Houston Devotees Safe During Hurrican Harvey, Feeding Victims
Hurricane Harvey has caused major destruction in Houston and throughout Texas in the last several days. 21 trillion gallons of rain fell on the Houston area, causing 51 inches of flooding in the worst hit places. Thirty to forty thousand homes were destroyed by floodwaters just in and around Houston; 39 people died, and 13 million were directly affected.
Brinda Raval, 21, is offering an inspirational example of how young ISKCON devotees can engage with today’s global concerns. “I’m very interested in social justice issues, and how as a devotee and a spiritual person I can use that to serve,” says Brinda. Through a rigorous application process, Brinda was recently accepted to attend the UN Summer Youth Assembly at the UN Headquarters in New York City.
The Bhaktivedanta Gita Academy started in 1994 under the direction and guidance of Bhakti Purusottama Swami, and is located north of the Temple of the Vedic Planetarium. It provides various courses on our Vedic literature, such as the Bhagavad-gita As It Is and Srimad Bhagavatam.
Mahaprasad das has translated a number of Srila Prabhupada’s books from English to Amharic, the official working language of Ethiopia. 10,000 copies of Introduction to Bhagavad Gita and On the Way to Krishna are currently in the UK and will soon be shipped to Ethiopia.
At a recent event to launch the new #SheMustCount campaign, guests including Hollywood stars sponsored 30 girls to attend Vrindavan's Sandipani Muni School and raised $75,000.
Yasomati Devi, a co-founder of Kirtan Academy in Mayapur, toured important states such as Delhi and Punjab, in North India to educate devotees about Gaudiya kirtan standards. She explained each standard and also engaged in kirtans with devotees.
The devotees from the TOVP team are developing a project called FullDome. This project will be located on a small piece of land near Srila Prabhupada’s Samadhi. Operation FullDome is a way to give any visiting guest to Sri Dham Mayapur an opportunity to experience the most unique immersive spiritual experience in a spiritual town.
The walk began from Canterbury Cathedral - the mother of all pilgrimage sites in the UK. The devotees were blessed by the Dean of Canterbury Cathedral for a safe journey, providing an auspicious start to the festival of peace. The opening ceremony was also attended by Cathedral officials, local dignitaries, members of the Canterbury interfaith group.
Several members of the Hindu Forum of Europe (HFE) met with leaders of the Hindu Community of Portugal on 23rd of June 2017 at a hall offered by the City of Lisbon. Mahaprabhu dasa, General Secretary made a presentation of the work of HFE and how it is important for Hindu Communities in different countries in Europe to create platforms to represent them to the government, media and religious leaders.
The App is currently available for iPad and iPhone, with an Android version being planned. It contains the full text of Srila Prabhupada’s Bhagavad-gita as it is. You can make notes. You can adjust the font type and size, search the text to find what you need and choose between scrolling or swiping pages.
The conference registered new ideas and inspiration on how the knowledge and art rich tradition of Vaishnavism could help contribute to the social, cultural, scientific, economic and ecological wealth of humanity.
The UK's first "slaughter-free" dairy farm, Ahimsa dairy, is hoping its model will be picked up upon by other farms. Dairy cows are usually culled when they get older and cannot produce as much milk. But for Ahimsa dairy, the older cows are "retired".
On July 2nd, while driving to Split in Croatia the Harinama Mandir, a European traveling sankirtan party's bus suddenly started to loose the speed and right away stopped. Devotees heroically pullled and pushed the bus to a nearby town, creating quite a site to the passerbyes.
Bhagavata Pradipika, a free monthly e-magazine on the Srimad Bhagavatam, is an initiative of the Bhaktivedanta Vidyapitha, Govardhan Eco-village, to share the unparalleled wisdom of the Bhagavatam with the whole world. Each issue of the Bhagavata Pradipika contains illuminating perspectives and principles of practical application on a pertinent theme of Srimad-Bhagavatam.
A 2-minute short film entitled “Transit Point” featuring Hungarian ISKCON devotees taking care of refugees arriving from war-torn Syria is among the best ten in the video contest run by Faith Counts, an American multi-faith organization with mission is to promote the value of faith.
Southern Baptists reversed course and adopted a statement denouncing “alt-right white supremacy,” calling it “antithetical to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”
Recently, the Parliament of World Relegions issued a statement.
They increasingly see the socially responsible agenda as good business; and, perhaps more important, so do investment firms that are responding to the growing demand for portfolios that reflect a client’s values.
A new book is being released this summer featuring the individual voices of 108 women in the Bhakti tradition. Over the last three years, Krishna Kanta Dasi—founder of the Vaishnavi Voices Poetry Project—has been collecting the poetry of vaishnavis, or female practitioners of bhakti, from all over the world to produce Bhakti Blossoms: A Collection of Contemporary Vaishnavi Poetry.
We live amidst a culture of violence and indifference. Some people resort to violence at even the slightest provocation and others often just stand by, watching indifferently the victimization of another living human being.. This prevailing culture of violence and indifference can make us apathetic, unless we ourselves are targeted.
A recent Pew Research Center survey found that Muslims in the United States currently face the most discrimination of any group, with unlawful profiling, exclusionary immigration policies and hate crimes on the rise. In this environment some ISKCON members are reaching out to their brothers and sisters in the Muslim community.
“I think people naturally understand that big smokestacks have pollution in them and they understand air pollution, so they can easily make the connection between energy production and the idea of greenhouse gases,” Obama said.
Members of the D.C. Supersonic Kirtan group and devotees from the ISKCON temple in Washington D.C. joined together to chant the Hare Krishna maha-mantra at the Peoples Climate March on April 29th. They also shared a spiritual environmental message from the Sri Isopanisad.
The local municipality in Turin, one of the largest cities in Italy, is financially supporting ISKCON’s local Food For Life effort. Devotees feed 100 homeless people at two shelters every Monday. And local public, moved by the devotees' effort, are streaming in to volunteer.
