Surprisingly, after forty-plus years of existence, the International Society for Krishna Consciousness is still not clear on what it means to be one of its "members."

PURI: Two Iskcon devotees from Singapore and Australia were allegedly shoved out of the Jagannath temple on Thursday by a group of priests, for in their view, the visitors are non-Hindus. The priests reportedly nudged and even kicked the foreigners, who claimed themselves to be Hindus.

An article recently appeared on Iskcon news entitled "Iskcon Leaders Grapple to Define "Who is a member?" I've been thinking about this for a while, especially as it relates to how I've tried to conduct my self and what my goals have been in my service of interacting with the people who are not members of Iskcon.

Vrindavana, India - On October 17, five representatives of Governing Body Commission of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), founder-acarya His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, forming an official delegation, met with Srila B.V. Narayana Maharaja, founder-acarya of the BHAKTI Trust Mission, near the pilgrimage site of Govardhana Hill, just a few miles from Vrindavana, India. The meeting, which had been planned for several months, was held at Narayana Maharaja's Sri Sri Gauranga Radha Giridhari temple at Giridhari Gaudiya Math.

Tattoos have been inked permanently into modern culture. Walk down any busy city street and you'll spot a vast number of tattooees, ranging all the way from the young female professional with a butterfly on her shoulder blade to the wild punk rocker with hardly any space left for his white skin to shine. For some reason, having an unremovable image of a two-headed dragon eating its own face sprawled across their chest until their dying breath is an idea that appeals to a lot of people. National Geographic News reported in April 2000 that fifteen per cent of Americans were tattooed. That's around forty million people.

Now, surely a Hare Krsna devotee would be the last person you'd expect to see among those forty million, right?

Bhakta Mike, a Vaishnavist monk, came to Central Michigan University to meditate and teach others about Vaishnavism, also known as the Hare Krishna movement.

PURI: Chief priest Sri Jagannath Temple Laxmi Narayan Patjoshi Mohapatra died of cardiac arrest here today triggering uncertainty over his successor as his son is a minor to be anointed to the hereditary post. Mohapatra, who was only 32, was ill for some time. He is survived by wife, daughter and son.