Jagat

Sunset on te banks of the Yamuna. PC Thinking Particle I have usually avoided talking about environmental issues on this blog. Vrindavan Today was really meant for that, and I am really happy that Jagannath Poddar is taking the environmental side of Vrindavan consciousness very seriously and is leading Vrindavan Today into a more activist direction.  Part of the Braj Vrindavan Heritage Alliance (BVHA) strategy that I participated in was to administer the Save Yamuna to Save Vrindavan FB page that was first started by Vaishnavacharya Chandan Goswami . It is now being jointly run by me and Katie Jo WalterShoemaker . Katie Jo, like many others, is driven to distraction by the state of the world environment, and like many people whose heart lies in Vrindavan, is trying to do something about it by focusing on the Yamuna and water issues.. The more I think about it, an active environmentalism should be an essential part of the Krishna conscious movement. It is someth...

Boat on Yamuna near Keshi Ghat. Well-meaning volunteers diverted the Yamuna stream to come to the ghat, but polluted water draining into the river from town sewers still predominates. If I had to say what the main event for me was in 2011, it was definitely the move to Vrindavan. Since the end of 2007, I have been spending most of my time at the Swami Rama Sadhaka Grama in Rishikesh, which was recently named the fourth best yoga ashram in India. Life was good there and, in terms of my own spiritual practices, I was given plenty of time to study, learn, teach and write. This year, I finished editing the revised and enlarged edition of Swami Veda Bharati's Yoga-sütras.  I went back in September for a month to complete the project, and there are still bits and pieces left. I am also signed on with Swami Veda to work on a couple of other books. I like Swami Veda and I like his people; I also like the ashram. But Vrindavan has been calling for a long time. Vrindavan is my home. A...

It really is time to get this beast shaking again. Over the past few months I have not been doing much original writing. I had a few translation jobs that preoccupied me, and it would have been quite possible to comment publicly on that work. In fact, two different projects were directly connected with Ishopanishad, and I lectured on the Ishopanishad for a month at Swami Rama Sadhaka Grama. There was definitely material that would have been of interest to my readers in that and now I am rather sorry that I did not take the trouble to publish my notes. Perhaps we can do it later. (He said with a sigh.) One of the reasons I did not of course is that this blog has a somewhat specialized purpose, unclear as that may seem, and I would like to stick to that, rather than enter into an arcane discussion of the meaning of an ancient Upanishad. Though, since part of my work involved reading A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami's totally idiosyncratic interpretation of that work, it might have been wor...

This news that the Allahabad High Court has ordered a temporary injunction against the construction of the bridge over the Yamuna is most welcome. We can rejoice and thank the devotees from around the world. Their massive sigh of despair has no doubt influenced the way that the karmic wheel is turning. More and more people have become conscious of the issue and have been deeply affected emotionally at the thought of the wanton desecration and destruction of our beloved Vrindavan Dham. But we are far from winning this war. It is only lull, a break, a little bit of time to mobilize our forces for the even greater obstacles that need to be overcome. This war will not be won by mind vibrations only, nor even by Harinam alone. It will require convincing people on a massive scale in India and around the world. When we started in Krishna consciousness so many years ago, we thought that the whole world would turn to Krishna in a very short time. We were so enthusiastic and convinc...