The blog changes face

Dear blog readers,

The blog is undergoing a change. It will be more focused on our Guru's projects of guardianship of Mother Earth. Please allow some time for the change. 

Saturday feast! Every week!

Nityananda Trayodasi Celebration

On Saturday the 20th February we celebrate 

Sri Nityananda's appearance day.

*

Sri Nityananda is Krishna's first expansion and the original spiritual master – the guru principle, the one "at work" in the Guru, the Absolute in the relative. Therefore it is one of the year's most important celebrations. And the mercy of Nityananda is generously distributed on this celebration day so there is all the reason to come!

*

We will sing bhajans, Vasudeva Prabhu gives lecture, there will be ceremonial Deity bathing and altar greeting, and afterwards we serve some fine vegetarian prasadam.
17.00!

*

Warm welcome to celebrate with us!

The advent of Sri Advaita (Srila Sridhar Maharaj)

Today is the appearance day of Sri Advaita Acharya, the combined incarnation of Maha-Vishnu and Sada-Shiva 582 years ago. It was His intense prayers that affected Sri Krishna, the sentient Absolute, to descend as Sri Krishna Chaitanya (Nimai) in the half-secret form of a devotee of Himself, for the blinding beautiful double purpose of showing the conditioned souls in the material world how to be a devotee and go back all the way to the innermost of Godhead (Home), and to experience His devotees' ecstatic love for Him. We celebrate this with a talk by Srila Sridhar Maharaj about Sri Advaita Acharya's advent.

"First, Advaita Acharya descends here and then He looks around and finds that people are all apathetic to the truth, to Narayana. They are very fond of worshiping so many demigods and going on with their temporary pleasure searching, mad with that without caring for their own soul or liberation, or the life after liberation: to have a proper adjustment in Krishna consciousness. He was very much disturbed by this scenery and he prayed very fervently for the Lord to come here and to preach the Supreme Name, Nama sankirtana, by which a general amnesty and a peaceful effort may be done to start a campaign towards home. Back to God, back to home – this Nama sankirtana. And Mahaprabhu [Sri Krishna Chaitanya] with others, they also gradually come down here and begin their Nama sankirtana."

Serve – connect – feel – experience (Srila Sridhar Maharaj)

Srila B.R. Sridhar Dev-Goswami Maharaj

*

Excerpts from Sermons of the Guardian of Devotion, Vol 1

*

Whatever beautiful and valuable things we come across, we cannot but surrender ourselves to them. That is the criterion. If we come across anything higher within our vicinity, our appreciation means surrendering ourselves unto that. So according to the degree of our surrender, we have to measure what degree of quality of truth we have come across. That can be measured only according to the degree and intensity of surrender, or how much we could surrender to what we came into connection with, to the point of no return. 

*

When our appreciation for saranagati [surrender] comes, we will realize that we have come into the relativity of a great substance. Otherwise one cannot find the necessity of saranagati at all. “Why saranagati? We want mastery over everything!” Modern science, the exploitationists, the karmis – they want everything under their control. But this is just the opposite, and opposite to the highest degree. In this, we shall find such a great and noble aspect of nature that we will voluntarily offer ourselves to be the eternal servant of it. “I am in the relativity of such a magnanimous, noble thing!” Saranagati, herself, is reality. She contains Krsna within her boundary. Come to saranagati, and you will find Krsna. The halo of Krsna is saranagati. Through saranagati you can approach the Krsna conception [of the Absolute], but not by inquiry. 

*

And then service – to be utilized by Him. To serve means to taste the juice. Only by serving can we connect, feel, and have any experience.

Devotional service (Srila BA Paramadvaiti Maharaj)

Berlin 21st April 2011.

“Full enthusiasm for self realization. More full enthusiasm for embracing the divine Lord’s sweet will and becoming His instrument. And the even more fuller enthusiasm of simply fine-tuning everything to enter the sweet lila [play] of Krishna and to simply become submerged in that realm of divine ecstasy in total surrender.”

“Devotional service is purely ecstatic. To do something for Krishna to make the temple work better, to collect some laxmi [money] for the temple or whatever the Guru asks us, it should make us purely ecstatic.”

“When you have some desire to do something for Krishna, you don’t have to worry, it will be already taken care of, you just have to be there and do your job. Just be there and tolerate and wait and see.”

January's Gurumaharaj lectures on Nimaihuset YouTube

Not all Gurumaharaj material is posted on the blog, many lectures are only published on our YouTube channel (but all Gurumaharaj material on the blog and the YouTube channel can be found in the continuously updated blog archive, here). January's Gurumaharaj lectures on YouTube are all from Vrindavan (2000–2015). And there is always a special quality in the lectures from there that makes them extra valuable to listen to, no matter what the subject is. Ecstatic, joyful, revealing, summer-scented, home-felt... So inject your consciousness with an extra dose of vaikuntha sabda, transcendental sound, and make spiritual progress by just listening (sravanam – the first limb of devotional service). Here is a bunch:

* Reading from Bhaktiratna Kara 1 (Audio lecture, Vrindavan, November 2015)

* Reading from Bhaktiratna Kara 2 (Audio lecture, Vrindavan, November 2015)

* The Unlimited Infinite Supreme Lord (Audio lecture, Vrindavan, March 2007)

* One in love (Audio lecture, Vrindavan, November 2015)

* Maha-mantra (Audio lecture, Vrindavan, November 2015)

* Envy (Audio lecture, Vrindavan, November 2015)

* Raganuga Bhakti (Audio lecture, Vrindavan, October 2000)

* The land of Love (Audio lecture, Vrindavan, October 2015)