ac-bhaktivedanta | The Hare Krishna Movement

Talks Between Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu and Ramananda Raya

25 Jan 2025 Leave a comment

by The Hare Krishna Movement in A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, Caitanya Mahaprabhu, Pure Devotee, Ramananda Raya, Uncategorized Tags: ac-bhaktivedanta, Caitanya, Caitanya Caritamrta, Krishna, Krsna, Radha, Ramananda Raya, Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu, Srimati Radharani

Ramananda Raya from Back to Godhead Magazine

click on image to enlarge

This picture hangs in our temple room, not only is this one of my most favorite pictures from the Śrī Caitanya-caritāmṛta, but this is one of the most nectarian chapters as well. I always marvel at how fortunate this Ramananda Raya is.

After embracing Rāmānanda Rāya, the Lord pacified him, informing him, “But for you, no one has ever seen this form.”

In the Bhagavad-gītā (7.25) Lord Kṛṣṇa states:

nāhaṁ prakāśaḥ sarvasya
yoga-māyā-samāvṛtaḥ
mūḍho ’yaṁ nābhijānāti
loko mām ajam avyayam

“I am never manifest to the foolish and unintelligent. For them I am covered by My internal potency [yogamāyā], and so they do not know Me, who am unborn and infallible.”

The Lord always reserves the right of not being exposed to everyone. The devotees, however, are always engaged in the service of the Lord, serving with the tongue by chanting the Hare Kṛṣṇa mantra and tasting mahā-prasāda. Gradually the sincere devotee pleases the Supreme Personality of Godhead, and the Supreme Lord reveals Himself. One cannot see the Supreme Lord by making personal efforts. Rather, when the Lord is pleased by the service of a devotee, He reveals Himself.

This is a continuation from our previous post Drops of Nectar, and includes texts 279-289 from chapter eight of the Madhya-lila entitled “Talks Between Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu and Rāmānanda Rāya”.

Lord Śrī Kṛṣṇa is the reservoir of all pleasure, and Śrīmatī Rādhārāṇī is the personification of ecstatic love of Godhead. These two forms has combined as one in Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu. This being the case, Lord Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu revealed His real form to Rāmānanda Rāya.

Śrī Caitanya-caritāmṛta 1975 Edition
By His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda
Madhya-līlā, Chapter 8, Text 279-289

…A Fish Out of Water

17 Jan 2025 Leave a comment

by The Hare Krishna Movement in Uncategorized Tags: ac-bhaktivedanta, fish out of water, material bodies, religion, sac-cid-ananda, soul, spiritual-bodies, spirituality, Srila Prabhupada

This morning I was thinking about our eternal nature, as spirit souls. People talk about the soul, but what really is the soul. It is our eternal life. So we are really Eternal Spirit Souls, trapped in a Temporary Material body. Kinda like a fish out of water. Srila Prabhupada uses this example many times. So I decided to cite a few examples.

Śrīla Prabhupāda: The Vedic injunction is that people are searching after knowledge, and that when one understands the Absolute Truth, he understands everything. People are trying to approach an objective, but they do not know that the final objective is Krsna. They are simply trying to make adjustments with so many materialistic revolutions. They have no knowledge that they are spiritual beings and that unless they go back to the spiritual world and associate with the Supreme Spirit, God, there is no question of happiness. We are like fish out of water. Just as a fish cannot be happy unless he is in the water, we cannot be happy apart from the spiritual world. We are part and parcel of the Supreme Spirit, Krsna, but we have left His association and fallen from the spiritual world because of our desire to enjoy this material world. So unless we reawaken the understanding of our spiritual position and go back home to the spiritual world, we can never be happy. We can go on theorizing for many lifetimes, but we will only see one revolution after another. The old order changes, yielding its place to the new. Or in other words, history repeats itself. (from the “Journey of Self Discovery” chapter 7)

To cite an example I have given many times, if you take a fish out of water, you can give it a very comfortable velvet bedstead, but still the fish cannot be happy; it will die. Because the fish is an animal of the water, it cannot be happy without water. Similarly, we are all spirit soul; unless we are in spiritual life or in the spiritual world, we cannot be happy. That is our position. (“Krsna Consciousness: The Topmost Yoga”)

The Song of God

24 Dec 2024 Leave a comment

by The Hare Krishna Movement in A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, Bhagavad-gita, Bhagavad-gita As It Is 1972 Edition Tags: ac-bhaktivedanta, as it is, Bhagavad-gita, hare-krishna-devotee, Krishna, Krsna Book, penguin-classic, spirituality, yoga

I remember back in my younger years, before I became a devotee, I decided to spend my summer off from college, hiking the Appalachian trail. I took with me some small books with me to read along the way. I was becoming interested in Eastern philosophy, and was asking myself questions like who is God, who am I, and what is my relationship with Him. I carried with me a small paperback book by Hermann Hesse entitled Siddhartha, a book by Henry David Thoreau; “Walden”, and the Penguin Classic; “The Bhagavad-gita.

From the book “Siddhartha” I became interested in meditation and the journey to self discovery. From “Walden”, I became interested is self- sufficiency, or as I later describe it as simple living and high thinking, and from the Bhagavad-gita, I discovered who God is. Really. For some reason, as soon as I began reading, I immediately accepted that Krishna was God. This book was the song of God. This was God speaking to His friend Arjuna, instructing him. And I thought how wonderful to be a friend of God, to become Gods friend.

Even though I was raised as a Christian, went to church on Sunday, was taught by nuns and priests, I never got satisfactory answers to my question, Who is God? But this book the Bhagavad-gita, This was God Himself speaking to his friend. Now I knew, there is a God, and His name was Krishna.

About a year later I meet a Hare Krishna devotee at the Chicago O’Hare airport, and I got from him the Krsna Book, then later I went back there and found a deserted copy of the Bhagavad-gita As It Is, on a neglected bench seat, by His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami. It wasn’t just the translations that the penguin classic offered, but it was the complete edition, with original Sanskrit text, Roman transliterations, English equivalents, translation and elaborate purports.

The Final Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam Volume Translated by His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada

22 Dec 2024 Leave a comment

by The Hare Krishna Movement in A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, Books by Srila Prabhupada, Free Downloads, Srila Prabhupada vani, Srila Prabhupada's Accomplishments, Srimad Bhagavatam, Uncategorized Tags: ac-bhaktivedanta, Bhagavad-gita, India, Krishna, Krsna, prayers-by-lord-brahma, spirituality, Srila Prabhupada, srimad-bhagavatam-tenth-canto

I have been reading the Krsna Book lately, and just yesterday we were reading chapter 14 “Prayers Offered by Lord Brahma to Lord Krsna”, and I was reminded this was the last chapter Srila Prabhupada was working on in the Srimad Bhagavatam series before his passing. So I had another look at the Tenth Canto, part 3, and thought it a good idea to share it with all our readers.

click on following link; Srimad Bhagavatam Tenth Canto Part 3

This is the final Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam volume translated by His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, Founder-Acarya of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, before his untimely departure. We share it with you as a free PDF download. You can click on the above link to view the complete volume or save it to your computer.

Foward

This is the final Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam volume translated by His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, founder-acarya of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. It is smaller than the earlier volumes because it ends where the renowned author stopped translating just before his departure from this mortal world on November 14, 1977, at the Krsna-Balarama Mandira in Vrndavana, India.