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How To Offer Your Food To The Lord

24 Feb 2011 Leave a comment

by The Hare Krishna Movement in Practicing Krishna Consciousness at Home, Prasadam Tags: bhakti yoga, devotion, devotional service, God, Krishna, Lord Caitanya, Lord Krishna, love, Prasadam, Srila Prabhupada, yoga

How to Offer Your Food To The Lord

Everything comes from God (Krishna), the air we breath, the water we drink, and the food we eat. But this process of Krishna Consciousness or bhakti-yoga, is the method for re-awakeing our dormant love for God. When you love someone, then there is service. Isn’t this so? A mother loves her baby, and cares for the babies needs; she baths the baby, dresses the baby, feeds the baby etc. So this process of Krishna Consciousness is giving back to the Supreme Lord, in the mood of loving devotional service. Although the Supreme Lord is providing everything, still a devotee thinks, “I want to give something back. I want to offer something to the Lord” Not that we just take from the Lord, ‘O Lord thank you for our daily bread’. No, a devotee wants to bake some bread for the Lord, cook some rice and offer it to the Lord, offer some fruits, and flowers, and water for the Lords pleasure. This is the begining of Love, through service.

A young boy meets a young girl, and he gives her a flower, carries her books, gives her gifts and offers her service. Similary, we want to love God, so we begin with gifts and service, to develope our love and devotion. So this process of offering very nicely prepeared foods to the Lord is Bhakti Yoga. Yoga means ‘union’, and Bhakti means through loving devotional service. It is a very blissful process. I want to Love God, so let me offer some service, some flowers, some nicely cooked food,etc. And we can link up with God (yoga) by thinking of Him, offering prayers, chanting His holy names, and offering the food we eat.

Transcendental Teachings of Prahlāda Mahārāja

23 Feb 2011 Leave a comment

by The Hare Krishna Movement in Krishna Consciousness, Teachings of Pralada Maharaja Tags: age of quarrel, atheistic persons, causless mercy, demons, God, Jesus Christ, Kali, materialistic, Pralada Maharaja, Supreme Lord

Transcendental Teachings of Prahlāda Mahārāja
by His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda

The Dearmost Person

Today I shall speak to you of the history of a boy devotee named Prahlāda Mahārāja. He was born in a family that was stubbornly atheistic. There are two kinds of men in this world: the demons and the demigods. What is the difference between them? The main difference is that the demigods, or godly persons, are devoted to the Supreme Lord, whereas the demons are atheistic. They do not believe in God because they are materialists. These two classes of men always exist in this world. At the present moment, due to the Age of Kali (Age of Quarrel), the number of demons has increased, but the classification has existed since the beginning of creation. The incident I am narrating to you occurred very, very long ago, a few million years after the time of creation.

Prahlāda Mahārāja was the son of the most atheistic person and the most materially powerful as well. Because the society was materialistic, this boy had no opportunity to glorify the Supreme Lord. The characteristic of a great soul is that he is very eager to broadcast glorification of the Supreme Lord. Lord Jesus Christ, for example, was very eager to broadcast the glorification of God, but demoniac people misunderstood him and crucified him.

Premanjana “Seeing God”

11 Feb 2011 Leave a comment

by The Hare Krishna Movement in Krishna Consciousness, Spiritual World Tags: Absolute Truth, God, Krishna, Krishna's Mercy, Srila Prabhupada, Surpreme Personality

Article written by Krishna’s Mercy . org

“Everyone is seeing God in His different aspects; the only difference is that the theist sees God as the Supreme Personality, the most beloved, Krishna, and the atheist sees the Absolute Truth as ultimate death.” (Shrila Prabhupada, Krishna, The Supreme Personality of Godhead, Vol 2, Ch 32)

“Have you seen God? Can you show Him to me?” These are some of the challenging questions often directed at those who are religiously inclined and those who are actively preaching the message of love and respect for the Lord found in India’s most famous religious text, the succinct and complete treatise on Vedic philosophy known as the Bhagavad-gita. Any time a preacher takes to kindly passing on information pertaining to spirituality, there will surely be skeptics, uninterested observers, and those who are not willing to listen. When engaged in ordinary conversation, wherein points and counterpoints are exchanged, generally no conclusion is reached in the end. Therefore in order to learn properly, one must take instruction from someone who has weight, a guru, or spiritual master, one who knows the truth as explained to them by previous authority figures. Yet even when hearing from a guru there is a natural urge to see proof, tangible evidence that God indeed exists. The devotees, those whose eyes have been anointed with transcendental love, see the influence of the Lord everywhere. Yet even the atheists, those who are staunchly against religious principles, are forced to see the influence of the same loveable Divine Entity at every turn, especially at the time that matters most: death.