Hare Krishna Society

FROM ARATIS TO BOLLYWOOD TUNES!

Arati Changes in ISKCON

BY: SRIVAS THAKUR DASA

Sampradaya Sun
Jun 01, INDIA (SUN) — It was interesting to read Locanananda prabhu’s article, “Kirtana Guidelines“, about the changes in kirtan in ISKCON. Often times when we go to visit ISKCON temples in India, I am just amazed how devotees sing the Hare Krishna Maha Mantra in all different Bollywood Hindi tunes – so much so that instead of remembering Krishna, we are remembering the Hindi songs of yesteryear before we came to Krishna consciousness.

Apart from kirtan tunes, book changes and a whole lot of other changes since 1977, let’s now add a new change—that is in the way arati is performed in ISKCON temples. At present, pujaris seek the permission of their gurus on the altar and then go to offer it to Radha Krishna, Gaur Nitai, then to the Guru parampara, and then to Srila Prabhupada and their respective guru.

This was not the system taught by Srila Prabhupada, and represents a whole concoction made cleverly after 1977.

Srila Prabhupada taught us how to offer aratis. We are to offer aratis first to Srila Prabhupada and then all the way up to Gaur Nitai and Radha Krishna. Srila Prabhupada emphatically warned us not to make changes after his physical disappearance, but we have boldly made all the changes disregarding His Divine Grace, and are on the threshold to make more changes.

Here are citations from Srila Prabhupada’s letters and lectures, showing what he taught: Continue reading →

Devotee (3): Śrīla Prabhupāda, if after finishing one’s sixteen rounds of the mahā–mantra…

Prabhupāda: Hm?

Devotee (3): … Hare Kṛṣṇa, is it all right to…

Prabhupāda: It is not finished. If you have got time, if, if you haven’t got to do anything else, you can continue, (laughter) sixteen hundred. It is not mechanical: “Now I have finished sixteen rounds, that’s all.” Why sixteen rounds? You chant sixteen hundred rounds. That is minimum, because you cannot concentrate your mind in chanting, you have no attachment for chanting, that is a, a regulative principle. You must. You must finish this. Otherwise, those who are actually attached to the Hare Kṛṣṇa mahā–mantra, that, that Haridāsa Ṭhākura, they are chanting whole day and night. But you cannot imitate that. Your mind is not fixed up. Therefore it is minimum sixteen rounds. Not that “Because minimum sixteen, I cannot chant more.” Why not more? You can chant more, more.

Devotee (3): Śrīla Prabhupāda, after, if, if we chant more than sixteen rounds, can we chant bhaja śrī–kṛṣṇa–caitanya in our japa? Is it all right…

Prabhupāda: No, no, śrī–kṛṣṇa–caitanya is for, in the beginning it is done. Now you go on chanting as much as you can. And if you chant śrī–kṛṣṇa–caitanya that is also very good. There is no prohibition.

Devotee (4): How do we become free of envy?

Prabhupāda: Hm?

Devotee (5): How to become free of envy. How do we become free of envy?

Prabhupāda: Envy?

Devotee (5): Mm.

Prabhupāda: You don’t become envious to your spiritual master. Then you will become free from envy. As soon as you become envious to your spiritual master, then you will…, then begins envious. Chant Hare Kṛṣṇa. Continue reading →

751128SB.DEL

Guest (3): My question: Do you think your quality to change… A

person, if that soul becomes fate or lift…

Prabhupada: No fate can be changed. I understand. These questions are

generally put. Fate can be changed.

Guest (3): By name.

Prabhupada: By Krsna consciousness. Karmani nirdahati kintu ca

bhakti-bhajam. Others cannot change their fate, but only the devotees

can change. How? Krsna says, aham tvam sarva-papebhyo moksayisyami.

Krsna says, “I shall give you protection from all the resultant action

of your sinful life.” That is fate changed. If you don’t surrender to

Krsna, then you have to suffer or enjoy the actions of your fruitive

activities. But when you surrender to Krsna, He takes charge of

squaring up all your sinful activities and their reaction. That is…

So you surrender to Krsna; then your fate is changed. Otherwise it is

not possible.

SB 8.19.21 . Anyone who is in this material world is extremely anxious to get more and more things for sense gratification…. Therefore the Vedic culture or brahminical culture teaches one how to be satisfied with possessing the minimum necessities in life.

To teach this highest culture, varnasrama-dharma is recommended. The aim of the varnasrama divisions–brahmana, ksatriya, vaisya, sudra, brahmacarya, grhastha, vanaprastha and sannyasa–is to train one to control the senses and be content with the bare necessities. Here Lord Vamanadeva, as an ideal brahmacari, refuses Bali Maharaja’s offer to give Him anything He might want. He says that without contentment one could not be happy even if he possessed the property of the entire world or the entire universe. In human society, therefore, the brahminical culture, ksatriya culture and vaisya culture must be maintained, and people must be taught how to be satisfied with only what they need. In modern civilization there is no such education; everyone tries to possess more and more, and everyone is dissatisfied and unhappy. Continue reading →

Hare Krsna to all

Obeisances

All glories to Srila Prabhupada

For some, these videos will seem too much to understand, but for those devotees

who actually do understand things in a subtle or psychic way, the information

contained in these two videos are powerful information on how we can raise

our level of Krsna Consciousnes by becoming more fully aware of what we are

doing every second of our lives. And more importantly how we can change our lives by being conscious and not dull headed as we move about life.

The first video is very short-a Japanese Dr. who did a simple experiment with three bowls of rice with water added to each, and passing by each one daily and saying a different thing to each bowl of rice. Three different effects were caused by three different things said to each bowl over a months time. This shows the powerful effect on our lives of thought and emotion and how we think.

The second video is a bit longer but well worth the time viewing it. The man is a person trained in western science who later started looking at eastern traditions and how the teachers from each tradition used inner

thought or consciousness linked with emotion, and thought can change their lives. Even watching a women in a hospital in China who had cancer, see the tumors disappear due to the positive effects of three people in that room. This was viewed live on hospital monitors. This section appears around 6-8 minutes into it.

Continue reading →

Hare Krsna to all

Pranams

All glories to Srila Prabhupada

If you like great stories heard from the earliest devotees of how things took place,

then watch these remembrances…..

Hari bol

Damaghosa das

How to love Krsna? Love His Pure Devotee

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_sgM_HFS3o

Highest blessing? Serve the devotee

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDaD7oMeFts

Shyamasundar tells amazing story of how George Harrison paid for Krsna Book

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnqMbu94Nv0

Brahmananda tells how Mac millan Co. printed the first Bhagavad Gita

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_sgM_HFS3o

760618SB.TOR Lectures

B.G. 16.23 yah sastra-vidhim utsrjya vartate kama-karatah na sa siddhim avapnoti na sukham na param gatim

Anyone who transgresses the regulative principles recommended in the sastra, sastra-vidhi, yah sastra-vidhim utsrjya, giving up sastra-vidhi, vartate kama-karatah, whimsically does something, na siddhim sa avapnoti: he never gets success. He’ll never be successful. Na siddhim na param gati: neither any salvation. Na siddhim, na sukham: neither even any material happiness. So we must accept the sastra vidhi. Sastra-vidhi, as in the sastra it is said, I have already quoted, kalau tad dhari-kirtanat.

krte yad dhyayato visnum tretayam yajato makhaih dvapare paricaryayam kalau tad dhari-kirtanat

In this age the sastra-vidhi is hari-kirtana. The more you chant Hare

Krsna maha-mantra, the more you become perfect. This is sastra-vidhi. And Caitanya Mahaprabhu confirmed it. Sadhu-sastra-guru-vakya. We have to be fixed up, first of all, what is the injunction of the sastra. Then what the sadhus, those who are devotees, what they are doing. What they are doing, sadhu, sastra, and guru. And what guru is asking. We have to follow these three principles. Sadhu-guru-sastra-vakya tinete koriya aikya. Who is sadhu? Who is abiding by the injunction of the sastra. Or guru? Guru means he’s also abiding by the injunction of the sastra. Then he’s guru, he’s sadhu. He’s sadhu. And if one, sastra vidhim, yah sastra-vidhim utsrjya… If sastra-vidhi you give up, then where is the question of guru and sadhu? Na siddhim. He’s not siddha. He has not attained the perfection, because he has rejected the principles of sastra. So he’s bogus. We have to test like that who is guru.

——————- Continue reading →

“We never compromise. All my students, they will never compromise. Why shall I compromise? If I am confident that I am speaking the truth, why shall I make compromise? Those who are not confident of his position, they will make compromise. One who does not know where he stands, he will make compromise. And if I know where I am standing, why shall I make compromise? Let others do whatever he likes. This is our position.”

[Press Interview: Bombay Dec 31 1976]

By Ajit Krishna Dasa

This a a response to Dravida Prabhu’s article “The Book Changes – A Defense” (posted on the Sampradaya Sun (01.13.2014).

Basically Dravida Prabhu’s attempted defense boils down to two wellknown fallacious arguments often presented by the BBT International:

1. Prabhupada trusted Jayadvaita Swami pre Nov 14th 1978. Therefore the editing Jayadvaita Swami has done after Prabhupada’s disappearance (post Nov. 14th 1978) is also approved.

2. The books are made “closer to Prabhupada” by making them closer to the so called original manuscript (which is really only a draft).

Let us look at each of these fallacious arguments.

The “he is good” argument

I have posted an article on my blog defeating this fallacious argument so often presented by the BBT International:

Is Jayadvaita Still Good?

BBT International and their supporters often attempt to justify the changes made to Prabhupada books by Jayadvaita Swami by pointing out that Prabhupada a couple if times spoke highly of his editing work.

This article will show that these statements by Prabhupada can’t be construed to mean that Jayadvaita Swami’s editing work after Prabhupada’s disappearance is pleasing to Prabhupada.

From BBT International’s website:

“Of course, regarding Jayadvaita Swami, the BBT’s chief editor, Srila Prabhupada wrote, “Concerning the editing of Jayadvaita Prabhu, whatever he does is approved by me. I have confidence in him.” (letter to Radhavallabha, 7 September 1976) Continue reading →

Hare Krsna to all

Pranams

All glories to Srila Prabhupada

The mood of hope against all hope, could also be called the mood of separation. What hope

do I have of ever seeing Krsna? We saw Srila Prabhupada for a very brief time and those moments

in time should be sufficient to whet our appetites for “more”.

68-01-13.Jad Letter: Jadurani Yes, the ecstasy of separation of Spiritual Master is even greater ecstasy than meeting with Him.

Whenever Prabhupada would come to some city, the devotees would run there in

ecstasy and madness sometimes, almost like what we read in Krsna book when the

gopis of Vrndavana or the queens of Dvarka would come to meet with Krsna.

So we , who were there, all remember these feelings very acutely, and to hear Srila Prabhupada

say that the feelings of separation are even greater than feelings of meeting, is not

comprehensible to this limited mind I presently possess.

The devotees were literally mad, some of them, in meeting with Srila Prabhupada, So all we can do, at present, is just “imagine” what is in store for us when we finally arrive at the stage of “separation” !! And it is just this mood that one is supposed to cultivate, following in the footsteps of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu. .

And finally this mood of separation can be made possible only by hearing from the mouth of a realized soul.

This is the Paramahamsa path recommended by Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu. Here below, is the evidence…

Hare Krsna

Damaghosa das

————————–

Antya 14.37 … Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu showed by practical example how one can cultivate the mood of Radharani and the other gopis in separation from Krsna. Devotees absorbed in this mood do not like to see Krsna anywhere else but Vrndavana. Therefore Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu lamented, “I found Krsna in Vrndavana, and now I have again lost Him and come to Kuruksetra.” Unless one is a very highly advanced devotee, he cannot understand these intricate feelings. The author of Sri Caitanya-caritamrta, however, has tried to explain this divyonmada as far as possible, and it is our duty simply to appreciate it as far as possible. Therefore the author has made the following request in verse 11: Continue reading →

Hare Krsna to all

Pranams

All glories to Srila Prabhupada

If you dont want to be shocked-then don’t read any further….

I would suspect there are literally hundreds of thousands of devotees all over this planet that consider

the brutish mentality of changing even one word of Srila Prabhupadas book a gross offense, or hati mata, the mad elephant offense.

What to speak of the wholesale change to thousands of passages in the Bhagavad gita , Srimad Bhagavatam and Caitanya Caritamrta.

Now dear readers please hear what the author himself of these same books says about anybody who dares to touch his translations and purports.

Hare Krsna

Damaghosa das

740704BG.HON Lectures 207301/530501 Prabhupada: Then so siksa and diksa-guru… A siksa-guru who instructs against the instruction of spiritual, he is not a siksa guru. He is a demon. Siksa-guru, diksa-guru means… Sometimes a diksa-guru is not present always. Therefore one can take learning, instruction, from an advanced devotee. That is called the siksa-guru. Siksa-guru does not mean he is speaking something against the teachings of the diksa-guru. He is not a siksa-guru. He is a rascal. … Because that is offense. Guror avajna. First offense is guror avajna, defying the authority of guru. This is the first offense. So one who is offensive, how he can make advance in chanting? He cannot make. Then everything is finished in the beginning. Guror avajna. Continue reading →

Hare Krishna Society

Arati Changes in ISKCON

Envy begins with envy of guru‏

Fate can be changed–SP‏

Two very interesting videos for elevating our (Krsna ) consciousness‏

4 stories from early devotees‏

How one gets material success, later salvation and then perfection‏

“We never compromise”—SP‏

Great article on “no change” to the books‏

Meeting vs. separation and hearing from a realized soul–SP‏

Srila Prabhupada himself calls Jayadvaita and Dravida–DEMONS‏