I started noticing at our community that there where kids, and my first notice of them would be that they would trump through the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam class while we were conducting it, without a care in the world, or noticing that they were walking through a group of devotees who were hearing Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam. Then I started noticing that they were exceptional. Little by little, I noticed that, and I got fascinated with how they were born into families where the chanting of Hare Kṛṣṇa, where the devotees were chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa. And I saw they must be some special souls. Then I started realizing more and more that they were, and then I started realizing more and more that they were one of the main pillars of the community.

So I gave more and more attention to the young people, partly because they were non-judgmental, and it was really easy to be around them and have programs. And then I started doing more research about how to give more facility to young people. I wanted to know what they thought when they were growing up, and what it felt like to be an adolescent in the Hare Kṛṣṇa movement. In fact, I called some devotees who were already grown up, but they had been through that, like Jhanavi Harrison, that I talked to for some time, and she told me how she had met Jamunā and had been deeply inspired by her. And when she was leaving her home and driving away, she thought, "Yeah, I'm going to be a devotee." Then I got together a group of young people who were my godbrothers and godsisters who had been initiated at a young age—some of them at 12, Prabhupāda gave initiation to—and I wanted to know from them what inspired them and what was a hindrance in their progress. After some conferences, they came up with these two mantras. One of them was in the middle of this pentagon that you see there. What helped them the most was seeing peers doing great, and the thing that held them back the most, they said, was not having upward mobility they felt at the time there. There wasn't any opening for them for taking on service or management or anything like that.

Then I started noticing that young people gravitated, oftentimes and in many places around ISKCON, to kīrtana. And I started some interaction with the kids, where we had not just kīrtana, but also some of the other things you see here: ślokas, śravaṇam (hearing from Prabhupāda's books), then of course kīrtanam, and then visits to the Deities' rooms, and also learning book distribution. I saw those as five points that could be really helpful, and we started several programs like Youth Jam, Śāstra Jam, Japa Jolt, and Youth Yatra. Why am I bringing this up regarding community? Because people care about their kids right? now, really say, "Yes, yeah." I mean, and when the kids are becoming Kṛṣṇa conscious and well-rounded, and they actually cross that threshold where they say, "No, I want to be a devotee. It's not that I was a devotee. Now I'm growing up, and I'm going to move on and do something else." They feel part of the mission, and they start taking responsibilities like initiation and also wanting to do service. And they're really smart, too, and they bring in everybody else. They bring in the rest of the community. It enlivens them.

So I made these two pentagons. One of them is a reminder that it all comes back to śravaṇam-kīrtanam. There's no point to coming together for niceties if there's no transcendental sound vibration, and the community is all based on hearing and chanting and then distributing to as many people as possible. If we have those as a center point, and if we feel that we're flagging in one way or another, we can always remember that the antidote to that is to hear and chant more and increase the transcendental sound vibration. That's helpful to know. And it's the verdict of the śāstra that that's our main process.

So he (Lord Caitanya )went back to His spiritual master, and he said, "Did you give me the right mantra? Because when I chant this, I go crazy." And the spiritual master said, "Very good, very good, very good." And there in the purport, Prabhupāda said, "A spiritual master isn't interested in donations or any material facility. What he wants to see is that the disciple gets the freedom of Kṛṣṇa consciousness and gets a taste for chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa."

Prabhupāda—the first time I had the fortune of sitting in his presence, it was in 1973 in San Francisco, a kid from the suburbs. Here's a paramahaṁsa. I went in with a group, got whisked in, sat down, and when the devotees read Prabhupāda the saṅkīrtana results for the day, he looked right at us, and he said, "You must also read my books. I've not written them just for selling. I've written them for you to read, become pure devotees, and go back to Godhead." That's what Prabhupāda wanted. He says so in his books. So he wanted us to read his books.

And after that time, I felt full permission to read Prabhupāda's books as much as possible, and I still do, and it's the mainstay of our movement—that is the sound vibration, that is the books. Prabhupāda's books are the primal vibration of ISKCON, and taking full advantage of that vibration by going deeply within them, reading them regularly, reading all of them completely, all the way through as many times as possible in his lifetime—that gives one this internal spiritual strength, and one can understand exactly what Kṛṣṇa wants, what Prabhupāda wanted, hearing from his purports. He said, "Everything I had to say, I said in my books, so please read them carefully and discuss them." He said in his final purports before he left the world that if there's ever any difference or problems, he said, "Sit together and read Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, and you could work it out."

So that's what he wanted us to be internally, to be deeply in love with the Bhāgavatam. And that's not hard to do because it's so beautiful. The Bhāgavatam solves all the problems. Kṛṣṇa mentions in the Bhagavad-gītā vīta-rāga-bhaya-krodhāḥ—there are these three main stumbling blocks in the material world: rāga, bhaya, krodha. By reading through the whole Bhāgavatam, there's a way in which the Bhāgavatam helps us overcome all of the psychological anomalies that hold us back from giving our full heart to Kṛṣṇa. And that's what Kṛṣṇa wants. That's what Prabhupāda wants. That's what any Vaiṣṇava wants. They want to see everybody happy. And a Vaiṣṇava knows you can't be happy unless you're with Kṛṣṇa.

I mentioned in a class this morning, I just read in the 11th Canto of the Bhāgavatam that the emptiness that people feel in the material world because they're not in contact with Kṛṣṇa is worse than death and hell. The pain of struggling through life and then dying and going to hell is not as great as the emptiness that one feels by not being connected to Kṛṣṇa. And you can directly connect to Kṛṣṇa by reading the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, because that's the sound incarnation of Kṛṣṇa. So that's what Prabhupāda wanted. He wanted us to take advantage of what he painstakingly presented for us.

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We're really in a pickle here, and there's a way in which Kṛṣṇa absolves us of all that, if we just come back to our happy life, happy Life means, "Kṛṣṇa, I'm Yours. I'm Your servant." So the meaning of chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa is very profound. It means that you've come to the pinnacle of understanding that my life is meant for Kṛṣṇa, and everything I do is to be used in His service, dedicated to Him. When you chant Hare Kṛṣṇa, you can take full shelter of Kṛṣṇa and just say, "Kṛṣṇa, I am a lost soul. I'm not liberated. I have nothing in this world. I'm the runt of the litter. I've been left behind, abandoned. I'm freezing by the roadside in the middle of nowhere, and have nobody else but You. Please, please engage me in Your service." And Kṛṣṇa is so kind that in our forlorn, lost situation, He'll be there. In fact, He's always been there for us, and there's a recognition that He's there for us. When we call out to Him, then immediately we'll feel satisfaction in our heart. All the disappointments we've had in this world, all the tenuous situations, trying to hold on to things that we know we can't hold on to, will be assuaged from our fears, from our false hopes that are nagging at us, giving us a sense of cognitive dissonance at every moment of our lives, even when we're dreaming—it will be dried up.Our tears will dry up.

Excerpt from the Talk: Put Together A Lifetime of Dedication to Kṛṣṇa https://youtu.be/cwiBso8Mafk

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That eagle then leapt out from his hands and began to soar. And in that moment realized that it was not a chicken, but it was an eagle. The story—many people may take various lessons from the story—but one of the ways it relates to the practice of what we call Kṛṣṇa consciousness, which means to come back to our original consciousness, is to see that the ways that we work in this world and the idea that we're a material entity ,"I belong to a particular family"—when you perform a yajña, there's a recount of your family and your heritage and so forth. But actually, we don't have anything to do with this material identity that we've assumed.

And because of association, we've taken on a very determined lifestyle that, "Oh, I'm a human. I have to do human things and so forth, and I have work to do, I have a family, I have obligations to my material body." So Kṛṣṇa says, "This is a mistaken identity." But when we're reminded by Kṛṣṇa and those who teach Kṛṣṇa consciousness like our spiritual teacher here came to the West and just had a simple message that the work that you're doing and the way that you're identifying yourself s not your real nature. He was like that wise person who came and took the eagle and said, "Here, here, no, try fly," and it's quite natural, because that is our nature. We're spiritual beings.

Link to the entire talk: https://youtu.be/rQ7AlWtSorY

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When you look at the world, you think, "Oh yeah, I know how this works. I know causality. I know the resultant vector of what's taking place here." And when you read the Bhagavad-gītā and Kṛṣṇa tells you, "Here's how to identify the modes of nature, and here's the effect of each mode of nature." For instance, He says, in passion, it's like nectar in the beginning, but poison at the end. When you know that, and it's there in your intelligence strongly enough, and the opportunity comes and you go, there's a little screen in front of your face, like there's a little readout that you can see, like if you had those AI glasses or something. And then you look, and you go, "Rajas: happy in the beginning, poison in the end." And like, "Would you like poison?" "No thanks." Even though the senses are going, "Take it, come on, take it," and then the intelligence says, "No, we don't want to drink poison right now. Thanks a lot. Maybe, you know, some other time."

This is what we get from the Bhagavad-gītā and Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam. So in the beginning, if we're diligent in doing vaidhi—taking shelter of the scripture. Vaidhi means scripture. In the beginning, we're not practicing spontaneous devotional service. We don't have a taste, but we have faith in śāstra. As it is pointed out many times by our ācāryas and by Prabhupāda, śāstra or śastra. It comes from the same root, but śāstra means the scripture which gives us this razor-sharp intelligence, and śastra means the sword of the material world. If you put your hand in the wrong place, you get your fingers cut off. So which do you prefer? You take the śāstra or the śastra? That's why we emphasize our movements based on this śāstra. If you join a movement and there's no śāstra and they just have emotions, you really won't be able to make advancement.

This is also there in the Second Chapter—it's a few verses before where we are now, śṛṇvatām. It says (SB 1.2.12),

tac chraddadhānā munayo

jñāna-vairāgya-yuktayā

paśyanty ātmani cātmānaṁ

bhaktyā śruta-gṛhītayā

To make advancement on this path, you need śāstra. It has to be there. And if you don't have that, then it's going to be very difficult just to say, "Okay, I already have a higher taste; therefore, I won't be attracted to everything else." If you don't have that yet, you will be pulled back into the idea that maybe I can enjoy both things—I'll do devotional service and also enjoy the material world at the same time. And that doesn't work out well.

Verse for discussion: https://vedabase.io/en/library/sb/1/2/17/

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How is it that transcendental sound can be transmitted through a material medium? After all, when you hear "Hare Kṛṣṇa," that's a percussive sound, it's coming through the air, and it's touching your eardrum, and it's vibrating, and it goes through the auditory nerve, and then you're able to make some association. So how do you distinguish a material sound from a spiritual sound? Or how are those two different?

And they are different, say the personified Vedas, because Kṛṣṇa is the Supreme Personality of Godhead, and He controls all energies, and He's fully cognizant of why you're chanting. Therefore, when a pure devotee chants, Pṛthu Mahārāja says in the Fourth Canto of the Bhāgavatam, there's a different effect than when a māyāvādī chants, māyāvādī poison. Pṛthu Mahārāja says, when a pure devotee with love in his heart (or her heart) for Kṛṣṇa chants the holy name, then that holy name, he says poetically, touches Kṛṣṇa's lotus feet. Look, His lotus feet are besmeared with saffron, and that's in the paste that the devotees put on the Lord's lotus feet, and then the sound vibration is mixed with saffron mercy particles. So when you hear that sound vibration by Kṛṣṇa's divine arrangement from a pure devotee, then your heart changes, and you say, "I think I'll surrender to Kṛṣṇa." When a māyāvādī chants, and they think they're chanting to become God, or all demigods are God, are the same, then the sound vibration is contaminating.

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When you follow the footsteps of the great sages, you say, "Only Kṛṣṇa. All for Kṛṣṇa. I'm all in for Kṛṣṇa. I'm all out for the idea that I'm going to be happy in the material world. That's it—finished, done, no más, out." Then you're eligible for the same result as the greatest of sages: kalpante yennu tāṁ iha—means you get what they got, because you're following their footsteps. Even if you feel feeble in your attempt, you will attain the highest perfection.

So if you take this attitude that "Kṛṣṇa, I'm Yours, there's nothing else but You," then you'll never make an offense, also never feel entitled.

Entitlement is a dangerous attitude. If you feel it creeping in, then go somewhere and get some remedial measure to overcome entitlement, because it can creep in and you might not even know that you have it. If somebody notices it in you and mentions that you seem entitled, like you feel entitled, then be afraid. What should you be? Actually, I'm going to modify that. Be very afraid. Be afraid of entitlement and feel that "I'm not entitled to anything," and you may notice that it's natural. Your senses feel entitled. Have you ever noticed that if you see a cupcake, your tongue may say, "That's for me. That's mine." And you can say, "No, that's not your cupcake. That's Kṛṣṇa's cupcake." First, you offer it to Kṛṣṇa, then you can have a little bit. Don't be entitled, and be sincere. Just be sincere. Don't think you have to perform a trick. This is not a circus act. It is not something to show that "I'm something" or "somebody." We have nothing except our own sincerity. Just come down to that essence. Bottle it, if you can find it inside, you put it in a little bottle, and every day, take a little drop of that, and remember you just need sincerity. Kṛṣṇa says in the Bhagavad-gītā: 'teṣāṁ satata-yuktānāṁ bhajatāṁ prīti-pūrvakam dadāmi buddhi-yogaṁ taṁ yena mām upayānti te' (BG 10.10)

He's there for us just as long as we're sincere, and He knows what our heart is. And if we're sincere, don't try to have pretense—a pretense that "I'm more than I am." You don't have to do that. It's not important. Nobody cares anyway. Everyone is concerned with their own stature and how they look. And everyone looked in the mirror this morning at one time or another and thought, you know, "How am I going to come off in the world?" You don't have to worry about that, except for as a record of being a representative of Kṛṣṇa, but for ourselves, we can remain akiñcana. Queen Kunti says, don't get caught up with the designations of wealth or beauty or intelligence. Don't try to perform like a circus animal. Just be a sincere devotee of Kṛṣṇa. And don't even try to be a great devotee. Just try to be a good devotee. And if we just try to be good and put together one lifetime of dedication to Kṛṣṇa—just one lifetime—that's it.

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Frame or be framed. If I don't frame my exact purpose for my attention, then the undisciplined mind will take me to a myriad other places. So remembering that our two obstacles in chanting are apathy and distraction—at least those are two major ones. And we're here to remedy those by sitting with devotees and chanting, and also remembering that the goal of life is to remember Kṛṣṇa, especially at the time of death, and that we're in a practice session right now. So get ready and do your due diligence. Do your repetitions now. Don't wait until it's too late.

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There is an interim period in devotional service when we begin. This unfolds in the story, because we'll notice and other people have asked, and ācāryas have answered, how is it that Ajāmila chanted "Nārāyaṇa," but it seemed that he went on with a sinful life? He was chanting "Nārāyaṇa" a lot. "This is Nārāyaṇa. Come eat. Nārāyaṇa. Please come sleep. Nārāyaṇa, Nārāyaṇa, Nārāyaṇa." And in that case, Viśvanātha Cakravartī Ṭhākura, or in the commentary for this chapter, explains (as does Prabhupāda, obviously) that once he had chanted "Nārāyaṇa," then, although he went on with the momentum of his sinful life, it was like a snake with no teeth. Although the snake seems to be biting again and again like that, there's no effect. There's no poison that comes from it.

The interim period of devotional service, when one begins devotional service in earnest, of course, one has to cross over anartha-nivṛtti. And as Kṛṣṇa Himself explains to Uddhava in the 11th Canto of the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam (SB/11/20/27-28):

jāta-śraddho mat-kathāsu

nirviṇṇaḥ sarva-karmasu

veda duḥkhātmakān kāmān

parityāge ’py anīśvaraḥ

tato bhajeta māṁ prītaḥ

śraddhālur dṛḍha-niścayaḥ

juṣamāṇaś ca tān kāmān

duḥkhodarkāṁś ca garhayan

This interim period, He says, is when jāta-śraddho mat-kathāsu—your faith in the process is awakened of hearing that will kill all sinful reactions, and one will progress on devotional service. nirviṇṇaḥ sarva-karmasu—the person also becomes aware that he's disgusted with his tendency to engage in material activities. 'Veda duḥkhātmakān kāmān'—because he knows that engagement in sense gratification leads to misery. But 'parityāge ’py anīśvaraḥ'—parityāga means to give something up, and īśvara means supreme controller, obviously, but it also means the power to do something. He's in this position: he knows what it leads to, but still he doesn't have the power to give it up.

So then Kṛṣṇa says that one should go on with the process and know that anyone who's engaged in devotional service is very dear to Him. And gradually, by the strength of the process, when one comes to full strength in devotional service, duḥkhodarkāṁś ca garhayan—and He said, garhayan means you should have a little regret, but not too much. If you become obsessed with how unqualified you are, and then you say that "I'm permanently unqualified," that's illegal, because the power of devotional service is so great that anyone can become purified if you just stick to the process. And He said 'garhayan'—you can take just a little bit of that, like when you use asafoetida (hing). If you use any more, if you can use enough that you can see it, that's too much. It has to be microscopic; otherwise, you'll kill the preparation. So similarly, we should have a little bit of remorse for the fact that we're not at that level.

(excerpt from the discussion)

https://vedabase.io/en/library/sb/6/1/

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If you win something, you call somebody on the phone: "I just won something!" and tell somebody else. We've won a lot! We've won a free human birth. There are several places. For instance, the Avadhūta Brāhmaṇa—he's out in the wilderness, and Mahārāja Yadu meets him and says, "How did you become enlightened? You're obviously enlightened." And he said, "I have all these gurus around." Mahārāja Yadu said, "I didn't see anybody. It's just wilderness." And he starts pointing to natural phenomena and saying, "I got lessons from the mountain, from the tree, from the kurara hawk." He names these 24 gurus, and one of the statements is: 'labdhvā su-durlabham idaṁ bahu-sambhavānte mānuṣyam artha-dam anityam apīha dhīraḥ.' That is, the human life is very rare to get. You can't sign up for it. You just either get it or you don't. And once you've got it, you can turn this temporary (and miserable, by the way) life into something eternal and blissful forever. That's a pretty good deal. So that's something we've won.

And then we have also won because of the sampradāya—the sages, the great devotees—they feel so happy, and they also understand Kṛṣṇa's mission for the world. Kṛṣṇa's mission for the world is: He's the Prabhu, He's the master, and we're all His jana—we're all His subordinate servants. Those who are ensconced in material energy and lost to the happiness of the spiritual world, Kṛṣṇa wants to reclaim, and that's His main purpose for creating the material world. And if you know that, then you can be an insider in spiritual life by helping Kṛṣṇa in His mission, by sharing Kṛṣṇa consciousness with other people. If you do that, then you become part of this phenomenon called sampradāya, giving the greatest gifts.

There are lots and lots and lots—millions—of good causes in the world. Even in London, there are good causes, but there's only one great cause, and that is to take Kṛṣṇa consciousness while you're a human and you have the opportunity, and you give it to as many people as possible. And that's the spirit of the sampradāya. The more we take it ourselves through these five methods and feel the effect of it, the more you'll be enthusiastic to administer the medicine. That's a metaphor given often in Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam: 'nivṛtta-tarṣair upagīyamānād bhavauṣadhāc chrotra-mano-'bhirāmāt' in which Śukadeva Gosvāmī describes how this is medicine. You're in a diseased condition, and hearing Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam is medicine. And you give the medicine to people if you see that there's a need for medicine, and you have it, and then you get a chance to distribute it, it's a very heartfelt service. Sometimes people don't know they need it, but they get it and then take it, and then they feel revived and then become eternally grateful, and they want to give it out also to other people. That's nice to see, right?

So that's all part of this idea of sampradāya. It's a great life. It's the best life—is taking what's the most valuable, imbibing it for oneself so you feel genuinely qualified to recommend it to others, because you've taken it and you're taking it, and you feel the change in your life, and then you naturally just want to share it with other people. So it's not really a technique; it's just life—life in abundance. There is only one way to be abundant in life, and it's to think of Kṛṣṇa and chant Kṛṣṇa's names, have prasādam—this is abundant life—and then we share it with other people. And that's Lord Caitanya's mission, which is called audārya.

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To connect with His Grace Vaiśeṣika Dāsa, please visit https://www.fanthespark.com/next-steps/ask-vaisesika-dasa/

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Add to your wisdom literature collection:

https://iskconsv.com/book-store/

https://www.bbtacademic.com/books/

https://thefourquestionsbook.com/

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