Woody Allen

REINCARNATION IN MANHATTAN
by Woody Allen

(Source: www.newyorker.com/humor/2009/03/30/090330sh_shouts_allen)

Two weeks ago, Abe Moscowitz dropped dead of a heart attack and was reincarnated as a lobster. Trapped off the coast of Maine, he was shipped to Manhattan and dumped into a tank at a posh Upper East Side seafood restaurant. In the tank there were several other lobsters, one of whom recognized him. “Abe, is that you?” the creature asked, his antennae perking up.

“Who’s that? Who’s talking to me?” Moscowitz said, still dazed by the mystical slam-bang postmortem that had transmogrified him into a crustacean.

“It’s me, Moe Silverman,” the other lobster said.

“O.M.G.!” Moscowitz piped, recognizing the voice of an old gin-rummy colleague. “What’s going on?”

“We’re reborn,” Moe explained. “As a couple of two-pounders.”

“Lobsters? This is how I wind up after leading a just life? In a tank on Third Avenue?”

“The Lord works in strange ways,” Moe Silverman explained. “Take Phil Pinchuck. The man keeled over with an aneurysm, he’s now a hamster. All day, running at the stupid wheel. For years he was a Yale professor. My point is he’s gotten to like the wheel. He pedals and pedals, running nowhere, but he smiles.”

Moscowitz did not like his new condition at all. Why should a decent citizen like himself, a dentist, a mensch who deserved to relive life as a soaring eagle or ensconced in the lap of some sexy socialite getting his fur stroked, come back ignominiously as an entrée on a menu? It was his cruel fate to be delicious, to turn up as Today’s Special, along with a baked potato and dessert. This led to a discussion by the two lobsters of the mysteries of existence, of religion, and how capricious the universe was, when someone like Sol Drazin, a schlemiel they knew from the catering business, came back after a fatal stroke as a stud horse impregnating cute little thoroughbred fillies for high fees. Feeling sorry for himself and angry, Moscowitz swam about, unable to buy into Silverman’s Buddha-like resignation over the prospect of being served thermidor.

At that moment, who walked into the restaurant and sits down at a nearby table but Bernie Madoff. If Moscowitz had been bitter and agitated before, now he gasped as his tail started churning the water like an Evinrude.

“I don’t believe this,” he said, pressing his little black peepers to the glass walls. “That goniff who should be doing time, chopping rocks, making license plates, somehow slipped out of his apartment confinement and he’s treating himself to a shore dinner.”

“Clock the ice on his immortal beloved,” Moe observed, scanning Mrs. M.’s rings and bracelets.

Moscowitz fought back his acid reflux, a condition that had followed him from his former life. “He’s the reason I’m here,” he said, riled to a fever pitch.

“Tell me about it,” Moe Silverman said. “I played golf with the man in Florida, which incidentally he’ll move the ball with his foot if you’re not watching.”

“Each month I got a statement from him,” Moscowitz ranted. “I knew such numbers looked too good to be kosher, and when I joked to him how it sounded like a Ponzi scheme he choked on his kugel. I had to do the Heimlich maneuver. Finally, after all that high living, it comes out he was a fraud and my net worth was bupkes. P.S., I had a myocardial infarction that registered at the oceanography lab in Tokyo.”

“With me he played it coy,” Silverman said, instinctively frisking his carapace for a Xanax. “He told me at first he had no room for another investor. The more he put me off, the more I wanted in. I had him to dinner, and because he liked Rosalee’s blintzes he promised me the next opening would be mine. The day I found out he could handle my account I was so thrilled I cut my wife’s head out of our wedding photo and put his in. When I learned I was broke, I committed suicide by jumping off the roof of our golf club in Palm Beach. I had to wait half an hour to jump, I was twelfth in line.”

Bernie Madoff

At this moment, the captain escorted Madoff to the lobster tank, where the unctuous sharpie analyzed the assorted saltwater candidates for potential succulence and pointed to Moscowitz and Silverman. An obliging smile played on the captain’s face as he summoned a waiter to extract the pair from the tank.

“This is the last straw!” Moscowitz cried, bracing himself for the consummate outrage. “To swindle me out of my life’s savings and then to nosh me in butter sauce! What kind of universe is this?”

Moscowitz and Silverman, their ire reaching cosmic dimensions, rocked the tank to and fro until it toppled off its table, smashing its glass walls and flooding the hexagonal-tile floor. Heads turned as the alarmed captain looked on in stunned disbelief. Bent on vengeance, the two lobsters scuttled swiftly after Madoff. They reached his table in an instant, and Silverman went for his ankle. Moscowitz, summoning the strength of a madman, leaped from the floor and with one giant pincer took firm hold of Madoff’s nose. Screaming with pain, the gray-haired con artist hopped from the chair as Silverman strangled his instep with both claws. Patrons could not believe their eyes as they recognized Madoff, and began to cheer the lobsters.

“This is for the widows and charities!” yelled Moscowitz. “Thanks to you, Hatikvah Hospital is now a skating rink!”

Madoff, unable to free himself from the two Atlantic denizens, bolted from the restaurant and fled yelping into traffic. When Moscowitz tightened his viselike grip on his septum and Silverman tore through his shoe, they persuaded the oily scammer to plead guilty and apologize for his monumental hustle.

By the end of the day, Madoff was in Lenox Hill Hospital, awash in welts and abrasions. The two renegade main courses, their rage slaked, had just enough strength left to flop away into the cold, deep waters of Sheepshead Bay, where, if I’m not mistaken, Moscowitz lives to this day with Yetta Belkin, whom he recognized from shopping at Fairway. In life she had always resembled a flounder, and after her fatal plane crash she came back as one.

From ISKCON News Weekly

Performing at ISKCON’s annual Festival of Inspiration this May for the seventh time in a row, professional comedian Yadunath Dasa is a ball of energy and edgy humor. His distinctive New Jersey accent booms out over the sound system as he simultaneously plays on the audience’s familiarity with internal ISKCON quirks and throws them unexpected curveballs, plunging them into waves of hysterical laughter.

Perhaps misguidedly, I expect to interview the same character—someone loud, gregarious, and delivering an incessant flow of punchlines.

What I get is a Yadunath who looks the same as he does onstage—small and wiry, smiley, and at 47, possessed of eternally youthful features. But this man is also thoughtful, almost quiet, careful in his answers and very genuine, both in his general attitude and in the depth of his feelings for spiritual life. “When I’m on stage, I have no qualms about being ‘big,’” he says. “But it’s a little uncomfortable for me when people want me to perform offstage too. Sometimes devotees will say stuff like, “I’m not letting you past here unless you tell me a joke.” I usually tense up when that happens, because I don’t have any back-pocket stuff. I don’t really tell jokes, like ‘a Hare Krishna and a Buddhist walk into a bar.’”

Born Joe DeGise II in New Jersey, where he still lives, Yadunath started his theater career early, putting on shows for his grandparents…

Read complete article here

"Anyone who has any desire or aspiration for satisfying his senses by becoming more and more important, either in the material sense or in the spiritual sense, cannot actually relish the really sweet taste of devotional service."(NOD p. 33) As devotees we strive to uproot the desire for fame and distinction but paradoxically, as devotees, we generally take as many opportunities to serve, appreciate and indeed glorify the service of other devotees. So naturally it is important that such glorification is appropriate, in so far as who it is directed to.

Diary of a Traveling Sadhaka, Vol. 5, No. 9a
By Krishna-kripa das
(May 2009, part one, section a)
Antwerp, Munich, Zurich, Bern, and Langenthal
(Sent from Antwerp, Belgium, on 6/1/09)

Highlights
Spiritual Encounters
Harinamas in Munich and Switzerland
Personal Reflection
Insights from Sacinandana Swami, Kadamba Kanana Swami, and Navina Nirada Prabhu

Where I Am and What I Am Doing

After Queen’s Day, we did harinama with five devotees headed by Yadunandana Swami in a square in Antwerp, Belgium, on two consecutive days. Then I returned to Amsterdam, where Dhananjaya Prabhu engaged me in giving the Sunday lecture on the “lamp in a windless place” verse in Bhagavad-gita to their packed little temple. Earlier I went out on harinama by myself on that gray day with sporadic rain. Eager to attend a public sankirtana program with Sacinandana Swami in Munich and the Nrsimha festival at Simachalam, I spent an hour finding a flight for just 55 euros from Brussels on Brussels Airlines for the following day. After a great five-hour harinama in Munich, we went to Simhachalam for the Nrsimha festival which I describe in a separate issue. Kadambda Kanana Swami suggested I go to Zurich, and I got a ride there with devotees from the festival. I did harinamas there and in Bern and Langenthal while on my first trip to Switzerland as a devotee, which turned out to be a very pleasant experience because of the friendliness of the devotees.

I talked to one photography student who asked permission to photograph our party in Antwerp, Belgium, and proceed to take many pictures. When I heard his assignment was to take pictures that give evidence of devotion, I smiled thinking how nicely Krishna arranged for him to stumble across the harinama party that day. He was excited as his other pictures were of the local Catholics, and he was glad to include other traditions as well.

I met three families from Nepal who had moved to Antwerp, one at the temple and one on each harinama. So many encounters with people from a single country was a surprise for me.

I also talked to a local Belgian who has been attending different religious services, including Hare Krishna ones, for years. The man likes Krishna consciousness because the programs include a spiritual service, socializing, and good food, while others often leave one with unfulfilled needs. As we talked, he mentioned that each Belgian province maintains one psychiatrist specifically assigned to counsel priests whose minds are troubling them, often with feelings of loneliness. Later I mentioned that to Lokanath Swami who used it in Srimad-Bhagavatam class as an example of the degradation of the age. Formerly, when the varnasrama social system was functioning, the religious leaders would give counsel to the governmental leaders, but now the government is making arrangements to counsel the religious leaders because of their lack of realization.

Harinama in Munich


Sacinandana Swami chants for Four Hours in Munich

The devotees set up a stage and a couple booths at Karlsplatz, a fairly crowded downtown square.

During most of the program, at least thirty and sometimes as many as seventy people stood, watching with curiosity, about half of them taking invitations. Some of the people bought books, danced with us, and took some Ekadasi prasadam. There was also face painting and hand painting. When the devotees dance, Sacinandana Swami observed, the people in general are more inclined to stay.

Between songs Sacinandana Swami would speak, and during the lecture the crowd would even increase. The weather was cold and windy, but despite that, many people participated. The devotees in Munich, headed by Doyal Gauranga Prabhu, have such programs every two weeks. Come sometime and add your enthusiasm.
[For more pictures of Sacinandana Swami in Munich, click here.]

Of the seven days, I spent Switzerland, I did harinama on six of them, twice going out alone. In Zurich, a harinama counts as a demonstration and requires special permission, but it is possible to sit down by the lake, a favorite place for people to take a stroll, and to chant bhajanas there. I went with temple president Krishna Prema Rupa Prabhu and two book distributors, Bhaktas Dirk and Martin. Krishna tested our determination by making it rain just as we began to set up. I suggested that we chant in the van for fifteen minutes and see how the weather looked. The storm came and left, and the so we got out and chanted for two hours. One man obviously liked us as he spent practically the whole time nearby. A middle-aged woman looked at us with a big smile for sometime and one of the sankirtana devotees in our party sold her a Science of Self-Realization. Then she sat on a nearby bench to continue to listen.

One little girl and her grandmother stopped for quite a while. The grandmother asked the girl if she wanted to go several times, but she just wanted to stay and watch and listen. She told a devotee that the whole day the girl had been wanting to return to her mother, but now she just wanted to stay and listen to the Krishna music. The grandmother gave the girl a 10 Swiss franc ($9) donation to give us.

Devotees based in Langenthal chant in Bern every Wednesday and have a public program at Good Day, a small storefront Indian import shop owned by a friend of the devotees. Bern is a center for alternative people in Switzerland. Bern’s regulation is that two musicians can play for half an hour at a single spot but then must move on. We had five persons for an hour at a time before we changed locations but it was not a problem. At one point a little boy and his mother watched for sometime, and Dirk, who is number three among the European book distributors, talked to the mother. Apparently she had decided the night before that she wanted to get into the philosophy of yoga and even made a prayer about it. Thus she was very happy to meet the devotees, and bought two books.

At the evening program, there were a couple young devotee ladies who love to sing. One of them, Radha Govinda Dasi, has a program every Friday there in Bern, and she invited me to give the lecture. I stayed overnight in Bern with the book distributors from Zurich and the prasadam distributors from Langenthal and did harinama by myself for three hours the next day. I passed out a few invitations and collected 15 Swiss francs, but I did not get a chance to talk with anyone. The devotee we stayed with invited me to move there and do harinama fulltime. At this point, I am not thinking of sticking in one place, and if I did, it would not be in a cold climate!

Radha Govinda’s attendees had some commitment to spiritual life, and to kirtana, which they all seemed rather absorbed in. One young man sang the Gaura arati song playing a guitar. She gets from three to fifteen people at her program each Friday.

We had a half hour harinama in Langenthal (Long Valley), about 40 km from Bern, where the devotees bought a sizeable building for a temple. Bhaktin Sobina, the other lady who likes to sing, did a good job playing my small accordion.

Sunday is lively in Zurich temple with two Sunday feast programs, one for the Tamil community, mostly refugees from Sri Lanka, and another for the Swiss, a japa class, an evening arati and two hours of bhajanas often by Madhava, a talented and popular Vaishnava youth with a friendly and encouraging disposition.

One recurrent theme in different lectures I heard recently is that we should find some way we can contribute to Srila Prabhupada’s movement. I proposed to Kadamba Kanana Swami that I try to serve by traveling and endeavoring to increase the faith of the devotees, especially in the holy name and in Srila Prabhupada’s teachings in general. Kadamba Kanana Swami liked the idea. He said that with the fall of many gurus in the 1980s, there was general lack of faith among the devotees, and that the current problems existing in many temples were symptoms of the lack of faith. He cited The Nectar of Devotion as differentiating between the three classes of devotees based on degrees of faith, and that advanced devotees were simply those with more faith. I reflected that recently I had given three classes on the holy name, with many excellent quotes by the previous acaryas, and that lectures like that can help to build faith. I also have encountered many examples from my travels showing the power of Krishna prasadam and the holy name. It is an exciting direction for me, and I attribute the breakthrough in finding a place in our society due to the association of Kadamba Kanana Swami, a very serious, practical, and compassionate devotee. He is like my guru for European preaching, and my activities here are going on under his direction. It is always useful to work under the direction of an authority. By Krishna’s grace, my encounter with him in Zurich is the third time in my three and a half week stay in Europe thus far. Last year our paths crossed five times during the six months I spent in Europe.

Insight from Lectures

Caitanya Mahaprabhu blessed new people, “Krishna matir astu.” [May you become Krishna consciousness.] He blessed experienced devotees , “Krishna matir rahu.” [May you remain Krishna consciousness].

The heart of a Vaishnava is not just a pump but a resting place for Govinda.

Srila Prabhupada said that some of his followers had met Lord Caitanya when the Lord was personally present.

Prabhupada told a group of lawyers, “You have to understand that everything belongs to Krishna and nothing belongs any of us.” How do we understand that nothing belongs to us? Because we cannot take anything with us.

To illustrate this point, Sacinandana Swami told the story of the tailor and the millionaire. A dying tailor gives his son a needle and whispers something in his ear when he leaves this world. When it came time for the millionaire to also leave this world, the tailor’s son approached him, saying my father left this world just last year. He wanted you to take his favorite needle with you and give it to him. The millionaire said, “Yes, of course.” Then he began to reflect on how he could carry the needle with him to the other side of death. After sometime it suddenly occurred to him, “Nobody takes anything with him.” He asked a sadhu if there is anything that we can take with us to the next world. The sadhu said, “Your actions.” Thus with his few remaining days he performed many good deeds with his wealth and left this world a very satisfied man. The result of our actions is all we can take with us. So if we really want to become rich, we must perform many nice devotional activities now.

Should the spiritual master be just obeyed or be really satisfied in the heart? To catch his heart is something that is complete different from mere obedience. We have to do something more. And the same is true with Krishna. Krishna does not give the same with each one, but according to His mood. We have to individually satisfy the guru. It may not be enough to just to the standard duties. The guru may want more from us. The attitude of the gopis and sakhas are all based on service, dasyam. Kinkara means personal servant of guru or Krishna. This means you do what he likes. Generally you offer anything vegetarian to Krishna, but practically to please Krishna we offer him certain foods at certain times. The mentality to personally serve is higher mentality. If you serve the guru in this way, you will please Krishna.

Prabhupada’s guru told him to preach in English. Prabhupada understood he should actually go the West, and furthermore, he preached, through translators, in many, many other languages, all beyond the guru’s original order.

Srila Prabhupada said to a disciple, “I am waiting six hundred lives for you to become really sincere.”

Some disciples, erroneously do not keep their commitments to their guru, thinking after so many years and life changes, they are not applicable. If we let the guru’s instructions remain in our heart, we will be attracted back to the path of devotion. The guru is eternal, past, present, and future, and so it is not that we select a guru, but Krishna reveals our guru. The guru remembers his commitment to deliver his disciples, although serving Krishna intimately back in the spiritual world. He is still personally working in the life of his disciples. Prabhupada, through his murti and books, is still present.

Kadamba Kanana Swami:

It is more difficult to fix the mind on the holy name than to pick a bar of soap that slips out of hand in the shower. Many people propose different techniques, but my realization is that the more we hear about Krishna, the more we will feel like chanting his holy name.

Krishna is very pleasant in his dealings, even in his chastisement of Kaliya, he spoke so politely to him.

If we hear of the qualities of Krishna, we become attracted to Him, and then we will want chant his name.

How long can you hear? Therefore have to become creative. Sometimes Lord Caitanya and associates would have spontaneous plays, enacting Krishna’s pastimes. Culture is necessary.

We make Krishna consciousness difficult for us by doing everything in the same way every day. Jagannatha has sixty festivals a year. That is more than once a week.

Krishna consciousness is a cultural conquest.

We talk about how all results of spiritual activities increase our spiritual bank account. This is based on Krishna’s statement nehabikrama-naso ’sti . . . In this endeavor there is no loss or diminution, and a little advancement on this path can protect one from the most dangerous type of fear.” (Bg. 2.40) But I always wondered about the interest. Then I read in The Nectar of Devotion that Krishna said, “When I was away from Draupadi, she cried with the words, ‘He Govinda!’ This call for Me has put Me in her debt, and that indebtedness is gradually increasing in My heart!” Then I thought, “Eureka! That’s the interest!” Now the question is, how much is the interest? The answer is infinite. That is because Krishna is eternal. Therefore, Krishna consciousness is the best investment, and therefore I am eager to invest. How about you?

How long can you maintain if Krishna consciousness is unnatural? With this large temple facility we can do so many things, dramas, retreats, etc. Our problem is that the Deity is transcendental, Srila Prabhupada is transcendental, the temple is transcendental, but unfortunately I am not transcendental, so I cannot appreciate! We have to find a situation in which we feel satisfied.

Personal darshan with Kadamba Kanana Swami:

Fifty years old means time to invest in the next life. Not this one. That is what vanaprastha life is all about. That makes perfect sense. There is no sense in getting married at fifty. That means you are still investing in this life.

Kadamba Kanana Swami in Zurich:

Q: If I want to invite to someone to my home, is there a good way to introduce Krishna consciousness to them?
A: Giving them prasadam is a good thing. Coming to a temple is a big thing for some person, but perhaps they will go to a restaurant. Sometimes, if someone is interested in you, they will become interested in Krishna consciousness because you are. Pictures in your home may be attractive. That we cannot do this and that, but we are still happy, that generates inquiry. 

Q: A sannyasi, according to Srimad-Bhagavatam, stays at a householder for long enough to milk a cow. In ISKCON a sannyasi might rather read the Bhagavatam but some grhasthas are inviting him for pizza. What about this?
A: According to the sastra, the sannyasis have no such social obiligations, although due to affection for the householders, they may fulfill their desires in pursuit of developing spiritual relationships. It is important that we give sannyasis the time to really be sannyasis and not entangled in management or social obligations.

I have a friend who is distributes books and does congregational preaching in Italy. He had been corresponding for years with one industrialist who once took some books. After some time the businessman showed some interest in inquiring about spiritual life. The devotee asked what induced him to become more interested. The man said that all the letters the devotee wrote were signed “Your servant,” and nobody else signs letters like that.

---

etam sa asthaya paratma-nistham
adhyasitam purvatamair maharsibhih
aham tarisyami duranta-param
tamo mukundanghri-niseveayaiva

“I shall cross over the insurmountable ocean of nescience by being firmly fixed in the service of the lotus feet of Krishna. This was approved by the previous acaryas, who were fixed in firm devotion to the Lord, Paramatma, the Supreme Personality of Godhead.” (Srimad-Bhagavatam 11.23.57)

‘It was a different experience for us. We have been visiting Mayapur regularly but we could really understand what Mayapur is after attending this program”, expressed a life member. Around 280 life members attended a two days conference in Mayapur. HG Bhadracharu prabhu and HG Sridhama Govinda Prabhu under the guidance of HH Bhakti Purusottama Swami has organized variety programs which included special Bhagavatam lectures by Maharaja, question and answer session, Srila Prabhupada’s life and achievements, teachings of Lord Caitanya Mahaprabhu,

read more

In the purport to a Srimad Bhagavatam verse (1.10.5) Srila Prabhupada indirectly supports the activists whose protests in Genoa gained worldwide renown when Italian police killed one of their number. He writes, "The artificial way of living depending on factories and tools can render so-called happiness only to a limited number at the cost of millions."

"Eddie McGuire flies to Baghdad to watch a young Iraqi play aussie rules football and is suitably impressed and arranges for him to come over to Collingwood. He's signed to a one-year contract and the kid joins the team for the pre-season.

Two weeks later the magpies are down by 6 goals to Carlton with only 10 minutes left. The coach gives the young Iraqi the nod and he goes in. The kid is a sensation - kicks 7 goals in 10 minutes and wins the game for the magpies!

The fans are thrilled, the players and coaches are delighted, and the media are in love with the new star.

When the player comes off the ground he phones his mum to tell her about his first day of AFL.

'Hello mum, guess what?' he says. 'I played for 10 minutes today, we were 6 goals down, but I kicked 7 goals and we won. Everybody loves me, the fans, the media...

'Wonderful,' says his mum, 'Let me tell you about my day. Your father got shot in the street and robbed, your sister and I were ambushed, raped and beaten, and your brother has joined a gang of looters, and all the while you were having such a great time.'

The young Iraqi is very upset. 'What can I say mum, I'm so sorry.'

'Sorry? You're sorry?' says his mum, 'It's your fault we moved to Collingwood in the first place!'"

Dear devotees and friends,

Please accept my best wishes. All glories to Srila Prabhupada.

I am writing to you from Tomsk, in West Siberia. It’s a university city, and the leader here, Carudesna prabhu, has very effective programmes going on with the students. Therefore the preaching is very nice.

I last wrote about 10 days ago from Abakan, on the way to Kizil, near the border with Mongolia and Kazakhstan.

We travelled there in a car with the leading preacher of the area, Vidyanidhi prabhu, and my translator Subala, and Vidyanidhi was explaining about the area we were going into. His English is about on the same level as
my Russian, and has been for years, and as he explained things to me I was also understanding some of the difficulties of dabbling in a foreign language and not really learning it properly.

As he talked about one particular place he looked me in the eyes with a straight face and told me “there was a big bottle there.” My mind went into a minor spin. “Wow! A big bottle! How big would a bottle have to be that the place it came from would become famous for it? Big enough to walk into?”

But then, seeing my surprise, he asked Subala what the correct word was, and Subala told him “battle, not bottle!” There had apparently been some major military conflict there hundreds of years ago. That in itself was mildly interesting, but the thing that struck me was how difficult it is to learn a foreign language, where all the words have nothing to do with your native language, and where “battle” might as well be “bottle” as far as you were concerned. Why would it make a difference? But for the speakers of that foreign language it makes the difference between someone making sense and speaking nonsense!

I had an evening off the first night, May 19th, and tried to catch up on some reading and chanting, and then on the 20th evening we had a programme in a cultural hall. There were about 100 or so people there, most of them new to Krishna consciousness, so we tried to adapt things to them as much as possible. They seemed to like it, and at the end some of them danced in the kirtana.

The next morning we drove on to Kizil, which is the capital of the Tuva Republic. When the Russian empire spread out eastwards from Moscow about 350 years ago, they annexed whatever civilizations were in their way, and in this part of the world that meant parts of the former Mongolia. What is left of Mongolia on the map is just perhaps half of what it used to be. The rest is now part of Russia.

In the Communist times they gave these areas a semblance of independence by declaring them “Autonomous Republics” and letting them govern themselves to some degree. Of course, if they didn’t do what Moscow told them to do then they were unceremoniously crushed and people more co-operative with the Communist regime were put in charge.

We drove through a beautiful mountain range called the Sayani Mountains, and found to our surprise that even though the outside temperature that day was about 20 degrees C, still the snow was not melting so much. It was quite unusual to be outside in a kurta, feeling pleasantly warm, but completely surrounded by snow.

On the way we stopped for a short break near the place that a person formerly hoping to become the Russian State President died. His name was Lebed, and some years ago he was featured in Time magazine as the likely successor to then-President Yeltsin. However one day in winter he was flying through the Sayani Mts in a helicopter in very rough conditions, and they hit the power pylons running over the mountains, and he died in the crash. There’s a small monument to him at the side of the road there.

He was known to be very hateful towards devotees, and had apparently vowed that if he came to power he would destroy the Hare Krishna movement. Krishna doesn’t like it if people talk like that, and I think it caught up with him after a while.

As we entered the “republic” we were stopped by the local police at their border checkpoint, and they looked at me, dressed in Vaisnava clothes, and asked our driver “is he the guru?” They are Buddhist people and know certain of the Vedic traditions and terms.

Just before Kizil we were met by some of the local devotees, with a traditional Tuva welcome. One of the devotee ladies was dressed in the national dress, and she came forward and offered us each a cup of warm milk - this is apparently a local tradition! Then we were garlanded and taken to our luxury hotel.

As in many places in the former Soviet Union, in Kizil we don’t have a proper centre, so we held our programmes with the local devotees in a small conference hall in the hotel. Unfortunately we had to keep the kirtanas somewhat quiet, but still everything went very nicely. We talked about Lord Caitanya and how He went through the Jarikhanda forest and made the animals devotees, and how we should now try to make people Krishna conscious and continue the parampara line under Srila Prabhupada.

Caitanya-caritamrita says:

keha yadi tanra mukhe sune krsna-nama
tanra mukhe ana sune tanra mukhe ana
sabe ‘krsna’ ‘hari’ bali’ nace, kande, hase
paramparaya ‘vaisnava’ ha-ila sarva dese

When someone heard the chanting of the holy name from the mouth of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu, and someone else heard this chanting from that second person, and someone again heard this chanting from the third person, everyone in all countries became a Vaisnava through such disciplic succession. Thus everyone chanted the holy name of Krsna and Hari, and they danced, cried and smiled.

In his purport Srila Prabhupada says: “The transcendental potency of the Hare Krsna maha-mantra is herein explained. First, the holy name is vibrated by Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu. When someone hears from Him directly, he is purified. When another person hears from that person, he also is purified. In this way the purification process is advanced among pure devotees. Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu is the Supreme Personality of Godhead, and no one can claim His potency. Nonetheless, if one is a pure devotee, hundreds and thousands of men can be purified by his vibration. This potency is within every living being, provided he chants the Hare Krsna maha-mantra offenselessly and without material motives. When a pure devotee chants
offenselessly, another person will become a Vaisnava, and from him another Vaisnava will emerge. This is the parampara system.” (Caitanya-caritamrita Madhya Lila 17.48-49)

I tried to impress on the devotees the importance of spreading Krishna consciousness, and not just being satisfied with being a small group. Because of the Buddhist background of the majority of people there they have a natural affinity for Vedic culture. One lady just walked up to me and asked me to pray for her daughter, and I was approached by a number of other people for blessings. Some of the hotel staff came to our room and asked for blessings. It was quite an amazing experience. My conclusion was that this is a very ripe place for spreading Krishna consciousness.

Geographically, Kizil is the centre of Asia, and we visited the exact place, just down the road from the hotel. We also visited the main Buddhist temple, which was Quite unimpressive, and then went to Beaver Springs, a part of the local riverbank where water is coming out of the ground in numerous places. Although most of the people are Buddhist, some of them still follow the earlier religious practices of the area, from before the time of Buddha. This culture is called Shamanism, and is arguably more Vedic in nature, focusing on nature spirits and the ancestors and so on. Somehow beavers are sacred in the Shaman culture, and they were previously worshipped at this place.

Subala, Vidyanidhi and I then flew on the 22nd of May back from Kizil to Krasnoyarsk, and we did a programme for the congregation, in a hall, on Saturday afternoon, the 23rd. At the end  of it we had a good kirtana, and Subala told me “we haven’t had a kirtana like that here for years.”

That night he and I took the train to Novosibirsk, arriving there in time for the Sunday programme on the 24th. The weather was almost sub-zero when we arrived, but there was a very nice group of young devotees waiting for us at the railway station.

Novosibirsk is the 3rd or 4th largest city in Russia, with a population of more than 2 million, and there is a fairly large devotee community there. There used to be a temple, but the former Temple President rejected ISKCON leadership some years ago, and is now totally separate from Srila Prabhupada’s movement, so the devotees have not had a centre since then.

But now they are renting a building near the centre of the city, so we had our programmes there. On Wednesday May 27th I went with Svarupa Damodara, my West Siberian translator and Vaisnava Prana, a senior disciple of mine there, to Vaisnava Prana’s dacha for a bania, or Russian sauna. A dacha is a Russian summer garden cottage, and they are immensely popular. Practically every family has one, and Vaisnava Prana’s is one of the best.

The bania is right next to a small river, and in between doses of torture (pitka in Russian) in the bania, which was 95 degrees C, we were meant to dive in the river. I tested the water and it was so cold that it was practically sub-zero, so I didn’t bother swimming. However, right at the end Vaisnava Prana was almost insisting I went in, so I did, and came out gasping with cold. Maybe it’s good for the health (?). I don’t know how it could be though.

That night at the centre there was the 21st birthday celebration for Bhaktin Gaurangi, an aspiring disciple of mine who has been a devotee almost all her life. She’s a tower of strength among the your devotees in Novosibirsk, and has got all the girls dancing very beautifully, as is the style in many parts of Russia. By contrast, many of the men seem to more or less just stand there in the kirtana, and just a few of them really get into the dancing. By her enthusiasm and sincerity, Gaurangi has brought a number of young women into Krishna consciousness, and it just shows how important leadership is in spreading the Krishna consciousness movement.

Then on May 28th we drove to Tomsk, where we are now, and we’ve had a couple of programmes in the devotees’ centre there. This afternoon we’ll have a public programme in a hall, and some new people are expected. I’ll let you know how it goes shortly.

Hoping this meets you well.

Your servant,

Bhakti Caitanya Swami

The spiritual body is developed through the practice of Krishna consciousness. This material body is spiritualized by this bhakti‑yoga process. If you place an iron within fire, the iron becomes so hot that it also becomes fiery. When the iron is red hot, it acquires all the qualities of fire. If you touch something with that iron, that iron will act as fire. Similarly, although this body is material, it can become spiritualized through Krishna consciousness and act as spirit.

Beginning japa in the morning is like waking from the dead. You feel like a zombie until you begin your morning prayers. They are so important. It’s like being underwater without air until you start them. As you chant, you come to life again. I’m glad it’s this way. Chanting has become such an important part of my life.....I’m happy to be chanting and to be alive in the holy names. There is nothing so refreshing and life-giving as chanting the maha-mantra. I feel like I’m a good person, obeying the parampara and obeying Srila Prabhupada. I don’t feel foreign to it; I feel I’m in my element.

What has been shocking is the host of liberals--and ex-leftists like Christopher Hitchens--who have rallied to cause of empire, swallowing hook, line and sinker U.S. claims of humanitarian motives for imperial war. . ."

Although this article is about socialism, not atheism, it is interesting that the author mentions Christopher Hitchens, as her example of a liberal who supports the imperialism of the United States. (Check out the rest of the article here.)

As Chris Hedges points out, that is why there isn't any fundamental difference between the atheists fundamentalists and the Christian fundamentalists.

"The secular utopians, like Christian Fundamentalists, are stunted products of a self-satisfied, materialistic middle class. They seek in their philosophical systems a moral justification for their own comfort, self-absorption, and power. They do not question the imperial projects of the nation, globalization or the vast disparities in wealth and security between themselves, as members of the world's industrialized elite, and the rest of the human race."

Most találtam egy vicces bhakta komédia videót, amit Új Vridabanban, Yadunatha prabhu tartott. Angol tudás szükséges hozzá, de nekem nagyon bejött

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.

Each Saturday we have a special night, which we call “Krishnafest”. We do kirtan, singing sacred mantras to musical accompaniment, talk, hang out, and have dinner together. It’s a really nice evening, and with winter setting in it’s nice to sit around the potbelly stove in our lounge room.

Here’s a video of a recent evening:

Come along and enjoy the evening.

If we look, we can find the principle of yukta-vairagya right in the Srimad Bhagavatam and in Srila Prabhupada's speeches and purports.

read more

In the meantime, here's more instalments of the Favourite Kurma Recipe poll. I've hit a rich vein again. Please, all of you who haven't written yet (yes you!!) I want to hear from you soon.

Lajjarani writes "My all time favorite is the Laksa/Curried Malay Noodle soup! So spicy and guests love it. Delicious on day one, and just gets better. It looks complicated with so many ingredients, but cooks up in just over an hour, and works well with substitute ingredients. Thank you so much for putting the recipe out there."

Gaurangi wrote from India to tell me that the Green Curry from my Quick Vegetarian Dishes was her first fave dish, then Sweet and Sour Walnuts and my hearty Barley and Vegetable Soup. She noted that she thought it was mean of me to only ask for three, so she added a fourth: "Potato and Cottage Cheese Rolls with Sour Cream and Cranberry Sauce is really great.. also haven't made it for a while but i feel it may be time to do it again.. right now!! maybe not.. it's 10.30pm.. you have amazing recipes. i love them. we all love them. thanks and well done!"

Radha from Australia also went way over the top with six entries in her top three: "What a question! I've been thinking hard about this and I've decided that there is no one answer, although it's amazing that some of my favourites are already listed out of the hundreds of possibilities. I know what each of my girls would say. The eldest; Palak Panir, middle; Moussaka and youngest Kofta Balls. Of course the most favoured and most often cooked dish for us all is Khichari but then what about desserts? The Almond Fudge is to die for and what birthday is complete without Carob Fudge Cake? Well I've narrowed it down to a few .. does that help ??". Yes, it certainly does, Radha. Thank you.

Vaidhi Bhakti's response was short and sweet: Carob Cake, Matar Panir and Mango Lassi.

On the other hand, Valerie from Cape Town wrote a weighty tome which I reproduce in full: "Hello Kurma, years ago, before I could get married, my mother-in-law (unbelievable as it may seem) gave me one of your books as a gift. She owned a copy of Great Vegetarian Dishes and when I would visit her I would sit and browse through the book for ages. Little did she know that she would change my life for ever. My husband always tells me that if I couldnt cook, well...he wouldn't be my husband. So thank you for your incredible recipes.

Like many others, I found it very difficult to narrow down my favourite recipes to only three (let alone one). So I figured that I could list the ones that I am requested to make more regularly:

1. Rasam. This is by far the recipe I make the most often, probably twice a week, sometimes three times. I had to come up with a quicker way of cooking it because at times my husband sudddenly decides that he`d like some hot rasam dal, so I use my faithful pressure cooker to accelerate the process.

2. Vegatables au Gratin Need I say more? ...maybe i could actually... for a long time I wondered why my mother`s vegetable au gratin was always so perfect. Now, mine is also perfect. I serve it with home made soft rolls. parfait!

3. Gobi Kofta There is always chickpea flour in my cupboard because of this recipe. There is only one problem I encounter with this recipe - it is very hard to resist eating the hot kofta balls while I am frying them! So now, I make extra and sometimes I shape them in the form of patties and use them as "burgers" for my husband's lunch. Awesome!

Thank you for truly inspirational cooking. I must add that you Fruit Cake is excellent. I wasn't a fan of anything with dried fruit in it until I made this cake.

Ria and Dick wrote: "The voting from the Kingdom of Belgium has now been tallied!!

1.  Baked Stuffed Cheesy Corn Breads (Enchiladas)

2.  Vegetarian Lasagna

3.  Rainbow Brown Rice

Receiving equally high votes were the Moussaka, Guacamole, Pakoras , Mock Crab Cakes with Thai Peanut and Cucumber Relish, Koftas in Tomato Sauce, and Spinach Filo Triangles (spanakopita). Ria adds that it would have been much easier to list the top 50 choices. We don't think we have ever tried a Kurma recipe that we didn't totally enjoy and that we would ever hesitate to go back to!!".

And finally, for now, well-loved Kurma-blog-stalker Linda admits her favourite three are Stuffed Baked Avocados, Succulent Gujarati Pumpkin, and North Indian Cabbage Salad.

• Stav says that after compressing 100 vocal takes you'll have an idea of how compression works. After doing a few tens I can see the validity of this.
• I figured out how to track to disk with compression in Logic - channel A has your microphone as its input; you route the output of channel A through a bus to the input of channel B, which has a compressor as an insert; then track channel B to disk.
• Tracking to disk with compression will probably not solve clipping problems. The compressor is a digital one - in other words, it will be compressing a clipped signal in the digital domain.
• The best setup would be to have an 8/16-channel analog compressor/limiter in the signal path before the A/D converter, to compress any spikes before they hit the digital domain.
• A multi-band compressor may be a better way to deal with the "predominance of metal", rather than generic EQ. A multi-band compressor can compress the EQ band containing the metal, while leaving the rest of the spectrum uncompressed.
• Fixing things in the mix is the last ditch - far preferable is to fix them in performance. I'll investigate getting lighter cartals, and perhaps not having them play all the time.

This week at Krishnafest I tried a couple of new things.

First of all I used only three mics - a matched pair of Behringer C2s miking the room and a single SM58 on the vocal.

Among other things this miking arrangement is a little more subtle - surreptitious even - and doesn't lead to the room looking like a recording studio.

I'm experimenting with overhead mics at the moment. I put these two mikes on full-sized stands and widely separated to give a wide stereo panorama. In the mix they are panned hard left and right.

I've put compression on them because the of the "power of metal" - cartals and chimpta cause massive spikes. In order to keep those spikes within dynamic range without compression we'd have to turn the room mics down so much that you wouldn't get any singing. I could have played with the EQ to reduce them, but I'll leave that for next time.

I also experimented with a different recording device. Rather than use the BR-1600CD I used my 2005 ibook with a Presonus FireTube Studio interface. The FireTube Studio is a 8 channel mic preamp with a firewire interface. Two of the mic preamps have a 12AX7 tube stage. I put the vocal SM58 through a tube (english: valve) and the room mics through transistor-only preamps.

The ibook struggled with this. Its CPU is at the low-end of compatibility (it's a 1.33GHz G4), and there are pops and clicks due to it dropping frames. In the kirtan you don't notice so much, but in the discussion / class, which I also recorded, you can hear it.

I am going to try using the Presonus with my Dell laptop, which is a 2007 model and has a more powerful processor in it (2.4GHz dual core, I think).

The advantage of using the Presonus is that I don't have to spend ages transferring data from the BR-1600 via USB, then manually split up the files.

I didn't get to ride the faders, so the levels are not optimal. I put the SM58 signal through my Roland Street cube (the small amp we use for harinam), and there is some feedback that I didn't hear on the night - the placement was not optimal at all. Still, it came out OK, and shows that this minimalist recording format has potential.

Here's a 5 minute sampler of a couple of kirtans from the night:

• 30 May Kirtan Megamix (mp3, 7MB)

Here's a recording of the impromptu Bhagavad-gita exposition that I gave before dinner:

• Krishnafest Bhagavad-gita discussion (mp3, 17MB)

The room mics picked up everyone else quite nicely.

It was a nice night. We lit the fire for the first time this year, and it was nice and toasty.

I have a five minute video that I shot of the evening, showing people talking before the kirtan started, some kirtan, then dinner aftewards. When it's finished uploading I'll add it to this post. Next week I am going to try to have a live webcam during kirtan.

With “barbecue season” officially here, Molly´s story is a gentle reminder that the animals on our plates were once inquisitive individuals who valued their lives, solved problems, formed friendships and experienced fear and pain—just as we do. And it´s also a good reason to skip the hamburger patties and grill up delicious veggie burgers instead.

Molly gained fame earlier this month when she broke through a fence at a slaughterhouse in Queens, N.Y., and made a bold dash for freedom. She led slaughterhouse workers and police on a mile-long chase through city streets before she was finally caught.

Her chutzpah paid off. Instead of being taken back to the slaughterhouse, Molly was turned over to local animal-care workers. Now Molly has a new home (a 60-acre organic farm on Long Island) and a new “boyfriend” (a steer on the farm named Wexley).

Most importantly, she no longer has to worry about ending up as somebody´s burger. Connie Farr, who owns the Long Island “Farrm” with her husband, Rex, told the New York Post, “I´m a vegetarian. No one will be food on my farm.”

One cow saved—only 40 million to go.

Cows are intelligent and curious animals who form social hierarchies, can recognize more than 100 members of their herd, have best friends and cliques and even hold grudges.

When they are separated from their families or friends, cows grieve deeply, especially mother cows for their calves. Author Oliver Sacks, M.D., wrote of a visit that he and cattle expert Dr. Temple Grandin made to a dairy farm. Earlier in the day, the calves had been taken away from their mothers. “We saw one cow outside the stockade, roaming, looking for her calf, and bellowing,” Sacks wrote. “She wants her baby,” Dr. Grandin told him. This sad scene is repeated regularly on dairy farms across the country.

Mother hens also care deeply for their babies. A mother hen will turn her eggs as many as five times an hour and cluck soothingly to her unborn chicks.

Even fish—who are slaughtered by the billions with little regard for their suffering—are smart, complex animals with impressive long-term memories and sophisticated social structures. Scientists at Stanford University say that fish have the reasoning capacity of small children. Other researchers have found that fish feel fear when they are being chased and that they do feel pain, as all animals do.

Before firing up the grill at your next cookout, please give a thought to Molly the cow, Mary the hen and the many nameless animals who are killed for food every year without ever being known to us. It might make hamburgers and chicken legs a bit harder to swallow—but then, that´s the point.

Paula Moore is a research specialist for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), 501 Front St., Norfolk, VA 23510; www.PETA.org.