Don't Misjudge | 17 Jan 2021

Nadiya Mani - 5.21.21

Some tracks to help inspire devotion to Krishna

Spiritual Spoken Word

Krishna's sweetness - Dina Bhandu Das

Govinda Prabhu 7.2.20 Kirtan In Aindra Prabhus Room On Nityananda Trayodasi

Choices - Sri Prahlad

Caring - Krishna Nandini Mataji

He said, ‘I have been chanting 16 rounds for 3 years now but I never knew how to say it, because I never met a devotee. I am only saying what I am reading.’ He said, ‘but I never knew that there was such thing as devotees till I saw you.’ Somehow or other he found out about our New Vrindavan. So, He said, ‘I have come to surrender.’ He said, ‘I want to surrender everything.’ He said, ‘This is what I read that I am suppose to surrender everything.’ Then he said, ‘Sarvadharmanparityadya’ and he said it in all different ways, He said, ‘you are supposed to abandon everything and surrender to Krishna. This is what I have learned from reading this book. So, I want to surrender everything to Krishna.’ So, he had a house trailer, he had 2 cars, he had about a 50 thousand dollars with a welding equipment. He said, ‘Am I allowed to give all this to my guru? Because I read you are supposed to give everything to your guru.’ I said, ‘Yes, you are supposed to do like this.’ He said, ‘I have permission?’ I said, ‘I am Sure you can get permission.’ Now this is an example of someone who never met a devotee before but was living perfectly as a devotee for 3 years and completely and properly understood our whole philosophy, didn’t understand the proper pronunciation, just by coming in contact with one of these wonderful books. So, this is the power of transcendental knowledge. This is the greatest service that we can offer to humanity, by somehow or other influencing people’s lives by which they could live according to this transcendental knowledge. The world is suffering so terribly because of the lack of proper understanding of the goal of life.

Anecdote About Bhagavad Gita's Influence

In the situation you are speaking out, if you are not associating with devotees very-very regularly, hearing from them, doing some seva, doing sadhana, you are finished, your consciousness will definitely be washed away by illusion. But if this is the service they were asked to perform, we have to do it as Priyavrata had to do it. But we have to be very careful. The first thing is we must regularly associate with devotees, understand how desperate we need to and have good sadhana. And the second thing is we are working so hard, we are competing so ferociously, what are we going to do with the results? We have to give it to Krishna; we have to make that sacrifice. Then, Krishna sees that we are actually doing it for Him and then He will actually really protect us.

How To Be Krishna Consciousness When We Are Busy At Work?

You may be content now that you are Krishna Conscious, that really, “I don’t need much more of anything.” And if it’s your service, you just live a simple life and just go out and preach and that’s what you should do. You shouldn’t try for anything more. You just take what you need, work just enough for what you need and then forget anything else, don’t compete. Survive and just be with devotees and help. That’s your service, you should be like that. Let anyone criticize, what to be care? But if our service is to facilitate, then we should be greedy, we should compete, we should fight, we should defeat all opposition so that we can take as much as we can and utilize it for the suffering humanity in the service of Krishna. We have to understand what our services. We have to be willing to strive. Arjuna was content going to the forest, but Krishna said, “No, you fight, you win, for Me.” We have to be willing to do that. And if it means that we become vicious, we are willing to become vicious for Krishna, not for ourselves.

How To Maintain Spiritual And Professional Life As We Are Advancing?

In my own life I saw yogis who could perform incredible, what we call miracles. I saw people stopping their hearts, I saw people just saying some mantra and producing things out of nowhere, I saw people, if you read The Journey Home, you'll learn something about what I saw people doing, they could read minds, they could live without food despise breathing, but you know something after a while, I was not impressed by any of it. The only thing that really impressed me was humility, integrity, the true sense of love which means ‘seva’ in Sanskrit, the joy of serving.’ When i was a little boy, my mother taught me this principle. Whether she was given a pearl necklace or whether I would just grab a flower out of her garden and give it to her, she was equally happy. She always had tears in her eyes. And she said “it's not the thing that counts, it's the thought, it's the love that gives meaning to anything.”

The True Miracle In Life - HH Radhanath Swami At The House Of Commons

If we hear and if serve such great souls then the Lord becomes please with us and ultimately such a state of pure love cannot be attained by any endeavour but it is received by the causeless mercy of Sri Sri Radha and Krishna, through Gurudev. That is our only hope. Bhakti means how to attract the Lord through our sincere, eager desire to serve. It is this type of humility to simply want to serve that attracts the Lord. Krishna is Laxminath, He is the husband of the goddess of fortune. He does not need any of our learned abilities to quote scriptures, He does not need our money, He does not need our influential position in society. But Krishna is longing to taste the sweetness of our humble devotion. Therefore, we must put as the supreme principle of our life, humility and an ambitious desire to serve the servants of the Lord; this is what Krishna consciousness means.

Only Humility With Service Attitude Can Attract Krishna

Radhanath Swami is a Vaishnava sanyassi (a monk in a Krishna-bhakti lineage) and teacher of the devotional path of Bhakti-yoga. He is author of The Journey Home, a memoir of his search for spiritual truth. His teachings draw from the sacred texts of India such as The Bhagavad-gita, Srimad Bhagavatam, and Ramayana, and aim to reveal the practical application of the sacred traditions, while focusing on the shared essence which unites apparently disparate religious or spiritual paths.
Born Richard Slavin, on December 7, 1950, in his teens he came to confront a deep sense of alienation from suburban Chicago life and the civil injustices of mid-century America. At the age of nineteen, while on a summer trip to Europe, his internal struggles culminated in a commitment to search for God wherever it might lead him. Meditating on the Isle of Crete, he felt a supernatural calling and the next morning set off alone to find spiritual India. The Journey Home documents his odyssey as a penniless hitch-hiker though Greece, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and finally India. There he lived as a wandering ascetic, first amongst the forest dwelling Himalayan yogis and later amongst a wide variety of gurus and spiritual practitioners throughout India and Nepal. Ultimately, he was led to the holy town of Vrindavan, where he found his path amongst the Bhakti-yogis.
In Vrindavan he found the teacher he was searching for in A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (1896-1977) the founder of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), and representative of Gaudiya Vaishnavism, (the Krishna-bhakti tradition stemming from the 16th century mystic avatar Sri Chaitanya). In choosing Bhaktivedanta Swami, as his guru, Radhanath Swami felt compelled to shear his matted locks and reenter Western society with a mission to share the sacred wisdom he had received. This return exemplifies the form of devotional yoga which is at the heart of Radhanath Swami’s teachings, a spiritual practice expressed as tangible action meant to bring about personal fulfillment and benefit the world.
At the the age of 31 he took the monastic vows of a Vaishnava sanyassin and became known as Radhanath Swami.
Today Radhanath Swami travels regularly throughout India, Europe and North America, sharing the teachings of Bhakti-yoga. He resides much of the year at the Radha Gopinath Ashram in Chowpatty, Mumbai. For the past twenty-five years he has guided the community’s development and has directed a number of acclaimed social action projects including Midday Meals, which daily serves more than 260,000 plates of sanctified vegetarian food to the children of the slums of Mumbai. He has also worked to establish missionary hospitals and eye camps, eco-friendly farms, schools and ashrams, an orphanage, and a number of emergency relief programs throughout India.


How To Maintain Spiritual And Professional Life As We Are Advancing?

Radhanath Swami

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