20201125 Zoom Session with ISKCON Koramangala Congregation

mūkaṁ karoti vācālaṁ paṅguṁ laṅghayate girim
yat-kṛpā tam ahaṁ vande śrī-guruṁ dīna-tāraṇam
hariḥ oṁ tat sat

Jayapatākā Swami: I am very happy for visiting the Koramaṅgala congregation in Bengaluru. And thank Prema Padminī devī dāsī and Vijaya Veṇugopāla dāsa for their reception. Now is the sacred month of Dāmodara. Tomorrow is the last five days of the month Dāmodara, begins the Bhīṣma-Pañcaka. So we hope that the devotees will be following the Bhīṣma-Pañcaka. And there is a video that explains the process on my Facebook. And I don’t know if you have downloaded the Jayapatākā Swami App. With that I am trying to keep in contact with the devotees.

The purpose of human life is actually to reawaken our relationship with Kṛṣṇa. Since in the material world, people think that we are the body, and the relatives of the body, the body is considered the main thing. But actually, we are eternal, spirit souls. We are in this particular body for maximum a hundred years. But I think the insurance companies they calculate something like 75 years. They say women live a little longer than men. Anyway, the Bhagavad-gītā tells us that the body dies but the soul never dies. We go on from one birth to the other. Depending on our karma, whether we get a better or worse birth. But if we are fully Kṛṣṇa conscious, we will not take birth again. We will go back to the spiritual world to serve Kṛṣṇa. So normally, it is quite difficult to get such a blessing. But this Age of Kali is known as the fallen age. Here, the Lord gives some special bonus. If we chant His holy name, which is non-different from Him, then we can get purified and go back home back to Godhead. So we encourage everyone to read Bhagavad-gītā, read the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, discuss it and help others to understand it. In this way, try to reach out to more and more people. And by applying that way, Kṛṣṇa consciousness, we get unlimited happiness. And the sufferings of life go away. Actually, this material world is not a nice place. Just like now we are having the worldwide pandemic because people are eating meat, flesh, chicken, turkeys, therefore nature is punishing us with this corona virus, which comes from the animals. But at least it would be ideal if people would be vegetarians, but if they can chant the holy name of Hari, that would be the best thing. Naturally if one chants the name of Hari, it is very easy to eat kṛṣṇa-prasāda. And we are happy that in India in the homes we see the husband and wife and children, they worship Deities. Kṛṣṇa, He does not accept non-veg. Therefore, if you offer your food to Kṛṣṇa, then it would naturally be Kṛṣṇatarian or vegetarian. So we hope that people would chant Hare Kṛṣṇa, worship and serve Lord Kṛṣṇa and study the teachings of Lord Kṛṣṇa. By doing the Bhakti-vṛkṣa programs we are studying the teachings of Lord Kṛṣṇa. We discuss how we can understand, how we can apply the teachings of Kṛṣṇa. It is not something theoretical, it is something that should be practically practiced in our daily life. We heard how in Chennai they had 40 devotees in their Bhakti-vṛkṣa group and they asked them to publicize the ‘Gītā Made Easy’ course, 18 days, one day for each chapter. They asked to posters on the WhatsApp groups, try to promote to the contacts. 40 devotees. You know how many people they got registered? 9,000! Each one had so many contacts. Like that, easily we have 161 people on the call tonight. Easily we can get 10,000 or more. I told about the Chennai success to Mangaluru. There, Nāmaniṣṭha Prabhu, he could not afford the Zoom since Zoom for a 1000-users is quite expensive. Then he got a Microsoft program for free, 25 programs. And he gave a course in seven languages, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Hindi, English and so on., seven. He was able to get 10 to 11 thousand people registered. He got 20 congregational devotees giving classes. He would have a special class for them beforehand and prepare them what to say. After the first series they became confident. And they did three more series. 10 to 11 thousand each. So, you may think you only have 150 or 160, you can make outreach to many people. So I would like to encourage the people, they need kṛṣṇa-bhakti and it is an opportunity to help them. Hare Kṛṣṇa!