Documentary about Hare Krishna devotees in the former Soviet Union and how they were persecuted and tortured by the KGB. Featuring Niranjana Swami.

New Vrindaban was truly blessed by a wonderful and auspicious Gaura Purnima festival. All glories to the many devotees who organized, cooked, acted, and sang so well, all glories to our wondrous guests who shook our temple floor with their ecstatic dance-steps, and all glories to Sri Krsna Caitanya Mahaprabhu, for His unlimited causeless mercy in spreading the Holy Name, and also in spreading the cloud-cover just enough for many of us to view the lunar eclipse. What a way to kickstart the 2007 festival season here at New Vrindaban!

with all the festivals and other projects our small but enthusiastic team took upon ourselves, correspondence has been somewhat limited.  So much has happened…

The last day of the Maynardville festival fell on Gaura Purnima.  Krishna’s Village of Peace supplied a wonderful selection of vegetarian delights as well as gifts, books, gopi dots and henna designs.  Best of all (in my opinion) was the continuous live bhajans.  We had a little stage and sound system in our tent.  The last night the rain was pouring down outside and people were pouring into our little village.  From the stage I observed how the Mahamantra pacified the hearts of the public - everyone seemed drawn into the sweet syllables of the Holy Name.  I could not drag myself away - remaining on the stage as the musicians rotated, I felt like I had been given a rare opportunity to connect with the Holy Names.  Just that morning I had prayed to Lord Gauranga to allow me to chant always and also to let me realize the happiness of devotional service again (I had been feeling a little overwhelmed by everything recently).  The bhajans just flowed on, becoming sweeter and sweeter.  I felt such great happiness as I sat there singing, realizing how much had happened since last Gaura Purnima in Port Elizabeth, realizing how grateful I am to be here and take part in this amazing process and how all the difficulties and obstacles had been Mahaprabhu’s special mercy to increase my devotion to Him.  It also struck me that Krishna very kindly reciprocates with anyone who tries to turn to Him.  He is just waiting for us to turn our attention towards Him.  All He wants is our love.

Acutally, I realized that all anyone ever wants is love.  Love is all that is expected from me and that is the hardest to give.

The Gaura Purnima celebrations happened on Sunday.  Today is a day for rest and recovery.

On the 3rd of March, Gaura Purnima we have spent the morning with Sri Sri Radha Damodara and Sri Sri Dayal Nitai Gaura Hari chanting bhajans with Maharaja. After a Hungarian class he took us on Harinama around Puri. We circumambulated the Jagannatha temple and visited the Gambhira.

In the afternoon we returned to Danda-bhanga where Maharaja gave an English class to the devotees. That class was going to be today’s podcast but the line is so bad here in Puri it doesn’t upload. Hopefully it will be up by tomorrow. (Now our train is soon leaving for Mayapur.)

While Maharaja was speaking we went to take darsana of Kapatesvara Mahadeva, a one million year old Siva-lingam installed by Lord Ramacandra. Caitanya Mahaprabhu was in this exact same temple building when Nityananda prabhu broke His danda on the bank of the Yamuna. In the holy dhama of Danda-bhanga Lord Caitanya established Himself in the form of His danda to distribute prema to whoever visits this sacred land.

Later Maharaja led an ecstatic bhajan during the abhiseka ceremony and we honoured prasadam with the Danda-bhanga devotees.

Maharaja gives class on Danda-bhanga

Dayal Nitai Gaura Hari

The temple of Kapatesvara Mahadeva

Kapatesvara Mahadeva

Maharaja bathing Lord Caitanya

Március 3-án, Gaura Purnima napján délelôtt Guru Maharaja Sri Sri Radha Damodara és Sri Sri Dayal Nitai Gaura Hari elôtt bhajanozott velünk, majd leckét tartott az Úr Caitanya dicsôségérôl. Arról a fajta szeretetrôl beszélt, amelyben a szeretô nem vágyik semmilyen viszonzásra. Ez az a fajta szeretet, amit Krisna elfogad. Caitanya Mahaprabhu ezt a fajta szeretetet testesítette meg és adta át másoknak. A lecke után harinamával bejártuk a várost, körbejártuk Jagannatha templomát, majd elmentünk a Gambhirába.

Délután ismét kimentünk Danda-bhangára, ahol Guru Maharaja angolul tartott leckét az orisszai bhaktáknak. Ezalatt mi elmentünk megnézni Kapatesvara Mahadevát, egy 1 millió eves Siva-lingamot, amit az Úr Ramacandra avatott be. Caitanya Mahaprabhu ugyanebben a templomban volt, miközben az Úr Nityananda eltörte a dandáját. Aztán darsant vettünk azokról az eredeti Sita-Rama-Laksman-Bharata-Satrughna-Hanuman murtikról, amiket eredetileg Bhrgu Muni imádott, s a Satya-yuga óta jelen vannak e murti formájukban.

Amikor visszaértünk, Guru Maharaja egy extatikus bhajant vezetett az abhiseka alatt, majd megtiszteltük a prasadamot.

Letöltés (00:27:17) 25 MB

Guru Maharaja leckét tart Danda-bhangán

Dayal Nitai Gaura Hari

Kapatesvara Mahadeva temploma

Kapatesvara Mahadeva

Az abhiseka elején Guru Maharaja fürdeti az Úr Caitanyát

We had an issue with noise control recently; just in time for Gaura Purnima. As one devotee suggested: Sounds a lot like the Lords lila with the Chand Kazi doesn’t it?…perhaps we should take all the assembled devotees on a “walking mantra jam” on Sunday night, and complete with flaming torches, pay our neighbors a visit? (Just joking).

Here’s the letter I wrote to the man in charge at the Wellington City Council:

Dear Matthew,

Unfortunately I haven’t been able to speak to you personally yet, but I have been given your email from one of your colleagues.

We are a Hare Krishna community, since 10yrs on Vivian Street in the inner city. We have a very nice centre there in which some of us congregate daily for meditation, and as a larger group congregate on Saturday and Sunday later afternoon/early evening.

Recently we have received a complaint from a neighbour as to the noise level of our chanting (mantra chanting with instruments). We have not changed the way we do things in the last 10yrs at least, so a complaint is a surprise. Usually we would have the windows open, which I understand would project the chanting further than the distance of our own four walls, but since we haven’t received unfavourable opinions from any of our neighbours about this we have left them open in a mood of no concern. I think the chanting is very beautiful, yet to our neighbour it has been deemed too loud. We respect this, so from now on will have our windows shut, and curtains drawn as early as possible. I hope this solves the issue. We don’t like to cause a disturbance, but at the same time the music must continue as a means of devotional worship.

The hours we play music are as follows:

Saturday 5.00pm - 6.00pm

Sunday 6:15pm - 7.30pm

Very minimal as you can see.

On occasions we have a festival for the public in which we share food, music, philosophy…many people come, students, professionals, artists, and enjoy the good spirits. This Sunday in celebration of the Golden full moon, called ‘Gaura Purnima’ we have such a festival. It is a festival of deep spiritual awareness (never is there intoxication involved). The hours as above in which music will be played stays the same, but with more people may prove to be louder. I will abide by the rule of keeping the windows shut and hope this will suffice as pacification for our neighbour. Again, it is such a short time to endure a bit of melody.

We will take a visit to our neighbour (amidst an apartment block), and ask what we can do to minimise her discomfort. She also has to bear in mind that she does live in the inner-city, and must expect this occasionally. What we do is not that bad; and we have now taken measure to minimise our impact.

Am I approaching this issue from the right angle Matthew? Please let me know if there is something further I should consider.

I am easily available on email to discuss further or on cellphone.

Kind Regards,

Visnu-maya
021 04 11 892

A special for Gaura Purnima, recorded on Saturday night. Here it is:

• Urban Missionary Podcast mp3, 21MB
• Urban Missionary Podcast ogg, 18MB

Yesterday was the appearance (birth) day of Lord Caitanya, the most recent incarnation of Krishna. Caitanya appeared 500 years ago in West Bengal to spread the chanting of Hare Krishna as the means of deliverance and is considered the founder of our sankirtan (chanting) movement. Of all the incarnations and forms of Krishna, Lord Caitanya is by far the most attractive to me. I remember seeing a group of devotees dancing and chanting once in Canberra and I remarked to my friend "these guys know what's going on, they just chant the names of god and dance. Who can argue with that?". This was Lord Caitanya's mercy: that even the most fallen can be delivered by this congregational chanting process.

The main affair for celebrating his birthday is, then, the chanting of Hare Krishna. Devotees chant 16 rounds of the Hare Krishna mantra daily. The mantra consists of 16 names of God and each round of 108 iterations for a grand total of 1728 mantras or 27648 names of God. Note that all these numbers are obtained by raising 2 to an integer exponent or are integer hyperfactorials (108 is 3 hyperfactorial). I'll go into the maths of this another time...

One of the devotees I spoke to made it to 64 rounds for the day, which is about 6 hours of solid undivided chanting. I got through 34, which i'm quite happy with. We also fasted for the whole day before a grand feast at 8pm. I am no good at fasting, in fact I find it difficult to go more than hour after waking up without eating something. Despite not being very fixed in my determination to go through with it, I was somehow able to muster up the mind and sense control to do so. After waking up at 3am, not eating anything, and basically chanting and dancing all day, my mind was very light and I got into quite a trance. I met some guests in the temple courtyard who were trying to ask me intelligent questions and I just couldn't hold a conversation, I kept on zoning out and smiling and laughing. The burning fire of material qualms really does just fade away when you get absorbed in chanting the names of the Lord.

Thi s is a couple of minutes of lo-fi video footage that Vraj shot of the Yoga Expo on his camera.

The day was an unqualified success. This year it was all about bringing the yoga community together, and not so much about reaching out to the general public. Next year it will go ballistic.

Most of the people I spoke to were either doing yoga regularly already at a school, or else, in a large number of cases, a yoga teacher. We got to meet people we hadn't had the opportunity to meet yet, such as Adam, Akash, and Radha Bornstein from Radiant Light Yoga, and Har Simrat, who recently moved up to Brisbane from Sydney, and is teaching Kundalini Yoga at Zen Central in West End. We also got to catch up with old friends, such as Johnathon Murphy, who organized the event, Kate Pell from West End Yoga, who lead our yoga teacher training last year, Tamara James, and a whole lot of others.

There were classes all day, and I attended one, Tamara James' class where we worked on shoulders. I would have liked to have gone to Kate's class and Adam's class, but we were organizing our stall and the prasadam, so it wasn't possible.

At the end, after a beautiful set of devotional songs by Radha Bornstein, there was a kirtan with Radiant Light and Atma Yoga fielding a kirtan group each. There were about 100 people there for that. It was awesome. Radiant Light would do one kirtan, then we would do one, back and forth. Then for the final kirtan everyone got up and danced with wild abandon.

Then Johnathon came and stood in the center of a circle of everyone who was there, and we pronounced our blessings on him for his service to the yoga community, intoning the sacred syllable OM three times with our palms raised toward him. It was quite powerful.

Then we went to Govindas and broke fast with some curd subji!

This was filmed on January 3rd 2007 at the New Govardhana Festival by Ananta Vrindavan prabhu. The music is by Hari Bhakti prabhu and friends-recorded by Sitapati prabhu in an all night kirtan session at the festival. The yajna was overseen by H.H Jayapataka Swami - who gave the class, portions of which are heard in this video.

I've told the joke a million times, but you haven't heard it yet.

You have to trust in Krishna. Don't bother trying to pursue your own sense gratification independently. Just serve Him, and He'll take care of you. Vraja certainly didn't spend three years in South America as an ISKCON missionary because he was looking for a wife, but it was obviously divine arrangement, because that's probably one of the few places in the world where he could find someone his size, and the only place where he could meet Bhakti Candrika...

We sat on the floor in the very back. People were polite enough. They didn’t say anything to us. Well, one older woman did speak to my wife and friend. She said, “That’s bad.” She was making a comment about their sitting posture. They had grown weary of folding their legs so they stuck them out in front of them. The non-lotus position is disrespectful. Opps!

- A recent visitor to an ISKCON temple

It is a principle that correcting people that you don't have a relationship with puts you into a negative emotional bank balance with them. As a consequence, if you want to grow in influence with someone, don't try to correct them if you have no relationship with them. If you want to "correct", then first invest.

Influence can only take place across a relationship. Only force can be applied across a vacuum, and force is generally inappropriate and counterproductive in what is a purely volunteer organization. As this person said in their account: "I went into their world…..but they didn’t keep me!"

Small wonder. If this simple principle were applied in this case, then the experience of this visitor would have been very different.

In this case the "purity" of the temple was conserved and proper behaviour was enforced, effectively by chasing the perpetrator away. But was that the goal? If the goal is to bring people in to the community, then it wasn't so effective. We have to reach out and touch the heart before we can change the mind. We need to bring people in and guide them by walking alongside them, supporting them, and gently nudging them in the right direction, and letting them go there themselves.

Of course, the only people that this will influence will be those that I have some relationship with. For everyone else, please carry on as you were.

This was filmed on January 3rd 2007 at the New Govardhana Festival by Ananta Vrindavan prabhu. The music is by Hari Bhakti prabhu and friends-recorded by Sitapati prabhu in an all night kirtan session at the festival. The yajna was overseen by H.H Jayapataka Swami - who gave the class, portions of which are heard in this video.

A spontaneous Harinam by devotees from the annual New Govardhan Festival in Northern N.S.W.

Zoltan Bakaja: Mixed choir video clip.

Before you scroll down you might like to read this; I conducted a bit of research into the history of the building quite a few years ago. Here's what I found out.

The original land that now houses the temple was purchased from the Crown in 1875 by a British judge, Thomas Abercrombie Mouatt. He spared no expense, shipping in many artisans, especially plasterers from Italy.

His beautiful family home was quickly built. At the time, the whole of the coast from St Kilda to Port Melbourne was covered with rolling sand dunes and resembled a miniature Sahara Desert. The judge’s mansion stood alone, the only building for miles on a military road in the area then known as Emerald Hill Beach, and commanded a sweeping view of the ocean.

Although the judge named his domicile Montalto House, the locals called it ‘Mouatt’s Folly’. They considered that since it was built on sand it would not stand for long. Notwithstanding that, the judge lived there for quite some time, surrounded by his extensive holdings that included large stables.

Not only did the magnificent sandstone building not sink into the dunes, but it survived the judge and his family. After his death, the imposing mansion became the residence of James Alston, a famous manufacturer of patented irrigational windmills.

By the turn of the century, a newly-constructed beach road called Beaconsfield Parade had already eclipsed the beach-side prominence of the property. In due course, an extra building was erected on the site with it’s frontage directly on what was now called Danks Street.

Alston’s widow later bequeathed both buildings to the Catholic Church, who transformed the property into Our Lady of Mount Carmel Boys’ School. The newly added brick building became classrooms, and Montalto House became living quarters for the Catholic brothers who taught there.

Now Montalto House is renamed 'Prabhupada House'; and the building that had for decades seen thousands of young boys learn the rudiments of science, mathematics and English, is now the Hare Krishna Temple.

Prabhupada House is an excellent example of residential Victorian Italianate architecture. The building exhibits all the best features of its style: a pronounced bay facade with triple arches, corniced eaves and gables and an upper veranda with ornate balustrade and tall circular columns decorated with Corinthian capitols.

This information was published in my book outlining the history of the Hare Krishna Movement in Australia, entitled "The Great Transcendental Adventure".

So here we are at the present day:

The old front wall was leaning due to the pressure of the earth in the front garden. It was removed recently and replaced with this very nice reincarnated version, replete with cast iron work especially commissioned in India.

As you walk in the front gate you enter the beautiful and serene inner compounds of the temple sanctuary. This is a view looking out to the front street from where the preceding two photos were taken.

Another view of the inner courtyard. The faithful plum tree still gives lots of fruit.

Today's opulent altar decorations celebrate the full-moon festival of Gaura Purnima, the birthday anniversary of Sri Chaitanya, who appeared in 1486 AD.

The main festivities are held tonight. Over 1000 guests are expected. I am posting this before the evening begins. Perhaps I'll get some good photos then. I'm leading a large portion of the kirtans (chanting) so I may not get a chance. Let's see.

Attendance

• Rehearsal Saturday 11 March 9.15 - 10.30 Bowen Lane RMIT
• Monday 13 March 8.00 am - 1.00 pm Bowen Lane and Swanston St

• We are in section two The Ambassador Section whose colours are Gold, Yellow and White. Ladies please try to select your saris accordingly.
• No thongs, please wear a good pair of runners or casual shoes.
• No t-shirts, men to wear plain kurtas.
  

The tranquil Hare Krishna Temple in Melbourne's well-heeled suburb of Albert Park (host to next week's noisy Grand Prix) is looking good these days. There's a few glimpses below. Before you scroll down you might like to read this; I conducted a bit of research into the history of the building quite a few years ago. Here's what I found out.

With love from Yamini devi dasi; Four songs glorifying Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu: "Chant," "Two Thieves," > Meeting Lord Chaitanya," and "Separation." Free downloads on this Soundclick.com Link

A beautiful ashram located near the road and the Mayapur ferry ghat is for sale. It is on a large plot (more than one acre of land) with several residential buildings plus a mandira.

Recently, so much has been happening in Jagannatha Puri Dhama! I thought you may be interested in the good news!

The new year has started in a grand way. Some temples, it appears, continued the Prabhupada marathon into 2007. Karuna Bhavan in Scotland, Delhi in India, and Catania in Sicily had a very successful month of January. Once one receives the mercy of Prabhupada by distributing these vedic jewels in the form of his books it's hard to slow down.

From Kripamoya Prabhu's blog: The Vaishnava Voice

Last Sunday I chaired a gathering of ISKCON group leaders and the following post is my reflection on the need for structured pastoral guidance within our movement. My apologies to regular readers if this piece is organisation-centred rather than focused on personal spiritual growth. After this piece, and so many ‘illness-centred’ posts we can return to normal - some time soon.

What is ISKCON and how can we better service our members? The presentations and discussions of more than fifty ISKCON Sangha group leaders attending an event at the Govinda’s Restaurant in Soho, London, England last Sunday helped to identify several requirements.

read more

Hare Krsna. All glories to Sri Gauranga Mahaprabhu on His appearance day! During Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu's stay in Sri Vrindaban dhama, the Lord would chant japa near the Yamuna River beneath the spreading branches of the tamarind tree known as tentuli-tala, or Amli tala.

With a view to maintaining his memory and spreading his glories far and wide, I humbly request you all to include these productions in your home or temple video library.

The first of a series of children's books from Dharma Design Publications, gently expresses the basics of Krishna consciousness in a style suitable for its young audience.

Thanks for all your participation and support. I hope this finds you experiencng the happiness and inner satisfaction that accompanies cow protection. Jaya Sri Gopal!

Back to Godhead Magazine continues to progress in leaps and bounds, introducing new features and authors, using more dynamic graphics, and upgrading to full, vivid color on every page. If you haven't picked a copy up in some time, do it now. You'll be surprised.

Dear Devotees! We would like to convey some moving news to you and also tell you some of the history of a great personality of New Vrajamandala.