Having a beginning (adi) and end (anta) qualifies all pleasures in the material world. For that reason, one who is actually wise (budha) seeks no enjoyment from them.

It is a fact that in this temporal world we hold not title to, we have no actual possession of, anything we enjoy. Our lease here on happiness is fragile and fleeting.

During the 1970s, I would get culture shock whenever I went to India. The crowded cities, the heat, the food, the occasional sickness, and the austerities of local travel would painfully remind me that I was a stranger in a foreign land. But as the years passed, my visits became more frequent and I began to feel at home there, especially in places like Vrindavan and Mayapur, where the Lord once performed His transcendental pastimes.

Is Darwin’s theory of evolution unquestionable fact? Or should the possibility that an intelligent designer created our world be discussed as an alternative? Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, a recent film presented by actor and political speech writer Ben Stein, suggests that it should.

When we send our children to school obviously we hope that they will be taught the truth. Well, at least some of the time. It seems that painful truths may have to wait, such as the non-existence of Santa Claus. A teacher who recently made the grave error of informing children in her class that Father Christmas was not real found herself out of a job. Parents were furious. “My Joshua came home in tears,” said one distraught mother. “I didn’t know what to say.”

Descriptions of DNA and its replication mechanism are commonly given as though they have provided a complete description of the most fundamental processes of life -- a final mechanism, step-by-step breakdown of these life processes into understandable chemical terms. However, this is far from truth.

My wife, Srimati Krishna Kripa Dasi, disappeared on November 30, 2008. A staunch disciple of Srila Prabhupada, she was always enthusiastic and attentive in her service. She loved to read and distribute Srila Prabhupada's books, and was always thinking and planning about the welfare of others.

The Sanskrit word bhoga means ‘pleasures’ or ‘enjoyments’. What kinds? The pleasures born (ja) from samsparsha, ‘the bringing into contact’—implicitly, the contact of the senses with their appropriate objects.

This is what we mean by “sense gratification”: enjoying the pleasures that arise when the eyes, or nose, or tongue, the hands, skin, or genitals comes together with their particular objects.

I gave class this morning at the temple. The subject was the ninth chapter of the Antya-lila portion of the Caitanya Caritamrita, the life and teachings of Shri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. We study it every weekend. The ninth chapter is all about an incident that took place while the Lord was living in Jagannatha Puri, the seaside pilgrimage place in the present state of Orissa, east India.

Andy Serwer and Allan Sloan write today in their Time article "How Financial Madness Overtook Wall Street":

"If you're having a little trouble coping with what seems to be the complete unraveling of the world's financial system, you needn't feel bad about yourself. It's horribly confusing, not to say terrifying; even people like us, with a combined 65 years of writing about business, have never seen anything like what's going on."

This week found me sharing several interesting hours with Christian and Jewish ministers from my town. The first meeting was in a local hall, and attended by the Mayor; the second, a special explanatory Sabbath service in one of the two high street synagogues.

Readers, start your keyboards. ISKCON News Weekly is now enabling user comments on our Opinion pieces. The decision to allow reader comments – which will not be edited but will be monitored – is a marked but intentional departure from INW’s earlier editorial policy, and represents a new phase for our website.

“Voice” is the aspect of a literary work which conveys the distinct power and flavor of the narrator’s personality. Voice is different from style, although it depends on style for its realization.

Akrura dasa: Since January 2006, I had over 900 sessions with 250 devotees all over the world. I do coaching on the phone, on Skype, on email, and I had Gita Coaching seminars in twelve European countries. Many know about it, but not too many have become coaches.

Sometime in the 1730’s, a young Scottish philosopher tried, and failed, to find himself. David Hume reflected upon this experience in his first book, A Treatise of Human Nature (1739). The passage is much quoted and anthologized. I encountered it frequently as an undergraduate philosophy major, for my teachers regarded it as a watershed in Western philosophy.

Every year, scores of women from all over the U.S., Canada and other parts of the globe travel to the hills of West Virginia to attend the annual Vaisnavi Retreat in New Vrndavan. The ladies come, young and old, to participate in an exciting weekend of activities beseeching the mercy of Srimati Radharani, the feminine counterpart of the Supreme Personality of Godhead.

In 1971, the idea of animal rights was “way out there,” a notion of the lunatic fringe. Yet this highly radical extension of civil rights to animals was contained within Prabhupada’s exposition of monarchism—a most conservative political philosophy, to say the least.

It’s the question on everyone’s minds, and one with an increasingly elusive answer in today’s world. The society we live in seems determined to convince us that we should be dissatisfied with what we have, and that if we get something else – something “better” – we’ll be happy.

Although multimedia and the Internet are no longer new to preachers, the continued development and increased availability of digital communications is giving rise to a new surge in electronic religion.

Sri Ramanujacarya (1017-1137) created 74 simhasana-dhipatis or ‘throne-holders,’ to give initiation after his death, he created what we in ISKCON would term ‘zonal acaryas.’ He chose 74 of his disciples to give diksha, each of them affiliated to one of the many temples spread far and wide throughout a large tract of India.

This question has probably caused more people to lose their faith than anything else. Why does God sit peacefully in his cloud or wherever, feet up and smoking his pipe, while we suffer all kinds of grim miseries down here on earth?