• Center - Worship, Sadhana
• Connect - Fellowship, Sanga
• Cultivate - Discipleship, Siksha
• Contribute - Ministry, Seva
• Communicate - Mission, Sankirtan
• Contributor not consumer
• Participator, not spectator
“I have left India just
to execute the order
of Sri Bhakti Siddhanta
Saraswati in
pursuance of Lord
Chaitanya's order. I
have no qualification,
but I have taken up
the risk just to carry
out the order of His
Divine Grace. I
depend fully on Their
mercy so far away
from Vrindaban.”
“Simply by chanting the Holy Name
of Krishna, one can attain freedom
from material existence. By chanting
the Hare Krishna mantra one will be
able to see the Lotus Feet of the
Lord.”
“In this age of Kali there is no
religious principle other than the
chanting of the Holy Name, which is
the essence of all scriptures.”
CC Adi 7/73,74
“For one who explains
this supreme secret to
the devotees, devotional
service is guaranteed,
and at the end he will
come back to me.
There is no servant in
this world more dear to
Me than he nor will
there ever be one more dear.”
Gita 18/71,72
The greatest philanthropists are those
transcendentalists who represent the
mission of Vyasa, Narada, Madhva,
Caitanya, Rupa, Sarasvati, etc. They are all
one and the same. The personalities may
be different, but the aim of the mission is
one and the same, namely, to deliver the
fallen souls back home, back to Godhead.
SB 1/4/17
The constant companions of
Lord Krishna, such as
Uddhava, are all liberated
souls, and they descended
along with Lord Krishna to
this material world to fulfill
the mission of the Lord.
The Pandavas are also
liberated souls who
descended along with
Lord Krishna to serve
Him in His
transcendental
pastimes on this earth.
Bowl from Surya
SB 1/14/32
Privilege & a Responsibility
• Roles, rewards, & responsibilties
• Did you fulfill 5 purposes
• Is anybody going to be in Vaikuntha
because of you?
Privilege to Participate
A pure devotee has the privilege as the
son of God to participate in the ecstatic
eternal pastimes of the Supreme Lord,
loving Krishna and playing with Him
forever. For such a devotee the pale
material nature, which is but a perverted
reflection of the spiritual world, becomes
totally unattractive. SB 11/2/48
• Either striving to
get better or
allowing to get
worse
• Not knowing
your mission
causes
problems
Whether one has achieved great success in
business, or has amassed great wealth, a
nice family, fame, or any amount of worldly
or mystical power, that dissatisfaction at the
inner core of one’s being is liable to occur.
This dissatisfaction is manifested in many
ways, such as boredom, frustration,
loneliness and disillusion, and in general it
exists because our innermost desires for
happiness and fulfillment are not being
satisfied. BTG 1977 Cause of despondency,
Vyasadev
Playwright Eugene Ionesco writes, "Cut off
from religion, metaphysics, and roots, man
is lost. His actions become senseless,
useless, absurd.”
1. Boredom
• 8 cylinder person in 2 cylinder job
• Chewing the chewed
• Chew some gum, crack a joke, change the
channel, make a call, catch a flick
Kierkegaard
“Unrestricted
sense
gratification
leads to
boredom, and
ultimately to
despair.”
Bodily life - life of washer man
Make Believe World
For the soul to interact with
the material
world, he has
to make believe.
Make believe
he’s some
teen with his
first driver’s license. Make believe
he’s some proud new grandpa.
Make believe he’s the body.
Everything in life
happens to the body.
Nothing directly
touches the soul. No
tear, no fear.
Everything
secondhand life.
Terminally Recurrent
After many lifetimes, it
gets pretty stale. And so
we’re bored. When
someone says this is a
world of suffering, that’s
often what he really means.
It’s terminally recurrent
boredom.
BTG Is this Suffering?
JAPA
Devotees always chant the name Krishna over and over,
but they do not feel boredom or monotony. They feel everincreasing transcendental bliss, and this is why they keep
chanting.”
2. Escapism
A few months before I was born, my dad
met a stranger who was new to our small
Tennessee town. From the beginning,
Dad was fascinated with this enchanting
newcomer, and soon invited him to live
with our family. The stranger was quickly
accepted and was around to welcome me
into the world a few months later. As I
grew up I never questioned his place in
our family.
Mom taught me to love the Word of God.
Dad taught me to obey it. But the stranger
was our storyteller. He could weave the
most fascinating tales. Adventures,
mysteries and comedies were daily
conversations. He could hold our whole
family spellbound for hours each
evening. He was like a friend to the whole
family. He took Dad, Bill and me to our
first major league baseball game. He was
always encouraging us to see the movies
and he even made arrangements to
introduce us to several movie stars.
The stranger was an incessant talker. Dad didn't
seem to mind, but sometimes Mom would quietly
get up - while the rest of us were enthralled with
one of his stories of faraway places - and go to her
room read her Bible and pray. I wonder now if she
ever prayed that the stranger would leave. You
see, my dad ruled our household with certain
moral convictions. But this stranger never felt an
obligation to honor them. Profanity, for example,
was not allowed in our house - not from us, from
our friends, or adults. Our longtime visitor,
however, used occasional four-letter words that
burned my ears and made Dad squirm. To my
knowledge the stranger was never confronted.
My dad was a teetotaler who didn't permit
alcohol in his home - not even for cooking. But
the stranger felt he needed exposure and
enlightened us to other ways of life. He offered
us beer and other alcoholic beverages often.
He made cigarettes look tasty, cigars manly,
and pipes distinguished. He talked freely (too
much too freely) about sex. His comments
were sometimes blatant, sometimes
suggestive, and generally embarrassing. I
know now that my early concepts of the
man/woman relationship were influenced by
the stranger.
As I look back, I believe it was the grace of God
that the stranger did not influence us more.
Time after time he opposed the values of my
parents. Yet he was seldom rebuked and never
asked to leave. More than thirty years have
passed since the stranger moved in with the
young family on Morningside Drive. But if I
were to walk into my parents' den today, you
would still see him sitting over in a corner,
waiting for someone to listen to him talk and
watch him draw his pictures. His name? We
always called him TV.
The human life is an opportunity to
escape the Lord's external potency
and enter into His internal potency.
“No materialistic creature—be he the great
Brahma or an insignificant ant—can be happy.
Everyone tries to make a permanent plan for
happiness, but everyone is baffled by the
laws of material nature. The materialistic
world is called the darkest region of God's
creation. The unhappy materialists can get
out of it simply by desiring to get out.
Unfortunately they are so foolish that they do
not want to escape.” SB 1/2/3
Camel Chewing Thorns
O Suta Gosvami,
there are those
amongst men who
desire freedom
from death and get
eternal life. They
escape the
slaughtering
process by calling
the controller of
death, Yamarja. SB
1/16/7
Acala Mrtyu Haranam
Actual charity is to award fearlessness and
freedom to others, not to give them some material
means of temporary pleasure or relief. Any
material "charitable" arrangement will inevitably
be crushed by the onward march of time. Thus
only realization of one's eternal existence beyond
the reach of time can make one fearless, for it
enables one to escape the bondage of the laws of
nature. Real charity is to help people revive their
eternal, spiritual consciousness.
3. Depression
Why get up in the morning?
“When one's higher awareness fails
and finally disappears and one is
thus unable to concentrate his
attention, his mind is ruined and
manifests ignorance and depression.
You should understand this situation
to be the predominance of the mode
of ignorance.”
Intoxicants
Wind us down, pick us, up, steady
jangled nerves. Without some kind of
buffer, life can often be too harsh to
endure.
“What's wrong with a little intoxication to
relax at the end of the day? The sensation of
pleasure with no basis in fact; the drugged
complacence that enables one to accept a life
of pain as satisfactory. One lives, numb to the
yearnings of his deeper nature, in a tiny world
of make-believe people. He’ll never grasp the
futility of his life as he wallows in his
intoxicated stupor, and thus he will live and
die with no more significance than the
German shepherd chained in his backyard.”
BTG 1986, “One More Round.”
Illusory Effect Wears Off
Whiskey sours won't take the dent out
of your new car, or pay for your son's
braces, or make you attractive to your
new secretary. They won't make you
twenty again, nor will they diminish the
flab around your waist. When the
illusory effect wears off, you're left with
the same harsh world.
4. Indecision
Arjuna, paralyzed with indecision at the prospect
of slaying his own friends, relatives, and teachers
in the opposing army, accepts his friend Krishna
as his guru and appeals to Him for guidance.
“The power and energy which were
bestowed upon Arjuna were required for
fulfillment of the mission of the Lord,
but when His mission was fulfilled, the
emergency powers were withdrawn from
Arjuna as they were no longer required.”
SB 1/15/15
One should, therefore,
adjust the activities of life in
pace with the mission of the
Lord, and by doing this one
is sure to return back home,
back to Godhead. This is the
highest perfection of life.
SB 1/15/30
He served God’s purpose in his generation & then he died.
Some will want to
serve God’s purpose
more than:





Pleasure
Prestige
Position
Power
Possession
Going & Bringing
• Has your life benefited from Krishna
Consciousness
• Someone one passed it to you, you
pass it to others.
• Cure for AIDS & Cancer.
Is There Interest?
• Bought a lie.
• 65 million no spiritual home.
• 35 millions would go if asked.
• Teens rather talk about God.
•
.
Who do we bring?
When do we bring?
• Been meaning to go to the
temple.
• Don’t stop bringing..I brought
Vai & she brought me back
“I’m going to work at this because I
want my loved ones in spritual world.
I want my friends in the spiritual
world. I want my co-workers in the
spiritual world. I want my children,
my mom, my dad, my brother and
sister. So I’m going to work at
bringing people to Krishna
Consciousness.”
Yare dekha tare kaha krsna upadesh
Amara ajnan guru hana tara ei desa
“Wherever you are, whoever you meet,
try to liberate them from death by
following the orders of Lord Krishna in the
Bhagavad Gita.”
Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu to Kurma brahmana
Know Heart of Prabhupada
• Preaching is life
• Witness not
defense attorney
• Let all be
delivered
Bless Your Life
• Care about what
Krishna cares
about, lost souls
• Rest of your life the
best of your life
• Care about whole
world because
Krishna does
No Retirement
“For, if I did not engage in
work, certainly all men
would follow My path. If I
should cease to work, then
all these worlds would be
put to ruination, and I
would therefore destroy
the peace of all sentient
beings.”
Gita 3/23, 24
Transcendental service to the Lord is
not mundane. The service attitude of
the devotee gradually increases and
never becomes slackened. Generally, in
old age a person is allowed retirement
from mundane service. But in the
transcendental service of the Lord there
is no retirement at all; on the contrary,
the service attitude increases more and
more with the progress of age. SB 3/2/3
Hare Krishna Hare Krishna
Krishna Krishna Hare Hare
Hare Rama Hare Rama
Rama Rama Hare Hare