After spending a blissful week in Charlotte, churning thought-provoking topics every evening in home programs attended by keen and inquisitive devotees, I moved on to New Vrindavan - one of our famous and historic projects within ISKCON.
Srila Prabhupada had visited here several times, encouraging the devotees to establish a rural community on the basis of "simple living high thinking". And in order to glorify our beloved Srila Prabhupada, they had built a beautiful Palace of Gold for him, which has now become a popular tourist attraction, bringing so many people in contact with Krishna consciousness.
Srila Prabhupada had visited here several times, encouraging the devotees to establish a rural community on the basis of "simple living high thinking". And in order to glorify our beloved Srila Prabhupada, they had built a beautiful Palace of Gold for him, which has now become a popular tourist attraction, bringing so many people in contact with Krishna consciousness.
Please watch the following video:
The temple room has several altars with Deities Who used to be worshiped in different temples around the property. Some years ago this community was the home of around 800 devotees, and there had been several places of worship. Now, all the Deities had moved to the main temple room: Lord Nrsimhadeva, Lord Jagannath, Baladev and Subhadra, the six Goswamis, Gaur Nitai, beautiful Sri Sri Radha Vrindaban Chandra, and Sri Gopalnathji.
The following video gives insights into this unique project and its history:
The following video gives insights into this unique project and its history:
Since my last visit 6 years ago, the devotees have developed the project further, and every weekend many devotees and guests are visiting to have an enlightening experience. The visitors are offered numerous engagements, programs and tours around the property in order to expose them as much as possible to Krishna consciousness.
For my visit, the devotees had announced a "Week of Wisdom" and kept me very busy requesting me to offer two programs almost every day. I felt enlivened to give myself in serving the devotees who were so eagerly reciprocating in loving exchanges.
A popular and intriguing topic was the discussion on the false ego - our constant companion and troublemaker. In this regard, Vaishnava etiquette and culture is always our saving grace. It is Krishna’s system to protect us from so many traps along our journey back home. Krishna offers us these guidelines as a kind of crutch to gradually help us move forward. Thus we can establish humble patterns of behaviour, giving up those driven by ambition and the desire to be recognised and glorified. In the Srimad-Bhagavatam (3.15.18), we hear about the atmosphere in the spiritual world:
"When the king of bees hums in a high pitch, singing the glories of the Lord, there is a temporary lull in the noise of the pigeon, the cuckoo, the crane, the chakravaka, the swan, the parrot, the partridge and the peacock. Such transcendental birds stop their own singing simply to hear the glories of the Lord."
Srila Prabhupada elaborates further in his purport:
"The special feature of Vaikunthaloka is that there is no question of sense gratification. In the material world even an ass enjoys his sound vibration, but in the Vaikunthas such nice birds as the peacock, the chakravaka and the cuckoo prefer to hear the vibration of the glories of the Lord from the bees. The principles of devotional service, beginning with hearing and chanting, are very prominent in the Vaikuntha world."
In other words, in the spiritual world even the beautifully chirping birds such as the chakravaka, the peacocks and the cuckoos would rather hear the glories of the Lord chanted by the bees, thinking their glorifications to be so much more attractive and beautiful than their own. Those birds prefer to hear from the bees – even though, from a material point of view, their humming is not such an enlivening sound. In fact, the singing of those birds is so much more attractive!
A popular and intriguing topic was the discussion on the false ego - our constant companion and troublemaker. In this regard, Vaishnava etiquette and culture is always our saving grace. It is Krishna’s system to protect us from so many traps along our journey back home. Krishna offers us these guidelines as a kind of crutch to gradually help us move forward. Thus we can establish humble patterns of behaviour, giving up those driven by ambition and the desire to be recognised and glorified. In the Srimad-Bhagavatam (3.15.18), we hear about the atmosphere in the spiritual world:
"When the king of bees hums in a high pitch, singing the glories of the Lord, there is a temporary lull in the noise of the pigeon, the cuckoo, the crane, the chakravaka, the swan, the parrot, the partridge and the peacock. Such transcendental birds stop their own singing simply to hear the glories of the Lord."
Srila Prabhupada elaborates further in his purport:
"The special feature of Vaikunthaloka is that there is no question of sense gratification. In the material world even an ass enjoys his sound vibration, but in the Vaikunthas such nice birds as the peacock, the chakravaka and the cuckoo prefer to hear the vibration of the glories of the Lord from the bees. The principles of devotional service, beginning with hearing and chanting, are very prominent in the Vaikuntha world."
In other words, in the spiritual world even the beautifully chirping birds such as the chakravaka, the peacocks and the cuckoos would rather hear the glories of the Lord chanted by the bees, thinking their glorifications to be so much more attractive and beautiful than their own. Those birds prefer to hear from the bees – even though, from a material point of view, their humming is not such an enlivening sound. In fact, the singing of those birds is so much more attractive!
In the material world, however, the mood is a very different one. Here, even a donkey enjoys his own sound vibrations. Although his braying is rather ugly, he thinks, “Everybody has to hear my voice. It is most beautiful!” The atmosphere of the spiritual world is entirely pure – a place devoid of sense gratification. Everybody pushes the other entities to the forefront, happy to keep themselves in the background. There, we derive more pleasure assisting others in pleasing the Lord, rather than pleasing Him directly. This is the mood and aspiration in the spiritual world: becoming dasa-dasanudasa – servant of the servant.
Being in the material world, most of us carry this ass-like conditioning in our heart, thinking our sound to be most beautiful. And the whole world should hear it. After all, the urge to speak and be heard is one of the foremost urges that we have to learn to control. However, in the name of preaching one can very easily feed this urge instead of subduing it.
Therefore, Vaishnava etiquette and culture is designed to help us give up this ass-like conditioning and cultivate true humility, considering ourselves unqualified and worthless. Thus we should not give our little ‘donkey’ a chance to stick up his ugly head, by being so eager to speak or lead kirtan and be heard, but rather wait until we are invited to do so.
The Vaishnava mood is ‘I am unqualified’. And if we are not invited to lead or speak, then we should be happy to serve by hearing from others. On the absolute platform, there is no difference whether we hear or whether we speak. It is all service.
Sometimes, when being introspective, we may detect a certain frustration or disappointment in our hearts when we are not given the chance to lead kirtan at an event. Or we may be very insistent to lead for longer than the time slot allotted to us. When we observe such tendencies within ourselves, an internal alarm bell should go off. It is a very clear sign that our pleasure and satisfaction are not coming from chanting the holy name.
If our joy comes from chanting the holy name, then it will no longer matter to us whether we lead a kirtan or somebody else does. We are simply joyfully chanting. But if we are only satisfied when we lead, we are undeniably running after satisfaction of the ego. As long as we are attached to this gratification, we will not be able to relish the sweet taste of chanting the holy name. Instead, we taste the fruits of self-glorification.
Chanting the holy name is a deep, mysterious science and secret. It is not meant to be a forum to show off our musical expertise or our beautiful voice. We are meant to deeply connect with the Lord by helplessly appealing to Him to accept us and allow us to serve Him and His devotees. Who are we to be so easily accepted by Him? It is not such a cheap thing!
Once we understand the deeper secrets of chanting, we will lose our eagerness to lead. We may realise that it is much easier to connect with the Lord in kirtan when we don’t lead. As long as we have not deeply established our connection with Krishna through attentive and prayerful japa, we may easily be distracted by so many external aspects when leading kirtan: The tune, the instruments, the rhythm, the speed, even the audience may take our attention away from calling out to the Lord. And we may be pre-occupied, wondering what the audience thinks of us or whether they are getting bored with the same tune, and so forth. Consequently, we may decide to allow more advanced and experienced devotees to perform the service of leading kirtan, considering ourselves unqualified.
However, so often that little donkey in our hearts takes over. With burning eagerness we may try to take advantage of the opportunity to grab the microphone, thinking to ourselves, “Now I have an audience! This is my chance to be heard and noticed. Nobody else volunteers, so it looks like I have to do it!” But no, we should not take to the microphone unless we are invited to do so.
In this way, we may not follow proper Vaishnava etiquette – perhaps we are not even aware of these subtle aspects in our culture. We may have never been trained this way, to not show ourselves keen for situations that feed our false ego, nor should we jump at the chance to be in the limelight – on the stage, where everyone will admire us, take photos or videos of us and applaud our performance. We may be excited at the prospect that it will be posted on the Internet for the whole world to see and admire!
While we are in a less advanced stage – and as we become purified, we will understand ourselves to be in a neophyte position – we must carefully avoid such situations because they may poison the cultivation of our bhakti-lata.
Rather than allowing our false ego’s ass-like conditioning to use kirtan for braying, we should focus on praying! Instead of pushing ourselves to the front, we should cultivate the mood of encouraging others around us to step forward. This is the atmosphere in the spiritual world. If we want to enter Krishna’s abode one day, now is the time to develop such a mood, otherwise our presence will create a disturbance and we may not be allowed entrance.
On the 30th of April I flew on to Syracuse/New York
Your servant, Devaki dd
Please visit www.theholynameretreat.net
www.therootsofspiritualculture.net
https://www.facebook.com/instituteforspiritualculture/
Being in the material world, most of us carry this ass-like conditioning in our heart, thinking our sound to be most beautiful. And the whole world should hear it. After all, the urge to speak and be heard is one of the foremost urges that we have to learn to control. However, in the name of preaching one can very easily feed this urge instead of subduing it.
Therefore, Vaishnava etiquette and culture is designed to help us give up this ass-like conditioning and cultivate true humility, considering ourselves unqualified and worthless. Thus we should not give our little ‘donkey’ a chance to stick up his ugly head, by being so eager to speak or lead kirtan and be heard, but rather wait until we are invited to do so.
The Vaishnava mood is ‘I am unqualified’. And if we are not invited to lead or speak, then we should be happy to serve by hearing from others. On the absolute platform, there is no difference whether we hear or whether we speak. It is all service.
Sometimes, when being introspective, we may detect a certain frustration or disappointment in our hearts when we are not given the chance to lead kirtan at an event. Or we may be very insistent to lead for longer than the time slot allotted to us. When we observe such tendencies within ourselves, an internal alarm bell should go off. It is a very clear sign that our pleasure and satisfaction are not coming from chanting the holy name.
If our joy comes from chanting the holy name, then it will no longer matter to us whether we lead a kirtan or somebody else does. We are simply joyfully chanting. But if we are only satisfied when we lead, we are undeniably running after satisfaction of the ego. As long as we are attached to this gratification, we will not be able to relish the sweet taste of chanting the holy name. Instead, we taste the fruits of self-glorification.
Chanting the holy name is a deep, mysterious science and secret. It is not meant to be a forum to show off our musical expertise or our beautiful voice. We are meant to deeply connect with the Lord by helplessly appealing to Him to accept us and allow us to serve Him and His devotees. Who are we to be so easily accepted by Him? It is not such a cheap thing!
Once we understand the deeper secrets of chanting, we will lose our eagerness to lead. We may realise that it is much easier to connect with the Lord in kirtan when we don’t lead. As long as we have not deeply established our connection with Krishna through attentive and prayerful japa, we may easily be distracted by so many external aspects when leading kirtan: The tune, the instruments, the rhythm, the speed, even the audience may take our attention away from calling out to the Lord. And we may be pre-occupied, wondering what the audience thinks of us or whether they are getting bored with the same tune, and so forth. Consequently, we may decide to allow more advanced and experienced devotees to perform the service of leading kirtan, considering ourselves unqualified.
However, so often that little donkey in our hearts takes over. With burning eagerness we may try to take advantage of the opportunity to grab the microphone, thinking to ourselves, “Now I have an audience! This is my chance to be heard and noticed. Nobody else volunteers, so it looks like I have to do it!” But no, we should not take to the microphone unless we are invited to do so.
In this way, we may not follow proper Vaishnava etiquette – perhaps we are not even aware of these subtle aspects in our culture. We may have never been trained this way, to not show ourselves keen for situations that feed our false ego, nor should we jump at the chance to be in the limelight – on the stage, where everyone will admire us, take photos or videos of us and applaud our performance. We may be excited at the prospect that it will be posted on the Internet for the whole world to see and admire!
While we are in a less advanced stage – and as we become purified, we will understand ourselves to be in a neophyte position – we must carefully avoid such situations because they may poison the cultivation of our bhakti-lata.
Rather than allowing our false ego’s ass-like conditioning to use kirtan for braying, we should focus on praying! Instead of pushing ourselves to the front, we should cultivate the mood of encouraging others around us to step forward. This is the atmosphere in the spiritual world. If we want to enter Krishna’s abode one day, now is the time to develop such a mood, otherwise our presence will create a disturbance and we may not be allowed entrance.
On the 30th of April I flew on to Syracuse/New York
Your servant, Devaki dd
Please visit www.theholynameretreat.net
www.therootsofspiritualculture.net
https://www.facebook.com/instituteforspiritualculture/
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