Indian, Vietnamese, some all mixed up, all of us all clear in heart, the real United Nations. This is the spiritual revolution, its thunder still resounding throughout the dance steps of history.

Faith and Flavor: The Taste of the Gita

2009-05-24T08:00:00.000-04:00

Aditi Sriram graduated from Columbia University in 2007 and has been working in New York City as a consultant since then.

Her spiritual heritage and contemporary search for truth and wisdom has led her to a time-tested source, the Bhagavad-Gita.

Here, she shares some of her dynamic and sincere insights and personal inspirations.

Before I turned 18, I lived in 4 countries and attended 6 schools. Transition, adjustment, flexibility – these were concepts I understood and embraced. It was after I settled into a dorm room at Columbia University as a freshman that time stopped moving so quickly, and my attitude started to shift from adaptation to identification and independence. I was no longer living with my parents, so obedience and duty had to come from within. Suddenly I was relying on my conscience instead of my parents to discipline me, and navigating a moral code for the sake of principle and not deference. College juxtaposed endless opportunity – hundreds of academic majors, internships and lectures – with inescapable mundanities – assignments, alarm snooze buttons, laundry – and it was up to me to prioritize all my activities in the way that best expressed my identity.

Inevitably I signed up for a class on Middle Eastern and Indian Civilizations, eager to see my culture in a glossy textbook. Conversations erupted about religion, caste, education and the controversies embedded in these constructs. I’d contribute with personal experience, having lived in India, but 21^st century Bombay does not explain sati (self-sacrifice) very effectively. I remembered what my father would always say to my siblings and I when we had questions about specific Hindu teachings – why isn’t there an equivalent Brahmachari Puja (celibate monk life) for women? What are the differences between Shaivites (worshipers of Shiva) and Vaishnavites (worshipers of Vishnu)? – and were not satisfied with his answer: Go to the source, go to the texts. All the answers are there! Don’t make judgments before you have fully sought out an answer.

Study which texts? Pray to which Gods? Visit which temples? Where did one start? Hinduism is overwhelming in the plurality of ways it can be approached and analyzed in order to understand, embrace, and live by it. Yet Hinduism appeals to people the way Krishna appeals to the Gopis (Krishna's milkmaid servants): by calling out to the curious individual, singling him out and welcoming him. The umbrella of Hinduism is as all-encompassing as Mt. Govardhan (a Vaishnava holy site); everyone can find their patch of shelter underneath it and, once ready, Krishna guides them out with a customized path to help them advance through the religion, always with love and encouragement.

My foray was an on-campus discussion group that involved copious amounts of free, Indian, vegetarian food and two very friendly Hare Krishna monks in saffron robes, armed with many copies of the Bhagavad Gita. The crowd was casual, the conversation comfortable and the food consummate! Perhaps my priorities were misaligned at the time – my focus being more on the food than on the text – but a fulfilled stomach abets a fulfilled mind, and I was moved to speak up, when my mouth was finally empty.

At first, I felt like I knew more than my counterparts since I knew the premise of the Gita, the principal characters and the subsidiary myths, but with each verse that we explored, I became less concerned with the pace of the pack, and more disarmed by the language of the Gita. Love everyone the same way – your mother the way you would a neighbor, and a stranger the way you would your mother? Dust off the layer of lust that coats your heart and turns love into attachment? The Gita chastised human temperaments, without temper, and revolutionized our discussion group’s thoughts, without starting any fights: we were all Arjunas and Sanjayas, blessed with Krishna and his words just inches away from our ears (next to our plates of pasta and halava!). I was amazed at the potency of the words.

I had encounters with realized souls that demonstrated karma to me just the way Krishna, Narada and others created circumstances for their devotees to interact in and learn from – twice with Radhanath Swami and once with a complete stranger on a New York City bus who, after telling me that my guru would find me, told me that he could see “right through” me, that he knew who I was. I realized that for every thought I devoted to cultivating a consciousness and formulating an awareness, I was being rewarded. A summer internship in India exposed me, once again, to the harsh juxtapositions of luxury and poverty, religious adherence and intolerance, and the frailty of life in a country of 1 billion. I

I questioned Hinduism still further, and received patiently responses from the same monks at Columbia, who helped me put life, mortality and meaningfulness in the perspective of karma and dharma (duty). We glorify the Lord to practice compassion and humility, and Krishna glorifies us for our efforts, creating distractions from the maya (illusion) that surrounds us and allowing us a glimpse of pure interaction.

It was easy to compartmentalize my Gita study into a weekly activity and keep busy with academics, other extra-curricular activities, and the wealth of distraction that New York City had to offer.! But after graduating and starting a full-time job, my thoughts seemed to toggle between tasks at work, and subsequent fatigue at home. Having spent the day staring at a computer screen, I was too tired to read at night. My copy of the Gita sat on a shelf, collecting its own proverbial layer of dust, hiding from me its potential to lessen the stress from my daily routine. This could not last forever, of course; circumstances found me at the Hare Krishna temple, hungry for halava and an honest discussion. I

I found the energy to pick up the Gita again, determined to read it from Chapter 1 to Chapter 12. Comparing the examples of service and compassion in the Gita to my varied interactions at work have shown me how power and control wrongly dominate the workplace – and how easy it is to get caught up in it. Every visit to the Hare Krishna ashram is personal and intimate, while the office can feel like a maze of cubicles. I have re-prioritized once again, to define my attitude towards work with the determination and humility I draw upon when discussing the Gita. I am hearing its language – or noticing its lack thereof – in newspaper headlines about greedy leaders, in lust-filled enterprises, and rejoicing in the examples the Lord puts forth to his devotees when we most need it. I have tasted the endlessness of the Gita, and I have returned to it!

A Real Prankster

2009-05-22T08:00:00.000-04:00

From our "Reflections On Friendship From The Monks Of The East Village" series

by Ghanashyam Dasa

Friendships are generally based on a common interest or aim. What is my aim in life? This is the all-important question that will determine the quality of our friendships. The higher the interest or aim, the stronger the bond. At least, this is my personal experience.

In high school, the common interest I shared with a group of friends was to have a good laugh at the expense of another friend. Unlike most teenagers, I couldn’t wait to get to school on Monday mornings. Sunday nights I would sit in my room in full concentration, thinking of a plot and devising a plan to "set up" a "good friend" for a devastating embarrassment. Not very deep, but back then I somehow lived for those moments. My mother was so proud to occasionally see me in my room preparing for the next day at school. I sat there at my desk, pen and paper in hand, thoughtfully gazing out the window, excitedly writing down any breakthrough ideas. My mother would sometimes bring me a hot chocolate. When the plan was executed, success would be determined by the look of shock of the surrounding people, and the laughs that were produced from my friends who weren't targeted.

Here's a sample: I was keen to observe that during gym class, one friend of ours would leave his locker unlocked. He was quite different from the rest of our crew, in that his personal life-style of choice could be understood by the term Death-Rock. He had long hair, played electric guitar, decorated his body with silver spikes, and wore all black at all times. His least favorite class was gym. He hated sports, but more importantly, everyday for one hour, he hated having to change from death-mode to little blue shorts, a white T-shirt, and clean white tennis shoes.

One day he returned to his locker after gym class to change his clothes quickly. But to his surprise, his death-metal wardrobe was nowhere to be found. It was replaced by a pink swimsuit and a mexican sombrero. His high black combat boots were replaced with yellow beach sandals. He became angered, but soon composed himself, all along hoping, and perhaps praying, that it would be just a few moments before his things were returned. But it wasn't so. We would sometimes take things too far. And because our "set ups" were a group activity, we could always protect ourselves with our famous line: "Sorry Steve, but it wasn't me." "I'm not sure who did it." This was our saving grace.Needless to say, most of those friendships didn't continue after high school. Our common interest was shallow, and therefore our bonds were weak.

Fortunately, in college my activities became a little more normal. But still, I could see that, though the form had changed, my aim was the same: It was egoistic and self-centered. Upon a little inward reflection, it seemed that in all my relationships, the motivating factor was my own self-interest. I began to wonder if it was even possible for it to be otherwise. Later, I understood that for the time being, it might not be possible to immediately change this. But there is one secret that I have learned, and am now trying to practice.

There is one self-interest that doesn't harm friendships but strengthens them. What could that be? It is when the common interest of our friendships is self-purity. What could be more healthy for a friendship? When friends are united in trying to uproot their own unhealthy tendencies, truly deep relationships can be born and maintained. Before we can genuinely love one another, we have to be able to love. We each have many things within us that block and prevent us from loving one another. But if friends become determined in this higher aim of self-purity, then even the setbacks and failures can act as opportunities to practice the virtues of humility, love, and forgiveness. When this is our aim, and our attitude is right, nothing can be an impediment. Everything teaches us, helps us.

Of course, to find such a place or community may not be so easy. But such places do exist and I've been fortunate enough to discover one. I am presently living in an asrama on the Lower East Side with a group of people dedicated to such an ideal. Even here, my pranks continue, but they are secondary to a deeper aim. That deeper aim includes acts of devotion and service to one another. There's one monk here who, on occasion, very happily makes a delicious pancake breakfast for the pleasure of all the others.

Recently, I was inspired by his enthusiasm to serve everyone, and so I decided to help. As I mixed bananas and blueberries into the batter, I was suddenly struck with a breakthrough idea that must have come from the Supreme Lord Himself. I thought, "I can make one special pancake with a long hot chili pepper in the middle." "And if I mix it with the others, it will be very exciting to find out which monk will become the lucky reciepient of this flavorful delight." As I waited in silent anticipation after serving out the first batch, a jolt of fear entered my heart. "Oh no!" I thought, "What if an older, more serious monk gets the hot pepper?" "Maybe this wasn't God's idea." It would surely be harder for a more senior monk to appreciate my strange sense of humor. Now in total anxiety, I served out the second batch. I was trying to think of what to do or say if the wrong monk got the hot pepper. But I was drawing a blank. Finally, I heard a murmur from a monk in the far corner of the room. "Why are these pancakes spicy?" he said. Everyone just ignored him, as it apparently made no sense to anyone else. Internally I was laughing, externally I was passing the maple syrup. He took another bite. A few seconds later he loudly shouted, "These pancakes are hot!" I knew that with his second bite he really got a good chunk. It happened to be the youngest monk in the room. I therefore knew, beyond all doubt, that it was in fact the will of the Lord. I felt great relief and the young monk vowed to get revenge.

I still play around like this sometimes, but unlike the past, these friendships mean everything to me. They are fun, yet profound. And they are always meaningful and fulfilling. Of course, there are struggles. We have many short-comings. But they are overlooked and overcome for the sake of these higher aims: compassion, self-purity, and service to one another. Even just striving together for such aims brings greater understanding and joy into the heart. Our bonds are strengthening, and as those virtues of purity actually begin to reawaken, the bonds of friendship can become unbreakable. When self-interest starts to slacken, we finally begin to understand what it means to love.

Dancing Around, Bouncing Off One Another, Like Atoms Inside a Molecule

2009-05-19T08:00:00.000-04:00

From our "Reflections On Friendship From The Monks Of The East Village" series

by Ari Weiss

It was my freshman year of college and I was on the phone with my girlfriend, Ella.
“While I was in class today, I was thinking of you practically the entire time!”
Ella lived upstate, a good five hours from NYU, and I was real good at getting sappy with her about that.
There was silence on the other end.
“Well, what about you?” I provoked.
“I enjoyed a nice lecture on the evolution of the wombat.”
Silence on my end.
Then: “You didn’t think about me at all today?”
“Ummm… I didn’t say that.”
Silence.
“Well did you?”
“We’re not going to talk about this now.”
“Why not?”
“I have an idea!”
“What?” I growled.
“Why don’t you listen to how cool wombats are?”
“I don’t think that’s appropriate…”
“Why not?”
“Ellaaaaaaa!”
And we’d be shouting again.
I wish I could say that it was all in good fun. The messier truth is that, regardless of how it may come off in retrospect, it wasn’t all that much fun back then.

Sitting at the foot of the dorm-room door, the only relief came when the surgeon knocked. Her name was Jesse and she was also a freshman. Jesse had dark brown hair and a kind face that begged for sympathy, though she could attract more friends than anyone else on our floor.
Jesse liked to knock. She didn’t mind that I was sitting with my arms hugging my thighs outside the very door she knocked on.
“Hey Jesse.”
“Hey Ari. How’s it going?”
Cellular phone clutched in my right hand, the LCD screen glistening with sweat beads, Jesse didn’t really have to ask.
“Okay,” I said with a little mustered cheer.
“I brought you some CDs.”
“Oh, no way!”
From beneath a violet cloth, she unsheathed six Tori Amos albums and a Talking Heads album which I hadn’t yet snagged for my collection.
“Nice!” I shouted. “Hold on, one second,” I said, scrambling to my feet.
I reemerged from my dorm room with a fistful of discs that doubled hers, all meticulously labeled with multi-colored markers.
Her face lit up.
And we’d proceed to talk about Ella, Bowie, and our hopes and dreams that night until the dawn threatened to creep up on us. Jesse sewed up my wounded ego every time I needed it. She had a superb sense of timing. There was nothing romantic about our relationship, except that it fit precisely my romanticized ideal for what a deep and sincere friendship should be. I loved Jesse as my ideal friend and I loved Ella as my ideal beloved.

Then one day, each of them vanished. Spontaneously, as if they’d never been there in the first place, they entered into the boundless realm of memory. I often drove myself to distraction. ‘How could this be?!’ I could apply no sound logic to placate the mind or coax the heart out of its existence. One day, these ladies appeared both so real, as was the affection I wielded in their direction. Then the next, they were gone and I had to redirect my feelings elsewhere, or render my heart more callous.

In the months that followed, I alone went up against the whole of New York, simply searching for a good friend. And somehow, as a starry-eyed student, I’d managed to find myself “bonding deeply” with a new best friend… every week.
The indigestible fact was that even with all of the unlimited possibility that lay vibrantly in wait, there was only limited outcome. What I wanted, very matter-of-factly, and what I believed, deep down, every NYU student who’d enrolled alongside me in the fall of 2002 really wanted, were meaningful relationships saturated with warmth, trust, humor, and identity.

Either, we’d all gotten on the same train, then gotten off at different stops along the way, or I’d brilliantly gotten myself onto the wrong train altogether. Nevertheless, there I was, freshly on the cusp of living 18 years, ardently seeking hominess in a gaping city that overflowed with individual potential pursuit, and ever so subtly, forcing myself into the recognition that we were all, the whole lot of us, dancing around, bouncing off one another like atoms inside a molecule. There were no actual bonds formed, only intersections of time and place, surcharged with emotion.

No one stopped to tell us that in the midst of all the wondrous madness, we human beings could scarcely see one another, what to speak of getting to know one another. Not that we’d have heard it. We presumed “getting to know someone” meant spilling our guts when drunk or stripping our clothes in bed. At best, it meant simply doing the same things together… There was no real heart. The soul was a formidable myth. Taste defined life.

Aesthetics were not just valued, they were worshiped. But no one wanted to admit the sheer religiosity of their aesthetic ideology, least of all my own self. And yet, I did feel something, even if most notably in retrospect. Neo’s “splinter in the mind” had struck me – something was off - and I’d not simply allow it to fester.

In course of time I came to befriend, casually at first, a humble group of lively monks. I gradually began to appreciate that their relationships had little to do with the style one wishes to project or ambition one wishes to achieve. Instead, they achieved a depth by putting themselves second to others. They valued performing tasks that reduced pride by serving each other in menial ways without expectation of returns. Cooking, cleaning, taking out the trash. Done without self-interest. Without entitlement. And most difficult of all, with affection. When I began to see that this was indeed possible, and even pleasurable, my life’s pursuit of romantic ideals became more about becoming the ideal, for the benefit of others, than receiving it for the gratification of my own self.

Ella graduated from school without my seeing her again face to face. She moved back to her hometown in California with a replacement college sweetheart. It seems, by her Facebook profile, that they broke up within a month of settling in together.

I never found out why Jesse stopped knocking on my door. But I ran into her a couple of times throughout my NYU career. Once on West 4th Street overlooking Washington Square Park. Once in the science building, while hastening myself to get to an environmentalism class. And once while tipsy at a party. Each time I’d meet Jesse, I I’d scan her eyes, desperate to detect anything mysterious. Then she’d twirl her dyed-brown locks of hair. And I’d wonder if she’d listened to my R.E.M. CD yet, or if she ever planned on giving it back. The “how are you’s” were brutal. The “good’s” were worse. Before I could ask what classes she was taking, she’d lightly smile and walk away.

Yoga, Choice, and Destiny

2009-05-17T08:00:00.000-04:00

Yoga, Choice and Destiny

By Raghunath Das (Ray Cappo)

My entire face puckered and my gag reflux kicked in as I slugged down a two ounce shot of wheat grass juice. "I know this is good for me! I know this is good for me! Just deal with it...antioxidants, chlorophyll, essential amino acids, B vitamins. Just swig it down!" I swallowed. Even my neck seemed to pucker as this lawnmower smoothie dripped down my throat. "Aaaahg. I know there's a greater good coming from that gulp. This is a miracle healing food!"

That was 25 years ago and I remember that first wheat grass juice shot like it was yesterday. I was outside of a health food store on 6th avenue in Manhattan. There was a greasy pot bellied man with a fat neck and eating an equally greasy sausage-like something who was propped up against the wall observing me. He had to say something. "Hey dude - why go through all the trouble? Have some reeaal food." And when he said "reeaal" he pushed the greasy sausage thing towards my head. I mumbled and half smiled at him before I turned and walked away. A quote came to mind: Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space lies our freewill and thus our destiny. 25 years later I'm glad I made that choice not to put greasy sausage things in my body and instead to search out seek things that heal me and protect me from instead of causing the dreaded "fat neck syndrome."

It was at that time I had embarked on a spiritual journey that brought me around the world. I had become a yogi and my bible of choice was the Bhagavad Gita, India's foremost book on universal truth. I was all about transformation, change, and evolution. I wanted to transform. I wanted to see if Ii could change the current of where Ii was headed genetically, spiritually, & culturally. I remember the conversation I had about it with my mother a, short old Italian lady from Willliamsburg, Brooklyn.

"We take on different bodies according to our desire and our meditation." I said, paraphrasing the Gita.

"Do you mean we are going to die and come back as a cow or something?!"

"No mom, don't even think of it like that. We don't die. We just observe. Always. Our bodies and the minds just change according to our activities, our passions, and our habits."

It's really easy to dismiss something like reincarnation as other worldly, far fetched or new agey when you think of dying and coming back as a cow, so Ii pressed on, giving a more down to earth analogy that she could relate to.

"Remember when I was little and you'd warn me about hanging out with bad kids - because they'd have a bad influence on me.?"

She remembered and immediately said repeated her famous quote in her Brooklyn dialect, "If you hang out with trouble, -you become trouble! It's true!" she warned as she had since I was 6 years old.

"Exactly! The company we keep creates our consciousness. Our friends, our spouse. Whomever we have in our circle of close people influences who we are and what we become." This time she nodded.

"But it's not only that," I continued, “, "everything that we consume creates us. It creates our new body and mind. As soon as we are hungry we have a choice (here's that 'stimulus and response' quote from above). Whatever we choose to eat creates us and either assists us to evolve or devolve on an evolutionary scale." I was on a role so I didn't stop. " It's not only what food we eat but what we put in our eyes. Our ears. The movies we watch. The books we read. They are all creating us. They are all creating our new bodies and mind at every moment. We are changing every moment and creating a new body with every thought, morsel of food, sound and activity.

"Sound makes us change bodies?!"

"Sure. Don't you think hearing the sounds of Brooklyn every day are going to change your consciousness as opposed to you growing up in.....the Grand Canyon. Don't you think you create a different mind growing up in peace? Sound too creates us."

I think she got it.

There is a concept taught in the ancient histories of yoga. It's said animals get no karma or reactions for their actions. If I slap a tiger and he bites me he doesn't get any bad karma for biting me. That's what tigers do. In the in the human species we are responsible for our actions. If somebody slaps me, I have an opportunity to react in many ways. I could slap him back. It could come from a base feeling of revenge, anger and hostility. It could be rage. Or I could give a thoughtful stare. I could wonder what got into this guy to make himthem slug me, and I could ask him if he is alright. Ask him how he is. Each choice grants me a different reaction. Advancing in the yoga system means training ourselves to take more space after stimulus and , before response - to act in a way that let's us evolve. Can we use our higher consciousness instead of our lower consciousness?. Be in control of our thoughts, our choices, instead of acting on auto-pilot?. If so, we can evolve instead of devolving.

Yes, you can devolve. I've had days, even years where Ii felt, "God! I've really devolved this year! I use to be up there but now I'm down here! What's happened to me?" It's true, we can either grow intoas more conscious, caring, enlightened beings, or we become more bound toup in the material world. More animalistic (in every bad sense of ‘animal’). More reactive. Impulsive. Trapped. More frustrated within our bodies and minds. Frustrated by lower passions and desires that produces grief and disappointment.

Therefore the yogi is constantly thinking, "How can I live in such a way to surround my senses with things that will enlighten my consciousness and not degrade the consciousness? What am I letting into my universe? Into my senses? Whom and what do I have to cut out and what do I have to add in order to grow? To evolve? How can I create more space between stimulus and response?

www.raghunath.org

A Spiritual Stimulus

2009-05-16T08:00:00.000-04:00

Rasanath Das, our good friend and spiritual guide from the East Village Temple community, explains from his own unique perspective, as a former member of the Wall Street elect, that we need to look into our heart and find a place for "A Spiritual Stimulus"

August 2^nd, 2007. There was excitement in the air. The décor in the ball room at the Times Square Hilton was exquisite, the populace dressed in crisp business suits, shaking hands and introducing themselves, and right on the center of the far wall, the projector screen proudly displayed “Bank of America. Higher Standards.” As the fresh batch MBAs from top business schools walked into the room, the mood was clear. The long-cherished dream of working on The Street (also known as Wall Street) had finally come true for the many aspiring bankers and traders assembled.
As we settled down, my mind flashed back to the yesteryears. As a 9^th grader, I was an ardent fan of Charlie Sheen in “Wall Street”. The momentum that was generated 14 years ago had finally met with success. I was one of 13 associates about to start an exciting career in Investment Banking (oh, those big bonuses!) with the Technology and Media group of Bank of America. The Global Head of Investment Banking, Mr. Brian Brille opened his address to the class with the statement, “You are all starting here at a very historic time….” Exhilarating!

Flash ahead-The saxophone loudly played the title music of “The Titanic”. The faces of the people walking out of the building with card board boxes said the story. The moment was historic. September 8^th, 2008 – I stood outside the Lehman Brothers building at 745 7^th Avenue, as the street artist waved dry erase markers at passers-by, urging them to express “words of gratitude” on his painting of the Lehman Brothers CEO, Mr. Richard Fuld. The excitement was over, the bonuses had evaporated, and two Wall Street giants - Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers - had met their end. The remaining had been severely battered.

It all seemed like a dream. Emotions ran high through my head as I walked past Times Square– disappointment, anger and embarrassment. As the newspapers played into the blame game voicing the opinions of the general public on people working on Wall Street, Wall Street had become something like a criminal’s haven overnight. I felt it when I introduced myself to my neighbor on the Amtrak train, “Oh! You are one of the guys responsible for this mess”, he said with a wry smile. I had my own blame list too, which I used to defend myself. But something did not reconcile. It was true mean, I worked with many of these very people. They were good people – inspiring, driven to succeed, hard working and charitable too. What went wrong?

Over the last few months, some deep thinking , some sobering and heart-felt conversations with empowerment gurus has seemed to provide the much needed answer and possibly a long-term solution to a problem that had always existed through history and now had manifested itself in a different form - the problem of collective greed, or more simply put, greed itself.

It seems like a regular Bible lesson – something that I had learned as a 4 year old kid, too. Only that it took me 24 more years to realize what its unfathomable power can be. As individuals, we don’t seem to think lightly about it in ourselves. When my cousin ardently pointed out that I was being greedy when I took up my job on The Street, I made light out of it, “Well, a little greed does not matter much. After all, there are so manpeople out there who are doing the same. The world will come to a stop if we start thinking so idealistically!”

Greed is an addiction – it starts out as an innocent desire to be comfortable and live comfortably. But somewhere along the way, instead of us controlling money and position, they begin to control and dictate our lives. As my ethics professor at Cornell University once put it, “Watch out when you tell yourself ‘I deserve it’!” And there are hundreds of ways to justify it too – after all logical rationalization seems to be the biggest gift that college education has given us. But as greed grows stronger by the day, fed by our own justifications and inattention, it becomes a way of life.

And when things are going wellgood, it seems too unimportant to notice, as was my case during my brief stint on The Street. We unconsciously became part of a system that has been built oncollective greed (after all the first “commodities” to trade on Wall Street in the early 17^th century were human slaves!) and glorified the system when the music is playing well.

But it is when the music stops that reality dawns, of course only after all the anger and frustration has been released and we are ready to honestly look inside our own selves. True, our contribution to this crisis maycould have been insignificant, but if we are not honestly spending time cleansing our own hearts, we just have tomust mentally prepare ourselves for much more of the same. As we vent our frustrations on the Thains, Fulds and Madoffs during of this crisis, it is also important to realize that they were just reflections of the very same greed within our hearts - perhaps only nurtured by more sophisticated and favorable education, power and circumstances than what we may have had. It could have been any of us.

What may be needed in this time of crisis, along with a monetary solution to bail us out of it, is a program to help us monitor, take personal responsibility for and possibly eliminate the greed from our hearts– a Spiritual Stimulus if I may call ityou will. We all want to see this situation change, but to prevent this situation from reoccurring, we need a deeper change. As Mahatma Gandhi wonderfully put it, “Be the change you wish to see in the world!” How we do it, time will tell. But let us use this time to at least resolve (unlike our ‘serious’ New Year Resolutions!) to rid our heart of the pollution of greed. It can be a big step in creating a better world for our children.

Economics According to the Vedic Way

2009-05-14T08:00:00.000-04:00

By Stephen Knapp
Courtesy of his website http://www.stephen-knapp.com/

Economics According To The Vedic Way by Stephen Knapp (Sri Nandanandana Das)

This is a simple explanation of how we should view economics according
to the principles of Vedic Dharma. First of all, the higher vision of
Vedic understanding is that we see everything as the energy of the
Supreme Being. If we can see the Divine in all of life, meaning in all
beings, we must understand that there is a way of conducting business
between each other that upholds and advances our perception of this.
Conducting business or managing economics in a way that deliberately
cheats or exploits others will harden our hearts and our sensitivity
so that we become unable to perceive the Divine in all living beings
and even in ourselves.

The point is that there must be integrity in all transactions and
business relations. If we use the above mentioned principle, then by
seeing the Divine in all living beings, we must realize we are not
merely doing business with another person, but we are also doing
business with the Divine within that person. This means that the
Supreme is also observing our every act, not only from within us but
from within the person with whom we are dealing. If the relationship
has integrity, then that is fine. We will continue in our spiritual
development even while doing our business.

But if there is dishonesty and cheating in our involvement, then the
quick profits we make will only pave our way downward. This will not
be helpful. So we must conduct ourselves, even in business, with the
foundation of the Dharmic principles.

We have easily seen that companies with power may produce various
foods, drugs, beverages or devices that are said to be of great
benefit or are healthy for us, or help us solve our problems with no
side effects or unexpected problems. Yet time and time again we learn
that different kinds of products have indeed been pushed on the public
and have caused harmful side effects, much to the dismay, suffering
and frustration of the people. In fact, However, the company or even
government may deny any such possibility of injury. However, you must
always bear in mind that a story presented as factual from an entity
or company whose purpose is power, control or profits is often a story
not to be trusted.

For example, in today’s world, the use of paper currency, which only
represents a value rather than being a tangible item like gold or
silver coins, may be convenient to the user. But those in positions to
set the value on such currency can also more easily manipulate it.
This creates abstractions in the link between the paper representation
and the actual gold it is supposed to be representing. At other times
the combined confidence that people and governments place in a
currency may fluctuate greatly, making it especially vulnerable to
times of political upheaval or war. Such currency can then become
completely worthless.

The fluctuating character of this type of currency also helps separate
society from nature. Nature requires balance in the environment to
operate properly, while currency that only represents what is supposed
to be tangible values is more easily manipulated. It is the
adjustments in currency and interest values which often create
stressful fluctuations for the ordinary consumers and for the general
mass of people. People who are most implicated in these fluctuations
are less likely to advance economically, as are those who are in
positions to claim profits from the same adjustments or manipulations
in the markets and economy. This is the difference between those
involved in the global monopoly game, which is artificially propped
up, and those that depend on real value, such as the gold standard or
genuine real estate values.

In this way, the gold-standard currency is based on falsehood because
the currency does not accurately represent the reserved gold. Because
the money value is inflated, prices on commodities rise. The only way
to reduce inflation and have an honest currency is to use that which
has intrinsic value, such as when trading something of equal value as
in bartering or using real currency like gold and silver coins. That
is an honest system.

Real prosperity flourishes on the natural gifts of nature, or God’s
gifts to us. Villages and towns and their local economy will flourish
when there is plenty of grains, vegetables, herbs, trees full of
fruits, rivers flowing with fresh and clean water, and hills full of
minerals. When this is the situation, there will be plenty for
everyone. If society has sufficient natural resources in this way,
then why should it endeavor for huge industrial complexes that require
the labor of numerous men by sending them into dark factories where
they spend their lives in exchange for inflated dollars, and then have
to pay a sizable portion of their earnings for government taxes?

Industry produces so many items that are in demand only because of the
advertising they show use to convince people that they need to
purchase the item in order to be happy. Essentially, the more society
depends on artificial necessities, the more vulnerable it becomes to
artificial crises. Thus, civilization suffers and the economy slows
whenever there is not enough oil, gas, electricity, or when the prices
of such modern commodities become too high. When there is a loss of
oil, gas, and other such necessities, or when there is an electrical
blackout, so many activities are forced to stop. So many machines and
appliances are but recent inventions, but now we have become so
dependent on them that without them we think we can no longer
function. Thus, people become trapped ever more deeply in the struggle
to earn more money to buy more things that they are convinced they
require to live happily and comfortably. In this way, they are tied
and enslaved to a system whose goal is profits rather than really
benefitting to society. In such a system, humanity loses its
sensitivity for their finer intellectual development and has neither
no time nor and no taste for any spiritual pursuits, except possibly
for the most elementary levels of moral standards.

In the natural form of economy, which is the Vedic system, the basic
principle of economic development is land and its produce. Whoever
controls land controls food. Whosoever controls food and fuel controls
the world. This is why land should always be in the hands of local
farmers, so that everything is shared and all people everyone can
prosper. Once large industrial or national complexes take it over,
such large tracts of land are no longer in the hands of a local
economy, but are controlled by large companies who have their own
concerns and plans. Then land becomes another element by which to
manipulate profits, resources, people, and even other communities and
global markets. History has also shown that such companies are often
connected with crooked politicians, or their networks that want more
and more power.

By developing the land properly for vegetable and grain production,
society can solve its eating problems. By producing enough cotton,
wood, minerals, and additional resources from the land, humanity can
work out its economic problems without depending on an artificial
economic or political system.

Those who do become wealthy by honest means can more easily
acknowledge his or her opulence as gifts from God. Thus, one’s
business, if done morally, can be a way of invoking the principle of
Dharma. Such gifts or blessings also come in the form of one’s own
intelligence and ingenuity for devising wholesome ideas and needed
products for the benefit of others, and from which one’s business will
expand. Thus, without the blessings of God in every way, we cannot
progress or be happy. All things, from wealth to , health, good birth,
beauty, good education, etc., are all examples of gifts from God.
Therefore, we all must acknowledge our gratefulness, especially those
who have become more successful. When a family or society offers such
acknowledgment, their success and happiness can increase in a balanced
and moral way.

In conclusion to this line of thinking, we must recognize that one of
the greatest forms of pollution in this world is that of competition--
competition for position, power and money. It is natural to work at
devising better ways of doing business and producing more effective
products. Whoever has what is best will more likely succeed.
Competition based on envy, jealousy, and deviousness, or simply for
more money, makes individuals and companies resort to dishonorable
means to get ahead, to get more market share, more customers, and ways
of making products more cheaply. This also adds to social stress
levels by forcing people to increasingly think increasingly in terms
of growing profits and income, while and lowering expenses. This takes
away from the peace in the world, and often adds to the pollution in
the environment by using resources in less eco-friendly ways.

Because we have forgotten our true spiritual nature, we are stressed
and crying over small and unimportant problems that have little to do
with our real identity as spiritual beings. Because such difficulties
are not connected to who we really are, they actually have little
relevancey to our spiritual nature. But because we are so attached to
our temporary and bodily identity, we are greatly affected so much by
these ephemeral and superficial troubles. This is not how we are meant
to proceed through life. We should not get entangled in such a way
manner to this illusion. It wastes our time and distracts us from the
things that matter most.

We may have made so much technological progress and have numerous
facilities added to our comforts of life, yet we can still see so many
people suffering in this world. This is primarily because money, and
people who are greedy for money, rule the world. Not everyone is
cruel, but who cannot see how the misery of many people in this world
is caused by the greediness of others? The perverted politicians and
rulers in various countries have created so much trouble that almost
all of the torment of people who are poor, starving, or even being
slaughtered or enslaved into prostitution to do the wicked bidding of
others, has been due to the unending selfishness and greed for money
and power. Do you think this is the way of a truly progressive world?
We can plainly see that it is increasingly becoming more godless and
thus more hellish. If this trend continues, society will lose its
moral values and respect for life. People will become progressively
more desperate and the world ever more lost.

A new influence must rise to purify this world from the rulership
kingdom of money, dirty politics, and a false and misguided economic
system. We must feel the influence of spiritual knowledge, for only
then can society know what is real peace and happiness, and live
together cooperatively. It is knowledge and awareness of our spiritual
identity and our connection with the Supreme Spirit that will fill our
hearts with the deep inner peace and contentment that we are looking
for. If we can progress in this way, our own happiness and peace can
spread to others. That i’s how we can become the peacemakers and help
fill society with the tranquility of such self-sufficient happiness
and contentment. Then our only concern will be how to relieve the
suffering of others. The more people reach this state of
consciousness, the more beautiful society will become beautiful and
the world will be wonderful. Then Tthe tendency for war and the
manipulation over others because of greed for money and power will
cease, and the world will live in peace. We have to be strong enough
to make such a change.

MGCA (Matchless Gifts Conscious Arts) on You Tube!

2009-05-13T08:00:00.000-04:00

MGCA (Matchless Gifts Conscious Arts)!!
The name says it all...gifted, spiritual, deep, funky, profound.

Don't let your computer be a tool of material mayhem!
Tune in to the MGCA YouTube channel for all the latest sights and sounds from our open mics (every last Thursday of the month, 7pm, The East Village Temple, 25 1st Ave), kirtans, freestyles and more.

We'll have a link to the MGCA YouTube channel up now in the links portion of Spirit Matters online. Stay tuned!

Conquering The Enemies of The Mind

2009-05-11T08:00:00.000-04:00

by Bhakti-Tirtha Swami

How To Avoid Anxiety
How do we break the pattern of constant worrying? How can people who have protection of the greatest shelter, spiritual shelter, still worry so much? Although we can endlessly worry and consider ourselves to be at the mercy of circumstance, we understand the influence of karma, which refers to any material action that brings a reaction, binding us to this material world. We also understand that higher authorities, our spiritual guides and even supernatural sources such as angels, also have control over all things.

Considering these factors, where does all the worry stem from? We should never think that our higher spiritual guides have left us alone without any help or guidance and without any way to get us out of our problems. We want to find ways to break the worry habits before they break us. If we do not stop such habits, our fears can easily overwhelm us and even turn into chronic depression, phobias, panic attacks, and compulsive behaviors.

We have all seen people who worry about every little detail. If we simply present them with an idea, they will immediately try to show point out its fallibility. They have an insecurity complex along with an existential mood about life, feeling . They feel defeated before they even start. Since they will not take the risk, they lead a life of great boredom, frustration, and mediocrity, which also means less ruci or spiritual taste. We do not want to fall into these destructive patterns; therefore, we want to offer the following techniques to help rescue our consciousness from such a negative mentality.

Do Not Fear The Future
We should try to avoid any worry that revolves around fears of the future. As we live each day, we should simply do our very best today and let the future take care of itself. When we worry too excessively about the future, we often fail to take the necessary actions that will lead to an auspicious future. In many ways, the future is an extension of the present along with influences from the past. Our own mind can create the exact situation we wish to avoid, and an unhealthy mental culture often blocks the divine power that can work through us. When we worry about the future, we do not offer our best today.

Collect The Facts And Then Act
We should get all of the facts. People often try to make decisions before they have a sufficient amount of information about the problem or issue. This lack of knowledge will definietely result in anxiety. We should look at the entire issue and then develop a plan. We should not avoid problems; instead we must recognize the need to work through them in ways that can help us accelerate our spiritual consciousness. When we find ourselves absorbed in worry, we should take the time to reflect on the actual variables involved in the issue because this might help us develop a clearer insight and find a more positive way to respond to the situation. At the very least, we should clearly understand the reasons for our anxiety.

Keep The Mind Busy
Keeping the mind busy is a valuable technique. Plenty of action is one of the best therapies or cures for a worrying mind. Many times we get absorbed in our anxieties because we do not have anything productive in which to engage our minds and bodies. All that loose energy needs to go somewhere. Therefore, a simple technique is to look at our use of time. When we are engaged in a healthy way, we will not be subject to such excessive amounts of anxiety.

Avoid The Trifles
We should carefully avoid worrying about the trifles that can ruin our happiness and faith in the Divine, our spiritual guides, and other saintly personalities. Sometimes we have to be practical by trying to understand the probability of our worst fears actually happening:. What are the chances that I will actually fall down and break my leg? It could definietely happen,s but what are the chances?

Help And Serve Other People
An even greater way to avoid anxiety involves utilizing that energy to think of ways to help another person. We can put so much of our energy into finding ways to serve or assist someone else. There will always be another person whose problems far exceed our own. If we can relinquish some of our selfishness by trying to help another person in distress, we will not waste unnecessary energy in creating the exact problem we want to avoid. By thinking about another person, we will naturally take our focus away from our own appetite and concerns, and this will actually cause to us become more powerful.

If we think too much about ourselves, we actually become powerless because we block the Divine from channeling coming through us. As our selfishness increases, we will correspondingly lose our power in spiritual life because we will check the Divine's real sakti or spiritual power from coming through in our lives. We will prevent the miracles that can occur when we remove our mental and physical disturbances and embrace divinity.

God Talk

2009-05-08T08:00:00.000-04:00

From the Think Again blog by Stanley Fish from the New York Times

In the opening sentence of the last chapter of his new book, “Reason, Faith and Revolution,” the British critic Terry Eagleton asks, “Why are the most unlikely people, including myself, suddenly talking about God?” His answer, elaborated in prose that is alternately witty, scabrous and angry, is that the other candidates for guidance — science, reason, liberalism, capitalism — just don’t deliver what is ultimately needed. “What other symbolic form,” he queries, “has managed to forge such direct links between the most universal and absolute of truths and the everyday practices of countless millions of men and women?”

Eagleton acknowledges that the links forged are not always benign — many terrible things have been done in religion’s name — but at least religion is trying for something more than local satisfactions, for its “subject is nothing less than the nature and destiny of humanity itself, in relation to what it takes to be its transcendent source of life.” And it is only that great subject, and the aspirations it generates, that can lead, Eagleton insists, to “a radical transformation of what we say and do.”

The other projects, he concedes, provide various comforts and pleasures, but they are finally superficial and tend to the perpetuation of the status quo rather than to meaningful change: “A society of packaged fulfillment, administered desire, managerialized politics and consumerist economics is unlikely to cut to the depth where theological questions can ever be properly raised.”

By theological questions, Eagleton means questions like, “Why is there anything in the first place?”, “Why what we do have is actually intelligible to us?” and “Where do our notions of explanation, regularity and intelligibility come from?”

The fact that science, liberal rationalism and economic calculation can not ask — never mind answer — such questions should not be held against them, for that is not what they do.

And, conversely, the fact that religion and theology cannot provide a technology for explaining how the material world works should not be held against them, either, for that is not what they do. When Christopher Hitchens declares that given the emergence of “the telescope and the microscope” religion “no longer offers an explanation of anything important,” Eagleton replies, “But Christianity was never meant to be an explanation of anything in the first place. It’s rather like saying that thanks to the electric toaster we can forget about Chekhov.”

Eagleton likes this turn of speech, and he has recourse to it often when making the same point: “[B]elieving that religion is a botched attempt to explain the world . . . is like seeing ballet as a botched attempt to run for a bus.” Running for a bus is a focused empirical act and the steps you take are instrumental to its end. The positions one assumes in ballet have no such end; they are after something else, and that something doesn’t yield to the usual forms of measurement. Religion, Eagleton is saying, is like ballet (and Chekhov); it’s after something else.

After what? Eagleton, of course, does not tell us, except in the most general terms: “The coming kingdom of God, a condition of justice, fellowship, and self-fulfillment far beyond anything that might normally be considered possible or even desirable in the more well-heeled quarters of Oxford and Washington.” Such a condition would not be desirable in Oxford and Washington because, according to Eagleton, the inhabitants of those places are complacently in bondage to the false idols of wealth, power and progress. That is, they feel little of the tragedy and pain of the human condition, but instead “adopt some bright-eyed superstition such as the dream of untrammeled human progress” and put their baseless “trust in the efficacy of a spot of social engineering here and a dose of liberal enlightenment there.”

Progress, liberalism and enlightenment — these are the watchwords of those, like Hitchens, who believe that in a modern world, religion has nothing to offer us. Don’t we discover cures for diseases every day? Doesn’t technology continually extend our powers and offer the promise of mastering nature? Who needs an outmoded, left-over medieval superstition?

Eagleton punctures the complacency of these questions when he turns the tables and applies the label of “superstition” to the idea of progress. It is a superstition — an idol or “a belief not logically related to a course of events” (American Heritage Dictionary) — because it is blind to what is now done in its name: “The language of enlightenment has been hijacked in the name of corporate greed, the police state, a politically compromised science, and a permanent war economy,” all in the service, Eagleton contends, of an empty suburbanism that produces ever more things without any care as to whether or not the things produced have true value.

And as for the vaunted triumph of liberalism, what about “the misery wreaked by racism and sexism, the sordid history of colonialism and imperialism, the generation of poverty and famine”? Only by ignoring all this and much more can the claim of human progress at the end of history be maintained: “If ever there was a pious myth and a piece of credulous superstition, it is the liberal-rationalist belief that, a few hiccups apart, we are all steadily en route to a finer world.”

That kind of belief will have little use for a creed that has at its center “one who spoke up for love and justice and was done to death for his pains.” No wonder “Ditchkins” — Eagleton’s contemptuous amalgam of Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, perhaps with a sidelong glance at Luke 6:39, “Can the blind lead the blind? Shall they not both fall into the ditch?” — seems incapable of responding to “the kind of commitment made manifest by a human being at the end of his tether, foundering in darkness, pain, and bewilderment, who nevertheless remains faithful to the promise of a transformative love.”

You won’t be interested in any such promise, you won’t see the point of clinging to it, if you think that “apart from the odd, stubbornly lingering spot of barbarism here and there, history on the whole is still steadily on the up,” if you think that “not only is the salvation of the human species possible but that contrary to all we read in the newspapers, it has in principle already taken place.” How, Eagleton asks, can a civilization “which regards itself as pretty well self-sufficient” see any point in or need of “faith or hope”?

“Self-sufficient” gets to the heart of what Eagleton sees as wrong with the “brittle triumphalism” of liberal rationalism and its ideology of science. From the perspective of a theistic religion, the cardinal error is the claim of the creature to be “self-originating”: “Self-authorship,” Eagleton proclaims, “is the bourgeois fantasy par excellence,” and he could have cited in support the words of that great bourgeois villain, Milton’s Satan, who, upon being reminded that he was created by another, retorts , “[W]ho saw/ When this creation was…?/ We know no time when we were not as now/Know none before us, self-begot, self-raised” (Paradise Lost, V, 856-860).That is, we created ourselves (although how there can be agency before there is being and therefore an agent is not explained), and if we are able to do that, why can’t we just keep on going and pull progress and eventual perfection out of our own entrails?

That is where science and reason come in. Science, says Eagleton, “does not start far back enough”; it can run its operations, but it can’t tell you what they ultimately mean or provide a corrective to its own excesses. Likewise, reason is “too skin deep a creed to tackle what is at stake”; its laws — the laws of entailment and evidence — cannot get going without some substantive proposition from which they proceed but which they cannot contain; reason is a non-starter in the absence of an a prior specification of what is real and important, and where is that going to come from? Only from some kind of faith.

“Ditchkins,” Eagleton observes, cannot ground his belief “in the value of individual freedom” in scientific observation. It is for him an article of faith, and once in place, it generates facts and reasons and judgments of right and wrong. “Faith and knowledge,” Eagleton concludes, are not antithetical but “interwoven.” You can’t have one without the other, despite the Satanic claim that you can go it alone by applying your own independent intellect to an unmediated reality: “All reasoning is conducted within the ambit of some sort of faith, attraction, inclination, orientation, predisposition, or prior commitment.” Meaning, value and truth are not “reducible to the facts themselves, in the sense of being ineluctably motivated by a bare account of them.” Which is to say that there is no such thing as a bare account of them. (Here, as many have noted, is where religion and postmodernism meet.)

If this is so, the basis for what Eagleton calls “the rejection of religion on the cheap” by contrasting its unsupported (except by faith) assertions with the scientifically grounded assertions of atheism collapses; and we are where we always were, confronted with a choice between a flawed but aspiring religious faith or a spectacularly hubristic faith in the power of unaided reason and a progress that has no content but, like the capitalism it reflects and extends, just makes its valueless way into every nook and cranny.

For Eagleton the choice is obvious, although he does not have complete faith in the faith he prefers. “There are no guarantees,” he concedes that a “transfigured future will ever be born.” But we can be sure that it will never be born, he says in his last sentence, “if liberal dogmatists, doctrinaire flag-wavers for Progress, and Islamophobic intellectuals . . . continue to stand in its way.”

One more point. The book starts out witty and then gets angrier and angrier. (There is the possibility, of course, that the later chapters were written first; I’m just talking about the temporal experience of reading it.) I spent some time trying to figure out why the anger was there and I came up with two explanations.

One is given by Eagleton, and it is personal. Christianity may or may not be the faith he holds to (he doesn’t tell us), but he speaks, he says, “partly in defense of my own forbearers, against the charge that the creed to which they dedicated their lives is worthless and void.”

The other source of his anger is implied but never quite made explicit. He is angry, I think, at having to expend so much mental and emotional energy refuting the shallow arguments of school-yard atheists like Hitchens and Dawkins. I know just how he feels.

Conviction

2009-05-03T11:00:00.000-04:00

Ravindra Svarupa Dasa (William H. Deadwyler) joined the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) in 1971 in Philadelphia, PA where he has served for most of his devotional career. He is an initiated disciple of ISKCON’s founder-acharya, His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. Ravindra Svarupa dasa earned his B.A. in philosophy from the University of Pennsylvania, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in religion from Temple University. He has been a member of ISKCON’s ecclesiastical board, known as the Governing Body Commission, since 1987. He is an initiating guru for ISKCON and is the temple president of ISKCON of Philadelphia.

Check out more of his writings at his blog So It Happens

http://soithappens.com/

Doubt is the motor of the modern mentality, the indefatigable engine that drives the spirit of our age. Such doubt was honored with an early recognition in the essays of the Renaissance courtier Michel de Montaigne: “We are, I know not how, double within ourselves, with the result that we do not believe what we believe, and we cannot rid ourselves of what we condemn.”

During Montaigne’s time, religious wars of unbearable cruelty rent Europe. The absolute certainty of the raging antagonists began to taint conviction itself with bad odor. But Montaigne saw deeper. He descried the doubleness within the very certitude of the religious partisans. He recognized their zeal as a kind of cover up, overcompensation for a hidden, an unacknowledged, lack of faith: “We do not believe what we believe.”

In modern times, disbelief has so far entered into the essence of our existence, that both faithlessness and faith have become fundamentally two varieties of faithlessness.

It is the secret unbelief of true believers that energizes the armies of the night in Mathew Arnold’s poem of 1867:

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

William Butler Yeats delivers the ominous news in his prophetic, apocalyptic 1919 poem “The Second Coming”:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Others, of course, celebrated unbelief—it bestows liberation—and proselytized it. Leave it to Friedrich Nietzsche to push it as a jagged little pill: “Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.” (Aphorism 483, Human, All Too Human: 1878 )

So it happened that, as a child of the times, and all too human, I swallowed the pill. I served at the altar of doubt. Unbelief became my credo.

It took half a dozen years in academia for me to recognize that unbelief—skepticism, relativism, nihilism—had itself become dogma. Departments of religion were pledging themselves en masse to the hermeneutics of suspicion. To confess any conviction other than mistrust of all convictions was to court anathema.

All joined in choir to hymn unwavering faith in faithlessness. This dogmatism began to rankle me. Something was wrong. I brooded, irritably.

And then, my breakthrough: We doubters were failing at doubt. We had failed to take our doubt far enough. If we are going to be thoroughly skeptical, then we must be also skeptical about our own skepticism. If all things are relative, then so must be our relativism itself.

I stated my case at an informal religion department gathering.

“You must feel like you’re walking a tightrope over an abyss,” responded a fellow grad student, only recently a nun.
“Yeah, but I’m not sure there’s a rope either,” I said. Everyone laughed.

Let us be bold enough to remove the very ground we stand on and miraculously levitate on nothing.

And so we come full circle. Doubting our own doubting, we find a surprise awaiting us: a tiny crack opens for the possibility of faith.

Just the possibility. Even less—just the openness to the possibility.

This turns out to be a crack even God can squeeze through.

One thing led to another. Several years after the manifestation of the crack, I joined—to my permanent amazement—a high-demand “organized religion.” A religion committed to preaching. Labeled by one academic as “evangelical Hinduism.” (For a systematically misleading expression, this is spot on.)

Then came a time, fifteen or twenty years later, that I realized that I was utterly and completely certain that, as they say, “God exists.” (For a systematically misleading expression, this is spot on.) I did not merely hold that a feasible case for divine existence could be made, that “God exists” can be reasonably affirmed, that the assertion is true with (of course) the possibility that it just might be false. Not at all. I was absolutely, totally certain.

This upset me.

I’m still a modern person. I assailed my own conviction: How could I be so sure? What right did I have to be so certain? How was it possible? How was I entitled to such a degree of certitude? What was wrong with me?

I attacked my own faith, and it repelled my assaults. I couldn’t shake it. It was as if it were simply there of its own accord, an irrevocable fact; it really didn’t depend upon me.

I put the matter before some judicious devotees. “It’s Kṛṣṇa’s causeless mercy,” said one. “It’s a gift,” said another. A Ph.D. who once taught Christian theology to divinity students, she cited the distinction between certainty and certitude.

These conversations relieved me of my anxiety and allowed me to accept the gift wholeheartedly.

Yet—not to look the gift horse in the mouth—I found myself still impelled to understand better what I had been given.

I began my inquiry with this question: Is there anything at all that every person can be absolutely certain of? The question, of course, summoned me back to the origins of modernity, to the very “father of modern philosophy,” Rene Descartes, who turned Montaigne’s doubt into a methodology. Sweeping away, in his Discourse on Method, everything dubitable, he was left with only his own indubitable existence as a cognizant being. He could doubt everything except that he was doubting. Cogito, ergo sum, he famously wrote: “I think, therefore I am.” Descartes explained that by “thought” he meant “what happens in me such that I am immediately conscious of it, insofar as I am conscious of it.” His own existence as a conscious subject was absolutely certain.

Here I got my own clue and cue: Start, like Descartes, with myself.

But in this, it seemed to me, I was able to be more clear that Descartes. To “start with myself” means, to be precise, to start with ātman, the conscious self.

We commonly use the English “soul” or “spirit soul” to denote the same entity, but without the same clear meaning. The Sanskrit word ātman (in the root form) or ātmā (in the nominative singular), is a noun meaning “the self.” (The same word also serves as the reflexive pronoun, the “-self” in words denoting myself, yourself, herself, etc.)

When I take note, as Descartes did, of my own consciousness, I understand that I am aware, at least to some degree, of the ātman, of myself as a conscious, experiencing living being, now bearing and animating a certain material body and mind.

For two decades preceding my own Cartesian investigation, I’d been engaged in spiritual practices amounting to researching of ātman. To try to understand my own certitude about God, I began to reflect upon those practices.

Ātma-tattva, the science of the self, like any science, presents itself first as a theory, as kind of picture, or conceptual map, of spiritual reality. A theory, like a map, is the fruit of the experience of previous researchers, prepared as a guide for later explorers. The only purpose of theory is to guide practice, just as a road map is drawn up to facilitate a successful automobile journey.

Ātma-tattva also includes practical instructions on how to undertake the spiritual journey, how to use the map correctly. It is, in this way, an applied science dedicated to the clarification and expansion of consciousness.

We do not find any enterprise like this in modern Western philosophy. Modern philosophy certainly speculates endlessly about consciousness and experience, about knowledge and the knower and the known, but it has lost the applied element so prominent in the ancient classical traditions of Pythagoras, Parmenides, and Plato. There is now no distinctive “philosophical way of life.” It’s just another job.

I had taken up a tradition from India, yet it returned me to the very foundations of Western philosophy. When I recognized this, I felt that I’d come back home.

The applied knowledge, the spiritual way of life, requires a commitment to a relatively rigorous and demanding discipline. This is called yoga. The discipline is required to remove the material veil so that one can attain direct experience of spiritual reality: of the ātmā, the self, and of paramātmā, the superself or God.

The necessity for such a disciplined life is stated succinctly in Bhagavad-gītā (14.17): spiritual knowledge depends on goodness, on sattva. If our awareness is covered by the material modes of passion (raja-guṇa) and ignorance (tamo-guṇa) we will not be capable of direct perception of ātmā and paramātmā. Therefore, we who undertake this project live a regulated and radically simple life designed to minimize the demands of the senses, to decrease lust, anger, greed, and so on.

Modern materialistic culture fosters values and activities that expand the modes of passion and of ignorance, so it is necessary to insulate oneself from its influence. Spiritual culture has the contrary aim of developing goodness and reducing passion and ignorance.

After several decades of practice in ātma-tattva, the science of the self, my own consciousness had become somewhat clarified and expanded. I had gained at least some awareness of my own spiritual identity, and, along with that, of God.

A master of yoga named Kavi has stated (Śrīmad Bhāgavatam 11.2.42) that for one practicing properly, three things develop simultaneously: devotion, direct perception of God, and detachment from everything else. This happens in the same natural way that for a person who is eating, satisfaction, nourishment, and relief from hunger increase together with every bite.

In the yoga discipline, the practitioner realizes his or her own identity as ātmā and also encounters God initially as paramātmā, as the interior, guiding superself, the self of all selves. In this experience we find the Cartesian key. For knowing God, the paramātmā, is something like knowing our own self. Thus the experience engendered total certitude in the experiencer. As one cannot doubt one’s own consciousness, when that same consciousness has expanded somewhat, God becomes known as I know myself, for God is the very self of my self. Then I can no more doubt God’s existence than I can my own.

I can, of course, doubt my experience of objects perceived in this world. It is possible, Descartes noted, that one is being deceived by some evil demon. (Here he anticipated the premise of The Matrix by some four centuries.) Even so, one still cannot be deceived about one’s own consciousness.

Knowledge of God is not like knowledge of the external world, of this table I write on, of the garden outside my window, of the people relaxing in the garden. In this case, I am spirit knowing matter. There is a far more intimate connection between me and God: Not only are ātmā and paramātmā of the same spiritual nature, but ātmā is part and parcel of paramātmā. For this reason, once there is experience of paramātmā, doubting God becomes impossible. After that expansion of consciousness, God remains part of the content of every experience I have. I experience my own being as part of God’s being.

It is not that in this experience, I perceiving something novel, like a new next-door neighbor or the latest cool thing from Apple. Rather, with consciousness purified and expanded, I now perceive what had always be there, merely unnoticed, unrecognized, unacknowledged.

In this state of expanded consciousness, I am aware that I cannot see anything without God’s seeing it first, hear anything without God’s first hearing it, and so on. I cannot doubt God’s seeing and hearing anymore than I can my own.

The experience of ātmā-paramātmā, which renders doubting God’s existence as impossible as doubting one’s own, is evidently not exclusive to my own or historically related traditions. A natural and unwavering certitude concerning God has appeared in advanced practitioners in many theistic traditions. Those traditions may have various theories (theological doctrines) about God and the worshipper, but, so far as I can see, the simplest and soundest explanation for the experienced certitude of advanced practitioners everywhere is found in the understanding of ātmā-paramātmā.

We can also conclude that we are made for belief, for conviction. There is no way around it.

Herein lies the foundation, I propose, for authentic conviction, for conviction arising from the opening up of the self. Without that, we seem contemned to verify Montaigne’s observation: “We are, I know not how, double within ourselves.” Authentic conviction may serve as antidote to the current global wars between modes of doubleness: Militant belief born from despair at its own unbelief clashing with militant unbelief born in denial of its own belief.

The Journey Home-Autobiography of an American Swami

2009-04-30T17:08:00.006-04:00

The Journey Home-Autobiography of an American Swami

by Radhanath Swami

Reviewed by Steven Rosen (Satyaraja Das)

The Journey Home is a spiritual memoir—the real-life, autobiographical
account of an exceptional countercultural youth who leaves America in search
of himself. Trying desperately to access the continent within, he sets out
first for Europe, visiting cathedrals, holy places, and hippie hotspots.
With little more than a seeker’s heart and a blues harmonica, he leaves few
avenues unexamined, as his overland journey takes him through the Middle
East and beyond. Western religious ideals and the models who exemplify them
are his first natural guideposts and ports of call. He is open, nonsectarian
and, most of all, earnest.

Ultimately, he arrives in India by the end of 1970, where he finds himself
living the life of a wandering sadhu, a mendicant, with little money and
fewer resources. His travels lead him in many directions, both
geographically and philosophically, and the reader watches him age with the
wisdom of centuries. In a few months, his young world is augmented by
experience and realization. We accompany him into a magical land of yoga,
meditation, and soul-stirring revelations. At various points in his journey,
he meets deformed lepers and frightening Naga Babas, contemplative Buddhists
and mystic yogis—even old friends from the West and angelic devotees.

Through the author’s personal encounters, the reader is introduced to many
of the prominent yogis, monks, and gurus of the era—Swami Shivananda, Swami
Rama, Swami Satchidananda, Swami Chidananda, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Ananda
Mayi Ma, Neem Karoli Baba, Muktananda, even the Dalai Lama and Mother
Teresa—either directly or through their legends and teachings. We meet many
nameless luminaries as well, and those whose names, if not for Radhanath
Swami, we would have never heard. Our blossoming seeker meditates under the
original Bodhi Tree—the Buddha himself meditated and achieved enlightenment
here!—and studies with masters and saints.

Each experience inches him closer to his goal. We witness, with him, the
burning of dead bodies in Benares and fascinating pilgrimages to ancient
cities (and inner worlds) where life takes on new meaning, high in the
Himalayas, Tibet, and in holylands innumerable. He lives in caves, deep in
forests, under trees, and moves throughout the subcontinent with a thirst
for “the truth” that is rarely seen—anywhere.

The book is replete with touching, heartwarming (and sometimes
heart-rending) episodes—like when he rejects the advances of a beautiful
woman for the sake of his quest, or when he feelingly and with tears bids
his harp goodbye, throwing it, once and for all, in the River Ganges, or
when he meets his eternal guru. All such scenes are recreated for the reader
with deep emotion and storytelling expertise. Both descriptive writing and
perceptive analysis are plentiful in this book, making it a precious gem
that will enrich the reader with its shining brilliance.

The meeting with his eternal guru is, in many ways, the pivotal episode in
the book. It was on this momentous occasion that all he had learned would
suddenly gel for him. The Indian print of Lord Krishna our young seeker had
carried with him for numerous months, uncontrollably attracted to it, now
had personality, definition—it was the Supreme Lord as evoked in the Hare
Krishna Maha Mantra. This sacred chant, too, was something he had carried
around for many moons, having mystically received it through the grace of
the Ganges River. But now, by his guru’s grace, he was able to connect the
form with the mantra, the Godhead with His spiritual sound vibration. It all
came together, like the three rivers—the Ganges, the Yamuna, and the
Sarasvati—in Prayaga. Still, his quest continued, even after meeting his
master, just so he could be sure that he had left no stones unturned.

But it was in his master’s eyes that he found his way home. This is where he
discovered the true depth of the Ganges and the ultimate meaning of the
Himalayan masters; the value of lineage holders and the wisdom of the Vedas;
the secrets of mysticism and the heart of devotion. His master’s very being
spoke of purpose, mission, and unending love. Home, too, was in Vrindavan,
Lord Krishna’s holy playground, which embodied his master’s essence.

Throughout this work, we find the author’s culminating realizations, as well
as correspondence written to family from distant lands, set apart from the
rest of the text, both with italics and with inset block quotes. These are
often pithy and rich, thought-provoking and even profound. In fact, the
block quotes, along with the book’s picture sections, showing the author as
a youth, with family and friends—so one can visualize the main players in
his life—and with spiritual “celebrities,” such as the Dalai Lama and
others, add immeasurably to the book’s overall effect.

After trekking for months through hostile lands, often barely escaping with
his life, he approaches the threshold of an eternal and magical realm where,
realizing that he has at last reached the precipace of his spiritual goals,
of Bhakti, or devotional mysticism, he makes the astonishing and almost
anticlimactic decision to leave. He returns back to the world from which he
came in order to share what he has learned.

It is an extraordinary choice, given what he survived to get there: a
journey filled with bizarre and often dangerous characters; mystical,
life-altering experiences; treacherous encounters that left permanent marks
on him and on those around him. The narrative of that journey unfolds as an
engaging tale, a love story, and an education in spiritual reality in all
its forms. We are with him through solitude; when he stumbles upon saintly
and accomplished teachers; and as he experiences moments of splendor and
enlightenment. The fact that he graphically and effectively conveys all this
is quite an achievement for a first-time author.

The act of turning back, of potentially denying one’s own salvation so that
the world may benefit, holds a revered place in most wisdom cultures.
Bodhisattvas, the “enlightened beings” of Buddhism, are motivated by such a
wish and forego their own entrance into nirvana, the state of enlightenment,
in order to work for the progress of society. In the Jewish faith, the
tzaddikim or “righteous” men and women (tzidkanit) are great souls who
strive to uplift the oppressed and establish justice. The history of
Christianity bears testimony to the price paid by Christian mystics,
apostles and martyrs who served as conduits for the spirit of God in the
world. And in India the title sadhu is awarded to learned spiritualists who
embody the holy life and serve as teachers and guides.

Not all sadhus risk their spiritual attainment to help others.

In traditional India, there are basically two types of sadhus. One type is
called bhajananandi. These are sadhus who shun society and live in forests
or caves, where they devote all their days to intense penance, rigid study,
and sing bhajans, sacred hymns. They remain aloof from money matters, their
diet is austere, and for most seekers of enlightenment their path is
impossible to follow. The other sadhus are known as goshtananandi. These
sadhus travel to populated cities to give everyone a chance to hear about
God and the principles of a holy life. Their path requires them to confront
one of the greatest challenges of the divine call, namely how to live a holy
life in utterly unholy surroundings. They show it is possible to remain
egoless in an ego-driven environment. Simply put, their teaching is as
follows: how to be both in the world and yet not of it.

According to a brief Author’s Note at the back of his book, Radhanath Swami
emerged from his years of travel wanting to explain for others the beauty
and mystery of what he had discovered, and therein lay a dilemma. Judging by
this very intimate account, he is a shy soul who finds it uncomfortable when
a spotlight is focused on him. Writing an autobiography was just not his
style, but he undertook the exercise in response to appeals made by a number
of his admirers. One friend in particular, Bhakti Tirtha Swami (1950–2005),
was an African-American guru who had risen from an impoverished childhood to
become a Princeton graduate, civil rights activist, High Chief in the Warri
kingdom of Nigeria, and a spiritual leader with students on five continents.
He was also one of the few people in the world who knew the full scope of
Radhanath’s odyssey. In 2005 as Bhakti Tirtha Swami lay dying from cancer,
he made a request. He asked Radhanath to set aside his reservations and
write the story of his journey to God. At first Radhanath refused, saying
that writing about his own life would be “sheer arrogance.”

“Don’t be miserly,” Bhakti Tirtha told him. “Share what has been given to
you.” He passed away two days later.

In some ways, Radhanath Swami’s hesitation over coming back into the world
after his discovery of Bhakti was justified. After all, having gone through
the numerous experiences related in this book, his was now the peaceful and
fulfilling life of an accomplished recluse; why take backsteps into the
drudgery of material life? Associating with those focused on sense
gratification, he knew, would engender the worst of risks. But his ultimate
choice, in terms of path and teacher, tells the story. At this point, we can
let the name be known: By selecting Srila A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami
Prabhupada (1896–1977), a pure devotee—an activist, who lived only to help
others—as his guru (after declining offers of initiation from several yogis
and other adepts in the Himalayas and elsewhere), Radhanath Swami cast his
fate to the wind, cut his matted locks, and bought a ticket back to America.
More than a symbolic gesture of moving away from the mindset of physically
renouncing the world, these were first steps toward an “engaged” form of
devotion. This contemporary strain of the Bhakti tradition maintains that
people who are aware of their spiritual identity must help to reduce
suffering in the world around them. They must share what they’ve been given.

Every recent generation has had its bestselling mystic guidebook, often
focusing on the life of an exemplary seeker. The 1940s gave us works on the
lives of Ramakrishna and Vivekananda as well as Paramahansa Yogananda’s now
classic Autobiography of a Yogi. Thomas Merton’s Seven Storey Mountain,
detailing the Trappist monk’s quest and accomplishment, came soon after
that. The following decades produced a slew of mystic accounts, prominent
among them are Carlos Castaneda’s series on Yaqui shaman Don Juan Matus and
the cult classic Miracle of Love: Stories About Neem Karoli Baba. The Ochre
Robe, an autobiography written by Agehananda Bharati, dominated the genre in
the ‘80s, but there were others.

These first autobiographical books, as listed above, focused on Shaktas or
the neo-Hinduism associated with Advaita Vedanta, or on yogis, as in the
case of Yogananda. For a Christian hagiography, Merton was decidedly more
modern in his approach. Biographical tales of Yaqui shaman mysticism and of
Neem Karoli Baba, both, were tinged by the psychedelic mode of the ‘60s and
by generic Hinduism. Agehananda was a Dasanami sannyasi, following the
philosophical conclusions of Shankara.

The next generation belongs to The Journey Home. Like its predecessors, it
offers readers an intimate look into a true seeker’s life, and into the
tradition he ultimately chose to follow. But what is unique here is that the
tradition of choice is Vaishnavism. The books mentioned above, and so many
others like them, invariably sidestep the Vaishnava tradition. There may, of
course, be many reasons for this: Those focusing on Western spirituality
need not look at the Vaishnava sages and their theological background at
all. It simply doesn’t figure into their survey. But the Eastern texts are
another story. With Vaishnavism accounting for the vast majority of “Hindu”
practitioners in the world today—a statistic that was initially brought to
light by Agehananda Bharati himself—its omission in the pages of the world’s
spiritual biographies is inexcusable.

That being said, the time has finally come for Vaishnavism to be given its
due, and there is hardly a more worthy representative than Radhanath Swami.
Indeed, he has learned from and appreciated every single religious leader
and tradition that has crossed his path. He views reality in an unabashedly
pluralistic way, never discounting the value and merits of any genuine form
of esoteric spirituality. He is nonjudgmental in the best, most enlightened
way—as a Saragrahi Vaishnava, one who looks to the essence, seeing all
religion as just so many roads to the same goal, which is, of course, God.
This makes him a superlative Vaishnava, indeed. Thus, The Journey Home
stands tall in the long line of spiritual classics mentioned above—and it
richly deserves to be there. It, too, has found a home.

*Steven Rosen (Satyaraja Dasa) is an initiated disciple of His Divine Grace
A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. He is also founding editor of the
Journal of Vaishnava Studies and associate editor for Back to Godhead. He
has published twenty-one books in numerous languages, including the recent
Essential Hinduism (Rowman & Littlefield, 2008) and the Yoga of Kirtan:
Conversations on the Sacred Art of Chanting (FOLK Books, 2008).*

Simple Living, High Thinking

2009-04-27T11:00:00.000-04:00

Culled from a series of lectures by Srila Prabhupada on the subject of "Simple Living, High Thinking"

This material world is a field of activity for the persons who have forgotten Krsna, or their connection with the Divine. But there is practical spiritual knowledge, coming from the Vedas, the original spiritual culture, that we can use. If we act according to this Vedic knowledge, then we can actually enjoy life. Because in the material world, there is nothing enjoyable for the spirit soul.

Just like a fish, it is an animal of the water. It has nothing to enjoy on the land. So if, by mistake, a fish thinks that "I shall become an elephant and enjoy in the land," that is not possible. Similarly, we are spirit soul, aham brahmāsmi, we are all Brahman, and we have nothing to do with this material world. But because we are Brahman... Brahman means ānandamaya. Ānanda-cinmaya-rasa.(seeking pleasure) The Supreme Brahman, Krsna, the Supreme Person is...

Īśvarah paramah krsnah

sac-cid-ānanda-vigrahah (Brahma-Samhita Chapter 5 Verse 1)

“Kṛṣṇa who is known as Govinda is the Supreme Person. He has an eternal blissful spiritual body. He is the origin of all. He has no other origin and He is the prime cause of all causes.

And we are part and parcel of the Supreme Brahman. Therefore we are also sac-cid-ānanda, eternal, blissful, and full of knowledge. In the Bhagavad-Gita, Krsna says...

yam labdhvā cāparam lābham
manyate nādhikam tataḥ
yasmin sthite na duhkhena
gurunāpi vicālyate
[Bhagavad-Gita. Chapter 6 Verse 20-23

“In the stage of perfection called trance, or samādhi, one's mind is completely restrained from material mental activities by practice of yoga. This perfection is characterized by one's ability to see the self by the pure mind and to relish and rejoice in the self. In that joyous state, one is situated in boundless transcendental happiness, realized through transcendental senses. Established thus, one never departs from the truth, and upon gaining this he thinks there is no greater gain. Being situated in such a position, one is never shaken, even in the midst of greatest difficulty. This indeed is actual freedom from all miseries arising from material contact.”

Krsna consciousness, our original spiritual consciousness, is so nice that if one is perfectly situated in Krsna consciousness, then one's condition will be like this, that yam labdha caparam labham\manyate nadhikam tatah. Achieving this stage, one will forget about any other profit. We are hankering after profit, profit after profit. I have got so much money, I want to make it double. When it is double I want to make it ten times. When it is ten times, I'll make it hundred times. Our civilizations goes on increasng like this

Formerly, people were satisfied if they could construct one brick house, kota bari. Now they are not satisfied with kota bari, or brick house. They want to make it a hundred— or two hundred, or a five-hundred-story house. And when they construct a five-hundred-story house, they'll think of a thousand-story house. This is the nature of selfishness, of greed, or lābha. Everyone is hankering after more profit, more profit, more profit. But if one is situated in Krsna consciousness, then he is satisfied.

So fortunately for us, some of our students have taken very large tracts of land in various places in the world to develop a society based on Vedic knowledge, a simple life, eating simple things, grains, vegetables, fruits, milk, and they are saving their time for advancing in Krsna consciousness, in their spiritual life and self-realization. Modern civilization is implicated in ugra-karma—vast machinery, everything is complicated. The government is complicated, the society is complicated, the economics rule is complicated, the foreign exchange is complicated. Everything has become complicated.

Because we have given up our Krsna consciousness, therefore we have become entangled in the different varieties of material activities. Now we have to simplify it. The Krsna consciousness movement's aim is to simplify, to save our valuable life, to save the valuable time of our valuable life. This human form of life is very valuable. Krsna says in the Bhagavad-Gita...

bahunam janmanam ante

jnanavan mam prapadyante

vasudevah sarvam iti

sa-mahatmah su-durlabhah (Gita, Chapter 7 Verse 19)

After many births and deaths, he who is actually in knowledge surrenders unto Me, knowing Me to be the cause of all causes and all that is. Such a great soul is very rare.

After many, many births we have got this important life. So we have to save our time to utilize it for Krsna consciousness. So far as we have got this material body, we want to maintain it. The body and the soul live together. That is all right. For that, Krsna has given us every chance. Anywhere you can get some land and a cow. You can produce something nice, grains and vegetables, and fresh cow's milk. That is sufficient for our maintenance. Not everyone can be expected to possess such a cow. Nonetheless, an ordinary man may possess an ordinary cow, give protection to this animal, take sufficient milk from it, and engage the milk to produce butter and clarified ghee. This is possible for everyone. Thus we find that in Bhagavad-gītā Lord Kṛṣṇa advises go-rakṣya, the protection of cows. This is essential because if cows are cared for properly they will surely supply sufficient milk.

We have practical experience that in the various farms in our society we are giving proper protection to the cows and receiving more than enough milk. In other farms the cows do not deliver as much milk as in our farms; because our cows know very well that we are not going to kill them, they are happy, and they give ample milk. Therefore this instruction given by Lord Kṛṣṇa—go-rakṣya—is extremely meaningful. The whole world must learn from Kṛṣṇa how to live happily without scarcity simply by producing food grains (annād bhavanti bhūtāni) and giving protection to the cows (go-rakṣya). This is the injunction of Bhagavad-gītā. In the matter of protecting the cows, the meat-eaters will protest, but in answer to them we may say that since Kṛṣṇa gives stress to cow protection, those who are inclined to eat meat may eat the flesh of unimportant animals like hogs, dogs, goats and sheep, but they should not touch the life of the cows, for this is destructive to the spiritual advancement of human society.

So let us try to make an attempt to organize a “simple living, high thinking” scheme based on Vedic knowledge, and I shall request all my students to develop this idea and show a good example to this Western part of the world, where people are always engaged in ugra-karma, asuric-karma (harmful acts) Things are becoming very implicated, and very complicated, and we must simplify with the proper knowledge, spiritual knowledge. Thank you very much.

Welcome to Spirit Matters!

2009-04-21T10:08:00.001-04:00

It's a happening!

The first NYC-exclusive issue of Spirit Matters is hot off the presses and hitting the streets of Manhattan, Brooklyn, and beyond.

We're excited to be promoting our East Village Temple community in such a dynamic and creative way, and we pray for your blessings so that Spirit Matters becomes a maximum spiritual inspiration for all who read it here in the Apple.

This is the online version of Spirit Matters, which will feature articles from the mag, as well as online-exclusive pieces, poems, and promotions.

If you have something to say, we can be your village voice! We're looking for practical, personal, spiritual articles and poems, focusing on contemporary issues and the fascinating imagination of living a spiritual, devoted life in today's times.

Your submission may be included in a future print issue of Spirit Matters, or in our online version.
Sri Kalacandra enjoys the Matchless Gifts Conscious Arts section!

We're also humbly asking for small\large donations to cover our printing costs, which right now run to about $1200 per issue.

All submissions/donations can be submitted via email to sanctuary108@gmail.com