19860209_Sunday_Feast_Evening_Literal version The following is a lecture given by His Holiness Jayapataka Swami on February 9th, 1986, in New Orleans, Louisiana. The class is given at a Sunday Feast. 500 years ago by Lord Caitanya Mahaprabhu, on the altar of the other side of the room on the far left, you see two figures with their arms raised, on the right the figure of Lord Caitanya, and on the left is Lord Nityananda. So Lord Caitanya is the founder of the Hare Krishna movement 500 years ago. The chanting of Hare Krishna is the ah… process which is timeless in itself. It is said to have been brought from the spiritual world by one messenger of god millions of years ago and that chanting has always existed in the world, but normally individuals or small groups of people would chant it together but Caitanya, the great ah… Lord Caitanya, He brought this ah… process in the street and said that everyone should chant together dancing in ecstasy and after chanting when they feel a little fatigued they should take a feast of ah… spiritualized foodstuff. So this process of chanting works. It’s not a theory, it’s not something that you have to have blind faith in, it is something that actually and factually works, that’s why when the devotee chants it’s hard for them to contain themselves, they too… it’s hard for them to don’t dance or don’t jump up and down and don’t… because they feel so happy when they are chanting. May be when the person chants they feels shy, they feel in… inhibited due to various conditioning, what will people think, what does it mean, so many other things but even if he didn’t know what it meant, if he just repeated the vibration again and again, the effect would be there, and it is there. It is not necessary that one has to know what it means because the Hare Krishna mantra is a vibration which is especially meant to deliver the consciousness and to awaken it to it’s original state of pure spiritual happiness and revelation. That ah… actually the mantra is Sanskrit word, mantra means ah… actually combination of two words, man and tra, man means the mind and tra means to deliver, so mantra is the vibration which delivers the mind, which elevates the mind, which opens the consciousness. So ah… there are different processes for opening consciousness through various religions ah… spiritual meditations, sacrifices. In India there are basic categories like yoga, meditation where one sits in sitting posture and does breathing exercises. They study scriptures for awakening higher revelations and prayers. Another process is this process of sankirtan or congregational chanting and primarily the most of the year in ah… asia, in southern asia, eastern and southern india. So I was doing a lecture tour of Thailand just about ten days ago and there one retired general of the Burmese army who had led from Burma when it turned socialist about 20 years ago and took shelter in Thailand, he is practicing Buddhist, so he was very ah… his comment after hearing the explanation of the Hare Krishna chanting was that he had done Thailand meditation his whole life and different type of mantra meditation sitting in one place, but this is the first time he saw that in group meditation how the chanter was not only helping himself but was by participating in the group chanting was actually helping the other people who are chanting or even by standers who were witnessing and self-less chanting he found very impressive. So actually that is ah… one of the basic feature of the chanting is that ah… while you are chanting and delivering your own consciousness because you are chanting out loud you are helping others ah… to deliver their consciousness or to advance ah… closer in their relationship with the supreme personality of Godhead. So here in the Mardi Gras everyone wants to have a good time, they want to have a joyful time, they like to be happy and try their level best in the ways that they know how to be happy. So Krishna conscious movement is also for the purpose of making people happy. It’s just that we have a different technique than it is normally used, and this technique is so dynamic and self-supporting it doesn’t require any other stimulant to get it off the ground. Normally to enjoy a lot of joyful ah… fun, a person’s consciousness in the normal may be is too sedate normally, so they have to induce it with a little extraneous stimuli but ah… due to chanting of hare Krishna one doesn’t need to take any ah… drugs or alcohol, it is not necessary. In fact those who practice regularly, they avoid them, they don’t… they don’t require them at all to become happy. Rather by chanting Hare Krishna, that along bring up the natural happiness which is within us, to such an extent that it’s ah… completely ah… overwhelming. So of course even if the people of course, even in the New Orlean, that at this time more or less everybody is ah… under various kinds of stimuli, even then if they chant Hare Krishna they will still benefit. So we encourage everyone to chant and join along, and if they feel happy they can like to be part of that joyful spirit, and rather we would like them to be part of a higher joyful spirit which is actually type of rejoicing. The message of Lord Caitanya is that we don’t have to fear the hell and brimstone and be ah… absorbed in some kind of ah… pessimistic attitude because ah… the special gift of God in this particular era or age is that if we simply absorb ourself in singing his glories and chanting ah… in ecstasy while we sing his holy names, that alone is ah… enough to ah… take us back to the spiritual world at the end of this lifetime and we can immediately in that kind of spiritual atmosphere, we can feel the transcendental happiness which is our natural ah… state. So in this way actually for the hare-krishna devotees everyday is a festival. In fact the more devotees there are chanting together it is a little bigger festival. So for us because here during the Mardi Grass time we are having devotees and Srila Bhaktipad has come from New Vrindavan and other so many devotees have come from ah… from different parts of ah… United States. So we get an opportunity to chant with more devotees and the more people would chant together, the more enjoyable it becomes, the more powerful the vibration becomes, so if you can have hundreds of people than it is more powerful. In India it is not unusual for us to have big gatherings and stadiums or in huge outdoor meetings where upto 25,000 or even 50,00 people are all chanting Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare, all at one time. I was ah… in fact at one time we were doing a program in the ambassador of India, and one of the ministers ah… he is in Bangladesh, they flew by helicopter and attended this program and there were 50,000 people there. So after the ambassador spoke he went about three miles away back to his ah… guest house and then I gave ah… I was giving a lecture. So I was requesting everyone to chant for 15 minutes first and so everyone was chanting in unison, this Hare Krishan mantra, and in fact that time Latika Bhakti, one of our devotee here, visiting from Sweden, she was there, we had a competition between the men and the women present that who could chant louder, the men or women, Hare Krishna. I think that the woman won. (laughter) but it was very tight. In fact the judge couldn’t decide immediately, he had to have three times ah…. just to be sure. Then finally the woman in the end, they all jumped up in the air and then he said, “they win.” So ah… what happened was that the next day the ambassador told his ah… told one of the organizers of that ah… meeting, he went back to his ah… guest house and he was taking a sip of his tea and he is about to take his tea and all of a sudden he heard this tumultuous sound, “Hare Krishna” come through his window, and he said you know, and it was a good three miles away from the ah… function. It was so loud that he said ah… immediately…he felt ah… overwhelming joy in his heart just from hearing that vibration and ah… his hairs started to tingle, and he was ah… very surprised, he couldn’t imagine where it was coming, he realized that it was coming from the program or three miles away, it was so loud that it was just pouring into his room. So whether one chants a 50,000 people or whether it is 50 people during the Mardi Grass. Whether you chant alone in your home, the effect is there, it is a scientific ah… process, systematic process handed down by great spiritual masters. Of course we have, because we part of the indian tradition of ah… god realization and spiritual practices. So many of our temple rituals are following in those cultural tradition. In fact I don’t doubt that sometimes ah… for an American, they come into the Hare Krishna temple, it is kind of a cultural… it’s either going as a cultural experience or a cultural shock. For the Indian people I feel that they probably feel quite at home that they are coming into a Krishna temple, not very much different than the temples that ah… they have seen in India and other places. So but for the western, probably it takes a bit of courage to walk to the portholes of the Hare Krishna temple and with the incense and the chanting and the shaved devotees, and they don’t know what to expect, when they see they don’t know what to think. So it’s alright, don’t have to feel, it’s ah… probably something new probably for the west but it is something very ancient and it’s a very wonderful… wonderful process. We talk about a united world and an integrated world, and a world where people consider everyone to be brothers and sisters and everyone is ah… having mutual respect for all cultures or they are integrated in a harmonious situation. Well, one of the aspect of this is that we know about other cultures. Even if a person doesn’t particularly have faith or be so much involved in this particular process but there is only benefit which can come from knowing more about… this is a genuine cultural transferral, the things which we are doing are very orthodox prac… practices. Mean that, chanting is of course particularly common in eastern India, in this particular form. It is not as well known in the southern or western India in this form ah… say uptil this recent century but ah… the other processes that we have like ah… we have various weddings here, we have initiation ceremonies, we have daily worships and meditations and classes. These are traditional functions which are almost the same as ah… you would find in India, and many of our Indian communities come here, to have their weddings performed, they have various ceremonies performed, and it’s open for their, service is as much for the general American public. So we are very grateful that people are coming here, that we have a chance to share a little bit of this ancient culture of this ah… Indian ah… traditional culture which has got the special relevance in the modern world because it’s timeless. In a world where everyday things are changing and it is hard to really keep a bearing from one season to the next. That even from hair style to clothing style to moral standards, to so much different things that it is hard to find any absolute values. So when you have the perspective of something which hasn’t basically changed over the past five or ten thousand years that gives a totally different perspective and that’s also to be in that type of a timeless situation is very relaxing, it’s very ah… liberating to the mind. So this process is a technique through that everyone can practice, everyone can learn and they can practice on their own time, on their own ground, in their own environment. So we don’t intend that people should all adopt our particular lifestyle, we don’t expect that everyone will live in a community like this… Hare Krishna community, but what we are trying to propose or offer to the public is to learn some of these techniques to become aware of this culture, and if a person can chant this Hare Krishna mahamantra, then they can experience… if they experience of peace and happiness that we are experiencing, then we will know that they we will be very satisfied and very gratified by that experience, and that will be our… our ah… own personal ah… satisfaction, to see that other people are becoming… there is no… becoming happy by… there is no charge for it, it is not a commercial enterprise although for our food distribution programs and for maintaining this type of cultural centre, sometimes our devotees do separately ask for donations but there is no charge as such for the ah… chanting and people contribute for the feast and other things according their own discretion and means, it’s not that we have free distributions. So that gives a little basic overview. I thought tonight just for a few minutes I can tell you about something that happened 5000 years ago, and when Lord Krishna was in the planet. Krishna was actually name for God but for… for us God is not a vague thing or simply a light, God is the absolute truth, the supreme reality, he is also a person, and he… lives in the spiritual kingdom or spiritual far beyond the universes but he occasionally comes down into the material world taking on a human form or appearing in his human form, human like form and he lives and walks with the people of this world, and when he is here he is also accompanied by various ah… wonderful devotees and saintly people. So some of the activities that happened when he was present is very illuminating and they give us a insight into the kind of atmosphere surrounding ah… the Lord. According to the vedas, that God is eternally young, he never grows old and that he is always enjoying loving relationships with his devotees and we are part of that loving relationship with the Lord but we have fallen from the spiritual world and come into this material world. So we are considered fallen souls. In this world the Lord is not personally present in a direct way. Indirectly he is present but he is not personally visible. This enables the fallen souls to be able to themselves create their own little world and self-centered existence where they can be the God or the controller of their own destiny. So this is basically ah… what people are doing in the material world, in a sense they are competing with God, they are competing with each other, and as such they are able to sometimes enjoy life, and sometimes they don’t enjoy life, but the Lord comes down to show us that there is another realm where you don’t have to compete with the Lord, you can just serve him with love and that is your real happiness, that what is actually in our natural state, and to attract the fallen souls back to that happy spiritual existence where we give up trying to compete with the Lord and rather we accept his supremacy and work under his shelter. He comes here and shows his very loving relationships with different devotees and they are very attractive and so those people who become aware of these pastimes, they go back to the spiritual world and resume their original position. So we are a kind of a creaming house, we are trying to give people the opportunity about knowing about this ah… spiritual secrets, very esoteric truths, so that people can go back to the original spiritual world and they don’t have to remain in this ah… material world where there is a constant repetition or reincarnation, birth and dealth, where we have to suffer and enjoy for all the karmas which we perform. So this is the description of where Lord Krishna entered into the city of Dwarka which is now the city of Dwaraka is off of the coast of Gujarat sunken in the ocean. Recently some archaeologist have rediscovered this city… of or discovered this city of Dwaraka. After Krishna left the planet, he sunk his city so that it wouldn’t be… just be under the ocean. So recently archaeologists using those new techniques they have or just like they found in the Air India remnants what you call them the crash ah… debri in the bottom of the ocean. So they are using those same kind of ah… sonar… I guess it is called sonar scanning devices and so on. They are able to locate these… there is a huge city of the coast of Gujarat in India, South of Pakistan which is ah… same place where the city of Dwaraka was. It used to be capital city where Krishna lived in a latter part of his ah… presence in the world. So after Krishna spoke the Bhagavat Gita, in the battle of Kurukshetra, then he was returning to Dwaraka and all the residents of Dwaraka were very happy to receive him. So it describes here a little bit about the city in the reception of Lord Krishna. It’s from the first canto of the Srimad Bhagavatam. By the way if anyone has ever ente… we have this books available and these are original Sanskrit texts. Today I wouldn’t read the Sanskrit because it’s won’t be very easily understandable by most of the guests, I will just read the English translations but we have both original Sanskrit texts, vedic texts from India with translations and purport as well as we have just flowing English ah… versions which are easier for people to read who are not… not used to reading the Sanskrit and everything. So the city of Dwaraka puri was filled with the opulence’s of all seasons, there were hermitages, orcha… orchards, flower gardens, parks and reservoir’s of water breeding lotus flowers all around. The city gateway, the house hold doors and festooned arches along the road were all nicely decorated with festive signs like plantaned trees and mango leaves, all to welcome the Lord. Flags, garlands and painted signs and slogans all combined to shade the sunshine. Signs of decorations in special festivals were also collected from the gifts of nature, such as the bla… banana trees, the mango trees, fruits and flowers, mango trees, coconut palms and plantain trees are still accepted as auspicious signs. The highways, subways, lanes, markets and public meeting places were thoroughly cleansed and then moistened with scented water and to welcome the Lord fruits, flowers an broken seeds were strewn everywhere. You can see how the city was filled with parks and highways and gardens, water reservoirs and lakes, and for greeting the Lord they use all natural things- fruits, grains, flowers, I continue and each and every door houses, auspicious things like curd, unbroken fruits, sugarcane and full water pots with articles for worship and candles were all displayed. In this regard Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, he gives an explanation that the process of reception according to vedic rights is not all dry, the reception was made not simply by decorated roads and streets as above mentioned but by worshipping the Lord with requisite ingredients like incense, lamp, flowers, sweets, fruits and other palatable edibles, according to one’s capacity. All were offered to the Lord and the remnants of foodstuffs were distributed amongst the gathering citizens. So it’s not like a dry reception of this modern days. Each and every house was ready to receive the Lord in a similar way and thus each and every house on the roads and the streets distributed such remnants of food to the citizens. Therefore the festival was successful. Without distribution of food no function is complete and that is the way of vedic culture. So ah… this way when the Lord was coming, then everyone hastened to greet the Lord, then finally Krishna he entered into the city of Dwaraka. At that time it described that the people of the city hastened towards the Lord in chariots with brahmanas bearing flowers. Before them were elephants, emblems of good fortune. Conchshells and beugles were sounded and vedic hyms were chanted and thus they offered their respects which were saturated with affection. At the same time many hundreds of well-known girls began to proceed on various vehicles. They were very eager to meet the Lord, and their beautiful faces were decorated with dazzling earrings which enhanced the beuty of their foreheads. Expert dramatists, artists, dancers, singers, historians, knowledgists and learned speakers, they all gave their respective contributions, being inspired by their super-human pastimes of the Lord. Thus they proceeded on and on. Lord Krishna, the personality of Godhead, he approached them and he offered them due honour and respect to each one of the friends, relatives, citizens and all others who came to receive and welcome him. The almighty Lord greeted everyone present by bowing his head, exchanging greetings and embracing, shaking hands, looking and smiling, giving assurances and awarding benedictions even to the lowest in rank. Then the Lord personally entered the city, accompanied by elderly relatives and invalid brahmanas and their wives and all offering benedictions and singing the glories of the Lord. Othe’s also praised the glories of the Lord. When Lord Krishna passed on the public roads, all the ladies of the respectable families of Dwaraka went to the roofs of their palaces just to have the look at the Lord. They considered it to be the greates festival. The inhabitants of Dwaraka were regularly accustomed to look upon the reservoir of all beuty and infallible Lord and they were never satiated. The Lord’s chest is the abode of the goddess of fortune. His moonlike face is the drinking vessel for the eye which hanker after all that is beautiful. His arms are resting places for administrative demigods, and his lotus feet were the refuge of the pure devotees who never talk or sing of any subject except his lordship. So like this Krishna was greeted when he came into his city of Dwarak 5000 years ago. We can see how beautiful their reception, how spontaneous their reception was for the Lord. What we see in modern festivals is a kind of a deem reflection where instead of being… the difference is just that in Dwaraka things were God centred and God is the eternal Lord, youthful personality of Godhead comes to the world and then he goes back to his spiritual world. Lord Jesus is his son, his devotee, his representative. There are other representatives or spiritual master who throughout the ages have given the process of how to return to our original spiritual status. So of course most of the people in the world, they are concerned how to be materially happy, how to have a peaceful life, how to be sensually gratified, this are the prominent considerations. The vedic culture tells us that that is just one of the aspects of life, and that human life is meant not only for that but to simultaneously achieve self-realization, to realize that we are more than the body, that we are the living force within the body, and that the body is dependent on the presence of the living force and when the living force leaves the body, that this body becomes simply a dead hunk of meat, it’s not attractive anymore. To the science of the self is to realize that we are the consciousness in the body, we are the living essence of the body. So the vedas describe… the bhagavat gita describes that that living force is us, that is actually who we are. We are the one watching everything in the body, the body is like a periscope or a machine like a video camera is in the eyes and the senses. We are picking up all the information’s with this senses and when this body becomes no longer usable, just like if you are driving down the road and our car breaks down, we get out of the car and hitch anther ride, that we somehow go on in a some other vehicle. When this vehicle becomes useless we just leave it and we take a new vehicle and we keep changing vehicles until that time as long as we are in the material world and when it is time… when we are ready to go back to the spiritual world, then we don’t need any more vehicle, then we have our spiritual form which is not dependent upon any vehicle, it in itself is self-contained. So self-realisations means to realize who we are, what is material world, what is the self, and then automatically the senses are gratified, the mind is peaceful without very much difficulty but more important is that there is actually there is higher complete satisfaction and this what we want to see everyone to achieve and life is a complete satisfaction. So a little sense of that satisfaction, anyone can achieve by chanting Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna Hare Hare, Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare, and so because we are chanting that people know us as the Hare Krishna but ah… it’s an open secret, we would like to invite everyone to give a trial run of chanting, you don’t have to worry, there is no… no bad side effects, you can chant and if you find that that is having proper effect, it is making you feel better helping you to understand the basic secrets of life more profoundly, that… as I told you before that will be our greatest ah… sign of success. So generally this time we don’t like to speak very long, because we have feast and many other programs. What we do like to have is more of a interchange between the guests and the speaker. So I would like to take the opportunity now to ask if any of you have any questions, that I could answer any questions that you might have. Yes Question: JPS: I never heard of people taking a pound of beaf or a some other kind of meat for vitamins. (laugh). There is a lot more vitamins in fruits and vegetables and milk than ah.. than in flesh. The only thing that is missing in our diet is that we don’t take ah…as far as the full time practitioners, we don’t take any meat or fish or eggs. So some… the only thing you can say is that there is a protein shortage but those things are not known, as far as I am concerned, they are not known for their vitamin contents…. The ah… as far as amino acids, when you take ah… chappatis or this wheat bread pattis along with the pulse soup of dal, the combination together creates a…more than the daily requirement of amino acids and proteins and things. In addition to that we do take animal fat, but we don’t take it any violent way, we take it in the form of butter and ghee (laugh), and that doesn’t hurt the cow, in fact the cow is ah… produces more milk than the calf can drink. If you have ever raised a daily cattle you know that if you let the calf drink all the mother’s milk the calf can die, it can only take about a quarter of the milk and that except for the few days and it has to be controlled. So this three quarters if meant for what, it is specially meant for human beings. So in this way we can get through cheese, through yogurt, through milk, through butter or clarified butter ghee we can get ah… more than enough of those animal derivative nutrients and apart from that of course there is unlimited vegetables, grains, fruits. So this ah… is more than enough ingredients for a healthy diet. That they have studied and found that there is no shortage. In fact ah… many of these, as far as the vegetarian… that’s going off a little into one side but we have a video which you could see sometimes, you seemed to be more of a little bit read up on this things. You could ask the devotees to show… there video on the vegetarian world. It’s put on the magazine… that the vegetarian world has produced a video and that tells about vegetarian deit and there you have you know big weighlifters…. Olympic weight lifters and there they are all vegetarians you know they are lifting you know 300 kilo. They are all…all telling you how vegetarian ways better and so and so. So mean from that aspect you could see the video and then after that they answer a lot of the questions there. Question : JPS: Meat… eating meat produces excessive body head, it causes anger, impatience, violence, so when you… when you eat a vegetarian diet you feel more peaceful. Doesn’t mean that if you get…if you have to be angry you can get the adrenaline… you can still do the needful, what I mean. It’s not like… unnecessarily a person ah… becomes agitated or angry or violent ah… just by eating ah… meat. I know that in the high school where I was at, they used to feed the ah… raw meat to the ah… football team before they played. They thought that that would get them more angry and… (laugh)… there is a lot of bad effect. So now they find that that gives some… that doesn’t give a lasting stamina or effect and rather who wants to be in that state all the time. So because of that a lot of misunderstandings and fights are going on in the world due to… if meat-eating was eliminated then the whole karma of all those innocent animals being killed would be relieved from the world and that would right there end the majority of the wars and violence in the world. Everyone has to get a quota of the questions. Question: JPS: That will be controversial. Well, in West Verginia, their basic project… but it will be better if you could hear from ah… Srila Bhaktipad’s spiritual master, west verginia’s here visit for a couple of days and ah… interested people can go and meet him and you can personally hear from him some of the West Verginia, New Vrindavan program. We would like to have a similar, I mean on a smaller scale possibly a little spiritual project in ah… in our farm in Missisippi in New Talaban, in ah… New Vrindavan their plan by far is in a nutshell is that they want to have their buildings set in temples and they have one temple constructed in honour of divine grace Bhaktivedanta Swami Srila Prabhupada, our founder spiritual master and the next temple is a very ambitious project of ah… all granite temple which is ah… how many feat high? 216 ? 216 feet high and which has a huge complex of exhibitions and spiritual planetarium and things like that, it is most wonderful program and when that’s finished there will be gardens and ah…so many other things, and there is going to be but… when that is finished they will come up with other programs, so there is seven. So in ah… in Mayapur, the ah… birthplace of Lord Caitanya, we have… we are constructing memorial for Srila Prabhupada. The structure is complete now and it’s being constructed by donations from all over the world. Small percentage of every book that is distributed is ah… sent to India for constructing this memorial to Srila Prabhupada. There is another memorial constructed in Vrindavana, that birth place of… pastime place of Krishna. So because we are building two memorials at one time they are… they are taking a little bit more time. One cost around a million dollars in Vrindavan than the one in Mayapur costing for about two million. So that’s about 216 feet or 210 feet high or about 180 feet high, I forget… about 200 feet high and that has some auditorium and has other… it’s a very big dome, but that’s a… that’s a memorial for Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada Samadhi, and then after that is completed then we want to build a city, the program is to build a spiritual city with thousands and thousands of inhabitants. So Vrindavan is kind of a spiritual temple village, and… but in Mayapur Prabhupada wanted to have a spiritual city and already on weekends we are getting about 20,000 people coming out, bus loads… line of people come out and see. This has come from Srila Prabhupada, it’s much the same, it’s sort of inspiration but ah.. in that temple in Mayapur you tend to have thousands of exihibits and along that temple there would be a central area which… which would be a like a Chaitanya world, and in the Chaitanya world there are going to be… another.. apart from that the world of the guru and the… the vedic planetarium , there are going to be another seven different exhibits which ah… are going to contain various ah… various ah… pavilions and displays and kind of a spiritual Disney world or something. So this year we wanted to have a Caitanya village as a proto… a small sample but doesn’t seem possible to finish in time for the festival but there is a very good scope for putting on a permanent exhibit which one of the world would be the world of Krishna consciousness around the world and so that… the seed of that is going to be opened this year in the world exhibition which will have displays from New Orleans, displays from West Virginia, displays from Russia, from Africa, from all over the world and that’s… that’s what I am primarily focussing on, right now it’s to try to finish that world exposition before our March 11 deadline when all our devotees will be reaching there. We are discussing many concepts, concepts of having area in the city for… for the intellectual activities, for…. for administrative activities, for commercial activities and for handicraft and industrial activities and agricultural activities, so on and so forth but in the meantime we are being swarmed by so many visitors and tourists that that necessity of providing basic infrastructure for them is… is becoming more the immediate necessity than after we fulfil that need than other development areas are going to be analysed. How many of the people here are chanting hare Krishna everday? (laught) No I mean of those who are living outside the temple? How many are chanting four rounds and more? How who are chanting four rounds or more are Krishna sevikas? No, we have a program for those who chant four rounds or more, and who are desirous of step by step gradually advancing in Krishna consciousness, there is program called Krishna sevak or Krishna sevika, pre-initiation kind of a program for the more advanced members of our congregation and is ranganath here? So if anyone’s, you can enquire from the local ah.. temple president here, if you are interested in that type of a program you may be eligible for that, is there any other question? Question: JPS: Well, we don’t get.. we don’t get so many donations from the west for missionaries to convert people in India. Think pope has hundred and million dollar budget for converting Indian into Roman Catholic. So if you become a Roman catholic you get a radio, tv, house, jobs, chickens, pigs. Would be so bad if you didn’t also have to be converted into a meat-eater. Ah.. we respect all religions and at the same time we don’t find that there is anything missing in vedic culture. So basically few of our grass root programs where we have namhatta program where we have in our every village, we have cultural and development program, we have around 2000 of such programs established, 2000 such centres established in all part of India, and you know we don’t…. we don’t offer people bribes or anything or give any cash instead of practising Krishna consciousness but through a kind of positive approach even through interfaith cooperation, we try to develop a person in their respective religious belief to the fullest extent. Those people who do not have any faith, we.. by any particular way we provide them one, and those who have… have the faith in Christianity we try to reinforce that, we try to give it a deeper understanding with a more broader perspective and for those who are already a part of the vedic culture we immediately organize them into this namhattas ah… village sankirtans seva mandals and we had a very good response and all parts of India. Of course everything is dependent on capital and manpower, so up to our present capital and manpower expanding… rather expanding beyond our ah… beyond our ability to supervise, it’s about increasing by 50% every year, which is almost mind-boggling because it is hard to get trained supervisors and trainers for people at that rate. So there is no shortage of customers but we need you know… but we need more shopkeepers and attendants to supply their needs. So sometimes…. some…recently one couple came from ah… they came from India and they working here, then when they retired they went back to India and ah… they are helping us with ah… some of the preaching work, then people respect them because while they are seeing the good life in America and they gone back to India to spread the truth and everything. So we had a very good response. We can’t compete on cash and centres or anything but that’s not our, that’s not we are offering people, we are offering them love and offering them spiritual realization and it’s… it’s being received very well. We have been only in India since 1970’s and that’s about 16 years, but in the 16 years the movement is very well established. Of course the culture has been there for 500 years but the realization has been there for 16 years, so there is a little bit of difficulty as you know for the people from some parts of India to accept ah… westerners practicing on being spiritual masters of this culture but now in the past decade the major hurdles in this regard has been crossed over and people do accept Krishna consciousness as a integral part of their culture, as a part of their community and …54.57…. in Bombay when we have our janmastami festival, the appearance of Lord Krishna in August. Last year around one million people attended to the temple site, so in the city side than we have the rural branches, we just had a integral program where we took from Dwaraka to Kanyakumari, from Kanyakumari upto Mayapur we are taking one padayatra, and that has alone established around 500 village centres and it’s over year and a half tour. So we have many programs like that and they are progressing very systematically. I think one of my assistants Bhanu Swami, he is supposed to meet the pope the day before yesterday. He wanted to ask the pope that since he has been received so warmly in India, that we hope that he will… talking about integration and inter-faith co…communication and so on, that a similar welcome will be extended by South America and other countries where all the followers are in greater numbers. I didn’t get the reply yet what he said but ah… we have… people are looking for a little more and we… and along we want to see all these different religious faiths come down to the essential. People are looking for something very practical. Just having the faith is not the practical method whereby we can always be situated in spiritual consciousness, and actually we can be free from the anxieties and sufferings of the material world and we can practically enjoy the real joy and… of self-realization, that’s what people are hankering for, that’s what they need, so this vedic culture, specially the sankirtan process provides and there is nothing in disharmony with any other religion, so in this very kind of very positive approach we are getting a very good response in the world. So similarly in India, through this grass root programs we are getting a good re… villagers and many of the leaders there, they have appreciated the work which we are doing. Of course there is no limit to how much work that can be done, so we are trying to expand as far as possible. We thank you for your support and cooperation. Hare Krishna

Transcribed by: Sadananda Krishnaprem Das Dibrugarh, Assam on 28-06-2016