Sometimes Krishna consciousness is established with long theological arguments, where ancient Sanskrit is diced and spliced to prove various points.

Sometimes its explained with razor-sharp philosophical logic, where propositions are defended by supporting logic, then defeated by counter-arguments.

Sometimes Krishna consciousness is experienced through great hardships endured while traveling to inaccessible holy places, where sun, dust and hunger sharpen the mind on the transcendent.

Sometimes Krishna consciousness is encountered through simple acts of menial service, where the proud head is humbled and the spirit of selfishness is momentarily set aside.

Sometimes Krishna consciousness is enjoyed in the simple recitation of his divine name.

And sometimes he is experienced by gazing at his image with the inner eyes of a child, caught in a moment of wonder…

Energetic book distribution, Back to Godhead subscription, a good mail-order and personal correspondence service were, at one time, a very important part of ISKCON’s outreach.

There’s been a lot of Srila Prabhupada’s books sold in our little country over the years - perhaps some 100 million pieces of literature over almost 40 years. No exagerration. During that time we’ve come up with various methods of staging our follow-up to book distribution so that people who wanted to know more could gradually get to know the devotees, learn more of our philosophy and life, and find a place for themselves in the wonderful Hare Krishna movement.

1985 was a good year. It was the year I bought my first computer, for the now astronomical sum of £3,500. Ouch! But we put it to good use, and had a devotee write a database for us. That was before I knew what a database was. We had a simple formula for processing all the names and addresses coming from street sankirtan which these days will sound blindingly obvious, but back then it was looked upon as brilliant, a stroke of pure genius direct from God.

The thing is, in 1985 we still imagined that people came to Krishna consciousness just like we did. They got a book, read it from cover to cover in a week, then thought to themselves: “This is just the most wonderful thing I have ever read in my life. I just have to join their movement, give my life completely, and in this one life go back to home, back to Godhead.”

Unfortunately, most people are not quite as interested as that, and are actually moving in spiritual slow-motion compared to the bright souls who gave them their first book about Krishna. So whilst a few people will always come to Krishna with the slightest whisper of sacred sound, others take quite some time,many more take even longer, and for all of them we have to be prepared to allow them that time.

Back in 1985 our time, like today, was limited. We couldn’t possibly talk to every person who we’d sold a book to - we were far too busy selling more books. But we knew that we’d ultimately have to actually talk to people to get them to come and stay in the temple for a while - otherwise we’d have a lot of people with a lot of books, but no new devotees.

So we wanted to be able to distinguish those who were most interested in taking up Krishna consciousness from those who needed much more time to think about it. We also wanted to help the most enthusiastic people to move forward in their spiritual life if they wanted to. Although we distributed books in every town throughout the country we didn’t really stop too much in each town to get to know the people and to talk to them. We did write to people though, and answered their questions through the mail. There was also an active mail-order service for supplying more books and exotic Indian devotional items.

1985, and I’m the proud owner of a - computer

We’d already had an active correspondence and mail-order department running for a few years. It was started by Amita Das, a devotee from New Zealand who was always thinking outside the box. His chief letter-writer was Shastra-Chaksus Das from Australia, a mild-mannered scribe with infinite patience for carefully penning thoughtful and helpful letters, then painstakingly filing all the carbon copies of each letter, clipping them to the enquirer’s letter, then depositing them into numerous cumbersome volumes. (How times have changed!) Later on they were joined by Gangamayi Dasi and Anada Dasi who gave an added dimension to the service by sending out little pieces of mangala-burfi. Even though it inevitably arrived completely flattened by the Post Office, it was a very popular feature of the outreach!

Of course, Srila Prabhupada was the origin of this programme too. Way back in the late 1940s he’d been writing to many leaders and sending them copies of his Back to Godhead newspaper. He’d also been bulk-mailing copies of his newspaper to libraries and institutions, eliciting responses from them, then beginning an exchange of correspondence. In the mid 1950s he set up his League of Devotees, a membership scheme whereby interested people could form an affiliation with him and his new organisation.

In 1973 or maybe 1974 - I forget which - his disciples at the Los Angeles branch of the Bhaktivedanta Book Trust asked him to write a standard response letter which they could send to everyone who wrote to them after reading one of his books. He wrote a two-page letter that was then sent out in the thousands.

So in England we’d been trying to follow his lead. The Back to Godhead magazine was an important part of that strategy as was a membership scheme that became known as FOLK, the Friends of Lord Krishna. A husband and wife team, Madhavendra Puri and Mandakini, created the FOLK magazine which had very daring articles about people who were trying to chant their four rounds and who didn’t shave their heads.

Anyway, the brilliant strategy that emerged from all of this - and which actually created many new devotees - was as follows:

Step 1 - Devotees go to every town and village and distribute books

Step 2 - The same devotees ask the most interested people they meet for their name and postal address

Step 3 - The entire sankirtan party hand in their names and addresses at the end of each week

Step 4 - Names and addresses entered into the very expensive, top of the range 1985 computer

Step 5 - Each person sent complimentary copy of the Back to Godhead magazine, and invited to receive two further monthly copies, entirely free

Step 6 - At the end of three months free subscription, each person invited to become annual subscriber

Step 7 - All annual subscribers invited to join FOLK

Step 8 - All FOLK members invited to form local groups or to join the temple

Now, the amazing statistics for this exceeded everyone’s expectations: 10% of all those offered a 3-month free trial subscription took it up; 10% of those who took it up paid for an annual subscription; and 50% of the annual subscribers - when the programme was running at its peak - joined the temple. Even today, one of those who came to Krishna through this process is a temple president, another is about to enter the sannyasa order of life.

On Sunday I was in Ipswich, the oldest continually inhabited Anglo-Saxon town in the UK. It goes back to around 400 AD, when those Angles, Saxons and Jutes first came over here to take our jobs and marry our women. Because they called themselves Englisch they gave our country and people the name. They lasted in power until the Norman French invaded in 1066 and stayed for quite some time.

The region is still known as East Anglia and its been a favourite travelling area of mine for several years. I distributed books there for many years, and have taken festivals and follow-up meetings to many towns in the counties of Suffolk and Norfolk which make up the region. On the map you’ll see the famous 13th century university town of Cambridge where we have a thriving Hare Krishna group, Ipswich, where we have a lively group of newcomers, and Norwich, where we have many friends and supporters. St. Albans, at the bottom of the map, is very close to Bhaktivedanta Manor.

Maps show where those foreigners invaded, and what the region looks like now

So Saturday it was the turn of the descendants of all those Anglo-Saxons to experience Rathayatra for the first time. The parade was held in conjunction with an Indian Mela, a local celebration of Indian arts and performance as part of the Ipswich Arts Week. Its an event that’s grown over the past six years and attracts a few thousand people from the region who are interested in all things Indian. So a good place for us to demonstrate the best of India’s spiritual culture.

Antardwipa das came down from Leicester with his mini-chariot, and the new preachers for the area, two young married couples, Kishor-murti and Dhunya, Karuna-Sindhu and Hana, came with their combined kirtan enthusiasm. Local coordination was provided by Lila Patel and Sejal Patel, with support from Vinay who hosts the local meetings at his home. Pictures taken by Vaibhav.

The procession through the streets of Ipswich begins. Karuna on accordion and singing, Kishor on mridanga drum, Karuna’s wife Hana on hand cymbals

Dhunya and Hana, two happy bhakti-yogis

Through the park, more devotees joining us as we walk

Mastermind of the Mini-Rathayatra phenomenon and architect of the online virtual temple: www.iskconlife.com - Antardwipa das

How an idea turns into a movement. Just do it - and the people will come

Karuna and Kishor created some strong and melodic kirtan

The police drop by to see what all the music and flags are about…

…and give Lord Jagannatha a police escort to the Mela

A good-sized crowd of Anglo-Saxons, all interested in things Indian

The Holy Name arrives, together with the Rathayatra. Later, many people stop by to speak with us.

I added a Clustr Map to my site the other day. Its the little pictorial widget at the bottom of the sidebar that shows where my internet visits are originating from. Some people consider such devices, along with prominently displayed stats counters, to be the nouveau riche decor of the blogging world. A little bit too self congratulatory and hence a little vulgar.

Actually I don’t mind. I quite like it, at least for the moment. I’m encouraged by the happy realisation that not only has somebody, somewhere, in a place I’ve probably never heard of, found my site; but that some readers are obviously visiting more than once. Quite a few hits from America, I see. And more in England. And a good few regulars in India. Some from South America. Even a few in Australia.

Of course, those ‘hits’ may not be readers searching for the Absolute Truth and finding it in my writing. It could be people looking for more information about ‘Jaws,’ a James Bond 007 villain whose enormously powerful gnashers share a tenuous link with my own dentist and who showed up in one of my 155 blogs.

Or it could be somebody looking for one of the many photographs I have ‘borrowed’ from the millions of cached photographs to be found by searching on Google. Or it could be just another salesman trying to find someone who desperately needs cheap Viagra.

Just because people visit your site, doesn’t mean they like you, or value what you have to say. So I don’t want to get too comfortable. Unfortunately, it seems as if I may be getting too self assured because I haven’t written anything for weeks. I have some excuses if my regular readers need any. I’ve had several weddings and ceremonies, Rathayatras and late night meetings. At all of these I’ve been using my voice extensively, so my desire to communicate through writing has been supplanted by more direct forms. But I hope to continue as before.

One thing I have noticed by looking at that little map of the world (as if I didn’t already know it) is just how small my country is compared to Australia and the USA. I mean, everything is relative isn’t it? I still think of 50 miles as being a ‘long drive,’ something from my childhood when, without a car, I walked practically everywhere or rode my bike. The next village was ‘down the road’ and the village after that was ‘quite a distance away’ while Plymouth was a distant city: ‘a long way away.’ It was 30 miles away. London was another planet.

Curious for me, then, to hear of my daughter Jahnavi’s travels at the moment in the USA and Canada. She started off in West Virginia, then Georgia, then Florida; was just in Montreal, and in New Brunswick watching whales the day before that. Its the third time she’s been on the youth bus tour and she really enjoys it. She’s a bit of an old hand at it now, so helps the younger members cope with being in a mobile girls ashram for a couple of months. They help to set up the Rathayatra festivals for ISKCON’s ‘Festival of India’ project, a travelling show which not only conducts the Rathayatras but stages a large fun-filled exhibition of the best of India’s culture and philosophy. Jahnavi takes part in the dance and kirtan and dismantles the festival tents afterwards. She is having fun and being Krishna conscious - a pretty good combination.

Another thing that little map of the world helps me to understand is just how far our Krishna consciousness movement has travelled in a short time. Srila Prabhupada very deliberately visited all the continents and circled the world 14 times in 12 years. He never stopped travelling and had a vision of establishing his movement in all the major cities, with his books in all major languages. If we continue to grow at this rate its sure that at some point in the near future historians will mark his travels as the beginning of a revolutionary shift in religious thought.

That’s my notes from a small country this morning.

There’s nothing quite like summer mornings. They seem perfectly designed for tranquility, contemplation, and spiritual thought.

Vaishnavas are supposed to rise early, so that their meditation, prayer and study begin one hour and thirty-six minutes before the sun rises. That’s the ancient Vedic prescription. Of course, those ancients who followed the Vedas back then probably never had to scrape the ice off the windscreen of their car at four on a dark, bitterly cold winter’s morning, fingers turning blue and an icy wind whipping around their cotton dhoti-clad legs. But in the summertime - especially this week in midsummer - it seems almost effortless to get out of bed early, and a pleasure to be up and about at that time.

This morning I woke up at twenty minutes past the hour of three. I must admit that my early waking had more to do with a fundamental call from Mother Nature than the soul’s ardent longing for God. But I got up, and saw the sky was at that wonderful stage when you know that night is coming to an end, but just before you know that dawn has come. I began my chanting, knowing that its easier at this time - the brahma-muhurta - and is, in fact, the best time all day for spiritual practise.

And then, as the sky turned from purple to blue, a lone bird began to sing. It was just a little bird, up in the tree above my shed, but his singing was confident and tuneful, reverberating around the garden and nearby houses. Others joined in, different birds with their distinct songs. Like an orchestra, they blended into a nice piece of God-given natural music, the Dawn Chorus. I began my japa walk, adding my own voice to the chorus. A few minutes later, as if not to be left out, a cock crowed, signifying that the dawn had well and truly come.

This time of day is special in all religions. Those who believe in a Creator acknowledge that this time of day is given by Him to offer praise; to begin the day by dismissing the dreams of the night and reconnecting with the ultimate reality. The very early Christians of Egypt and Syria named their first service of the day “cockcrow,” and the Jews before them were also known for their early rising.

When I lived in the African seaside town of Mombasa I would chant my pre-dawn Hare Krishna japa walking backwards and forwards on the temple roof. As I chanted, the local Hindu temples began ringing bells, followed by the amplified calls to prayer from the minarets of the nearby mosques. The sounds all blended into a chorus of praise for the one God, who is known by many names.

Twice in a month, one of the Hindu temples organised a nagar-sankirtan, when around a hundred devout worshippers would process through the streets singing hymns to Krishna. At five o’clock in the morning, with tulasi plants carried at the front of the group, flags borne aloft, and a small deity of Lord Krishna on a red velvet cushion, it was an uplifting sight from my roof.

This was the practise promoted by Shri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and his followers in mediaeval Bengal. It was immortalised by Bhaktivinode Thakura in the following words:

“When the eastern sky became tinged with the pink that heralds the rising of the sun, the jewel of the twice-born, Lord Gauranga awakened, and, taking His devotees with Him, went all over the countryside towns and villages. The mrdanga drums played, and the cymbals chimed in time. Lord Gauranga’s shimmering golden features danced, and His foot bells jingled. All the devotees chanted the names Mukunda, Madhava, Yadava and Hari, their mouths being filled with the vibrations.”

So summer is fully come now. Let’s all add our own voices to the Dawn Chorus. The birds will welcome you, the dawn glow will give you health, and the Lord in the Heart, as bright as the morning sun, will rise above the horizon of your best expectations.

I was able to offer Jagannatha, Baladeva and Subhadra each a carton of raspberries and strawberries picked fresh from my garden on Rathayatra morning. I placed the cartons in the freezer and by the end of the procession they were fresh and cooling for them. I walked up to each of the three colourful chariots and handed the fruits to the priests.

When I was a child we lived in a farming area in Cornwall and there was a strong tradition of celebrating Harvest Festivals in our Methodist chapel. Every year at harvest time the farmers would all bring in something they had personally grown and place it on an offering table. As they did so, we would all sing the almost obligatory:

We plough the fields and scatter, the good seed on the land,
But it is fed and watered, by God’s Almighty hand

By the time everyone had made their contribution the table was overflowing. As a child I was struck by just how much produce everyone was growing. And, naturally, that the first of the harvest was being offered to God.

Krishna consciousness is like having a harvest festival every single day. I suppose as devotees we’d like to grow everything ourselves, but as most of us are city-dwellers that’s not an option. So its a good feeling to be able to offer something you’ve planted, watered, weeded, protected from slugs, and finally picked. Of course we can’t take the credit, we didn’t design the fruits and flowers; didn’t create the DNA that shapes them; didn’t organise the processes that make a flower bloom or a fruit ripen. But the bit we get to do: choose whether or not to offer it to the Origin of All - well, maybe we can give ourselves a small pat on the back every time we manage to do that.

Krishna certainly does. In the Bhagavad-gita He says that He blesses and personally reciprocates with everyone who offers Him something with love and devotion; and thats the whole point of making offerings to Krishna. Its not that He needs raspberries; He is the God of all Raspberries after all, since He created them, grows them, and ripens them too. But He’s waiting for us to show that we understand where everything comes from, to offer our gratitude, and by offering things to Him, to develop our dormant love for Him one little bit at a time.

This time of year my garden has many fruits, vegetables and flowers growing strongly; future offerings for Krishna. Its a fairly traditional English ‘cottage garden’ with some things that are strongly associated with the English. So besides the vegetables you’d find in most gardens the world over: the sweetcorn, spinach, lettuce, beans and courgettes (zuchini) there’s also runner beans and broad beans, both growing up bamboo canes. There’s also a rhubarb patch, a blackcurrant bush, an apple tree and a cherry tree.

I offer arati every day, so a wide variety of flowers make it on to our home altar. In no particular order, our Pancha-Tattva and guru-parampara receive valerian, sweet william, traditional English hollyhocks and foxgloves; lupins, primroses, verbena, fuschia, campanula, hydrangea and, of course, the faithful marigold. There’s also the highly fragrant budlia, or ‘butterfly tree,’ named by a Reverend Buddle, a Church of England man, back in the days when there were still plants to name. And finally lilacs - because where would an English garden be without them?

Below: Foxgloves (top) and Hollyhocks (bottom)

One remarkable story from Sunday’s London Rathayatra was about the large group of deaf tourists who came to Trafalgar Square during the afternoon. They were being guided around that part of central London and, being attracted by all the colourful tents, began to mingle with the crowds. When it came time for a full explanation as to what the festival was all about, along came a member of ISKCON’s deaf group, who promptly jumped up on a bench and started to give a class on the history and theology of the event, using only sign language.

Now, there’s nothing quite like watching a deaf man get excited about explaining philosophy, especially a philosophy which places such a great emphasis on hearing divine sound within the form of a mantra. Just how do you tell that particular piece of good news to a large audience who cannot hear anything - let alone mantras. But he did. And he did so with such great passion that he drew another large crowd of hearing people who stood in amazement to watch the spectacle.

His hands moved quickly, forming letters through finger signs; words and expressions through gestures. And all the while, a smile on his face that told the people he was sharing something that gave him great joy. Even those who couldn’t understand sign language were smiling, sharing in his enthusiasm.

Amazing as it may seem, here in London we have a growing number of deaf people - not just ‘hearing impaired’ but completely deaf - who have begun chanting. They explain that they hear the mantra not in their ears but within their heart. It just shows that there’s no material bar to spiritual practise.

Of course, when it comes to philosophy, there’s Vedic concepts that don’t have any good English words; only the Sanskrit language will do. So just how do you translate ancient Sanskrit into British sign language? Well, the required ingredients are enthusiasm, determination, ingenuity and perseverance. You really have to want to get your message over to deaf and hard-of-hearing people.

Thats why ‘Radha Krishna Deaf Association’ was created, a group of people who can now communicate some pretty subtle stuff through their fingers. They meet up for discussions and classes, and have a member sign for their audience on every big occasion at the temple. There’s a book, t-shirt, and DVD of course, and a growing number of deaf people who think that Krishna consciousness is just what they are looking for.

This picture, taken by Jonny 2005, is one of many taken yesterday at London Rathayatra, always a great day for photographers.

A grand day out for Lord Jagannatha yesterday -and about 8,000 of His ardent followers. Light rain to clean the streets before the parade; sunshine all the way through, with just a little light wind to cool the kirtaniyas from their singing and dancing. Brightly-coloured flags waved, London policemen smiled, a cabinet minister swept the streets of the capital before the fifty-foot chariots, and tourists couldn’t believe their luck. It was the London Rathayatra, the 40th annual celebration of the Festival of the Chariots.

Trafalgar Square looked like an Indian bazaar, with all kinds of tents revealing sacred food for free distribution to all comers; exotic items for sale; and all manner of wise women and men to impart the wisdom of the east. Occasionally the wind whipped up the spray from the fountains and blew it for yards to drench some unsuspecting festival-goers. Thus the constant sound of the Hare Krishna mantra throughout the afternoon was regularly punctuated by screams and laughter.

The free food tents did well, and almost 12,000 were fed a fine meal. Westminster Council, on hand to see that all health and safety measures were followed, praised the Krishna devotees for their public spirit. This was the 40th time that devotees of Krishna had staged the event, it gets better every year, and it keeps on growing.

The devotees like to think that it brings the music, dance and laughter of the spiritual world down to earth for an afternoon - and that can’t be a bad thing for these troubled times.

More photos from ‘London Rathayatra’ can be seen on www.flickr.com

Above: The tented Trafalgar Square attracted thousands throughout the afternoon. Below: Three chariots bearing Jagannatha, Subhadra and Baladeva look out over Trafalgar Square from the plaza before the National Gallery.

Murti of Vedanta Deshika

There seems to have been a great deal of interest in my last post about guruship, so here’s another from a similar period of Vaishnava history. Its by Sri Vedanta Deshika (1268-1387) and it appears in the Sishyakrityadhikara section of the Srimad Rahasyatrayasara, one of his most important works. This piece is about the qualities required of the good disciple.

Six Essential Qualifications for a Good Disciple

1. The disciple should have the highest devotion for his preceptor

2. The wise disciple spreads the good name and fame of his preceptor to others.

3. The good disciple takes care of the guru’s property and his posessions.

4. The good disciple protects his guru’s teachings with a view to transferring them to a worthy disciple of his own.

5. The good disciple is always grateful to his guru.

6. The good disciple leads a pure life untainted by wrong habits and practises. Indeed, he should have the eight virtues of the soul spoken of by the sage Gautama:
Compassion, Patience, Contentment, Purity, Earnest Endeavour, Noble Thoughts, Absence of Greed, Absence of Envy

The Vaishnava teacher who gave these cautionary instructions for gurus wrote many important works on the practise of bhakti. When the sacred town of Sri Rangam was being attacked by Mogul invaders, who eventually slaughtered 12,000 people, he made a daring plan to escape with the utsava murti of Ranganatha (smaller deities above)

I saw this today - The Reprehensible Delusions of Guruship - and wondered if it might help us in ISKCON. Like other pieces I come across, it is from a mediaeval south Indian saint and guru, in this case Sri Pillai Lokacarya (1217-1323).
Pillai Lokacharya has described in Srivachana Bhushan (308 - 310) three reprehensible delusions which must be avoided by the guru at all costs. These are:-

1. The delusions of ‘preceptorship’ - thinking of oneself as the preceptor - a guru should think of himself as simply a conduit of the Lord’s Grace and not as a teacher of sacred lore, this awareness prevents the guru from developing the egotistical notion of being a great and learned person and having custodianship of spiritual knowledge.

2. The delusions about the role of the disciple - thinking of the disciple as one’s own personal adherent - the disciple should rather be thought of as a co-disciple of the same acharya. Thus the guru avoids the potential for exploitation inherent in the relationship.

3. The delusions arising from the process of instruction of a sisya - these are of four categories:-

a. seeking to gain financially from the disciple, either by tuition fees or dakshina.
b. the delusion that one is actually facilitating the liberation of the disciple.
c. the delusion that one is assisting the Lord in his salvific agenda.
d. seeking or expecting social companionship or service from disciples.