Śrī Kṛṣṇa Janmāṣṭamī Messages

The following is a message given by His Holiness Jayapatākā Swami Mahārāja for Śrī Kṛṣṇa Janmāṣṭamī and Śrīla Prabhupāda Vyāsa-pūja.

Haribol! Today is the most joyful day, the appearance day of Lord Kṛṣṇa in this world known as sacred Janmāṣṭamī. What a wonderful experience to know that the Supreme Lord has come down from the spiritual world to be with us. Why has He come? He comes here 5,000 years ago in order to free us from suffering, in order to attract us that we can know that we have a higher purpose in life, a higher existence. That there is something beyond this temporary world. He is so wonderful to come and be with us. In Bhagavad-gītā, He explains it that we understand that His coming is not an ordinary birth, it’s a spiritual experience.

janma karma ca me divyam
evaṁ yo vetti tattvataḥ
tyaktvā dehaṁ punar janma
naiti mām eti so 'rjuna
[Bg. 4.9]

“By knowing the transcendental nature of My birth and activities in this world at the time of leaving their material body, they come to Me and they do not take rebirth again.”

So today is the day when we can gather together, we can sing the Lord’s holy names.

Hare Kṛṣṇa, Hare Kṛṣṇa, Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa, Hare Hare/
Hare Rāma, Hare Rāma, Rāma Rāma, Hare Hare

We can pray, we can try to be our very best. We can visit the temples, associate with the devotees in this way, today can be a day where we inner purify ourselves, remember the Lord and we prepare ourselves to meet the Lord in His holy temple and rejoice His appearance in this world. Hare Kṛṣṇa.

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Hare Kṛṣṇa, Hare Kṛṣṇa, Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa, Hare Hare/
Hare Rāma, Hare Rāma, Rāma Rāma, Hare Hare

Haribol! Today is the wonderful day of Janmāṣṭamī. This is the sacred day that Lord Kṛṣṇa appeared in this world 5,000 some years ago. Actually, Kṛṣṇa, according to the Bhagavad-gītā, according to all the Vedas, He is the source of everything. It’s the original Godhead, the same Supreme God that all religions are worshiping. And what is so wonderful about today is that He has appeared, descending from His own abode in the kingdom of Godhead in the spiritual world to come and be with us here in this material world. ,Actually by nature, although we are his parts and parcels and His children, we forget Him. We forget the higher spiritual reality. So He is so kind to come down and be with us, to remind us that we are made in His image, so that we can be with Him and remember Him at every moment, by His coming into this world.

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Hare Kṛṣṇa! On this day of Janmāṣṭamī, believe that everyone has been having a very spiritual time. Kṛṣṇa appeared on this holy day in order to remind us, we are His eternal parts and parcels, we are His eternal children, to remind us that we are His devotees, to remind us that we have a higher purpose to our existence. So we are created as human beings in the image of God. Therefore, Kṛṣṇa, He appears, He has two hands, He has a beautiful features just like the human form because we are made of His image. Actually, Kṛṣṇa is so merciful to come down with us. He comes here to attract our minds away from the mundane temporary things to purify us, to give us liberation from all kinds of contaminations. So that we can prepare ourselves at the end of this life to go back to Him and live with him eternally in the spiritual world. So on this day of Janmāṣṭamī everything we do, every spiritual thing that we do has multiple implications. It has hundreds of times more effect. For instance, today if we chant the holy names of Kṛṣṇa: Hare Kṛṣṇa, Hare Kṛṣṇa, Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa, Hare Hare/ Hare Rāma, Hare Rāma, Rāma Rāma, Hare Hare – that will have so many times more effect. Every time we give a charity, what we do good to others, this has more effect. Today it’s a day when everyone can rejoice that on this day, we are celebrating the appearance of the Lord in the world. When the Lord is in the world it is like the sun coming, and the darkness goes away.

kṛṣṇa—sūrya-sama māyā haya andhakāra
yāhāṅ kṛṣṇa, tāhāṅ nāhi māyāra adhikāra
[Cc. Madhya 22.31]

“Kṛṣṇa is like the sun and nuisance is like the darkness. Where there is Kṛṣṇa, there is no nescience.” So this way in our lives if we bring Kṛṣṇa in our heart and bring God in our heart then we can actually be free from so many dark things like anger, greed, lust and we can have a pure, happy, peaceful life. We hope that families will pray together, people will join together on this day and truly make it a memorable occasion for the whole year until next year on Janmāṣṭamī! Hare Kṛṣṇa.

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Śrīla Prabhupāda Vyāsa-pūjā Message:

Hare Kṛṣṇa! After Janmāṣṭamī, the appearance of Lord Kṛṣṇa, we are celebrating the wonderful appearance of His Divine Grace Śrīla Abhayacaraṇāravinda Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda. The Founder-Ācārya, the spiritual master of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. Actually, he is a prime example of a spiritual master or guru, which all of us need in society. First comes the Lord, He comes down from the spiritual world to show us an example. But to connect us with the Lord, we who are diverse in material activities, we need a via media or a guru or the spiritual master. Spiritual master is like an ambassador in the spiritual world. He is like a personification of mercy. When we think of the personality of Śrīla Prabhupāda Bhaktivedanta Swami, you can see that quality of mercy. He would go down and keep the student, keep the people, he cared so much about people. He came to the west from India. His concern was that now in the modern world people are actually burned, burning in the fire of materialism and they have no peace. Like a wild animal in the forest fire, running here, running there, trying to get some freedom from the fire. But, all everywhere sealed, it’s burning. So he compared the situation today, the people of lack peace, they lack even basic satisfaction of life. The quality of life has come down so much because of the lack of a higher spiritual duration. And he cared about people in this way and let them get spiritual peace, let them have a spiritual direction in their life. And that is what the guru is all about. He comes down, gives the message in a way that’s appropriate in the time of crisis and circumstance we are living in. The spiritual master is someone who brings the message of the śāstra. He has to repeat what he finds in the scripture. He cannot say, his own, personal opinion. It’s like reading the message from God. So on this day we are rejoicing and we receive the message from God through His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda. Hare Kṛṣṇa!

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Message to the World

Hare Kṛṣṇa, Hare Kṛṣṇa, Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa, Hare Hare/
Hare Rāma, Hare Rāma, Rāma Rāma, Hare Hare

śrī-kṛṣṇa-caitanya prabhu-nityānanda
śrī-advaita gadādhara śrīvāsādi-gaura-bhakta-vṛnda

Today we are living in a very fast world. There is so much pressure on people in the day-to-day life—timelines, workloads which cause all kinds of tension, apprehension, fears, stress that makes life very difficult in today’s world. What is the solution? Why is this caused? There are solutions actually, which come to us from the ancient Vedas. In the Vedas that explains that animals, their basic nature is fear. Why is the animal afraid? Because the animal doesn’t know exactly what is going on. In this modern world, because we don’t know who we are, we don’t know where we come from, we don’t know where we go after we die. There are many basic esoteric, existential things of life and that we are not aware of. So this adds to our total apprehension and fear in life. When we get spiritual knowledge, this helps to give us inner peace and inner strength that we can deal with the day-to-day trials that we face. Another aspect is that by nature the consciousness should be pure and is pure in its original state. So what happens is because of fear, anger, because of lust, greed, because of envy, because of all the different vices and bad associations that we get. Other people’s stress, other people’s vibrations, they affect us. So just as we take a daily bath with water, we use soap. How do we cleanse the consciousness? For that we use mantra. A mantra is to liberate the mind from all kinds of contaminations. We can use a bead and chant on the bead by touching,

Hare Kṛṣṇa, Hare Kṛṣṇa, Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa, Hare Hare/
Hare Rāma, Hare Rāma, Rāma Rāma, Hare Hare

And in this way, we get free from these contaminations [inaudible]. Use meditation. It works. Hare Kṛṣṇa.