Among my current projects is a small handbook on kirtana, tentatively called Srila Prabhupada’s Kirtana Standards, developed from a seminar I’ve given. I have a finished draft and am adjusting it according to comments I’ve received. I’m going to start putting the draft here online, in parts, one after another, so that more devotees can read it and help me improve it. I especially welcome comments—suggestions, criticisms, questions, whatever. Among other things: If you were personally present with Srila Prabhupada and received or heard instructions from him about kirtana, or were present at an … [Read more...] about The Kirtana Standards book: Draft going online
Articles about the Krishna Culture and Tradition
About the Krishna tradition in Manipur
Srila Prabhupada’s kirtana standards
Last December at the Mayapur Institute I gave a four-day seminar about Srila Prabhupada's standards for kirtana. The seminar is now online, starting here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fb5Cv6RYLI.Thank you to Pradyumna Misra Dasa for the shooting and editing. The full set of videos is available on the Dhama Media YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzN7cEEDufL4W-lg-p-8kFA/videos. Also available there is a version with a voice-over translation in Russian. … [Read more...] about Srila Prabhupada’s kirtana standards
On pilgrimage, 1985: The lost article
A few weeks back, while looking through some old files at the Hare Krishna temple in Brooklyn, I came upon a copy of a newsletter I had edited in 1985 while traveling throughout India with a party of pilgrims. The newsletter included an article I had written, but the newsletter, and therefore the article, had long been lost. I was pleased to rediscover it. Padayātrā Newsletter Number 13, October 1985 Not Quite Back to Godhead The second and third articles I wrote for the Padayātrā “On Pilgrimage” series have now appeared in Back to Godhead. I found out some weeks ago … [Read more...] about On pilgrimage, 1985: The lost article
Introducing “Ahimsa Balancing”
As an aspiring devotee of Krishna, I face a moral problem: I am pro-dairy but anti-cruelty and anti-slaughter, and I know that the dairy industry and the slaughter industry are partners in cruelty and killing. If I buy milk from the store, I can be sure it comes from cows that have been exploited and abused and at last are heartlessly slaughtered. How then can my ethics allow me to purchase such milk, offer it to Krishna, the well-wisher of cows, or even drink it? Yet the entire culture of Krishna consciousness gives importance to milk and milk products: ghee, yogurt, butter, milk … [Read more...] about Introducing “Ahimsa Balancing”
Manipur: A Land of Krishna Conscious Culture
from Back to Godhead, November-December 1995 Indian Airlines -- from Calcutta via Guwahati -- has brought us to Imphal. We're a delegation of Krishna devotees from America, India, France, Italy, Iran, Australia, Singapore, and New Zealand. Hazy grey sky, mountains off in the distance to your left. The air is cool (Calcutta was blazing). We're up on a plateau, at twenty-five hundred feet. On the far side of the barbed wire that marks the parking lot from the airfield, an Army guard, turbaned Sikh, looks on patiently, rifle in hand. A drought is on. This is mid March, … [Read more...] about Manipur: A Land of Krishna Conscious Culture
How Manipur Became a Krishna Conscious State
from Back to Godhead, November-December 1995 The Vedic scriptures tell us that Manipur was a Krishna conscious land even more than five thousand years ago. But for the last several centuries the Manipuris have also worshiped various regional semi-historical deities, who hold a place in Manipuri culture even today. In modern times, worship of Vishnu first gained prominence in Manipur in the fifteenth century, during the reign of King Kyamba. It is said that the Pong king Khekhombha of the Shan kingdom gave Kyamba a Vishnu chakra (the symbolic disc of Vishnu). The presence of … [Read more...] about How Manipur Became a Krishna Conscious State
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