After a short stay in Brisbane the devotees headed off to a retreat center two hours out of town on Mount Warning, Murwillumbah, NSW. The center had been shut down for many years, but the owner wanted to get it going again. However, fixing it up was a big job, which he could not have [...]

Title:SB3.7.40 essential questions
Speaker:Devamrita Swami
Event:Morning class
Place:Berlin, Germany
Time:88:18
Year:2006

Questions are the natural product of affection. Complexities will inevitably be part of practicing KC in the material world. It’s like trying to remain dry while immersed in water.
The pushings of senses are reactions for your sensory activity. People say life is a learning process, but what is the lesson?
What [...]

Title:End of the Damodara-Lila
Speaker:Devamrita Swami
Event:Saturday Feast
Place:Berlin, Germany
Time:58:21
Year:2006

Devotees tend to want to focus on Krishna, on the pastime of mother Yasoda binding Krishna. Now that Krishna is bound to the mortar, what happened then? Time for more mischief: I shall knock down these two Yamala Arjuna trees.
Let us go to the heavenly planets: two sons of [...]

Title:BG4.9 End of Logic and reason
Speaker:Devamrita Swami
Event:Friday Feast
Place:Weimar, Germany
Time:87:34
Year:2006

Weimar is a great University city. Apply your great education to understanding Krishna. Proof of Krishna is not in logic and reason, the proof is in the scripture. But sometimes logic and reason is useful to help you understand the scripture. Logic and reason cannot stretch into [...]

Guru Maharaja asked Frank-Peter what the most memorable part of our trip was. Answer: the Swami’s lectures and the spiritual feeling of nourishment in the heart from devotee association.
Bits of advice from the Guru:

Marriage, whether you know the person or not, is difficult. However, if you stick to it until you’re over 45, the passions [...]

As we drove from Berlin to Leipzig I noticed that wind power generators were everywhere. Every few km there was a patch of about 15 windmills. Germany is the world’s greatest producer of wind power. It generates double the amount of wind power than the next runner up (which is France, I think). A good [...]

We travelled to Berlin with Maitreya-Muni das, a very nice disciple of Pritu Prabhu. It was a very nice sunny day with hardly any traffic. A very nice ride up to Germany’s capital city (4 million people live in Berlin).
The temple itself was a bit of a shock. Located off a main street in an [...]

Weimar is a famous beautiful university town. The birthplace of Schiller, one of the most famous German authors ever. It is one of the only cities in East Germany that has grown in population since the reunification. Income comes mostly from tourism. Gurudeva’s comment about Weimar devotees: quite an unusual crowd, they were quite mellow, [...]

Devamrita Swami spent the night at my old home in Germany. He suggested I should take a course in lawyer’s rhetoric for making a presentation and arguing. I need to learn negotiation and cynicism: to size up the opposition and get what you want (this was right after having been chewed up and spat out [...]

On this day we flew to Germany from Heathrow. While checking in at the airport there was some complication with the booking. The lady at the ticket desk spent what must have been 30 minutes merrily reading over regulations, filling out forms, discussing with her colleagues until finally issuing us with tickets. All was fine. [...]

I’ve (finally) finished writing up my notes and editing the recording from a trip to Germany with my spiritual master in April 2006. I’ll post these on this blog over the coming weeks.
So, the blog posting relating to the trip are obviously not in real time. They are from a long long time ago (a [...]

I’ve created a system for memorizing Bhagavad-Gita verses called Sloka Raja.

You can go to the Sloka Raja website and see a series of verses hidden by a saffron veil. Each verse number is given in a tab along the top of the window. If you hover the mouse over the veil shrouding a particular verse, [...]

My spiritual master visited me again for a few days. He arrived from Russia, having taken part in three huge festivals (in Hungary, Ukraine and Russia). One of his connecting flights was delayed and he ended having to stay overnight in an airport.
Needless to say, when he finally arrived he was exhausted. He came [...]

Just got word that Hitesh has been initiated by his spiritual master (Devamrita Swami) during the recent festival in New Vraja dhama, Hungary. His initiated name is Radhikesa dasa. I’m really happy for him. Who would have known that a photography student from Manchester would become such a great humble servant in the Gaudiya Vaisnava [...]

Title:How much Krishna consciousness should you bite off?
Speaker:Devamrita Swami
Event:Room Discussion
Place:Manchester, England
Time:100:49
Year:2006

There is a force that makes us act in the material world, even though we do not know what we are doing, or why we are doing it. We propose a new standard of intelligence: someone who can see this temporary material energy acts is [...]

My spiritual master, Devamrita Swami, recently visited my humble little abode. Not much to report. I was so busy serving and arranging things that I didn’t ask him any questions. Actually, all the many worries, doubts and concerns that had been on my mind evaporated in his association. I ended up not needing to ask [...]

Evening Soul Talk in Cardiff Soul Centre. One notable guest was Taj, a lady doing a PhD in marketing. She was kicking the advertising for the soul centre into high-gear. Being a marketing guru (as GD called her), she knew how to create a whole portfolio of offerings, membership schemes, advertisements, press releases, etc. The [...]