Texas school shooting: A Bhagavad-gita perspective - Chaitanya Charan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pysdrdzUImI
How Our Actions and Choices in Everyday Life Affect Our Chanting
~from an online lecture by Sacinandana Swami on May 3, 2020
Similar to what we are experiencing today with the internet, everything you do in this world is being ‘recorded’ and it stays there for as long as this manifestation of the world exists. It creates an impression, a samskara, which then informs your future actions and reactions. This is how by your choices, by your activities, you develop a certain pattern of action, choices and response – it is based on deep samskaras. Sometimes we call it habit or conditioning. This can affect your relationship with the Holy Name, because all our perceptions and experiences are affected by the ‘spectacles’ through which we look at the world. For this reason, devotees follow a few rules that help them to avoid those impressions which can distract you in a harmful way. On the other hand, we do things like for instance associating with devotees and reading sacred scriptures that affect us in a positive way, which cause positive samskaras that in turn affect our relationship with the Holy Name.
Engaged Bhakti podcast with Rukmini Walker
featuring Rukmini Walker in an interview with Krishna Kishore Dasa
In this Engaged Bhakti podcast episode, Krishna Kishore Dasa (Dr. Christopher Fici) holds an enlivening discussion with Rukmini Walker on the meaning of women's empowerment in spiritual life and how we can understand and express the ideal balance of the sacred feminine and the sacred masculine in our everyday lives.
Please click on this link or on the image below to listen to the talk.
You can follow Rukmini on: https://www.facebook.com/rukmini.walker/; https://www.patreon.com/RukminiWalker, and Instagram under Rukmini Walker
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bdqk2JfN4Q[/embed]
The Engaged Bhakti podcast is hosted by Krishna Kishore Dasa (Dr. Christopher Fici). Krishna Kishore is a lapsed Catholic kid from Detroit turned Vaishnava/ambigious Hindu. Krishna Kishore spent five years studying and living as a monk in the New Vrindavan community in West Virginia and in the Bhaktivedanta Ashram in New York City, where he remains associated with The Bhakti Center community. At the Bhakti Center he helps to facilitate the Sacred Ecology Forum.
The Power of Vulnerability
An interview by Balaram Perez with Rukmini Walker
In early June, I was interviewed by Balaram Perez at the beautiful and historic Bhaktivedanta Manor in England - the Manor house that was donated by George Harrison. The interview was on the power of vulnerability, Bhakti Yoga, healthy relationships between men and women, parenting and much more. I hope you enjoy it! ~ All the best, RukminiTo watch this interview, click here or on the screen shot below and it will take you to the youtube page for the Inspire Show at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gp5LGX7sMKo&feature=youtu.be [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gp5LGX7sMKo&feature=youtu.be[/embed]
Gaura Purnima 2019
March 21st in the holy Appearance Day of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu. In the Gaudiya Vaisnava tradition, He is considered to be a combined form of the divine feminine, Sri Radha, and the divine masculine, Sri Krsna.Here is a backstory of how that came to be:One day, Krsna sat beside Radhika in the forest of Vrndavan. Taking one of her hands in His, He pleaded. "Please give me something special today..."Inwardly, Sri Radha's heart melted at His request, but outwardly, she concealed her secret mind with a studied silence. Speaking no words, but by the tilt of her head, her sidelong glance, and the sign language of her lotus hand, she invited Krsna to tell her what he wanted. And Sri Krsna eagerly obliged her silent invitation with an outburst: "Please give me your love!"
Radha smiled and responded playfully. "Aho, but Krsna, this love of mine would be too heavy for You to bear."Just then, the best of Sri Radha's devoted girlfriends, the saucy Lalita, chimed in,"Radha's love would be too heavy for You, Krsna. You should know how intense it is when You are not near, her anxiety knows no limit. And though we try our best, no remedy can be found to assuage her distress. We anoint her body, blazing from the fire of separation, with cooling sandalwood paste, but the sandalwood flies from her limbs like dry leaves of paper. We bid her to lie on a shaded bed we prepared, strewn with dampened lotus petals, but the fragrant petals are in incinerated by the fever of her longing. So, it is true, none but the Queen of Vraja could bear that weight. It would be too heavy for You.Hearing these words, Krsna grabbed hold of Radharani's other hand, and with tears coming from His lotus eyes, implored once more: "But I cannot live without tasting the nectar of this love!"Astonished by joy, Sri Radha broadly smiled, and as if orchestrated by her heartbeat, all of Vraja fell silent, eavesdropping to hear her jubilant declaration. "All right, beloved. I will give you this love You crave. But there's something more. You will need the sanctuary of my golden complexion to shield your beautiful blackish body, because the intensity of my love will cause You to stumble and fall. And without the protection of my golden effulgence, you would be bruised. This golden hue will indemnify You instantly, no harm will come to ever overtake Your soft body, which is more dear to me than life itself."So Krsna was concealed by the molten gold of Sri Radha's dazzling complexion, which causes Him to adopt her mood and inner disposition. His limbs began to tremble and dance in jubilation, and He began to cry out, as Radha does, "O Krsna, where are You? Where are you? O ascendant moon risen from the dynasty of Nanda Maharaj and Yasoda? O beloved of my life breath, where are You? As soon as Krsna possessed and was possessed by this love, His amorous cries transformed the landscape: the stones within earshot melted in ecstasy; the trees began to dance; and the ardour of the love He felt caused Him to crash down like a tree torn from the earth by a gale, and cast to the ground. And then it was that Sri Radha's beautiful golden effulgence protected Him, as she had promised... This is the notion of Gauranga Mahaprabhu found in the line of Rupa and Raghunath..."(This story appears in Narahari Cakravarti's 18th Century Narottama-vilasa)I wish you a most joyous Gaura Purnima, Appearance day of Lord Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu!May Lord Caitanya be in your hearts and minds!
All the best,
Rukmini Walker
We Light A Candle
Oct. 30, 2018
Have you ever noticed that happy events in life seem to arrive coupled with tragic or unhappy ones? Last Saturday, a dear friend of ours was married, yesterday was the funeral of another friend.
I remember on the day of my sister’s wedding, a beloved grandfather on the other side of the family passed away. Sometimes the birth of a child is celebrated, and that day someone else announces a divorce.
These days, tragic events come in a close volley of repetition, themselves like shots from a semi-automatic weapon- our everyday world itself has become a killing field.
The tragic killings at the Tree of Life Synagogue (how cruel and absurd- to come with an ax of hate to try to cut down the Tree of Life!) , and then, only days afterward, another merciless killing of African Americans in Kentucky.
[perfectpullquote align="full" cite="" link="" color="" class="" size=""]We seem live in a world of duality. But this duality is our illusion. When we turn away from the sun, we face our shadow. When we turn away from God, our original Source, we see ourselves as separate, and fear arises. When we forget our commonality- that all living beings share the same divine Origin, and are eternal souls- beloved to God and sacred just like me.[/perfectpullquote]
At the Presbyterian church where the funeral was held yesterday, there was a banner hanging on the wall behind the altar. It said: We are one body, though we are many. I was deeply struck by the beauty and depth of that message.
In a few days we will celebrate Diwali, the New Year, the Festival of Lights. The victorious Lord Ram returns to His kingdom, and we celebrate the triumph of good over evil. The holy month of Kartik has already begun, and already we are offering our candles, our lights, our little “dipas” each day.
In this bittersweet year, as we celebrate the joy of Diwali, let us also offer up a prayer for peace and reconciliation, like this one, offered by Sri Prahlada Maharaj:
"May the entire universe be blessed with peace and good hope. May everyone driven by envy and enmity become pacified and reconciled. May all living beings develop abiding concern for the welfare of others. May our own hearts and minds be filled with purity and serenity. May all these blessings flow naturally from this supreme benediction: May our attention become spontaneously absorbed in the rapture of pure love unto the transcendent Lord." (inspired by Srimad Bhagavatam 5.18.9)
All the best,
Rukmini Walker
The Seen and the Unseen: The Young and the Elderly
Oct. 17th, 2018
South Florida is an interesting place. Like all places, I suppose, each has it’s own mood, it’s own ambience.
Last weekend I led a workshop in a vibrant youthful yoga community in Del Ray Beach. These last few days, I’ve been spending with my 91 year-old mother, Edith, in Boca Raton.
I keep thinking of the story of the Prince Gautama Buddha, and how it was predicted that he would renounce his father’s kingdom and the world.
His father, the king, took precaution to shelter his son from any possible stray introspection. The prince grew up surrounded by beautiful young people, pleasure gardens and all possible enjoyments of life. He was never to see suffering, or disease, old age or death.
But one day the inquisitive young prince scaled the wall and began to observe and inquire:
“What is this I see?”
“Dear boy, this is suffering- this is disease- this is old age- and this is death. And after death- again, there will be rebirth!”
Our culture also seems to have created such a veneer of an ever-youthful pleasure garden: in the media, on the billboards, the internet, in film… Beautiful people, an endless summer, with questions of why? sidelined to the fringe. With cancer wards tucked away behind corporate walls. Just a little more acquisition should fill the emptiness in my heart- with no alert to my time… to my youth- slipping away each day.
I see an elderly couple walking out of an elevator, clutching each other for support, for dear life…
What is our purpose in this temporary place? Aren’t we meant to begin to awaken- before our next death- some inkling of who we are and why we are here?
But the voices of the sadhus are there, in every place, in every generation, calling to us:
“But then a voice, how deep and soft,
Within ourselves is left,
Soul! Soul! Thou art immortal soul!
Thee death can never melt.”
Bhaktivinode Thakur