Fighting for the protection of the environment: India 1/27/13

Sripad Bv. Mangal Maharaja cleaning Vridavan Dham

Dear devotees of Vrinda Mission,

Greetings from Allahadbad!

Today was a classic day, because it was declared, with a big hug in the Triveni, to fight for Mother Earth, we must unite our strengths without philosophical differences. His Grace, Chidananda Sarasvati Muniji, with no doubt took the leadership in India for the awareness of environment. He also agreed that we must get involved with the fight.

Each individual must be part of the fight for the protection of the environment and of how we in the Vrinda Mission, work hard for the protection of Nature, must work hard to be representatives at our temples and not consume products that harm the environment, nor products that comes from multinationals that exploit the Earth. We must get healthy and organic food, and even better still if it comes from local producers.

At Vrinda Kunja we decided to prohibit the use of plastic bags. Because they are very harmful and it makes no sense that every day we see people collecting plastic at the Yamuna, but we keep using it at the temple. The World Conscious Pact is the natural answer. The only way the people can understand the seriousness of this topic is to become aware of it.

Today we  bathed at the "sangam", the place where the Yamuna, Ganges and Sarasvati rivers meet, and before we dive in, we happily cleaned it together.

With these words I say goodbye for today.

We still have a few weeks at the Kunbha Mela, and follow with making lasting changes for the protection of Mother Earth. Thanks to Srila Prabhupad we have received the mercy to be able to always preach: at any time and any place. That is why we are in Allahabad, performing a bit of tapasya to preach the message of Srila Prabhupad. 

Devotional service is the only thing that can help make a change in people's lives, that is why we must take the message of devotional service to all those we meet. This is the life of a preacher.

I wish you a beautiful beginning of the week, full of ecstasy in preaching. Distribute many messages of consciousness and bring many new friends to the temple.

A big hug from the heart. Keep going.

With affection,

Swami B. A. Paramadvaiti

Jay Srila Prabhupad!

Devotion from Puri dhama 1/13/13

My dear devotees:

It is my pleasure to send this message today after a week in Sri Jagannath Puri.

We’ve had a beautiful week that we could have never imagined, as we have found loving devotees everywhere. Like today, in Alarnath Temple, we find Vaisnavas of the family of Srila Bhaktisiddhanta.

Vaishnava relationships are very important. They are based on care and kindness. And today we were looked after very well. They offered wonderful prasadam and made us feel at home. This point, my dears, is very important. In India they are truly experts in dealing with visitors, and it is said that the visitor is like God. When you come to a house to visit, the first thing they do is welcome you, invite you to sit down and then you get some sweet words of welcome, and you feel as if they have been waiting forever, saying: "I am very happy that you arrived and you are here with us ", imagine one really become very happy this way.

Then, they invite you to honor prasadam ... but before honoring prasadam, they introduce you to the owner of the house. That owner is the Deity.

Then they take you to the temple, where the Lord is and they present you to Him. After that, they invite you to take prasadam and serve you until you are completely satisfied. It is a very beautiful loving exchange: the hosts offer more and more prasadam to the guests for their pleasure. Thus, when we received a person in our temple or in the home of a Krishna conscious family, we serve them well.

Today we are the temple of Sri Sri Guru Gauranga Gaudiya Nath ji, deities installed by Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Prabhupada Thakur just in front of the temple of Lord Alarnath.

On this day I receive and introduce each of you before their Lordships Gauranga Gaudiya Nath Ji. This is a very sacred place. It is a very beautiful pastime site. Here, Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu exhibited beautiful pastimes in great ecstasy of separation, so much so that he melted a stone that to this day the marks of His sacred body remain in it. This stone is worshiped today and we are visiting it today and we are asking for the mercy of Mahaprabhu. There is a story connected with Sri Alarnath that is very sweet and beautiful.

The pujari of the deity of Sri Alarnath was a devotee named Mukunda, who always attended Him with great dedication. He never wanted to delegate this service to another person. But one day he had to go out and asked his son to attend the Deity while he was out. Mukunda taught him all the details of the worship to his son so he departed. At the time of the offering of bhoga, the young man took the plate with all the preparations; he recited the appropriate mantras and left the room so the Lord could eat. It was a tremendous surprise to see that the Lord had not eaten since the dish was still full.

The poor boy did not know what to do, he was in such desperation that he began to cry, imploring the Lord to eat. Seeing him so afflicted, the Lord came down from the altar and began to eat the entire offering. So much so that He left an empty plate :). When he came back with the offering, his mother was surprised and very angry to see the empty plate. She told him, “Son, you ate the Lord's offering that is irresponsible. I will tell everything to your father.” When the father returned, his mother told him what had happened and the father was very intrigued, so much that the next day he decided to stay hidden to see what was happening when his son was offering. So, the same thing happened again, the boy brought the offering, left the Lord eating and when he returned the dish was still full. The boy was desperate once again began to cry until the Lord came down and began to eat it all. The father was impressed by the devotion of his son. But when the Deity realized that the father was there,the deity turned quickly into place and a little rice milk remained on His finger and mouth. This deity of Sri Alarnath retains those prasadam marks even today and so we come to beg Him to accept our offerings and help with remembering Mahaprabhu.

Going back to the start, we must turn our temples in places where people feel so good that they identify with it as if they are in their own home. That also means that our temples must be very beautiful in decoration, maintenance, etc...For example in this temple of Brahma Gaudiya Math, which has many beautiful decorations it is also very well maintained, the love placed behind it is apparent. So when we are in a temple, we should be aware that the gardens and all areas are beautiful. And I mean an ecologically beautiful site, no plastic waste should be in a beautiful place,otherwise all this is opaque. The plastic waste has nothing beautiful. Thus, our temples should be beautiful with beautiful smiling devotees from the heart. In Krishna consciousness we are not like American Airlines, which in its policies they are mandated to always smile. A devotee smiles from the heart.

I get very happy to see that in our family we have many of these beautiful devotees who smile from the heart. That is the pride of our sampradaya: Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu himself took much care for each of his devotees ... He is our role model. I know I say the same things a hundred times. It's nothing new. But just as the Maha Mantra is always the same and the Bhagavad Gita is the same for the last 5000 years, we repeat to remember.

That's why I also always repeat that all the temples should have Ishtagothis whose only meaning is to make everyone completely happy in the community ... just so all the devotees will want to keep in the community. Ishtagosthi is not a dictatorial instance. It is rather a participatory instance to define how each devotee feels and what is the best way they can help.

It is in the ishtagosthi that we can agree on how to best serve our guests and have beautiful temples and happier devotees. My message is that you never get tired of being warm, friendly and make others feeling welcomed to the temple ... because when you stop being this way you also will stop feeling it.

A story that I want to share with you in this conclusion is that I want to thank Arup Govinda prabhu and the sannyasis and devotees of Jagannath Puri, we had a meeting of the WVA which was very successful, and was the foundation to the Puri World Vaishnava Association branch.

They decided they were going to meet every month for joint activities.

That's one of the main goals of the WVA-VVRS: increase solidarity and support between different Vaishnava missions. Now we are returning to the city to continue our work. We will spend two days in Sri Purushottam kshetra and then travel to Allahabad for our preaching work in Kumbha Mela. It will be a great tapasya, but also a great responsibility to preach to the yogis so they can become more environmentally responsible.

With these words I say goodbye, have a nice Sunday festival full of preaching and good reception of guests.

 Jaya Om Paramahamsa Vishnupad 108 Parivrajak Acarya Srila Bhaktivedanta Swami Maharaj, ki jay!

Srila Prabhupara, ki jay!

Jaya Om Paramahamsa Vishnupad 108 Parivrajak Acarya Srila Prabhupad Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur, ki jay!

Haribol.

Your always well wisher,

Swami B. A. Paramadvaiti.My dear devotees:

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Ancestral Wisdom - From India, 1/6/13

Dear devotees,

In the spiritual path we have to defeat materialism scientifically. Whatever is harmful to our bodies in the form of disease is supposed to be treated by a doctor and if he is successful in doing so, or the mathematical system he uses, he will share this knowledge with others.

The modern world is suffering from the disease of materialism and there is an almost uncontainable amount of greed. We have ecosystems in jeopardy, the family in ruin and individuals in a well-known personal crisis. In the name of scientific progress, materialism has declared victory over ancient wisdom.

To scientifically defeat materialism, we are very happy to present you with OIDA Therapy, also known as a Perennial Psychology. Beyond defeating the blind faith in materialism and taking it to another blind faith, OIDA Therapy operates in the scientific basis for healing malodies.

OIDA Therapy presents favorable precepts for the healing of the conscious called the "healing circle", for mutable degrees of unfavorable levels of consciousness which increases different diseased conditions. OIDA Therapy comes from ancient wisdom, but it doesn't subscribe to any fanatical religion or to sectarianism, which has shown to increase the depth of the blind faith in materialism.

Due to the deception that has been created by the things created in the name of spirituality. Indifference for the suffering of others and selfishness can be identified as the root cause of unsocial behavior and of the unhealthy condition we are experiencing between man and nature, humans and animals, and between family members. OIDA Therapy opens the door to a deep and sincere evaluation of lifestyles, of our type of food, and of our need of help, which was traditionally provided to human beings through the ancient wisdom of the ancestors, who showed them how to preserve seeds, till the land, respect the lifeguard water, respect and love each other and to focus on the higher dimensions of life, also called transcendence.

In order to develop the desired character, necessary to accomplish peace, health and prosperity for themselves, their brothers and sisters, as a sustainable achievement. As the famous saying goes "The world is so abundant for everybody's needs, but not for everybody's greed". So whatever can help decrease our greed and increase our will to share becomes an urgent value that should be promoted for the urgent healing of our world and its necessities.

The concept in the statement "Simple life and high thinking" is easily supported by all those who feel some love for their fellow beings. OIDA Therapy is a door to open to appreciate those instructions of wisdom which help us discover a higher taste, a sublime happiness, which does not depend on the competition for resources and that should be shared on a large scale for individual advancement when it is told to the people in the educational systems, which nowadays is in the hands of the consumer society ignoring its own destructive impact. To counter this.

OIDA Therapy promotes the concept of non-sectarian faith education, a project which has been accepted by the UNESCO through its project, Innovate, which is a valuable new proposal to improve our educational system. Non-sectarian faith education means to share with the students the information of the good things that have been accomplished by humanity through the sacrifice made by those who were inspired by different kinds of faiths, to encourage them to search for values deep within themselves or to find inspiration from those who have accomplished positive things for mankind, even such simple things like being faithful to the wife and children, or by living saying no to drugs and avoiding inflicting unnecessary suffering to others for the food.

We humbly request you to give OIDA Therapy and faith education the chance to scientifically defeat materialism together with our own struggle against evil which has held us prisoners nowadays.

Scientific evidence needs to be able to present practical proof and it is up to all of us to produce such proof, helping the healing of the future generations through our ideals and accomplishments. Whatever different mystical traditions of this planet may have to offer for this same purpose must be seen through the accomplishments created by those who are inspired by these recommendations and we should welcome any such contributions regardless from which part of ancient wisdom they may come.

In connection with this, in South America, the Higher Institute for Learning Ancient Wisdom has set out to recover the healing methods and the environmental balance through the native tribes, through comparing and sharing with them the ancient wisdom of India, China or from wherever such wisdom is available.

We should not forget that we are talking about the wisdom of the people that we have not listened to previously, who have lived beautiful sustainable lives until today, they are the remnants of those civilizations who, have been persecuted, murdered and ridiculed by the advancement of colonization and materialism convened. According to human rights, they are the rightful owners of all the opulence which we see in Europe and America which resulted from the theft of the treasures and resources of these respected cultures.

An ancient prophecy of the Arruacos from northern Colombia says that the life of the white invaders and the self-destructive lifestyle will come to end through the wisdom of the true guardians of nature which will be one day respected and embraced. We pray that OIDA Therapy and our faith education research and teachings will greatly contribute to the enlightenment of the unfortunate people, whose only criteria of behavior is motivated by their greed and their absence of loving respect for other living creatures.

Faith is the only way to connect with higher spheres in higher dimensions, which obviously goes beyond the periods of birth and death, teaching us responsibility before the cosmic laws. And trough that faith, the practice of ancient healing systems can be inaugurated one more time, keeping careful consideration that also ancient wisdom is vulnerable to human corruption like everything else in this world. But the bad doctor has no reasons to close all the hospitals in the world.

So we should not adhere to ignoring ancient wisdom and getting lost in modern ignorance. For those who are actively interested in participating in our different institutes and feel the need to learn more about Oida-therapy or to start applying faith education in your educational institution, you are welcome to contact me directly or to connect with the people near you, who are also embracing our common effort.

Jay Srila Prabhupada

With these words I say goodby.

Your always well-wisher

Swami B. A. Paramadvaiti