Letters to the editor

Hare Krsna Gurudev, por favor acepte mis humildes reverencias

Todas las glorias a Srila Prabhupada, y tambien a usted. 🌹

I've been a long time without writing to you. I've done it several times mentally but never managed to send it.

🤓

I've resumed studying Bhakti Bhaivava. I'm doing it with Param Padam and a beautiful group of devotees. I joined them when they started Chapter 2.

I had already done Chapter 1 some years ago with Prabhu Lakshman. We had also done part of Chapter 2, but as we didn't complete it, I decided to start over.

I always knew that studying with devotees generates a lot of enthusiasm for me and brings health to my spiritual life. I feel that my sadhana has been very neglected in recent years, and I know that this systematic study helps me to recover.

Life experiences such as being a mother and others, I have been trying to look at them from the perspective of Krishna consciousness, and that has always been something that keeps me connected and inspired. In a sense, I feel deeper now than before.

🎥

Last year we were invited to teach Photography and Film at the Waldorf school Hari Vamsi attends. To 16-17-year-olds. We started with photography and concluded with film. They were able to create a script and shoot it. We guided them to the end, and the result was a very good 8-minute short film. Everyone was very happy.

ASA - 👍 Now they will continue with beer commercials? 😆 Don't think so. From your association they probably also got understanding of 'why' make movies as well as 'how', no???

This year we were invited again, and we are delving deeper into photography, into the personal aspect, personal motivations of photographers of all times, while the young people develop a personal photographic project.

ASA - Seee!

I am very happy with this opportunity.

I also offered a Film workshop for young people and adults at a cultural center in the area. It was very interesting because there were young people and older adults.

I want to express my gratitude once again for the opportunity to contribute to the DTC-UT project. It was deeply meaningful for me.

I know that I am not able to take advantage of all the opportunities and mercy that Krishna sends, through you and Srila Prabhupada. That can sometimes be a bit overwhelming, yet it serves as an impetus to improve and deepen a little every day.

Muchas gracias Gurudev.

Intentando ser util y servilo siempre,

Vrsabhanu Nandini Devi Dasi

hps/asa - great!!! when you leave this body, they will erect a statue for you at the school and say, 'she was very good person. she taught us a lot. some of us even joined her church'!

.... but watch to see if KRSNA has some special roles for you to play.

do not be afraid of becoming a devotee on the level of narada muni.

Hare Krsna Guru Maharaja.

Acepte por favor mis respetuosas reverencias.

¡Todas las glorias sean para Srila Prabhupada!

Espero que se encuentre muy bien.

Llevo mucho tiempo sin reportarme, pero nada ha cambiado.

Sigo con curso de Bhakti Sastri, y a un grupo pequeño en Curso de Bhaktas.

Estudiando Bhakti Vaibhava.

Leyendo Caitanya Caritamrta, adi-lila.

Desde este mes comenzamos un servicio (una vez al mes) para Sri Sri Goura Nitai del templo (ofrenda de bhoga y puja del mediodía).

Gurudev, debo decirle que casi no puedo interactuar en FMS ya que es la hora de preparar todo para llevar a los niños a la escuela. Cocinamos desayuno y almuerzo muy temprano, por eso me levanto más temprano para cantar japa.

Seguimos con la lectura del Krsna Book por la noche... un servicio eterno. Esperamos que los niños puedan hacer esta lectura cada noche cuando sean más grandes.

Hemos estado celebrando las festividades en nuestra casa o en casa de devotos, que también tienen niños. Las fiestas son en la semana, por eso es un poco difícil ir al templo.

También visitamos muy seguido a amigos devotos con quienes cantamos, y cocinamos para Krsna.

Los niños están en otra escuela. Encontramos profesores y niños veganos y vegetarianos, personas ligadas al yoga, más intelectuales y con más valores. Aunque cualquier lugar puede ser adecuado para ser devoto, estos ambientes pueden ser favorables.

Estamos tranquilos, felices en conciencia de Krsna. Haciendo todo con más devoción.

Espero que estas noticias puedan ser agradables para usted.

Nunca pido Sus bendiciones, pero espero seamos dignos de ellas.

Adjunto algunas fotografías.

Su aspirante a sirviente

Priyasakhi DD y familia.

-0-0-0-

Hare Krsna, Guru Maharaja.

Please accept my respectful obeisances.

All glories be to Srila Prabhupada!

I hope you are well.

HpS - The same tooth that rotted and had to be pulled recently on the right side, seems to be now rotting on the left side. Doctor said it might happen. 🙂

Seems that not just our old age but also Kali-yuga is reminding us that everything can change a lot at any moment. So making plans for the next few months or years is necessary, but we need to be really ready to adjust, taking constant shelter of the the Holy Names as giving us intelligence to plan.

I haven't reported for a long time, but nothing has changed.

I continue with the Bhakti Sastri course, and a small group in the Bhaktas Course.

Studying Bhakti Vaibhava.

Reading Caitanya Caritamrta, adi-lila.

HpS - Hope it never changes, just gets deep and broader!

From this month we start a service (once a month) for Sri Sri Goura Nitai of the temple (bhoga offering and midday puja).

HpS - Super. Wonderful if all the Grhasthas do this! Different family every night each week.

Gurudev, I must tell you that I can hardly interact at FMS as it is time to prepare everything to take the children to school. We cook breakfast and lunch very early, so I get up earlier to chant japa.

HpS - Fine, fine. For Maite it is like 10.30AM! 🙂

We continue reading the Krsna Book at night... an eternal service. We hope the children can do this reading every night when they are older.

We have been celebrating the festivities at our house or at the houses of devotees, who also have children. The holidays are during the week, so it is a little difficult to go to the temple.

We also visit devotee friends very often with whom we sing, and cook for Krsna.

The children are in another school. We find vegan and vegetarian teachers and children, people linked to yoga, more intellectual and with more values. Although any place can be suitable to be a devotee, these environments can be favorable.

We are calm, happy in Krsna consciousness. Doing everything with more devotion.

I hope this news can be pleasant for you.

I never ask for His blessings, but I hope we are worthy of them.

I attach some photographs.

Your would-be servant

Priyasakhi DD and family.

HpS/ASA - Thank you, Prabhu. How old are your children? What is your esteemed husband doing.

All these things may seem like little things. but now many people in the world now are chanting 16-rounds per day under Srila Prabhupada's authority? There are Mangala aratis going on 24-hours per day, now?

Result will accumulate. It is like blades of grass growing and eventually pushing over a big building.

Such nice photos! We added some Prairie Dogs!

All glories to Srila Prabhupada. All glories to Guru Maharaj HH Hanumat Presaka Swami Maharaj. Please accept our humble obeisances at Your sweet lotus feet.

Hare Krishna dear Guru Maharaj

Our godbrother Yamuneswar Prabhu Forwarded a message about Guru Maharaj's desire to take few classes for us fallen beings of Manipur. This has been our desire for a long time now, too shy and too worried we might disturb Guru Maharaj's busy schedule.

We have daily morning and evening classes starting at 6.30am and 6.30pm respectively through googlemeet.The link ishttps://meet.google.com/naa-phka-fth May we know when Guru Maharaj desire to take class ? Yamuneshwar Prabhu informed in the WhatsApp.

ASA/TB - 6.30AM IST is 8PM evening before for us!

6.30PM IST is 8am for us.

Maybe we can start working on an 8am class. Is there any topic or book that we can focus on?

Continuing our services from home. Chanting 16 rounds minimum daily. Thank you so much Guru Maharaj for the immense mercy.

Sending pic of Sri Nrshimha Dev on the auspicious Sri Nrshimhadev caturdasi. The other structure is the Sri Vishnu temple, the oldest Vishnu temple in Manipur as old as 15th century. The Vishnu Deity was gifted by Burmese king of Pong dynasty to Manipur King Kiyamba, long ,long before the advent of King Bhagyachandra. We were fortunate to give our services there.

HpS - We saw the Temple and heard the story, 'we heard He likes sweet rice'!!!

Opened Yoga programme at our department , trying our best to bring Srila Prabhupada's teachings to everyone somehow or other.

HpS - Asana and prana yama? Stories from SB?

Indebted to my Guru Maharaj always,

Your insignificant servant,

Sarad Gaurangi DD

Dear Guru Maharaja/ Dear Hanumat Preshak Maharaja

Please accept our humble obeisances

All glories to His Divine Grace!

On this auspicious day of appearance day of Lord Nrisimha we again can reflect how many blessings we received in this wonderful movement.

It takes a village to rise a child.

It takes innumerable incarnations and devotees kindness to keep us alive with their constant remembrance via occasions such as Nrisimha caturdashi.

We hope He will keep on glancing on us all and give us qualities to move forward.

In scriptures we find that

Sudarshan appeared as Varahas tusks,

Parasuram axe and Nrisimha nails.

Lord is everywhere!

Traps of His mercy are everywhere!

While writing this we are in the train back to our new "permanent" place that somehow appeared recently and took our time/attention past two months.

Due to the modes of nature and other ingredients I had to leave China and put all the deities to sleep.

Quite uncomfortable experience.

Today coincidentally happen that we are taking last 3 sets of Nrisimha deities to their home on 2000 km train journey.

The others are in Vrindavan.

China was basically paralysed due to covid 3 years and that move couldn't happen before.

My Guru Maharaja refused me 4 times in regards to green light for puja.

Took me 13 years to get the green light.

It was a nice time, time of growing desire for arcana seva.

His reasons are more and more proving right.

We tend to desire at the moment without being aware of circumstances that life brings and interfere with our regularity about seva.

Although I received a green light, it happened that still I had to go through lessons about deity worship and its importance.

Original altar was spread in 3 places and that made my mind 3 times more distracted.

Thanks to Lord Nrisimha and Prabhupadas mercy that we survived after giving the Lord this inconvenience.

Our "permanent" place is southern most part of China, just next to the border of Laos.

Its 2000m above see level and only place where there are some sort of hippy community.

It's ancient architecture towns with big lake in the middle.

Setting up a book table here is allowed (not in any other place in china).

In fact people standing on the street corners and doing some performance is encouraged and that is what makes this place famous in China.

A free zone!

People here wear traditional clothes and all do some sort of puja.

We collect water from the source as it is practice of people.

Tree of a picture-attached is one of 600 Peepal trees in the town.

Locals worship it for good fortune.

When we come to fetch water we do arati, poor water and circumabulate the tree.

Every village around the lake have people/families with particular skills.

Some are into cloth production, some have cows, tea, fish, stone or wood designing, etc....Hills are full of Buddhist temples and one can get some idea of their mood while being in those deep mountain forest doing their sadhana.

They are having large agricultural land and producing their own food.

Very well organised.

They have restaurants all around and if food is not free, then the fee is just very little.

Tibet is close by so strictness in their practice is higher than other parts of China. Proximity to Laos and construction of high speed railway that will open soon from the town to Vientiane, capital of Laos, is raising ideas of Krsna conscious expansion.

Young people speak English there and religious freedom reigns. It's a heaven that somehow has not yet been blessed by Srila Prabhupada and his troops.

We hope Nrisimha enlightens and guides us what is to be done and when. We may venture there in the future.

Anjana Ma has received nectar "from the sky". Your Anjana, whatever cooks is nectar. I am gaining some weight because of that, but I don't complain. 

Maharaja, it's nice to have your association/presence in our life. We hope we can please you and imbibe your good qualities so that we can continue the legacy of His Divine Grace. 

Yours in service of Hari ,Guru and Vaishnava 

Vanara-rani Anjana and Narayan pandit das

HpS - Super. Why not ask Buddha to come and tell people about the absolute truth and its manifestations for them.

THank you so much.

Now we run to Temple.

Thank you so so much!!!

Each word was nectar.

All glories to Sri Sri Guru and Gauranga!

PAMHO. AGTSP!

HK Maharaj! How r u?

HpS - Same, agtSP, as you and everyone else in the material world, but some mercy is squeezing through by Srila Prabhupada's mercy.... ! ! ! ......

Well, I’ve been living in Cordoba city for 3 years, and thanks to Krishna’s mercy I get to visit ISKCON Buenos Aires once a month,

I’ve many friends there and a lot of acquaintances,

it’s a joy for me going being there since I feel so much happiness during the Kirtana, bhajans,

there are excellent devotees there who perform both extatic bhajans and Kirtana, and usually the classes are really good.

There’s a brahmacari there, Gopal Govinda Prabhu, who preaches like heaven, makes you laugh, chill and get really excited.

I’ve been attending to that temple for the past 20 years, and it was there where I had the opportunity to meet you, and a lot of other great Gurus.

Well, the trial went more or less fine, the judge said that, since I had enrolled my daughter in a Kindergarden in the mother’s town, I was like agreeing she moved there, so he decided she must stay there, but I’ve got so many new rights in regard my daughter, now I have like 1 month and a half of vacations with her, and she comes to my city on weekends, I travel to pick her up, and the mother comes to take her away.

You know I’ve been dealing with some serious attachment issues with my child’s mother.

Well. she tried to blackmail asking for favor in return of the chance of me taking vacations with my daughter, and always used my daughter’s maintenance money for her own favour, and many other mean things, and sometimes it’s like I really forget about all of that and invite her out to have lunch or something, trying to fix the relation, when it’s unfixable I see,

and even I always get really depressed after those encounters,

I always retry seeing her.

What piece of advice would you give me in order to quit that addiction?

HpS - Keep deities of Radha and Krsna on you altar and bath them and feed them and live a nice life for them, and develop relations with devotees, some may be like mother, sister etc.

I have another philosophical question, well, we’ve all heard that Krishna’s the supreme controller, and I was wondering, if he doesn’t interfere with our free will, our decision on who to serve, isn’t that like a contradiction? I mean, sounds like that is something he cannot control, in spite He being the supreme controller.

HpS - He choses not to control it. Your daughter is making a bad choice bay buying into Barbi dolls rather than worshipping her own Jagannatha deities, but you realize that she needs to experience the situation herself. You are the ultimate controller, she is the efficient controller and the dolls are the material controllers.

Hmm? Chant, read, associate, serve and you will begin to see how it works in a very practical sense.

And please another question, regarding the Jiva status quo, I understood what you taught me about the Jiva eternal decision on who to serve, whether it’s Maya or Krishna, but I feel a little bit contradicted internally since Prabhupada states several times in the Bhagavata things like “to reach the spiritual platform and never return” well even Krishna says in a BG verse that the transcendentalist who reaches the spiritual realm never goes back, does that have something to do with what you said about that we should never look “back” or “down” in the spiritual process.

HpS - Memory or understanding of the last phrase.

Revatinandana Swami said that he specifically asked Prabhupada about the places in the BG where it says, 'they never come back' and Srila Prabhupada laughed and said that it means almost never.

If a poor man wins the lottery he will never go hungry ever again, right. 🙂

well thank you always for being there, I really appreciate your mail’s responses and you point of view.

hope you are always well.

HK!

Federico Molnár

HpS - Thank you. Hare Krsna!!! Thank you for the news and I hope several others had the same questions. We just give our answers, ideas, citations, but reading Srila Prabhupada directly is so powerful.

Hare Krishna Gurudeva

Please accept my obeisance

All Glories to Srila Prabhupada

While we were traveling back to La Perla from Chosica you gave me one of your most beautiful instructions: “compose songs based on the songs of the Acaryas.” You said that this instruction was the instruction that Srila Prabhupada gave to George Harrison. Later in the Blog you guided me more on how to carry out this activity.

The detail you gave me is that you can change things like “a lotus flower” to “a rose” and not omit the details.

I shared with you two songs that I had created, but neither convinces me in terms of the type of music I compose. I also feel that for it to be musically attractive enough, it would need help from other musicians.

I feel that there are many things that people will not understand and on the other hand several poems are long and it is difficult to maintain that length for a pop song that is around 2 to 3 minutes, generally in a song like this the lyrics are short and a lot of repetition.

I honestly think it would be more attractive to take the essence of the poems and then adapt it into a song that is attractive to many people, both musically and poetically.

HpS-ASA = AgtSP!.... Seems that shorter songs with repetition of basic phrases is also something that the Acharay's do, no? Some of their songs are long Ballads eg. https://kksongs.org/songs/y/yaditeharipada.html

The shorter songs can fit together as a cycle, that deal with the different aspects of the same idea gradually. SB does that in 18,000 verses and many stories, no?

It is difficult to generate rhymes having already created lyrics. I think that if I compose a poem based on the poem and the Vedic conclusions it would be more effective, parts would be omitted but the central idea would be preserved.

ASA - Yes.

The core concepts are maintained, but it is presented in a way that is easy for most people to understand.

I know that this is distorting the instruction, but I have composed in this more simplified way that I propose and I consider that it can have a better effect for the preaching.

But to follow your instruction, I can do a side project in which I translate the songs in a literal, but musically attractive way with the help of other people.

Your servant

Piyari Mohan das

ASA - Hear their songs then write your own song. Of course, KRSNA is very involved with everybodies songs.

How are your relations with everyone in the Temple and community in terms of the violence and chaos that your mind created a few months ago???