19860209 Sunday Feast Evening

The following is a lecture given by His Holiness Jayapatākā Swami on February 9^th, 1986 in New Orleans, Louisiana. The class is given at a Sunday Feast.

Jayapatākā Swami: 500 years ago by Lord Caitanya Mahāprabhu, on the altar of the other side of the room on the far left, you see two figures with their arms raised, on the right the figure is Lord Caitanya, and on the left is Lord Nityānanda. So Lord Caitanya is the founder of the Hare Kṛṣṇa movement 500 years ago.

The chanting of Hare Kṛṣṇa is the process, which is timeless in itself. It is said to have been brought from the spiritual world by one messenger of God, millions of years ago and that chanting has always existed in the world, but normally individuals or small groups of people would chant it together but Caitanya, the great Lord Caitanya, He brought this process in the street and said that everyone should chant together dancing in ecstasy and after chanting when they feel a little fatigued they should take a feast of spiritualized foodstuff.

So this process of chanting works. It’s not a theory, it’s not something that you have to have blind faith in, it is something that actually and factually works, that’s why when the devotee chants it’s hard for them to contain themselves, they too… it’s hard for them to don’t dance or don’t jump up and down and don’t… because they feel so happy when they are chanting.

May be in the beginning, when the person chants they feels shy, they feel in… inhibited due to various conditioning, what will people think, what does it mean, so many other things but even if he didn’t know what it meant, if he just repeated the vibration again and again, the effect would be there, and it is there. It is not necessary that one has to know what it means because the Hare Kṛṣṇa mantra is a vibration which is especially meant to deliver the consciousness and to awaken it to its original state of pure spiritual happiness and revelation. That actually the mantra is Sanskrit word, mantra means actually combination of two words, ‘man’ and ‘tra’, ‘man’ means the mind and ‘tra’ means to deliver, so mantra is the vibration which delivers the mind, which elevates the mind, which opens the consciousness. So there are different processes for opening consciousness through various religions spiritual meditations, sacrifices. In India there are basic categories like yoga, meditation where one sits in sitting postures and does breathing exercises. Their study of scriptures for awakening higher revelations and prayers.

Another process is this process of saṅkīrtana or congregational chanting and primarily the most of the year in Asia, in southern Asia, eastern and southern India. So I was recently doing a lecture tour of Thailand just about ten days ago and there one retired general of the Burmese army who had led from Burma, when it turned socialist about 20 years ago and took shelter in Thailand, he is practicing Buddhist, so he was very his comment after hearing the explanation of the Hare Kṛṣṇa chanting was that he had done Thailand meditation his whole life and different type of mantra meditation sitting in one place, but this is the first time he saw that in group meditation how the chanter was not only helping himself but was by participating in the group chant was actually helping the other people who are chanting or even bystanders who were witnessing and self-less chanting he found very impressive. So actually that is one of the basic features of the chanting is that while you are chanting and delivering your own consciousness at the same time because you are chanting out loud you are helping others to deliver their consciousness or to advance closer in their relationship with the Supreme Personality of Godhead.

So here in Mardi Gras everyone wants to have a good time, they want to have a joyful time, they would like to be happy and try their level best to do in the ways that they know how to be happy. So Kṛṣṇa conscious movement is also for the purpose of making people happy. It is that we have a different technique than it is normally used, and this technique is so dynamic and self-supporting it doesn’t require any other stimulant to get it off the ground. Normally to enjoy a lot of joyful fun, a person’s consciousness in the normal may be is too sedate normally, so they have to induce it with a little extraneous stimuli but through the chanting of Hare Kṛṣṇa one doesn’t need to take any drugs or alcohol, it is not necessary.

In fact those who practice regularly, they avoid them, they don’t… they don’t require them at all to become happy. Rather by chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa, that alone brings up the natural happiness which is within us, to such an extent that it’s completely overwhelming.

So of course even if the people of course, I think even in the New Orlean, that at this time more or less everybody is under various kinds of stimuli, even then if they chant Hare Kṛṣṇa they will still benefit. So we encourage everyone to chant and join along, and if they feel happy they can all, we like to be part of that joyful spirit, and rather we would like them to be part of a higher joyful spirit which is actually a type of rejoicing.

The message of Lord Caitanya is that we don’t have to fear the hell and brimstone and be absorbed in some kind of pessimistic attitude because the special gift of God in this particular era or age is that if we simply absorb ourself in singing his glories and chanting in ecstasy while we sing his holy names, that alone is enough to take us back to the spiritual world at the end of this lifetime and we can immediately in that kind of spiritual atmosphere, we can feel the transcendental happiness which is our natural state. So in this way actually for the Hare Kṛṣṇa devotees everyday is a festival. In fact the more devotees there are chanting together it is a little bigger festival.

So for us because here during the Mardi Gras time we are having devotees and Śrīla Bhaktipāda has come from New Vṛndāvana and other so many devotees have come from from different parts of United States. So we get an opportunity to chant with more devotees and the more people would chant together, the more enjoyable it becomes, the more powerful the vibration becomes, so if you can have hundreds of people chant, then it is more powerful.

In India it is not unusual for us to have big gatherings and stadiums or in huge outdoor meetings where upto 25,000 or even 50,000 people are all chanting, Hare Kṛṣṇa, Hare Kṛṣṇa, Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa, Hare Hare/ Hare Rāma, Hare Rāma, Rāma Rāma, Hare Hare, all at one time. I was in fact at one time we were doing a program in the ambassador of India, and one of the ministers he is in Bangladesh, they flew by helicopter and attended this program and there were 50,000 people there. So after the ambassador spoke he went about three miles away back to his guest house and then I gave I was giving a lecture.

So I was requesting everyone to chant for 15 minutes first and so everyone was chanting in unison, this Hare Kṛṣṇa mantra, and in fact that time Latikā Bhakti, one of our devotees here, visiting from Sweden, she was there, we had a competition between the men and the women present that who could chant louder, the men or women, Hare Kṛṣṇa. I think that the woman won. (laughter) but it was very tight.

In fact the judge couldn’t decide immediately, he had to have three times. just to be sure. Then finally the woman in the end, they all jumped up in the air and then he said, “they win.” So what happened was that the next day the ambassador told his told one of the organizers of that meeting, he went back to his guest house and he was taking a little sip of his tea and he is about to take his tea and all of a sudden he heard this tumultuous sound, “Hare Kṛṣṇa” come through his window, and he said you know, and it was a good three miles away from the function. It was so loud and that he said immediately… he felt overwhelming joy in his heart just from hearing that vibration and his hairs started to tingle, and he was very surprised, he couldn’t imagine where it was coming, he realized that it was coming from the program over three miles away, it was so loud that it was just pouring into his room. So whether one chants 50,000 people or whether it is 50 people during the Mardi Gras. Whether you chant alone in your home, the effect is there, it is a scientific process, systematic process handed down by great spiritual masters.

Of course we have, because we are part of the Indian tradition of God realization and spiritual practices. So many of our temple rituals are following in those cultural traditions. In fact I don’t doubt that sometimes for an American, they come into the Hare Kṛṣṇa temple, it is kind of a cultural… it’s either going as a cultural experience or a cultural shock. For the Indian people I feel that they probably feel quite at home that they are coming into a Kṛṣṇa temple, not very much different than the temples that they have seen in India and other places. So but for the westerner, probably it takes a bit of courage to walk to the portholes of the Hare Kṛṣṇa temple and with the incense and the chanting and the shaved devotees, and they don’t know what to expect, when they see they don’t know what to think.

So it’s alright, don’t have to feel, it’s something new probably here for the west but it is something very ancient and it’s a very wonderful process. We talk about a united world and an integrated world, and a world where people consider everyone to be brothers and sisters and everyone is having mutual respect for all cultures or they are integrated in a harmonious situation. Well, one of the aspects of that is to know about other cultures. Even if a person doesn’t particularly have faith or be so much involved in this particular process but there is only benefit which can come from knowing more about… this is a genuine cultural transferral, the things which we are doing here are very orthodox practices. Meaning, chanting is of course particularly common in eastern India, in this particular form.

It is not as well known in southern or western India in this form say up till the recent century but the other processes that we have like we have various weddings here, we have initiation ceremonies, we have daily worships and meditations and classes. These are traditional functions which are almost the same as you would find in India, and many of our Indian community come here to have their weddings performed, they have various ceremonies performed, and it’s open for their services as much as for the general American public.

So we are grateful that people are coming here, and that we have a chance to share a little bit of this ancient culture of this Indian traditional culture which has got the special relevance in the modern world because it’s timeless. In a world where everyday things are changing and it is hard to really keep a bearing from one season to the next. That even from hair style to clothing style to moral standards, to so many different things that it is hard to find any absolute values. So when you have the perspective of something which hasn’t basically changed over the past five or ten thousand years that gives a totally different perspective and that’s also to be in that type of a timeless situation is very relaxing, it’s very liberating to the mind.

So this process is a technique through that everyone can practice, everyone can learn and they can practice on their own time, on their own ground, in their own environment. So we don’t intend that people should all adopt our particular lifestyle, we don’t expect that everyone will live in a community like this… Hare Kṛṣṇa community, but what we are trying to propose or offer to the public is to learn some of these techniques to become aware of this culture, and if a person can chant this Hare Kṛṣṇa mahā-mantra, then they can experience… if they experience the peace and happiness that we are experiencing, then we will know that they will be very satisfied and very gratified by that experience, and that will be our… our own personal satisfaction, to see that other people are becoming… there is no… becoming happy by… there is no charge for it, it is not a commercial enterprise although for our food distribution programs and for maintaining this type of cultural centre, sometimes our devotees do separately ask for donations but there is no charge as such for the chanting and people contribute for the feast and other things according their own discretion and means, it’s not that we have free distributions. So that gives a little basic overview.

I thought tonight just for a few minutes I can tell you about something that happened 5000 years ago, when Lord Kṛṣṇa was on the planet. Kṛṣṇa is actually name for God but for… for us God is not a vague thing or simply light, but God is the absolute truth, the Supreme reality, He is also a person, and He… lives in a spiritual kingdom or spiritual world far beyond the universes but He occasionally comes down into the material world taking on a human form or appearing in His human form, human like form and He lives and walks with the people of this world, and when He is here He is also accompanied by various wonderful devotees and saintly people.

So some of the activities that happened when He was present are very illuminating and they give us an insight into the kind of atmosphere surrounding the Lord. According to the Vedas, that God is eternally young, He never grows old and that He is always enjoying loving relationships with His devotees and we are part of that loving relationship with the Lord but we have fallen from the spiritual world and come into this material world. So we are considered fallen souls. In this world the Lord is not personally present in a direct way. Indirectly He is present but He is not personally visible.

This enables the fallen souls to be able to themselves create their own little world and self-centered existence where they can be the God or the controller of their own destiny. So this is basically what people are doing in the material world, in a sense they are competing with God, they are competing with each other, and as such they are able to sometimes enjoy life, and sometimes they don’t enjoy life, but the Lord comes down to show us that there is another realm where you don’t have to compete with the Lord, you can just serve him in love and that is your real happiness, tha’s when we actually in our natural state, and to attract the fallen souls back to that happy spiritual existence where we give up trying to compete with the Lord and rather we just accept his supremacy and work under His shelter.

He comes here and shows His various loving relationships with different devotees and they are very attractive and so those people who become aware of these pastimes, they go back to the spiritual world and resume their original position. So we are a kind of a creaming house, we are trying to give people the opportunity about knowing about this spiritual secrets, very esoteric truths, so that people can go back to the original spiritual world and they don’t have to remain in this material world where there is a constant repetition or reincarnation, birth and death, where we have to suffer and enjoy for all the karmas which we perform. So this is the description of where Lord Kṛṣṇa entered into the city of Dvārakā, which is now the city of Dvārakā is off of the coast of Gujarat sunken in the ocean. Recently some archaeologists have rediscovered this city… of or discovered this city of Dvārakā.

After Kṛṣṇa left the planet, He sunk His city so that it wouldn’t be… just be under the ocean. So recently archaeologists using those new techniques they have or just like they found in the Air India remnants what you call them the ‘crash debri’ in the bottom of the ocean. So they are using those same kind of sonar… I guess it is called sonar scanning devices and so on. They are able to locate these… There is a huge city off the coast of Gujarat in India, South of Pakistan, which is the same place where the city of Dvārakā was. It used to be capital city where Kṛṣṇa lived in a latter part of His presence in the world. So after Kṛṣṇa spoke the Bhagavad-gītā, in the battle of Kurukṣetra, then He was returning to Dvārakā and all the residents of Dvārakā were very happy to receive him.

So it describes here a little bit about the city in the reception of Lord Kṛṣṇa. It’s from the first canto of the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam. By the way if anyone is ever inte… we have these books available and these are original Sanskrit texts. Today, I wouldn’t read the Sanskrit because it’s won’t be very easily understandable by most of the guests, I will just read the English translations but we have both original Sanskrit texts, Vedic texts from India with translations and purport as well as we have just flowing English versions which are easier for people to read who are not… not used to reading the Sanskrit and everything. So the city of Dvārakā Purī was filled with the opulences of all seasons, there were hermitages, orchards, flower gardens, parks and reservoirs of water breeding lotus flowers all around.

The city gateway, the house hold doors and festooned arches along the roads were all nicely decorated with festive signs like plantain trees and mango leaves, all to welcome the Lord. Flags, garlands and painted signs and slogans all combined to shade the sunshine. Signs of decorations in special festivals were also collected from the gifts of nature, such as the banana trees, the mango trees, fruits and flowers, mango trees, coconut palms and plantain trees are still accepted as auspicious signs. The highways, subways, lanes, markets and public meeting places were all thoroughly cleansed and then moistened with scented water and to welcome the Lord fruits, flowers and broken seeds were strewn everywhere.

You can see how the city was filled with parks and highways and gardens, water reservoirs, lakes, and for greeting the Lord they use all natural things: fruits, grains, flowers, I continue and each and every door houses, auspicious things like curd, unbroken fruits, sugarcane and full water pots with articles for worship, incense and candles were all displayed. In this regard Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda, he gives an explanation that the process of reception according to Vedic rights is not at all dry, the reception was made not simply by decorated roads and streets as above mentioned but by worshipping the Lord with requisite ingredients like incense, lamps, flowers, sweets, fruits and other palatable edibles, according to one’s capacity. All were offered to the Lord and the remnants of foodstuffs were distributed amongst the gathering citizens. So it’s not like a dry reception of these modern days.

Each and every house was ready to receive the Lord in a similar way and thus each and every house on the roads and the streets distributed such remnants of food to the citizens. and therefore the festival was successful. Without distribution of food no function is complete and that is the way of Vedic culture. So this way when the Lord was coming, then everyone hastened to greet the Lord, then finally Kṛṣṇa, He entered into the city of Dvārakā. At that time it describes that the people of the city hastened towards the Lord in chariots with brāhmaṇas bearing flowers. Before them were elephants, emblems of good fortune. Conchshells and bugles were sounded and Vedic hymns were chanted and thus they offered their respects which were saturated with affection. At the same time many hundreds of well-known girls began to proceed on various vehicles.

They were very eager to meet the Lord, and their beautiful faces were decorated with dazzling earrings which enhanced the beauty of their foreheads. Expert dramatists, artists, dancers, singers, historians, geneologists and learned speakers, they all gave their respective contributions, being inspired by their superhuman pastimes of the Lord. Thus they proceeded on and on. Lord Kṛṣṇa, the Personality of Godhead, approached them and offered them due honour and respect to each one of the friends, relatives, citizens and all others who came to receive and welcome him.

The almighty Lord greeted everyone present by bowing his head, exchanging greetings, embracing, shaking hands, looking and smiling, giving assurances and awarding benedictions even to the lowest in rank. Then the Lord personally entered the city, accompanied by elderly relatives and invalid brāhmaṇas with their wives and all offering benedictions and singing the glories of the Lord. Others also praised the glories of the Lord. When Lord Kṛṣṇa passed on the public roads, all the ladies from the respectable families of Dvārakā went to the roofs of their palaces just to have a look at the Lord. They considered this to be the greatest festival.

The inhabitants of Dvārakā were regularly accustomed to look upon the reservoir of all beauty, the infallible Lord and they were never satiated. The Lord’s chest is the abode of the goddess of fortune. His moonlike face is the drinking vessel for the eyes which hankers after all that is beautiful. His arms are resting places for administrative demigods, and His lotus feet are the refuge of the pure devotees, who never talk or sing of any subject except His Lordship. So like this Kṛṣṇa was greeted when He came into His city of Dvārakā 5000 years ago.

We can see how beautiful their reception, how spontaneous their reception was for the Lord. What we see in modern festivals is a kind of a dim reflection where instead of being… The difference is just that in Dvārakā things were God centred and God is the eternal Lord, the youthful personality of Godhead sometimes comes to this world and then He goes back to His spiritual world. Lord Jesus is His son, His devotee, His representative. There are other representatives or spiritual masters, who throughout the ages have given the process of how to return to our original spiritual status. So of course most people in the world are concerned how to be materially happy, how to have a peaceful life, how to be sensually gratified, these are the prominent considerations.

The Vedic culture tells us that, that is only one of the aspects of life, and that human life is meant not only for that but to simultaneously achieve self-realization, to realize that we are more than the body, that we are the living force within the body, and that the body is dependent on the presence of the living force and when the living force leaves the body, that this body becomes simply a dead hunk of meat, it’s not attractive anymore. So the science of the self is to realize that we are the consciousness in the body, we are the living essence of the body. So the Vedas describe… The Bhagavad-gītā describes that that living force is us, that is actually who we are.

We are the one watching everything in the body, the body is like a periscope or a machine like a video camera is in the eyes and the senses. We are picking up all the information with these senses and when this body becomes no longer usable, just like if you are driving down the road and our car breaks down, we get out of the car and hitch another ride, that we somehow go on in some other vehicle. When this vehicle becomes useless we just leave it and we take a new vehicle and we keep changing vehicles until that time as long as we are in the material world and when it is time…

When we are ready to go back to the spiritual world, then we don’t need any more vehicle, then we get a spiritual form which is not dependent upon any vehicle, it in itself is self-contained. So self-realisation means to realize that who we are, what is this material world, what is the self, and then automatically the senses are gratified, the mind is peaceful without very much difficulty but more important is, actually there is higher complete satisfaction and this is what we want to see everyone to achieve and life is a complete satisfaction.

So a little sense of that satisfaction, anyone can achieve by chanting, Hare Kṛṣṇa, Hare Kṛṣṇa, Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa, Hare Hare/ Hare Rāma, Hare Rāma, Rāma Rāma, Hare Hare, and so because we are chanting that people know us as the Hare Kṛṣṇa but it’s an open secret, we would like to invite everyone to give a trial run of chanting, you don’t have to worry, there is no… no bad side effects, you can chant and then if you find that is having proper effect, it is making you feel better helping you to understand the basic secrets of life more profoundly, then that will be as I told you before that will be our greatest sign of success. So generally this time we don’t like to speak very long, because we have feast and many other programs.

What we do like to have is more of an interchange between the guests and the speaker. So I would like to take the opportunity now to ask if any of you have any questions, that I could answer any questions that you might have. Yes

Question: (inaudible)

Jayapatākā Swami: I never heard of people taking a pound of beef or some other kind of meat for vitamins. (laughter). There are a lot more vitamins in fruits and vegetables and milk than in flesh. The only thing that is missing in our diet is that we don’t takeas far as the full time practitioners, we don’t take any meat or fish or eggs. So some… the only thing you can say is that there is a protein shortage but those things are not known, as far as I am concerned, they are not known for their vitamin contents…. The as far as amino acids, when you take capātīs or this wheat bread pattis along with the pulse soup or dāl, the combination together creates a… more than the daily requirement of amino acids and protein and things.

In addition to that we do take animal fat, but we don’t take it in any violent way, we take it in the form of butter or ghee (laugh), and that doesn’t hurt the cow, in fact the cow is produces more milk than the calf can drink. If you have ever raised a daily cattle you know that if you let the calf drink all the mother’s milk the calf can die, it can only take about a quarter of the milk and that except for after the few days and it has to be controlled.

So this three quarters if meant for what, it is specially meant for human beings. So in this way we can get cheese, to yogurt, to milk, to butter or clarified butter ghee we can get more than enough of those animal derivative nutrients and apart from that we have of course there is unlimited vegetables, grains, fruits. So this is more than enough ingredients for a healthy diet. That they have studied that and found that there is no shortage. In fact many of these, as far as the vegetarian… that’s going off into little one side but we have a video which you could see sometimes, you seemed to be well a little bit read up on these things. You could ask the devotees to show… there is video on the vegetarian world. It’s put on the magazine… that the vegetarian world has produced a video that tells about vegetarian diet and there they have big weightlifters... who are you know... the Olympic weight lifters and there they are all vegetarians you know they are lifting you know 300 kilo.

They are all… all telling you how vegetarian way is better and so and so. So I mean from that aspect you could see the video and then after that they answer a lot of the questions there.

Question: (inaudible).

Jayapatākā Swami: Meat… eat...meat eating produces an excessive body head, it causes anger, impatience, violence, so when you… if you eat a vegetarian diet you feel more peaceful. Doesn’t mean that I mean if you get… if you have to be angry if you get the adrenaline… you can still do the needful, what I mean. It’s not, just like… unnecessarily a person becomes agitated or angry or violent just by eating meat. I know that in the high school where I was at, they used to feed the raw meat to the football team before they played. They thought that that would get them more angry and… (laugh) well there is a lot of bad effect. So now they find that that gives, that gives some… that doesn’t give a lasting stamina or effect and rather who wants to be in that state all the time. So because of that a lot of unnecessary misunderstandings and fights are going on in the world due to… if meat-eating was eliminated then the whole karma of all those innocent animals being killed would be relieved from the world and that would right there end the majority of the wars and violence in the world.

Question: (inaudible)

Everyone has to get a quota and questions.

Question: unclear

Jayapatākā Swami: That will be controversial. Well, in, in West Virginia, their basic project… but surely it will be better if you could hear from Śrīla Bhaktipāda’s spiritual master, west virginia’s here visit for a couple of days and interested people can go and meet him and you can personally hear from him some of the West Verginia, New Vṛndāvana program. We would like to have a similar, I mean a little smaller scale possibly a little spiritual project here in in our farm in Mississippi in New Tālavana, in New Vṛndāvana their plan is I am just gonna, in a nutshell is that they want to have their buildings set in temples and they have one temple constructed in honour of divine grace Bhaktivedanta Swami Śrīla Prabhupāda, our founder spiritual master and the next temple is a very ambitious project of all granite temple which is how many feet high? 216? 216 feet high and which has a huge complex of exhibitions and spiritual planetarium and things like that.

It is the most wonderful program and when that’s finished there will be gardens and so many other things, and there is going to be but… when that is finished, I am sure, they will come up with another program, so there are seven. So in in Māyāpur, the birthplace of Lord Caitanya, we have… we are constructing memorial for Śrīla Prabhupāda. The structure is complete now and it’s being constructed by donations from all over the world. Small percentage of every book that is distributed is sent to India for constructing this memorial to Śrīla Prabhupāda. There is another memorial constructed in Vṛndāvana, that birth place of… pastime place of Kṛṣṇa.

So because we are building two memorials at one time they are… they are taking a little more time. One cost around a million dollars in Vṛndāvana than the one in Māyāpur costing about two million. So that’s about 216 feet or 210 feet high or about 180 feet high, I forget… about 200 feet high and that has some auditorium and has others… it’s a very big dome, but that’s a… that’s a memorial they said for Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda samādhi, and then after that is completed then we want to build a city, the program is to build a spiritual city with thousands and thousands of inhabitants. So Vṛndāvana is kind of a spiritual temple village, and… but in Māyāpur Prabhupāda wanted to have a spiritual city and already on weekends we are getting about 20,000 people coming out, bus loads… this lined rows of people come and see.

This has come from Śrīla Prabhupāda, it’s very much the same, it’s sort of inspiration but in that temple in Māyāpur you tend to have thousands of exhibits and aroung that temple there would be a central area which… which would be a like a Caitanya world, and in the Caitanya world there are going to be… another, apart from that the world of the guru and the… big Vedic planetarium, there are going to be another seven different exhibits which are going to contain various various varoius pavilions and displays and kind of a spiritual Disney world or something. So this year we wanted to have a Caitanya village as a proto… a small sample but doesn’t seem possible to finish in time for the festival but there is a very good scope of putting on a permanent exhibit which one of those worlds would be the world of Kṛṣṇa consciousness around the world and so that… the seed of that is going to be opened this year in a world exposition which will have displays from New Orleans, displays from West Virginia, displays from Russia, from Africa, from all over the world and that’s… that’s what I am primarily focussing on, right now it’s to try to finish that world exposition before our March 11 deadline when all our devotees will be reaching there.

We are discussing many concepts, concepts of having areas in the city for… for the intellectuals, intellectual activities, for…. for administrative activities, for commercial activities and for handicraft and industrial activities and agricultural activities, so on and so forth but in the meantime we are being swarmed by so many visitors and tourists that that necessity of providing basic infrastructure for them is becoming more the immediate necessity then after we fulfil that need than other development areas are going to be analysed. How many of the people here are chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa everyday? (laughter) No, I mean those who are living outside the temple? How many are chanting four rounds and more? How many are chanting four rounds or more are kṛṣṇa-sevakas or sevikās? No, we have a program for those who chant four rounds or more, and who are desirous of gradually step by step advancing in Kṛṣṇa consciousness, there is program called kṛṣṇa-sevaka or sevikā, pre-initiation kind of a program for the more advanced members of our congregation and is Raṅganātha here?

So if anyone’s, you can enquire from the local temple president here, if you are interested in that type of a program you may be eligible for that, is there any other question?

Jayapatākā Swami: Well, we don’t get.. we don’t get so many donations from the west for missionaries to convert people in India. Think the pope has a hundred and million dollar budget for converting Indian into Roman Catholic. So if you become a Roman Catholic you get a radio, tv, house, jobs, chickens, pigs. Would be so bad if you didn’t also have to be converted into a meat-eater. We respect all religions and at the same time we don’t find that there is anything missing in Vedic culture.

So basically through our grass root programs where we have Nāma-haṭṭa program where we have in our every village, we have cultural and development program, we have about 2000 of such programs established, 2000 centres established in all part of India, and you know we don’t… we don’t offer people bribes or anything or give any cash incentive for practising Kṛṣṇa consciousness but through a kind of positive approach even through interfaith cooperation, we try to develop a person in their respective religious belief to the fullest extent. Those people who do not have any faith, then we… by any particular way we provide them one, and those who have… have the faith in Christianity we try to reinforce that, we try to give it a deeper understanding with a more broader perspective and for those who are already a part of the Vedic culture we immediately organize them into this Nāma-haṭṭa village saṅkīrtana-sevā-maṇḍalas and we had a very good response in all parts of India.

Of course everything is dependent on capital and manpower, so up to our present capital and manpower were expanding… rather expanding beyond our in some cases beyond our ability to supervise, it’s about increasing by 50% every year, which is almost mind-boggling because it is hard to get trained supervisors and trainers for people at that rate. So there is no shortage of customers but we need you know… but we need more shopkeepers and attendants to supply their needs. So sometimes… some… recently one couple came from they came from India and they working here, then when they retired they went back to India and they are helping us with some of the preaching work, then people respect them because while they are seeing the good life in America and they gone back to India to spread the truth and everything.

So we are having a very good response. We can’t compete on cash incentives or anything but that’s not our, that’s not we are asking people, we are offering them love and offering them spiritual realization and it’s… it’s being received very well. We have only been in India for, since the 1970’s and that’s about 16 years, but in the 16 years the movement is very well established. Of course the culture has been there for 5000 years but at that particular organisation has only been there for 16 years, so there is a little bit of difficulty as you know for the people from some parts of India to accept westerners practicing on being spiritual masters of this culture but now in the past decade the major hurdles in this regard have been crossed over and people do accept Kṛṣṇa consciousness as a integral part of their culture, as part of their community and practices in Bombay.

When we have our Janmāṣṭamī festival, the appearance of Lord Kṛṣṇa in August, last year over one million people attended to the temple, in the temple site, so in the city side than we have the rural branches, which are going, we just had a integral program where we took from Dvārakā to Kanyākumārī, from Kanyākumārī upto Māyāpur we are taking one pāda-yātrā, and that has alone established 500 village centres and it’s over year and a half tour. So we have many programs like that and they are progressing very systematically. I think one of my assistants, Bhānu Swami, he is supposed to meet the pope the day before yesterday. He wanted to ask the Pope that since he has been received so warmly in India, that we hope that he will… and he is talking about integration and inter-faith communication and so on, that a similar welcome will be extended by South America and all other countries where his followers are in greater numbers. I didn’t get a reply yet what he said but we have… people are looking for a little more and we… and along we want to see all these different religious faiths synthesise come down to the essential.

People are looking for something very practical. Just having a faith is nice, but a the practical method whereby we can always be situated in spiritual consciousness, and actually we can actually be free from the anxieties and sufferings of the material world and we can practically experience the real joy and… of self-realization, that’s what people are hankering for, that’s what they need, so this Vedic culture, specially the saṅkīrtana process provides that and there is nothing in disharmony with any other religion, so in this very kind of very positive approach we are getting a good response in the world. So similarly in India, through this grass root programs we are getting a good re… villagers and many of the leaders there of different movements, they have appreciated the work which we are doing. Of course, there is no limit to how much work that can be done, so we are trying to expand it as far as possible. We thank you for your support and cooperation. Hare Kṛṣṇa!