My Dear Ranadhir,

Please accept my blessings. I beg to thank you for your letter dated November 23, 1969. I am so pleased to learn of the increased development of New Vrindaban. Please now try to organize a children’s school. This is one of our programs in New Vrindaban, and there is Hayagriva, Kirtanananda, Satyabhama, Shama Dasi, Paramananda and yourself. You can form a school committee and get it recognized by the Education Board. Then more children will be sent. There is one small child in Berkeley, and if you so desire, you can ask Hansadutta to send the child in your care.

Your mother has very kindly spoken about me, and she is herself a good lady. Otherwise, how could she have a nice child like you? So please keep in touch with your good mother and try to bring in Krishna Consciousness gradually. That is also one of your duties. As your mother’s duty was to raise you till you got strength, similarly when a child is grown up, it is his duty to see to the spiritual welfare of his mother.

In the Srimad Bhaqavatam the example is Devahuti and Lord Kapiladev. Lord Kapiladev appeared as the Son of Devahuti, and in the absence of Karda-muni, the father of Lord Kapiladev, the Divine Son instructed His mother, Devahuti, and she got elevated to the transcendental position.

Any boys who come there, please take special care of them. As it is generally said, the child is the father of the man. So if we can train little boys to Krishna Consciousness, it will be a great help in our future activities. I was fortunate to get birth in such family, and my father trained me in this line. I am reaping the fruit in this old age for that training. So let New Vrindaban be an ideal spot for Krishna Consciousness population; self-dependent on the local production and cow’s milk. That is my ideal.

Please offer my blessings to the others. I hope this will meet you in good health.

Your ever well-wisher,
A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami

xkcd

Rough notes from a Radhanath Swami Mother’s Day lecture:

From the big Saturday night packed house event:

Festival of Inspiration 2008 Nama-Yajna « Hare Krishna.

Impressions of a visitor:

A New Vrindavan Morning

Impressions of a resident:

VedaBase Hint: Copying Large Quotes

and

New Vrindaban Festival of Inspiration 2008

Okay these were from last year but …

Bhajans

If you know of any other links to posts about the 2008 Festival of Inspiration, please let us know.

I just had the opportunity to speak with my good friend Partha Sarathi Prabhu. It was a great Ekadasi treat! Who needs grains when you can chat with such a wonderful devotee. We have been emailing and facebook chating but today we had the time to video skype. Technology can be wonderful sometimes. Emphasis on the sometimes. here are some snaps of our conversation. We talked, we had darshan of his new Govardhan Sila, had darshan of his Salagram Sila’s and heard his newest melody on the harmonium! so much thousands of miles away! He is in Iraq.

Physicists discover that the structure of a brain cell is the same as the entire universe.

“Oh God, guide me, protect me; make of me a shining lamp and a brilliant star.” — Abdu’l-Bahá

See explanation here.

“Foolish philosophers say that the universe automatically came into being by nature. They say that in the beginning there was a chunk, and this cosmic manifestation came out of that chunk of matter. But where did this chunk come from?

“The fact is that there must be a brain, a leader, behind anything organized. We have information of this leader from the Vedas: nityo nityanam cetanas cetananam (Katha Upanisad 2.2.13). The Supreme Lord is eternal, and we are also eternal. But the Supreme Lord is one, and we are many. The Supreme Lord is very great, and we are very small. He is all-pervading and infinite, and we are finite and infinitesimal.”

TLK Vs 9

“So when He said, maya tatam idam sarvam, it is not a false pride. It is fact. Simply we must have brain to understand. Maya tatam idam sarvam. Every particle, every atom, there is presence of God. That is stated in the sastra. Andantara-stha-paramanu-cayantara-stham [Bs. 5.35]. Paramanu means the atom. God is within the atom. So God is within you also. God is outside; God is within.”

Bhagavad-gita 9.4 — Melbourne, April 23, 1976

“Similarly, this body, machine, is complete. And the soul is there, it is working nicely. The body is also a creation, and the universe is also a creation, and the brain which has created these things, He is complete.

“Therefore He has created these complete units. That is the idea. Purnam idam [Iso Invocation]. Purnah means complete. And because He is complete, the Creator, He has no defect; therefore He can create everything complete.”

Room Conversation with Kim Cornish — May 8, 1975, Perth

On the topic of blogging, photos come into it occasionally so in keeping with the general principle that through a guru is a good way to approach a topic, here is a link to someone who seems to know what he is talking about (after reading his points, see this blog post about the Festival of Inspiration and evaluate the photos given your new found knowledge(check out the FOI link even if you aren’t interested in photographic technique)):

21 Ways to Shoot Better Photographs

Do you want to sharpen your creative picture taking instincts? Do you want to combine new ideas with your current projects and techniques? These techniques will be better executed with digital cameras and meant as some direction or guidelines to taking ‘better‘ pictures. You are your cameras best viewfinder!

Why digital as opposed to film you say? You don’t have to buy tons of film if you are learning new ideas and trying different things and also you see the results right away.

That being said some of these photos were taken with Polaroid film. Polaroid has such an expressiveness to the colors and creates unique one of a kind images every time. The film is expensive but worth it. Once you get some basics down, experiment with film.

1. Perspective- Ansel Adams once said, “A good photo is knowing where to stand.” Explore your surroundings and take multiple shots from various angles. Look for vantage points that capitalize on the best available light, ones that have the least. Shoot from far away, get close, even closer, lie on the ground, use a ladder. Hold the camera above your head, tilt it at crazy angles. Stand right next to your subject, move with it or even walk around it. The main idea is to investigate normal and radical perspectives.
__________________________________________________

(to see the rest of the purports and examples go to the source article)

2. Unequal Space-

3. Framing-

4. Horizon Line-

5. Cropping-

6. Intentional Empty Space-

7. Shape-

8. Lines and Curves-

9. Visual Texture-

10. Depth-

11. Spin-

12. Motion Shots-

13. 360 Panoramic-

14. Composites-

15. Beautiful Decay-

16. Clouds-

17. Shadows/Reflections-

18. Light Painting-

19. Light Direction-

20. Night Shots-

21. Intentional Overexposure/Underexposure-

I attended Ekanath’s presentation at the Festival of Inspiration on using the VedaBase and got a good hint. It helped solve one of those pesky little inconveniences.

When I would try to copy a quote larger than the window size it was always a hassle. Because the VedaBase has so much information in it, if I tried to expand the selected area for copying beyond the viewable area by dragging the mouse down, it would just go crazy fast and I would end up way down the page. It is uncontrollable.

Clicking at the start of the quote, then going to the end and using Shift/Click, usually a reliable method in Windows programs, just didn’t work. I would have to copy the first part of the quote, then scroll down and copy the next part in an additional Copy and Paste operation or even do it several times if the quote was really large.

Ekanath gave the obeisances worthy hint — click at the beginning of the quote and then use Shift/Arrow keys to move around the page to increase or decrease the size of the selected area.

Shift/Arrow keys ki jaya!

Playing with it, I found that while the Shift/Arrow keys enable moving around the page one letter or whole line at a time, Shift/Page Down does exactly what you think it would do — increases the selected area by a whole screenful at a time. This would be great for even larger quotes.

Using Shift/Page Down to cover large areas and then fine tune it with the Shift/Arrow keys would be the way to do larger quotes.

Another hint he gave that I already use but when he polled the room surprisingly few were aware of is worth mentioning. That is using the Copy With Reference and Copy With Reference — Without Diacritics buttons. They are located on the toolbar at the top of the page about 3/4s of the way to the right past all the Navigation and Search buttons. If you squint they look like little clipboards or copies of pages.

Once you have selected the area you want to copy, if you use these buttons instead of Edit/Copy or Ctrl+C, when you go to Paste it automatically gives you the citation for the quote.

Examples:

Using regular Copy and Paste:

Thus we find that in Bhagavad-gétä Lord Kåñëa advises go-rakñya, the protection of cows.

Using Copy With Reference:

Thus we find that in Bhagavad-gétä Lord Kåñëa advises go-rakñya, the protection of cows.

>>> Ref. VedaBase => SB 9.15.25

Using Copy With Reference — Without Diacritics:

Thus we find that in Bhagavad-gita Lord Krsna advises go-raksya, the protection of cows.

>>> Ref. VedaBase => SB 9.15.25

While Krsna has hundreds and millions of names, most lay persons won’t recognize Kanea as one of them so I use Copy With Reference — Without Diacritics most frequently, because I can’t remember the name of the font in Word programs that make the diacritics look right.

The only fly in the ointment here is the “>>> Ref. VedaBase => ” that I feel compelled to remove and is a little chore but that is written into the code of the program and no way to opt out of it.

Anyway, select the quotable area, Copy With Reference — Without Diacritics, Paste, delete the branding, add quotation marks and viola:

“Thus we find that in Bhagavad-gita Lord Krsna advises go-raksya, the protection of cows.”

SB 9.15.25

Well, the FOI is officially over. A great festival that thousands of words couldn’t capture. Assume that the big guns did what big guns do, and did it well. I tend to avoid crowds but when I open the door to the temple room and see it is packed from side to side, front to back, I know things are going well.

The official schedule was great — the classes, the kirtans, the presentations and the entertainment was more than anyone was capable of absorbing everything.

I liked some of the off schedule stuff best, like the spontaneous bhajans that seemed to go on continuously in the yajnashalla.

Or Yoga Dave demonstrating the form of yoga he teaches called Danda Yoga.

Then there were the personal joys, like watching soon to be 2 years old granddaughter Sydney climb the ladder on the play set and then laugh with triumph while her mother (Manjari, lower left) negotiates with her to come down.

Of course it takes a lot of devotees working in the background and missing the festival itself in order that others can enjoy it. The kitchen crew, the cleanup crew, the data entry and phone crew, registration, the runners and problem fixers. More than I can mention.

A lot of New Vrindaban devotees play those roles but many outside devotees came early to help setup and be part of the logistics of running the thing.

One of them was Manu who came with a bus load of devotees from Alachua. He missed much of the festival because he spent all of one day and I don’t know how much of the next running cable and setting up a webcam for New Vrindaban.

Every 15 seconds the camera moves and takes a shot of different views of the temple room, including Srila Prabhupada on his vyasasana, each of the Deities, and the location of the class giver. I see those decorating the temple haven’t adapted to this yet as a decoration is blocking some of the views this morning, and it may not be active when the Deities are at rest. I haven’t figured out all the details yet.

There is also an audio cable so at some point kirtans and classes will be broadcast but I haven’t figured that out yet.

Some of us reacted to this new toy in a grave responsible manner — we would figure out where the camera was going to shoot next, then run stand in front of it and then run back to see ourselves on a laptop over the internet. Very mature.

My personal most inspiring memory came in a quiet off moment though. An amazing kirtan was going on in the temple room but I was outside yakking it up with various devotees. Out of the corner of my eye I saw two visitors picking up shoes and moving them. This struck me as odd but they were putting them in neat rows and it wasn’t my problem and as it was an anomalous action, my mind did as many minds do in similar situations and ignored it.

When the devotee I was talking to left, I walked over and noticed that two similar pairs of shoes were mismatched and as I can be a bit compulsive about organization, I switched them so they were correct. Then I looked at what the two guys were doing.

In what must have seemed like a good idea at the time, somehow or other all the shoes that had been in the temple foyer had been swept out into a pile right in front of the door. I immediately appreciated what the two guys were doing. They were searching through the merged shoes, finding pairs, and setting them in neat rows so when the devotees left the temple, there wouldn’t be a huge traffic jam as individuals searched through the pile.

As I hadn’t done my daily Sudoku (mental calisthenics) in three days, the puzzle part of my brain was jonsing so I started helping them. Once you got past the concept of touching someone else’s shoes, it was kind of fun — the little thrill of satisfaction at finding a match and watching the pile diminish.

Finally it was down to about 20 unmatched shoes left. We scoured the area and found some unmatched ones away from the pile and got it down to about 10. Then we went back over existing pairs that had been set aside, and found several that looked very similar but weren’t, brought them back, and managed to match every shoe in the pile. Anyone who finishes a large crossword puzzle will understand the joy of completing the task.

I was very much appreciating that these two guests had spontaneously done this. First, that they had the mental acuity to recognize that the pile of mixed up shoes would cause a lot of anxiety to devotees leaving the temple. I probably would have walked right past the pile and not even have noticed it. Then that they would take the time, and it took well over 30 minutes, maybe an hour, to do it, to sort them all out.

They did it with no one asking them, and with no expectation of any recognition or reward other than the desire of serving the literal feet of the devotees. If I hadn’t noticed them doing this service, no one would have even realized it happened. When I asked one of them why he did it, he said, “The devotees are having such a nice experience in the temple and now it can still be a nice experience when they come out.” Anyone who has left the temple and had a hard time finding their shoes can relate to what he was talking about.

I ran into him the next day and asked if he knew the other guy who was helping him and he said no, that he had just met him then. So by his humble example he inspired at least two of us to serve the devotees, and I hope that by hearing this you will also be inspired.

I was a part of a presentation at the FOI. Sri Nandanandana had a slot and asked Sankirtan and me to do part of it. He has a website that gets over 3000 unique visitors a day and has published numerous books.

The session was entitled:

Writing to Share Krsna Consciousness: Srinandanandana Das with Madhava Ghosh Das & Sankirtan Das

He spoke on the process of getting books published by self publishing, commercial publishing, and print on demand publishing. He spoke about how to use each method and the advantages and disadvantages of each method. He has done all three.

Sankirtan spoke on publishing booklets and how to use them in preaching.

My Plan A was to use a computer set up with a projector, go on the internet, set up a new blog, take a picture of the participants, upload it to the blog, and post it to the internet. I figured this would take about 15-29 minutes, then spend the balance of my 30 minutes adding some links and categories and whatever else we had time for.

Soma let me borrow his laptop and the night before we did a trial run and everything worked — we got connected to the internet and projected an image onto the screen. About an hour before the presentation, we went in to set it up and we couldn’t get an internet connection. The festival staff sent someone to help, even trying to get a hard wire connection but nothing worked so Plan A dissolved.

Fortunately, I had a Plan B which was to take someone else’s blog post on writing like a blogger, throwing in a couple of quotes from Prabhupada, and discuss that. Notes which follow:

“All students should be encouraged to write some article after reading Srimad-Bhagavatam, Bhagavad-gita and Teachings of Lord Caitanya. They should realize the information, and they must present their assimilation in their own words. Otherwise, how they can become preachers?”

Letter to: Brahmananda – Los Angeles 1 July, 1969

“If you sit down and write some article on Krsna, that means you have to concentrate on Krsna’s activities or Krsna’s devotees’ activities, and that very process will purify your heart. Therefore we always recommend to our students that you write articles, read our magazine, read our books.”

Srimad-Bhagavatam 6.2.12-14 — Allahabad, January 17, 1971, at Kumbha-mela

Write like a blogger

You can improve your writing (your business writing, your ad writing, your thank you notes and your essays) if you start thinking like a blogger:

1. Use headlines. I use them all the time now. Not just boring ones that announce your purpose (like the one on this post) but interesting or puzzling or engaging headlines. Headlines are perfect for engaging busy readers.

2. Realize that people have choices. With 80 million other blogs to choose from, I know you could leave at any moment (see, there goes someone now). So that makes blog writing shorter and faster and more exciting.

3. Drip, drip, drip. Bloggers don’t have to say everything at once. We can add a new idea every day, piling on a thesis over time. (300- 600 words)

4. It’s okay if you leave. Bloggers aren’t afraid to include links or distractions in their writing, because we know you’ll come back if what we had to say was interesting.

5. Interactivity is a great shortcut. Your readers care about someone’s opinion even more than yours… their own. So reading your email or your comments or your trackbacks (your choice) makes it easy to stay relevant.

6. Gimmicks aren’t as useful as insight. If you’re going to blog successfully for months or years, sooner or later you need to actually say something. Same goes for your writing.

7. Don’t be afraid of lists. People like lists.

8. Show up. Not writing is not a useful way of expressing your ideas. Waiting for perfect is a lousy strategy.

9. Say it. Don’t hide, don’t embellish.

Use categories and tags to show up in search engines.

Use key words in your post titles.

Click here for the complete report.

We lack all knowledge of this parting. Death
does not deal with us. We have no reason
to show death admiration, love or hate;
his mask of feigned tragic lament gives us

a false impression. The world’s stage is still
filled with roles which we play. While we worry
that our performances may not please,
death also performs, although to no applause.

But as you left us, there broke upon this stage
a glimpse of reality, shown through the slight
opening through which you disappeared: green,
evergreen, bathed in sunlight, actual woods.

We keep on playing, still anxious, our difficult roles
declaiming, accompanied by matching gestures
as required. But your presence so suddenly
removed from our midst and from our play, at times

overcomes us like a sense of that other
reality: yours, that we are so overwhelmed
and play our actual lives instead of the performance,
forgetting altogether the applause.

(Translated by Albert Ernest Fleming)

(In Memory of Gopi Lila)

The latest topic amongst those in ISKCON addicted to debating is the annotation of Prabhupada’s books. For those of you not familiar with the specifics, I will not provide links because a.) I am too lazy to find and include them and b.) why disturb your mind about it when you were having a perfectly fine day without worrying about it already.

I stipulate I haven’t read the GBC resolution and don’t know their specific reasons for deciding to annotate Prabhupada’s books. I am speaking only from my own perspective on the topic and neither approve nor disapprove of their method of arriving at their decision.

My first impression on reading some of the feedback is that I think that half the opposing commentators or more don’t know what annotation is, ergo I include this definition:

Main Entry: an·no·ta·tion
Function:noun
Date:15th century

1 a note added by way of comment or explanation 2: the act of annotating.

One example would be like Srimad Bhagvatam class where after reading the verse and purport, the person giving class gives a critical analysis of what has been read. An oral annotation in other words.

My premise is that the only way that Srila Prabhupada’s books can be retained in their original version is through the use of annotations. Think of Shakespeare.

He wrote hundreds of years ago and since then the English language, being very fluid, has shifted. In order to understand not only what the now archaic words meant but the cultural context and nuance of how those words were used, one would need to do an extensive study of the culture of that time.

Fortunately, qualified scholars have already done this for us so when we get stuck we can read the annotations and continue to enjoy Shakespeare as he originally wrote it.

Annotations don’t change books, they clarify points in them. Shakespeare comes in both annotated and unannotated versions. Just because an annotated version of a book exists, doesn’t mean an unannotated version can’t also exist, so there is no need to worry an annotated version of SP’s books will replace the current ones.

As language morphs, the need to annotate will become greater if the desire is there to retain Prabhupada’s books in original versions. That may seem academic now, but will be a greater need as decades slip by.

Consider the word “gay” and how its meaning has drastically changed:

Main Entry:¹gay

Function:adjective

Date:14th century

1 a: happily excited : merry <in a gay mood> b: keenly alive and exuberant : having or inducing high spirits <a bird’s gay spring song>2 a: bright, lively <gay sunny meadows> b: brilliant in color3: given to social pleasures; also : licentious4 a: homosexual <gay men> b: of, relating to, or used by homosexuals <the gay rights movement> <a gay bar>

Most would agree that the 4th meaning should now be put as the first, at least in America. If it were, the old Christmas carol “Deck the Halls Boughs of Holly” would need to be annotated in scholarly quarters so it was clear that the refrain “don we now our gay apparel” wasn’t understood to be an exhortation to dress in drag.

Consider this quote from Srila Prabhupada’s original Bhagvatam:

“The Lord was then married with great pomp and gay and began to preach the Congregational chanting of the Holy Name of the Lord at Nabadwipa.”

SB 1-1962: Introduction

Do we think that SP was saying Lord Chaitanya was a homosexual? Of course not, but an annotation would be in order to clarify it.

So I personally have no problems with the concept of annotating SP’s books IF it is done by devotees who have an understanding of the principles of Vaisnava philosophy.

by Gokulataruni dd

Two days ago I woke up to a phone call telling me that Gopi Lila passed away. Though I knew that this was coming it still came as a surprise. She was someone that was dearly loved by the devotees in our community, and will be greatly missed.

Gopi Lila joined at the rainbow gathering in the early 90’s and spent well over a decade living in the New Vrindavan and Columbus temples. Her son, Gopala Bhatta, was born in the little green house next to Tapah Punja’s garden. For a while she lived with her husband and baby on the third floor of the temple building. I remember her walking around, gathering herbs with little Gopal toddling behind her. Her son had long hair at the time and she wrapped it into a top knot and put kajjal on him so that he would look like baby Krishna. Seeing them brightened everyone’s day.

The thing I remember about her the most is what an amazing mother and wife she was. When I was pregnant I spent a lot of time talking to her and getting tips on childbirth and caring for a baby. She was into a very natural way of life and had given birth to both of her children in houses, without the use of modern medicine. I enjoyed hearing her stories and I learned a lot from her about what it meant to be a mom.

She also helped me out quite a bit financially during that time. She passed on a ton of maternity clothes, nursing shirts and baby things that kept me going for quite awhile. My son is close in age to her daughter and whenever they would visit (since she lived in Columbus at that time) the two played together.

The last time I saw Gopi was right before she moved to China. Her husband, Hari Bhakta, had been hired to teach English as a second language over there. I remember thinking how brave she was to move with two little kids to a country where she had never visited and didn’t know the language. We sat around joking about some of the problems she would likely encounter. Though she had a few hesitancies, her adventurous spirit eventually took over and she moved overseas.

While she was in China we kept in touch and she wrote about the things she struggled with there, sometime amused by it, sometimes frustrated. After that she went to India to spend time with Hari Bhakta’s family. While she was there she started to write about different health problems and infections that she was getting.  She was soon diagnosed as having the advanced stages of cervical cancer.

After that her health rapidly declined. I was amazed though by how well her and her husband were handling it. I’m sure that they had their weak moments and breakdowns, but every time I spoke with them they were amazingly detached from the situation. Both of them seemed very clear and focused on the fact that she had spent all of her years as a devotee preparing for this. They both accepted that it was time for her to move on.

I spoke with her a few days before she passed away and I couldn’t believe how much things had changed since the last time we had spoken. She was on too much morphine to have a conversation and was moaning from the pain.

Though I will miss her I am glad that her passing was relatively quick and that she is no longer suffering. Her husband stayed home with her the last few months and did everything possible to take care of her and make her comfortable during her last days. The devotees from Boston also spent a lot of time with her and were there with her when she passed away. My sympathies go out to her family that has been left behind.