Letters to the editor

¡Hare Krishna!
Todas las glorias para Srila Prabhupada
Todas las glorias para Sri Sri Nitay Gauranga

Espero que se encuentre muy bien, esta vez le escribo para comentarle que seguimos distribuyendo los libros de Srila Prabhupada, algunas personas que hemos invitado se han acercado al templo a conocer y les ha gustado mucho. Para intentar mejorar este servicio, nos estan ayudando algunos devotos y devotas mayores para continuar con la predica y para que puedan sentirse comodos y atraídos. Garga Acarya Das y su esposa siempre nos estan ayudando y motivando aún más para que esto siga adelante, además de guiarnos con su ejemplo.

Quería comentarle una breve historia que nos sucedió exactamente distribuyendo libros... hace aproximadamente 2 meses conocimos a una mujer que se llevó "en el camino a krishna", estuvimos predicando durante 30 minutos ya que estaba muy interesada, le pedimos sus datos y mantuvimos el contacto por mail. después de algunos días se acercó al templo y asistió a las clases, le presentamos algunas devotas para que hiciera amistad, y con el paso de los días nos comentó algo que recordó.. cuando ella era pequeña, como a la edad de 12 años, le habían regalado el libro "la vida proviene de la vida" de Srila Prabhupada, lo había leído y había entendído un poco pero no sabía como pronunciar el nombre del autor del libro. esto se le manifestó en un sueño, y después de eso emprendió el proceso muy entusiastamente. actualmente ha leído un par de libros pequeños, la ciencia de la autorrealización, el upadesamrta y el bhagavad gita. además esta ayudando un día en la cocina lavando las parafernalias. todo esto nos tiene muy contentos y motivados para salir a distribuir libros e intentar encontrar mas devotos y devotas, aunque como siempre habran dificultades, sabemos que este servicio nos esta limpiando de lo que nos aleja de Sri Krishna.

Por otra parte, hace 2 días llegamos de un sankirtana viajero de 3 días por rancagua, un poco al sur de chile, estuvo muy lindo, bastante austero y dificil pero siempre krishna nos hace apegarnos a él de alguna manera...

Además quería pedirle que por favor me comente algo que pueda hacer desde mi condición neófita para intentar complacerlo, y así motivarme un poco más en este eterno proceso...

P.d: madre Guru Govinda Devi Dasi me pidió que le comentara sobre unas cartas del bhagavad gita que usted le bendijo, por lo que pidió si es que usted puede darle un nombre a ese servicio, ya que lo hemos estado haciendo con varios devotos y devotas jovenes, y nos sirve para trabajar en torno a 1 verso por semana. y me dijo que le dijera esto: "queremos convertirnos en devotos puros"...

HpS ..-.. No entiendo esta???

Su aspirante a sirviente, bhakta martin

HpS - Yo estoy feliz recibir cartas de esta tipo. Solamente estamos intentando compartir con la gente lo que necesitan.

 All Glories to Srila Prabhupada! Please accept my humble obeisances.

Dear Gurudeva

its me Trivikrama das i am much better from my fracture  but still can't make any service in fact i have not cook for the Sri goura nitai either , but i had the chance to help in other areas. Recently finish the disciple course ,now we are waiting the result of the evaluation , it was very inspiring i felt that studying or training myself as a devotee make me a better disciple for you ,i want to find the way to study Bhakti sastri i am a donkey and the virtual classes makes it hard for me so i would try to accomplish.

i still have my plans for kartik 2017 to go to India but always and only if i got your blessings

 i chant 16 rounds and follow the 4 principles

this is my report

your eternal servant Trivikrama das

HpS - Very nice. How is your family? Can you go to India with some experienced devotees. Use your tongue. Out is not broken. Ha. Ha. Hare!

AgtSP

Agt Nimai and Nitai

Hare Krsna Maharaja.

I hope you are fine in all respects. I remember a lot about you.

Thank you for everything you do, I look at the blog as twice daily

For me, it's like watching the mail away from home.

Tulasi forest continues to grow, I am very happy. Yesterday I used the first leaf in an offering…it´s dry alone.

I've had good and bad days. I can hardly be aware of Krsna, in every thing, every moment, in every action, but lately, when I'm fine, I feel as if I started being aware of Krsna for the first time in my life. I have always believed I had many accomplishments, and ultimately begin to seem like an illusion.

I think I could never make a conscious action of Krsna, because I have never been free to choose, and every day this is changing a lot, or I think, thanks to the saintly devotees and Krsna's mercy. It's like open arms, and had a door in each hand, the world of Krsna, or the material world.

I imagine that sooner or later I soured, hopefully not, but I want to thank the Parampara, starting with you, not abandon a poor fool like me.

How I can keep this "yellow brick road" without deviation?

A big hello, Hare Krsna.

P.D .: I'll try to send you a cookie recipe.

Yours, Budanath das.

HpS-ASA - Hare Krsna. AGTSP. Keep association with devotees and follow the relative principles of hearing and chanting.

O.K?

This is a continuation to the previus letter found here:

hps.monkeywarrior.com/node/6612
~~~
ASA - Can you mail them? Do they keep well for long time with warm weather?
ND : Hmmm... I believe mailing is possible. For example in the box.
         As for  keeping them for long during warm weather, I would say that is not possible. Of course, what is meant by "long time" and "warm weather". Considering south European territory, I would say these sweets can could keep 2-3 days in max. summer temperature and much longer during winter season. In our humble abode, they got eatan in max. 4 days.

ASA - This recipe is good then, but for Cookie Central, it will not work so good, because we want a cookie or cracker that will last like Mayapura Prasada to travel for weeks and still be worshipable.

How is your family?
Than you for asking Guru Maharaja <img alt="smiley" height="23" src="http://hps-d6.monkeywarrior.com/sites/all/libraries/ckeditor/plugins/smiley/images/regular_smile.png" title="smiley" width="23" />   As for my parents, when I ask them the same question, they reply with "excelent, fine, good" and if have some bodily pain then they add news about that. Considering that they are 80 years old, lived in 3 countries and throught 2 wars, they are quiet OK.  They do not talk about or show any religious / spiritual inclination. TV is their friend and guru. 
Nirgata is doing fine. Trying to develop her job as a Iyengar Yoga teacher. We listen to classes online (by different devotees from around the world) together and then discuss what we heard by sharing our thoughts and realizations.
That would be one aspect of the family <img alt="laugh" height="23" src="http://hps-d6.monkeywarrior.com/sites/all/libraries/ckeditor/plugins/smiley/images/teeth_smile.png" title="laugh" width="23" /> Then there is the aspect of ISKCON family and (should I say more important) our Supreme Father's family. I wanted to add this thought here, but will not discuss it for the reason of the size of the letter.
~~~

Guru Maharaja, if you allow, can I ask you why in the DTC 6(Fr) you wrote "4-principles strictly (chocolate???)" ? What is the connection of 4 principles to the chocolate? And, if it is in connection to the topic, when you say "chocolate", do you mean cocoa or a product that has cocoa in itself and is sold by the name chocolate?

HpS - We have seen an exchange of letters from Prabhupada about Chocolate. It seems similar to onions. They bother contain theo-bromides as far as we understand. So, they stimulate lower chakras. This can be source of good energy under certain circumstances, but usually we want mode of goodness. I read that Prabhupada said that Grhasthas could take some, but it could not be offered to the Deity. GBC banned it, then canceled there ban. So seems, that under certain circumstances it maybe O.K.    Urad dahl is more acceptable but also not for regular diet.   Any cocoa product.
O.K?

Thank you!
Your servant Namacarya Das

All Glories to Sri Guruji Maharaja and Gouranga Mahaprabhu

Radha Krsna Ki Jay and Goura Bhakta Ki Jay

Please accept my humble obeisances unto Guruji's padmacharan that I will try at my level best to execute all Guruji's instructions of our Mandir and personal duties to increase spritual knowledge. Please communicate Imphal ISKCON members to make programme for Thoubal in the Mandir activities and other problems of the initiated bhaktas for their further advance knowledge and seva bhava of Sri Krsna. 

Another bhava of Gouranga Mahaprabhu : As Sri Krsna never move out even a single step from Golok/Vrndavan ; Gouranga Mahaprabhu did not move out even a single step from Nabadwip. What is the internal idea? Which Gouranga is  going outside Nabadwip and other places but staying at Jagannath Puri. What are the differences?

HpS - Hare Krsna. Yamunesvara Das.  Is very nice to hear from you. We are in Peru now, South America. The Sankirtan here with big symposium on Education is very intense. We have some little dangerous skin rash but are fighting to cure it.
We have not heard so much about Lord Caitanya residing eternally in Nabadvipa, but as you mention it, it seems likely. I remember that Lord Caitanya told Damodara Pandita to visit Mother Saci and tell her that all the offerings she made to him, even though he was in Jagannatha Puri, He was personally coming and eating.
It is the Vasudeva and Sankarsana portion of Krsna and Balarama that go to Dvaraka, but which aspect of Lord Caitanya is present in Puri, Vraja, South India, I don't know. We can pray to Him and the Acharyas to reveal that in our heart and confirm it by showing us the information in Sastra.

What will be my Sakhi and Manjari? Who will bring my sidhi Manjari to Vrndavan and under whose Sakhi and Manjari my sidhi  Manjari will followed and what will be duties as Dasera-anudasa? Please highlight me about my Sakhi and Manjari.
 

HpS - The development of spiritual life is described in great detail by Srila Prabhupada and the Acharyas and of course originally in the Srimad Bhagavatam. The different levels are very nicely summarized in the verse from Bhakti-rasa-amrta-sindhu by Rupa Goswam, "adau sraddha, sadhu sanga ...". You can find all the Sankrit, as I remember, in the Puport to BG 4.10. The you can find it paraphrased again in the Purport to NOI Text 8.
In the beginning our realization is that I am not the body. I can stop smoking, drinking etc. Then as we come to the level of Nistha and Ruci we can begin Raganuga Bhakti. Then we start to do our regular Sadhana, but trying to follow the humor, Raga, of a Ragatmika devotee, a devotee, Sakhi, Sakha, in Vraja or Vaikuntha. We can try to serve Krsna in the mood of Hanuman or Lalita.
This is only done after we are liberated from Anarthas, bad habits, by following the Sadhana bhakti.
O.K?    More questions?    What do you think of the description in NOI???

Yours fallen servant

Yamunesvara Das

Hare Krsna Dear Gurudeva
Please accept my humble obeisances
All Glories to Sri Guru & Gauranga
All Glories to Srila Prabhupada

Thank you for your fast response, and excuse me for my slow response from the last letter, this 3 weeks where intense... At least, we did Gandharva Yajña with Aravinda Prabhu and some of the Grihasthas of the comunity who knows our persons, the documentation of Sri Radha for civil Wedding hasn't showed up yet... About your Questions, we were doing Mangala-aratik at 5:30  5 days/week and 2 preaching programs in Queretaro (we are co-authorities with Vanamali Prabhu (ex-president for Mx. Temple)). Not going so well with rounds but getting them done so far... we are reading a nice book about Garbhadhana Samskara from CTE it includes SB stories with SP purpports.

After the Gandharva wedding we started a sankirtan mini-marathon, for the last 3 weeks.... i missed a lot of rounds, i took note of each of them and right now i am paying the debt; we took the desition to come to Uruapan Mich. for two months with Murli Manohara Dasa (director of a preaching center with gorgeous deities called Sri Sri Nitai Gaura-Candra) , a great great friend of mine, who is also a psichologist so Sri Radha can take a 8 weeks course and i could prepare a project which i want to develop as a service for ISKCON devotees and  also as my income activity.

Please Gurudeva, i want to know if my project is permitted inside of ISKCON before i start to spend next two months doing the plans, i hope you can tell me... The main idea is to create an iskcondesireetree.net---kind of web, for audio and maybe video classes from Gurus/Senior devotees all in spanish for all the latin-american devotees who doesnt speak english. The "job" will be to collect recorded classes from their disciples or local devotees -i have already kind of half a Terabyte of Spanish classes- and also translate more from different ISKCON Gurus from english and edit the audios (as if they where recorded in the temple with instant translation) and also to administrate the web. For that Quest i will be searching for REGULAR donnors and Sponsors who want to promote their services or products on the web. So, is it a possible whithin ISKCON, or is it just pie in the sky?

Thank you SO-VERY-MUCH! for all your effort trying to serve your own spiritual master.

Your aspirant to service
Krsna-kirtana Dasa

HpS - ASA - Of course, you should co-ordinate with GBC authority. Then it is in ISKCON administration. As a project I would say that you need some partners. If it is O.K. with GBC and some partners you can start the project and see what is the result. Work on it for some time, like three months, and see the result. See if there are other similar projects and join with them so that you don't duplicate the work.

Of course, ANYTHING we do will be improved in the very best manner as we improve our 16-rounds. We are damaging any project that we do by minimizing our Japa.

Nice photos!    Best wishes for everything. You seem to be doing very well!!   Just do better.