Blog
Mercy makes the blind see
While I was distributing books at a university in California, a blind lady came to me and said, "I overheard you saying something about spirituality, what do you have?" I said, "I have the Bhagavad-gita, which is considered to be the most important book on spirituality. It tells about the soul, God, karma, material nature, spiritual nature, and time. If you're interested in spirituality, then this is the book for you." She took it and happily gave a donation. There was a devotee with me observing how we distribute...
read moreHappy Janmastami!
Happy Janmastami! Here's a nice book distribuiton pastime about a mended relationship . We were at Ohio State University, in a town called Bowling Green. The campus is like a beautiful park. Most college campuses in the USA are like that. It is a joy to walk around, and it is ecstatic to distribute Srila Prabhupada's books. Every book distributor knows the various types of "sweeties." There are scores of them wherever we try to distribute Srila Prabhupada's books. It was early in the morning, between classes. It was...
read moreBook distribution at Universities in Southern California
While distributing at a university, I showed the Gita to a Muslim man who approached my table. I was showing pictures to him and giving him some explanations. When I finished explaining the five horses as the senses, he asked me, “How much do you want for this book?” I said that we ask for a donation for it, and he gave a nice donation, and I gave him an invitation to the temple. I'm finding that more and more Muslims are taking Srila Prabhupada's books. Now we also have his books translated into Arabic. Another day, a...
read moreThe Girls’ First Time Out in Durban
We may be silent with our mouth, but what’s happening in our mind? So many voices, so many things. Real silence is when the mind is quiet. Scriptures describe silence in different ways. One is material silence. When we are chanting God’s name, when we’re speaking about God, when we’re speaking for the benefit of others, we’re not speaking things that bind us to material existence. Therefore that is also considered as silence; we’re not gossiping, we’re not fault finding, we’re not talking just...
read moreBook Distribution on the Azores islands
For a couple of months every year, for the last ten years or so, I've visited the Azores islands, an autonomous region of Portugal, in the mid-Atlantic. On one of the islands, where just five hundred inhabitants live, I was giving out books one day. A lady who stopped to talk began to take something from her purse, which I thought might be an offical government document identifying her, and that she'd ask me to stop my book distribution. But in her purse she had the maha-mantra written a paper. She kept it there because the chanting...
read moreWorld Sankirtan Newsletter for Aug 2015
For complete results go to www.SankirtanNewsletter.com (password: wsnhome) Deadline for scores is the 15th of the next month WORLD WORLD SANKIR NEWS LETTER WWW WWW SSS TAN NEWS NEW WWW WWW SSS SSS NEWSLE NEW WWW WWW WWW SSSSS NEW NEWS NEW WWW WORLD WWW SANKIR NEW NEWS NEW WORLD WORLD SSS TAN NEW LETTER WWW WWW SAN SSS NEW NEWSL WW WW KIRTAN NEWSL ETTER ********************************************************* W O R L D S A N K I R T A N N E W S L E T T E R ********************************************************* August 2015 9/27/2015 For the...
read moreOvercoming a Big Assumption
One morning I was standing just outside a main train station in Melbourne, at a busy location where professionals and uni students exit the station. I spotted a girl a few metres away, who had a crumbled McDonald's package, indicating that she'd probably just eaten a burger and fries for breakfast. I thought, Let her be the proof of Lord Caitanya's and Srila Prabhupada's mercy. I began chatting with her and placed a Coming Back in her hand. She is a student and, being straightforward, she told me, "You know, I don't...
read moreOut of Many Thousands of Men, Only a Few are Named Hectar
In the 1970s I met a man named Hector at Vista Point, across the San Francisco Bay, overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge. He was on a big tour bus. I showed him a book and asked for a donation. "So I can give any donation I want, and I get to keep this book?" he asked. "Yes" I answered. "I want you to dedicate the book to me first. My name's Hector," he said. I wrote on the first page of the Sixth Canto, Part One: "To Hector, from Mitra." Hector handed me two dollars, and I went on to the next person....
read moreDistributing books in Herman Hesse’s town
Hare Krsna, I was recently distributing Bhagavad-gitas in Calw, a small town in the Black Forest in southwest Germany, I noted that Herman Hesse, the famous author (Siddharta, The Bead Game, and so on) lived here. He used to read and like Bhagavad-gita, and his appreciation of the book is included on the back cover of German edition. So I just pointed to his name and asked people, “Do you know of Hermann Hesse?” Of course, everyone was answering yes. “This was one of his favorite books,” I continued. Not many people...
read moreAn Indication That Krsna is The Master of All Mystics
Recently, I heard this: A disciple of Srila Prabhupada's had some difficulty in his early days and left the movement. His service had been book distribution with the Radha-Damodara group, which at one point had six busses touring the USA. The way he and most devotees distributed books back then was to sign the book during the exchange: "To: (name), From: (name). " Later, he was hitch-hicking, and a man picked him up. The driver was philosophical, so he kept up a philosophical conversation with the man. He mentioned the...
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