Lacking atma-tattva, or spiritual knowledge, we forget that the "soldiers" who are supposed to protect us - the government, our family, and the society - are fallible, and we rely on them excessively.
While navigating through life’s inevitable challenges, we often increase our burdens by uncritically accepting prevailing definitions of success as our life’s goals.
Exactly echoing a message found in the Bhagavad-gita, a UK senior judge recently declared that “almost all of society’s social ills can be traced directly to the collapse of the family life.”
We live in an age that that cherishes equality for all and celebrates the breaking down of barriers such as race. Intriguingly, a similar egalitarian spirit is enshrined in the Bhagavad-gita written millennia ago.
Here is what we know: karma is very difficult to understand. We all have experience of this fact. Krishna even advises in Bhagavad-gita that karma is so intricate that it’s better not to become too convinced that we will even understand it, better to just find our way out of the world of karma. But still, for purposes of helping others, we Hare Krishna devotees try to inform people of the correct understanding of karma.
Ever thought much about footnotes? As a practicing lawyer I have nightmares about them! Footnotes have the power to illuminate or damn any argument. The American College Dictionary defines a footnote as follows: a note or comment at the foot of a page, referring to a specific part of the text on the page. I don’t mean to get into splitting hairs, but as a lawyer I can’t help myself. The Compact Oxford English Dictionary defines a footnote slightly different as: an additional piece of information printed at the bottom of a page.
BAGHDAD — Vice is making a comeback in this city once famous for 1,001 varieties of it. Gone, for the most part, are nighttime curfews, religious extremists and prowling kidnappers. So, inevitably, some people are turning to illicit pleasures, or at least slightly dubious ones.
The good news: Kirtan, it seems, has finally hit the American mainstream. In the lead story of Wednesday’s New York Times Fashion & Style section, “Yoga Enthusiasts Hear the Call of Kirtan,” Times reporter Sara Eckel gives an overwhelmingly positive – albeit cheeky – glimpse into the practice of meditative call-and-response chanting. Festive, enjoyable, soothing, even relatively inexpensive – kirtan sounds like a pretty good deal in our troubled, stress-filled times.
As if there aren't enough differences between the sexes – now it seems we sin in quite diverse ways. Men struggle most with lust, while for women it's the issue of pride. A Vatican report has found that after excessive pride, the most common sin for women is envy; for men the urge for sex is followed by desire for food, The Advertiser reports.
The U.S. Religious Landscape Survey finds that more than one-in-four (27%) American adults who are married or living with a partner are in religiously mixed relationships. If people from different Protestant denominational families are included - for example, a marriage between a Methodist and a Lutheran - nearly four-in-ten (37%) couples are religiously mixed.
A Christian bus driver has refused to drive a bus with an atheist slogan proclaiming "There's probably no God". Ron Heather, from Southampton, Hampshire, responded with "shock" and "horror" at the message and walked out of his shift on Saturday in protest.
THE use of nuclear weapons will grow increasingly likely by 2025, US intelligence warned in a report on global trends that forecasts a tense, unstable world shadowed by war. "The world of the near future will be subject to an increased likelihood of conflict over scarce resources, including food and water, and will be haunted by the persistence of rogue states and terrorist groups with greater access to nuclear weapons," said the report.
Teachers should not be prosecuted for having affairs with their sixth formers, a union chief has said.
NASUWT general secretary Chris Keates said it was an “anomaly” that a teacher who had sex with a pupil aged over 16 could go on the sex offenders register.
Teachers in one part of the US state of Texas are to be allowed to carry concealed firearms when the new school term opens this month. The school superintendent in Harrold district said the move was intended to protect staff and pupils should there be any gun attacks on its sole campus.
Srila Prabhupada wanted us to serve together based on love and trust. Here are some reflections on building trust and some ideas that may be helpful to our temples and projects. Most organizations are not aware of the enormous cost of low trust, and because they have no means of measuring its impact, they have little motivation to seriously address it. To compound the problem, many people feel like helpless victims of the problems in their organizations and see no clear way to influence their leaders.