ISKCON NewsThe News Agency of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness

The Mayapur Academy’s two-month intensive deity worship course culminated last Friday (September 19), with fifty-seven Bengali-speaking students receiving their awards. The majority hailed from Mayapur, while two students each from Bangladesh and Kolkata attended. Most were staff of the Mayapur temple, including priests and department heads.

Devotees at ISKCON’s center in Ludhiana, Punjab celebrated World Holy Name Week with all the enthusiasm they could muster.

From September 13 through 20th, the congregation took turns to chant the Hare Krishna maha-mantra at the temple throughout the day.

The Western eye, and often heart, has always been drawn to the exotic. For artist and photographer Brahma Muhurta Dasa, the pull was stronger than for most. Born Michael Buhler-Rose, he began reading about different philosophies at fourteen, an age when most of his peers were more interested in videogames and girls. When a neighbor of his lent him first Barbara Stoler Miller’s translation of the Bhagavad-gita, and then ISKCON founder Srila Prabhupada’s, he was deeply affected by the ancient text.

On 13 September 2008, devotees from ISKCON center in Ludhiana paid a visit to Central Jail where young men in the age group 18-25 years are imprisoned.

This was not the first time that inmates of Central Jail got a chance to free their souls despite being under arrest for various crimes. Devotees regularly visit the Central Jail to engage the prisoners in various devotional activities including meditation through chanting the names of Lord.

Bhakti Raghava Swami, a proponent of the simple-living, high-thinking lifestyle, visited the ISKCON New Talavana farm in Mississippi from September 12 – 14th to hold a weekend workshop.

The seminar conveyed the urgency of implementing Srila Prabhupada’s vision of varnashram dharma. Varnashram is a traditional vedic social structure of natural vocations and life stages. It is often confused with the birth-based caste system, which Vaishnavas consider to be a missaplication of the original ancient system.

In Vancouver, Canada, a twenty-three year old man has been sentenced to four years in jail for shooting dead his mother at the age of fourteen.

The man is known only by his initials J.A.P. in Supreme Court documents. He and his family were previously Krishna devotees, but at the time of the killing they had since stopped practicing and became disaffiliated with ISKCON.

Time Broadband has entered into an understanding with ISKCON to provide spiritual discourses on their forthcoming IPTV platform.

ISKCON would produce 400-500 hours of content per year, said founder of ISKCON's broadcast ITV Haridas Prabhu.

My connection with Sadaputa goes back more than thirty years. I remember first meeting him one day at our Brooklyn Hare Krishna center, a large old brownstone in Brooklyn Heights. It was the middle of the day, and hardly anyone else was around, so I found myself spending at least an hour or so talking with this young scientist who had come there with questions about our philosophy.

We talked about consciousness, about Bhagavad-gita, about the implications of Schrödinger’s equation.

In the fast-paced lifestyle of today’s society, the focus is often getting things done and getting them done fast. Exchanges between spouses and between parents and children are, more often than not, fit in among the goings and comings of family activities and responsibilities. Choosing to slow down and truly connect with one another is considered a luxury that many couples feel they cannot afford. As a consequence, the demands of daily life absorb our attention and energy and we often fail to take the time to focus on the health of our relationship with our spouse.

The publication of "The Yoga of Kirtan: Conversations on the Sacred Art of Chanting," while sparking some mild controversy within ISKCON, has enabled me to share our philosophy in venues I wouldn't have previously thought possible. Radio shows ask for interviews, yoga studios and health food stores repeatedly invite me to lecture, to explain "the new phenomenon" known as kirtan, and numerous New Age magazines and yoga journals have either asked me to write feature articles on kirtan or have favorably reviewed the book.

Agra, Sep 24 (IANS) Thousands of people have been flocking to see the river Yamuna flowing with full gusto right next to the magnificent Taj Mahal - a rare sight in Agra as the river is mostly dry and is often described as an ‘open drain’ or the ’sewage canal’. The river is in spate and people can be seen spending hours at the banks admiring the natural beauty and the return of aquatic animals to the Yamuna.

People should have one meat-free day a week if they want to make a personal and effective sacrifice that would help tackle climate change, the world's leading authority on global warming has told The Observer.

Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which last year earned a joint share of the Nobel Peace Prize, said that people should then go on to reduce their meat consumption even further.