There's a chemistry to cooking that, you know, you have to give it time. As How long does it take to make idli? Overnight. "Overnight.! I want it now." You know, you have to let it ferment, and it has to, you know, like "you want it fluffy, or you want some hard thing.?" So if if we want to really change, if we want to make the most of human life, we have to stay in it for the whole lifetime. Nothing is excluded - all the detours we take in the ways that we are subjected to our own punishments t...
Dec 20, 2024•6 min
So this is, I'm reading excerpts from the'Śrī Bhakti Siddha Vaibhava' that Bhakti Vikāsa Mahārāj put together. The first excerpt I'm reading is from a lecture of 1932, where Śrīla Sarasvatī Ṭhākura stated how some disciples considered that by his spending profusely on preaching programs and printing, he was embezzling their hard-earned collections. He mentioned by name a particular leading devotee as one of several who thought it better to keep those funds in the bank. But he continued, "My aim ...
Dec 19, 2024•1 hr 34 min
This building is exactly restored to its original state. We were here when they were rebuilding it, and we met the devotees—so expert. They used all the techniques that UNESCO uses. I saw at Angkor Wat in Cambodia. I went there once just to see the temple, and UNESCO, an international organization, had big piles of stones or broken bits of wall and things. They would label each one of them so that they could put them all together, thousands of them, so they could restore it to its original state...
Dec 19, 2024•55 min
Kṛṣṇa is a person. It's not one thing. It's the thing. Kṛṣṇa is a person. He's the Supreme Person. And just know that His senses are perfect, and because His senses are perfect, He knows exactly what your sincerity is. And He's not like an ordinary person who may know or may not know—He knows. And you can offer yourself to Kṛṣṇa sincerely at any time, and the best way to stay connected with Him is through the Hare Kṛṣṇa mantra, because it follows the Guru Paramparā. It's the recommended process....
Dec 19, 2024•22 min
I'll sing one of Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta's favorite bhajans. By the way, his favorite author of bhajans was his father, Śrīla Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura, and one of his favorite bhajans starts with "Bhaja Re Bhaja Re Amar." It's a song about remembering the great Vaiṣṇavas and remembering the holy places. So let's remember Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta, sing his favorite song, and enter into the mood of that by singing it ourselves. ----------------------------------------------------------- To connect with His...
Dec 18, 2024•14 min
There are a couple of lessons I always take from this story. If we take responsibility, don't fret, because, well, you can fret and you will, but there's a way in which, at some point, if you're sincere and you pray to Kṛṣṇa for help, then he'll come in, maybe not from your nose, but from somewhere you weren't expecting. Like, something will come in that will make you say, "Oh, I hadn't thought of that. I didn't think it was possible." And I've seen it happen so many times, not just with problem...
Dec 18, 2024•1 hr 26 min
I talked to Śacīnandana Swāmi the other day for a while, and we were talking about The Holy Name. One thought he had passed on to me was from the philosopher Kierkegaard, who talked about commitment. One of his quotes was, 'Some games you don't get to play until you're all in, and when you decide that you're all in, that's when you're accepted.' He was talking about how, when we decide we're going to fully dedicate to the chanting process, that's when we actually start making progress. It has to...
Dec 18, 2024•18 min
Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī's very presence inspired awe. His glance was so powerful and penetrating that few could bear it. His every movement and gesture expressed extraordinary inner strength. Many smug persons became humbled and submissive simply by entering his presence, as did Mahārāj Adirāj Vijay Chanda Bahadur of Burdwan, who related: "I often went to see Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī, and naturally bowed at his lotus feet whenever I did. Yet at one point I considered, 'I am the gr...
Dec 18, 2024•1 hr 17 min
A palliative care worker who had a best-selling book—her name is Bronnie Ware— she wrote a book that got translated into 31 different languages around the world, called "The Top Five Regrets of the Dying: A Life Transformed by the Dearly Departing." Her book is a series of stories of people that she took care of. She was in palliative care and had a window into their lives. Some of them were in their 90s, some of them were in their 30s and younger. And all of them had some similar regrets, and i...
Dec 17, 2024•1 hr 30 min
So if we have to give attention to our practice. The word attention, actually one of the meanings is special care. You have to give special care to your practice of chanting Japa, keep going if possible. And that also means that is the word attention. It has the word 10 in it, which means to stretch, go. You have to stretch, stretch towards the holy name. That's what tension means. If you're slumping away from it with your mind or your body or your intentions altogether, then you lose the full p...
Dec 17, 2024•25 min
There are four orders in the āśrama: there's brahmachari, grihastha, vanaprastha, and sannyasa. Each one of these is very specifically to give facility at different eras, periods in one's life so that one can give one's full attention to Kṛṣṇa and Kṛṣṇa's service. As Kṛṣṇa says in the Bhagavad-gītā (BG 2.41): "vyavasāyātmikā buddhir ekeha kuru-nandana bahu-śākhā hy anantāś ca buddhayo ’vyavasāyinām." The idea Kṛṣṇa gives here is that unless you're fully dedicated to Kṛṣṇa consciousness and keep ...
Dec 17, 2024•14 min
One of the most profound conversations I heard was once when I was driving somewhere, hopefully to the temple, and I was listening to one of Prabhupada's conversations. It stuck in my mind so much that I thought I'd pass it on to you, and it goes like this: It was in Honolulu, 1976. Devotee: "So if we have to wake again, then there's no reason, why should we have to stop birth and death?" Prabhupada had been describing that dying is like going to sleep for some time. So the devotee was playing d...
Dec 16, 2024•1 hr 34 min
Japa is one of those times because we have to self-examine and see how we're chanting. There are plenty of opportunities to examine ourselves in chanting japa, just to see what is the intensity, are we finishing at an appropriate time, and so forth. By taking that responsibility then, we can develop spiritual strength. There are various obstacles to that. One of them is if we are lending our ear to those who don't consider it very important, then we can be dissuaded from taking it seriously. Tha...
Dec 16, 2024•18 min
I have a book. It's called "Compost Everything," and the author argues that anything could be composted. I mean, theoretically. Actually, of course, you wouldn't want to throw an aluminum can in there. It would take longer than your life to actually go back into the earth. However, almost everything else organic is compostable. And he argues that it's just how long you want to wait. Even a piece of a log you could throw in wood. If you go to the forest, which we did recently, you look around, an...
Dec 15, 2024•1 hr 30 min
The mantra is like a flower airplane. Okay, so far? Is everyone's good ? Okay, so it's ready to take us up, and we have to, of course, board the plane. That's our job. The aircraft comes. The flower airplane is there, but we have to be ready to board the plane means you have to have a ticket in hand, means enthusiasm to chant. And when you go to the airport, they announce certain things. They ask you questions before you get on the board. One of them is, has anyone unknown to you given you anyth...
Dec 15, 2024•17 min
Balance doesn't always look perfectly straight and I notice with balance, you're trying to pull back to the center, at least when I do it. Knowing what the center is and being able to come back to that regularly is very important. And more seva, "śuśrūṣoḥ śraddadhānasya vāsudeva-kathā-ruciḥ syān mahat-sevayā viprāḥ puṇya-tīrtha-niṣevaṇāt"; it's a way in which when we do seva, we get a deeper desire to hear and chant and when we hear and chant, we get a deeper desire, they're complimentary. So it...
Dec 15, 2024•3 min
This tendency to diminish anything anyone else is doing comes from the envy within the heart. But Rūpa Gosvāmī says, a miracle happens by the association of pure devotees, and that is gradually one's heart changes, and there's no more envy within the heart. And therefore 'nindādi-śūnya-hṛdam īpsita-saṅga-labdhyā,' the person then becomes free from nindā. Do you know somebody who is a professional at criticizing what they're called? A nindaka, or, you know, nindanīyā, like a kīrtanīyā. The kīrtan...
Dec 14, 2024•49 min
Without spiritual strength, we can't maintain niṣṭha or steadiness in practice. So to this end two points about practice. One is it's really hard to make it up at the last minute. Sometimes people become serious about Kṛṣṇa consciousness, but they're, of course, Khaṭvāṅga Mahārāja is an example. Even at the last minute, you can, you should try, and you can do it. But generally, if you try to pass a test at the last minute by studying the night before, it's very difficult, because it takes time t...
Dec 14, 2024•19 min
Śāstra is amazingly relevant to our lives. One realization I've had about reading Śrīmad-Bhāgvatam, especially at Kārtik time when we were able to read long sections at a time and hear the whole canto in a month, is that it solves all problems, which originate in the mind. There are very psychological anomalies that arise in the minds of humans, especially in mine, and by hearing Śrīmad-Bhāgvatam, they become resolved. That's a practical application, and you don't have to do a lot except be ther...
Dec 14, 2024•5 min
The sense of devotion is there within the heart of every being. It's intrinsic, and by stimulation, it becomes awakened. We might say that a seed is stimulated. It lies dormant in a little package, perhaps. And then when you take it out, bok choy, little seed, and you say, come here, little fellow, and you put him in his own cup, you get some nice rich earth that doesn't have any contamination and make it moist, and then it's a little warm, sun's coming down, and the little seed in there goes li...
Dec 13, 2024•1 hr 32 min
In the Bhagavad-gītā, Kṛṣṇa says in the 10th chapter that of all the sacrifices, Japa is the best. And we can consider why that is so. There are many different processes of devotional service that are easy to enter into. For instance, the Sunday feast, or any type of prasadam, anyone can do, or we can walk in and dance in kīrtana, even if we don't know much about Kṛṣṇa consciousness, lots of people do that, but to deliberately take time to use your own voice and your time to commune with God by ...
Dec 13, 2024•16 min
In the Gītā-māhātmya, there are descriptions of the miraculous benefits one gets from hearing the Bhagavad-gītā. Of course, we're not interested in miraculous benefits other than attracting Krishna's attention and gaining more service. Nonetheless, the Gītā-māhātmya describes and sees if hearing even one chapter of the Bhagavad-gītā, vignette about those who have died then somebody read the Gītā and they came back to life, and so forth. Each chapter has some unique story in the Gītā-māhātmya. Th...
Dec 13, 2024•3 hr 12 min
This chanting is a very intimate way of connecting with God. We're using our mouth, our tongue—the very place where we can express things to other people. We can make ourselves known, and over and over again, we're making ourselves known to Krishna. We may not even know what we're doing at first, but that's why we have to be careful and put some guardrails on the way we act in our life so we don't sully the process of chanting. In our mind, we're ready for it when we chant. If we just stay ready...
Dec 12, 2024•17 min
Once you have a book, it can be delivered anywhere in the world. It's one of the miracles of books. One thing I love about books is their delivery systems. And when you have something worthwhile delivering, it's very exhilarating to unleash that on the world. People like to send things out into the world that might have a good effect. If they're in a lower consciousness, they like to send things out that don't have such a good effect. People send out computer viruses and they sit back thinking, ...
Dec 11, 2024•57 min
The night has come to an end and the light of dawn is entering. O jiva soul, arise and give up your sleep. Chant the holy names of Lord Hari, who is the giver of liberation; the enemy of the Mura demon; the supreme enjoyer; the all-attractive one; and the horse-headed incarnation, Hayagrīva.(1) ------------------------------------------------------------ To connect with His Grace Vaiśeṣika Dāsa, please visit https://www.fanthespark.com/next-steps/ask-vaisesika-dasa/ -----------------------------...
Dec 11, 2024•6 min
In the Nāmāṣṭakam by Rūpa Gosvāmī, which is a great inspiration to anyone who's practicing Kṛṣṇa Consciousness, he says, 'ayi mukta-kulair upāsyamānam' (verse 1). That is, "Oh how wonderful it is that all the great sages worship The Holy Name." This is the main focus that they have in their worship. I often think of Vālmīki Muni because he was in such a slump as a living entity that when he got an instruction to come out of his stupor; that is, he had sunk so low that he had become a hunter and ...
Dec 11, 2024•14 min
kṛte yad dhyāyato viṣṇuṁ tretāyāṁ yajato makhaiḥ dvāpare paricaryāyāṁ kalau tad dhari-kīrtanāt Whatever result was obtained in Satya-yuga by meditating on Viṣṇu, in Tretā-yuga by performing sacrifices, and in Dvāpara-yuga by serving the Lord’s lotus feet can be obtained in Kali-yuga simply by chanting the Hare Kṛṣṇa mahā-mantra. (SB 12.3.52) https://vedabase.io/en/library/sb/12/3/52/ ------------------------------------------------------------ To connect with His Grace Vaiśeṣika Dāsa, please vis...
Dec 11, 2024•26 min
There's two kinds of association with bhāgavat or the person bhāgavat that means a person who's a pure devote dedicated to pure devotional service. One is called vāni and the other is called vāpu. Vāpu means you get the personal association.In other words the person's physically walking around the planet and if you go there and you have some association you can see the person, maybe render some service, be in the same room and so forth so that's one of the important kinds of association. But eve...
Dec 10, 2024•1 hr 32 min
The Holy Name is even more merciful than Kṛṣṇa. The holy name will go everywhere with you, pursue you, chase you down. Come to the material world saying, hey, wait a minute. Come back. So we can, we can make The Holy Name our main priority and the chanting of it. And if we can actually enter deeply within Japa, and indeed make Japa great again every day, then we'll make tangible spiritual advancement, and that's necessary, otherwise we lose altitude and forget how important it is to be a devotee...
Dec 10, 2024•22 min
Well, it's kind of natural that we lose track sometimes of what we're doing because the world's very topsy-turvy. And many things come upon us that we weren't expecting. We may think, "Oh, I can hold forth in any circumstance," and then a circumstance comes and we say, "Except for this one," or, "This is the exception," and then, you know, we can be thrown off course. So part of this, as I mentioned, I think, the other day, balance doesn't mean being perfectly still but it means knowing how to p...
Dec 09, 2024•8 min
