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I'd like to offer a homage to HH Kadamba Kanana Swami for holding down the nam sankirtan around the world for decades even through the "pandemic"
Here is my tribute:
Click here
By Sitapati Das
Gaura Purnima 08/03/2023
Here is my offering for the appearance day of Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, the most munificent incarnation of Krishna, who came to tell us that there is no wrong time, no wrong place for the chanting of God’s names: na smarane na kalah, kirtaniya sada harih.
He left us with only eight verses of personally written prose, glorifying Sri Krishna Sankirtan (the congregational chanting of the Holy Name), which cleanses the heart of the dust accumulated for years, and extinguishes the fire of material life.
Along with Lord Nityananda, He broke open the storehouse of love of God and freely distributed it to everyone, regardless of caste, creed, race, or religion.
Before I present my offering, I acknowledge Christchurch Hare Krishna Centre for their support of the Hare Krishna devotees who chanted at Profest in GOOD MEMORIES OF FREEDOM VILLAGE.2022.WELLINGTON.AOTEAROA.
ISKCON Auckland and ISKCON Wellington went out of their way to explicitly denounce us.
Never bet against the Holy Name.
———
"ISKCON received millions of dollars and ISKCON leaders published testimonials for novel Pfizer products from their positions as ISKCON leaders on ISKCON websites.
Absolutely unprecedented.
Were they "paid to be a drug spokesperson"? The money was not given as charity to Brahmanas, with no expectations.
Apart from leaders pumping out pro-Pfizer experimental injection propaganda, the behaviour (and compliance) of ISKCON entities was influenced by money and the threat of not getting it. Governments forced temples to close their restaurants and suspend congregational programs, impacting their income. The same governments then gave them financial handouts. In response, temples denounced Harinams in the press, instructed devotees to not chant the Holy Name publicly, excluded non-compliant devotees from attending the temple, and fired devotees from the gurukulas if they did not comply. Absolutely bent the knee to the asuras. Didn't even protest it. Irreligious.
I spoke to one Temple President. At that temple they dismissed ten devotees from the gurukula - including the principal, who had been there for 15 years.
The Temple President said to me: "They have to get real. They have mortgages to pay. What are they going to do?"
I said: "Depend on Krishna."
He laughed.
The temple management did not rely on Krishna and His Holy Name. Instead, they did what they were told by asuras. Even publishing letters with such deviance as saying that we get to do Harinam because of the largesse of the government. This, after devotees fought for the ability to do Harinam in this country in the 1970s.
Srila Prabhupada himself said, in this country: "We do not depend on city councils, we depend on Krishna".
Philosophical deviation. Historical revisionism.
By Sitapati dasa:
Why Chanting Hare Krishna (at the Parliament Occupation) Was the Right Decision for Me
To chant or not to chant, that is the question! The answer to this question is not so simple. I’m joking - it’s a no-brainer: kirtaniya sada harih - “chant the name of Hari without ceasing”.
Cuenca, Ecuador, 2001:
The camouflaged police officer looks across at us from his position crouched behind the armoured car. The street between him and us is littered with rocks and sticks. Further along, under a street light on a bridge over the Rio Tomebamba is a huddle of tactical officers, gas masks in place, shields up.
My godbrother Juan Carlos and I are in our white robes. It is 7pm and we just finished a two-hour session of chanting in the streets of Cuenca. Down near the university by the river it isn’t so bad. In the centre the streets were narrow and boxed in by high buildings. As a result, the tear gas lingers for hours, and as we turn street corners we often find ourselves gasping for breath, our eyes blinded by sudden tears. The air here is clearer - even when the Police fire tear gas close to us, we are okay.
“Okay, here goes nothing…” We cross the police line unimpeded - no-one is fool hardy enough to break cover to try to intercept us - and head across no-man’s land toward the university. Juan Carlos is carrying our box of books, I am empty-handed. Earlier in the day, we were in a crowd of people behind a police position when students fired a shotgun, and everyone hit the deck. The police returned fire with tear gas. Mainly the students are using rocks, although we heard an explosion earlier.
There is an abandoned bus skewed across the road behind the students’ position. Bands of hooded and masked students roam the street with sticks in their hands and carrying slingshots. Juan Carlos and I are chanting quietly as we make our way through them. I raise my arms and call out “Nos entregamos! Rindimos!” (we surrender!). Hostile-looking youths walk towards us menacingly, blocking our way. “Hare Krishna!” I say, as I pat the first one on the shoulder as we step around them. “Suerte!” (Good luck) Further along, we hear people behind us calling out: “Hare Krishna!” and “Halelulia!”. Some people make hostile or threatening comments, others smile and say “Hare Krishna”, respectfully or mockingly. No-one tries to touch us or stop us after the first group.
Parliament Gardens, New Zealand, 2022:
The lady stabs her finger into my mrdanga with each word, to emphasise her point.
“Your music sucks! We all hate it! You need to leave!”
Tensions are running high. We are ringed by a wall of police, mere feet away from us. On this day, over 120 people are arrested, and footage of police man-handling a naked woman causes thousands of people from around the country to stream to the protest over the next week, outraged at the treatment of their fellow citizens.
We are at the front line, and we are chanting Harinam. I am 100% clear, this is the astra of the age, and I am on this planet locked in a struggle for the destiny of humanity with my cousin-brothers, the asura. Call me a delusional religious fanatic, but for me the Bhagavatam is actually real.
My first response to this lady is to say: “Oh, that’s your opinion is it?”
I know that not everyone has the same opinion. That’s impossible. I’ve been chanting Hare Krishna long enough to know that in a group of one hundred people, you will have one hundred distinct opinions, which can be divided into broad categories. I am not allowing this woman to pretend to speak for everyone here.
Then, the Lord within my heart inspires me. I look her straight in the eye, and with a big smile, I say: “You know you love it!”
She pauses, then breaks out in uncontrollable laughter and walks away.
It is at this moment that I begin to see behind the veil. This is not simply a human. This is a demigod, testing me.
Days later, the protest has morphed into an occupation - one that will last for a total of 23 days - and we are living in the Krishna temple in Freedom Village. We do kirtan all day, stopping at night to allow the inhabitants of the village to sleep.
One day, I see that woman passing the temple, dancing. I catch her eye, and call out over the kirtan: “I told you, you love it!” She smiles and waves.
Somehow, in 2022, chanting Hare Krishna became controversial within the International Society for Krishna Consciousness.
After chanting in all manner of situations over the past 25 years, including protests with live gunfire and tear gas in South America, February 2022 found me on the doorstep of New Zealand’s Parliament House, along with thousands of people who had come to petition the government for redress.
A national convoy had converged on the nation’s capital from every part of the country. As part of my commitment that no large gatherings of people be permitted on this planet devoid of the chanting of the Holy Name, a handful of Vaisnava operatives joined the convoy and added Krishna to it, in the form of the congregational chanting of His Holy Names - the Hare Krishna maha-mantra.
Over the past two years, we had added the Holy Name to various protest marches in our local area. I reasoned that if the asuras wanted to assemble large groups of people for their own purposes, I would take advantage of the assembly to turn it into a Sankirtan Yajña.
I heard devotees saying things that I have never heard before 2022. Things like: “We don’t do Harinam in protests”.
I’m bewildered by this. I’ve done Harinam in so many protests that I can’t count them. The smell of tear gas awakens the same sentiment as the smell of incense for me: “It’s time for kirtan!”
The largest one was a march from the centre of Lima to the US embassy in 2001, as people protested the invasion of Iraq. I remember playing mrdanga alongside Kanu Pandit, the temple president, as we walked for hours, thinking: “We have to get back after this!”
So, that idea - that “we don’t do Harinam in protests” is clearly a novel vada. Some new invention. And it is puzzling to me how devotees can be subject to historical revisionism. “We don’t do Harinam in protests” - since when? And why?
One devotee criticised doing Harinam in a large, diverse protest march in Auckland, claiming that it was a political rally for a particular party (a fringe conspiracy party that in my analysis was a “controlled opposition” operation, for all my fellow conspiracy theorists out there).
This devotee said: “Would you do Harinam if it were a rally for (insert the two false dichotomy parties of demon-crazy in NZ)?”
To which I replied: “Well yeah, if I could. But more importantly, I wouldn’t criticise you if you did it. My position is that there should be no large gatherings of humans on this planet devoid of sankirtan yajña. That’s the whole problem and the whole solution right there.”
It’s strange to me, because I also did Harinam in the Pride parade - we managed to insert ourselves as a float, then turned around and went back through the parade, high-fiving everyone as we passed through - and no-one said anything about that.
During the Parliament Occupation of February 2022, after a few days of chanting, we experienced things I have never experienced before.
We are taking rest in our tent, attached to the Krishna temple. It’s past 11pm, and the village is mostly asleep. But people are walking past our tent doing harinam. I jokingly say to another devotee: “Hey, we’re trying to sleep in here!”
One morning, a week or two into the occupation, young children greet me as I emerge from our tent. The Krishna temple is right next to the playground and the children’s area. One boy says to me: “Can I do the talking today?”
I am bewildered. Does he want to give the morning class? We have started giving class from Bhagavad-gita in the morning . Is he asking to give the class?
He then says: “I know all the words to the song, and I’m good at it”.
He wants to lead kirtan.
I put the headset mic on him, and then the most amazing thing happens. The children begin playing cartels and he leads them in kirtan for the next hour, blowing the temple conch when they are responding.
I am clear: we are amongst demigods and great sages who have taken birth as humans as part of the Sankirtan lila of Mahaprabhu in the Kali Yuga of the 28th manvantara.
On the first day, as the moshpit of the police and protestors swirled around us like a washing machine, we found ourselves exactly in the centre of the garden, standing in a circle, and we chanted the classic “Prabhupada melody” for two hours as hundreds of people clashed with police and were arrested. Like the lotus flower floating on the pond, we were unaffected by everything happening around us.
This became our operating procedure for the entire occupation: chanting only the Prabhupada melody - eka-raga-vrata. At first, this seems to me to be a way that we control our mind. Only Harinam. No sense gratification of melodies, or “showing off”. Just harinam.
After some time, I come to realise that we are here to train hundreds of people at a time in kirtan. We do one mantra, one melody, one beat, non-stop for three weeks.
Devotees begin to arrive from around the country. Abhay Charan and Buddhi Manta from Northland stand up a kitchen and distribute 3000 plates of prasadam every day to the Village inhabitants and visitors.
When they arrive with the burners and pots, a devotee pulls up in a van inside the perimeter of the protest. People have parked their vans and cars for two or three blocks around Parliament House. By Krishna’s arrangement, I am just stepping out of a Portaloo when the devotee pulls up. He unloads the pots and paraphernalia on the sidewalk.
“Let’s get some help to carry this up”, I say. I step onto the road and call out: “Hare Krishna!”
Immediately, people materialise around me. “Where is this going?” asks one - “is this heavy stuff going to the kirtan tent or the kitchen?”
We are in a mystical realm, one of magic and miracles.
Buddhi Manta comes with us to the front lines shortly afterwards. Periodically, there are confrontations with the Police on the perimeter of the Freedom Village. We get the call at the Krishna temple, and will sally out with mrdangas, and cartels around our necks. We can split up if needed, and there are always people who play cartels and join the kirtan party.
This time it is Buddhi and me. When we arrive, the people are already doing kirtan. “Oh, now the real Hare Krishnas are here”, says one of them. “You can lead the kirtan.”
We wake up at 4am when the Police do operations on the perimeter. People are running through the village, yelling: “Hold the line!”
We hear people screaming in the distance.
Sevaka Vatsala das and I are in the tent. “What do we do?” he says. I am afraid, and I say: “We are kshatriyas. We must go out.” We grab mrdangas and cartels and head out. It is our duty. We are on this planet armed with the astra of the age, and we are locked in a struggle with the asuras for the destiny of humanity.
We are immortal Vaishnavas. And we are in the bodies of human beings, with all the neuro-chemistry and perception that comes with that. We see what is present on the eyeballs of these human bodies - but we also have perception beyond that through shastra-chaksus.
We are, by mundane standards, delusional. We are fully convinced in the existence of an immaterial transcendent force that permeates and is the source of all living beings, dwelling within their heart, and who also has a personal form: Lord Vishnu.
We are that we are His servitors, and that we are on this planet to carry out His will, and that His will is that all people chant the Holy Names of God.
It’s fine for you to believe that, but you are not supposed to really believe that. When the “adults” tell you: “OK, playtime is over”, you are supposed to pack up your toys.
We are not like that.
Early on in the occupation, my son Prahlad Narasingha reads an article in the press quoting the local ISKCON temple president. The temple president denounces us, saying that all the devotees in the local temple are fully vaccinated and that we “do not represent the Hare Krishna movement”.
Prahlad mans a book table throughout the occupation, up to 13 hours a day, and distributes over 300 books. He keeps us up to date on news reporting, as we do nothing but kirtan.
I send a message to the local GBC: “I have never seen a sankirtan yajña of this potency in this lifetime. It would be suicidal to oppose this. Don’t say anything about it. Let it be demonstrated by its fruit: phalena parichyate.”
I feel betrayed by the local temple president, and more - I feel he has overstepped his boundaries and has entered into philosophically deviant territory. I ask the GBC rhetorically: “What is the meaning of saying that we do not represent the Hare Krishna movement? How else do you represent the Hare Krishna movement other than by chanting Hare Krishna in any and all circumstances?”
ISKCON Auckland publishes a statement distancing themselves from us and condemning us, calling our chanting Hare Krishna there “unfortunate”.
I am disappointed by this, but not dismayed. My guru said to me decades ago: “If you want to be a preacher, don’t expect to be appreciated.” We have been condemned by both protestors and devotees.
But this is not a popularity contest. We are in a war for the soul of humanity. The dharma of this age is clear. In all circumstances, in all situations in life, one should chant the names of Sri Hari.
ISKCON Christchurch comes through with support for us, rewording the denunciation of ISKCON Auckland to state that our chanting there is “fortunate” and authorised by Chaitanya Mahaprabhu.
Ironically, the police appreciate our presence. At a protest in Auckland in 2021, a police officer said to me: “It makes our job a lot easier when you guys are here. Your chanting makes the protests peaceful”.
I see the stress and fear on the faces of the police on the line. They are being asked to perform policing operations that they have never done before, in the early hours of the morning clashing with protestors on the perimeter.
Police officers smile and nod when we arrive. I am reminded of the Sad Goswami Astakam. Whichever way you look at this situation, it seems that by chanting Harinam, we have become dear to the gentleman and the ruffian, alike.
Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakura said that he would do his bhajan in retirement in Kurukshetra. Why Kurukshetra? Why not Vrindavan or Varshan? The Thakura reasoned that there are so many people doing bhajan in these dhamas. But the need of Radharani is greatest at Kurukshetra. Having come all the way to see Krishna during the occasion of the solar eclipse, the gopis are dismayed when they encounter Dwarakeshwara Krishna. Where is the Krishna of Vrindavan, with a peacock feather in his hair, playing a flute?
It is at this moment, says Bhaktivinoda, that Radharani’s need for succour is the greatest. My bhajan is nothing, but just as a teaspoon of water, when offered to someone dying of thirst in the desert, gains great value, similarly, if I offer my bhajan to Radha in Kuruksetra, it will be worth something.
In the same way, Bhagavad-gita is spoken at Kuruksetra, at a moment of heightened emotion. These crucial moments focus the attention and make whatever is presented a powerful feature.
We find ourselves at Kuruksetra. Friends, family, gurus are arrayed on both sides. And we find that whatever small bhajan we offer has immense value and impact here.
I observe over the days how the chanting of the protestors morphs from “Freedom! Freedom!” to “Peace and Love!” and how the chanting of the Hare Krishna mantra becomes the soundtrack of Freedom Village.
Every day, a harinam party weaves through the village, collecting up a large following. Tulasi das leads on accordion, and we chant the Prabhupada melody without cessation or variation. Only Harinam.
As I write this, I am reminded of a story of Akincana Krishna das Babaji, a disciple of Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati who was well-known for his melodious kirtan. He would chant all night on ekadasi. One ekadasi, devotees came to where he was sitting, bringing with them a tape recorder. Babaji was chanting japa on his beads. The devotees also began to chant japa. After some hours, as the moon rose, the devotees asked: “Maharaja, will we do kirtan?” Understanding their mind, Babaji shook his head. “Tonight,” he said, “no disturbance. Only Harinam.”
We are in the Sankirtan lila of Mahaprabhu in the Kali Yuga of the 28th Manvantara on Earth. A scant 500 years from the appearance of Mahaprabhu, and 50 years from the disappearance of Srila Prabhupada.
Great sages and demigods take birth on the Earth, and wielding the astra of the Holy Name they drive the asuras from the planet, bringing in a golden age.
You are here.
Devotees, influenced by a class given by the local GBC, begin to say that the chanting of Hare Krishna is the right activity, but that for us to do it in the Freedom Village is “the wrong time and the wrong place”.
This is a philosophical deviation. It is the eighth offence to the Holy Name: “to consider the chanting of the Holy Name to be one of the auspicious, ritualistic activities offered in the Vedas as fruitive activity, karma-khanda”.
Those activities have an appropriate time and place for their execution, and correspondingly a wrong time and a wrong place.
The chanting of the Holy Name does not. It is “na smarane na kalah” - not subject to time, place, and circumstances. The pastime of Gopal Guru, widely accepted for as long as I have been a devotee in this lifetime - directly contradicts this siddhanta:
Lord Chaitanya is holding his tongue because he has been in the toilet and can’t stop chanting otherwise. The young boy Gopal sees this and asks what he is doing. Mahaprabhu explains, and Gopal says: “There is no wrong time, no wrong place for chanting. You can die at any moment, you must always chant. The Holy Name is pure and uncontaminated like the Sun.”
Mahaprabhu gives him the title “Guru” for this, and his name becomes Gopal Guru.
The idea that Harinam is the “right activity” but there can be a “wrong time, wrong place” directly contradicts the Shikashtakam of Mahaprabhu, is the eighth offense against the Holy Name, and it contradicts the previously widely accepted pastime of Gopal Guru.
It is a novel vada, it is apa siddhanta, nama-aparadha, and requires historical revisionism to incorporate it. For that reason, we reject it.
Another idea that is promulgated is that we are “politicising the Holy Name”. As soon as one claims that there is a “wrong time and wrong place” to chant Harinam, one has necessarily invented that there is a “right time, and a right place”. This means that there is a right political environment to chant and a wrong political environment to chant. This is itself an example of what it seeks to critique - politicising the Holy Name.
We, on the other hand, say that in any and all circumstances, one should chant the Holy Name. *That* is apolitical.
On the last day of the occupation, March 2, 2022, an overwhelming police force launches against the upper perimeter at 5am. We are on the front line doing Harinam from the beginning and throughout.
At 10am, in a lull in the action, we do the final kirtan in the Krishna temple in Freedom Village. Then we return to the front line and continue the Harinam.
As the police line advances, they destroy the tents and structures of the village behind them. At a certain point, I see the inevitability. They will reach the Krishna temple. I am certain that this will trigger a riot. The inhabitants of this village are demigods and sages, and they have been engaged in continuous sankirtan yajña for three weeks, eating prasadam, performing austerities by sleeping under the trees for the benefit of humanity, and offering dandavats as they sleep to the Salagram Sila in the Krishna temple.
If the police attempt to dismantle the temple, all hell will break loose.
My human mind is telling me to flee. At the same time, I cannot abandon our people. We came to this planet for Param Vijayate Sri Krishna Sankirtanam - Total World Victory of Hare Krishna, and we are not taking one step back.
We withdraw from the front line, which is now only metres away from the temple, and regroup in the temple.
And another miracle happens.
The police advance stops.
As I stand in the temple, a man appears wearing a cloth mask. No-one in Freedom Village wears a mask. His mask matches his clothes.
He says: “You need to move your things out to the gate.”
He stops himself, and says: “Sorry, my name is Alan. I’ve been watching your work over the last weeks and I’m a fan. I want to help you out. You need to move your things just outside the gate there.”
Another devotee next to me becomes agitated. “No, the police are coming down the road too.”
I stop him, and ask Alan: “So, if we move our things just outside that gate there, they will be safe?”
“Yes,” he replies.
Who am I to question the demigods sent by Lord Vishnu?
“OK, let’s move!”
Suddenly, two women appear. “We’re here to help you.”
Within a few minutes we have the bulk of the temple paraphernalia outside the gate. We continue chanting, the police advance begins again, and then fire breaks out in the children’s playground. The police hose it through the Krishna temple, then, when the fire is out, begin dismantling it.
We continue chanting as all of this takes place. Only Harinam.
I have a video that I shot outside the gate. Ania, one of the Freedom Village inhabitants is holding a maha-mantra banner, a young man is playing a drum and holding the PA system. They are chanting the maha-mantra.
What should I say to them? “Stop chanting! This is the wrong time and the wrong place! You are politicising the Holy Name”.
Such an idea is so patently ridiculous that it beggars belief. Parikshit Maharaja, inquiring from Shukadeva Goswami about the duty of all people in all circumstances and specifically for one about to die, received the answer that it is the same thing, for in reality we are all about to die - we just do not know the time.
On the front line, in such a chaotic situation, although there is in reality no danger - we are under the divine energy of the Lord and He will do with us as He wills - it is easy to see that there is danger at every step in the material world. Of course these people - all people - should chant the maha-mantra.
The chanting of the Holy Name is not a mundane, religious activity. It is not something that belongs in the church on Sunday, or in the government-approved time and place.
We are engaged in unlimited warfare with the asuras, and we wield the astra of the Holy Name, which is unlimitedly powerful, unlimitedly auspicious, has no limitations on its deployment, and is the only effective means for the humans to escape the domination of asuric forces.
The suppression of the chanting of the Holy Name, and the deployment of philosophical deviation to do it, is the strategy of the anti-party.
The asuras would love to have gatherings of thousands of humans, chanting all kinds of mundane slogans, because these yajñas are not yajña to Vishnu. By doing this, they redirect humanity’s religious impulse to ineffective activities that weaken the dharmic fabric of society.
One argument advanced against the sankirtan yajña at Parliament - and I can’t believe that in 2023 I am refuting arguments against sankirtan yajña advanced by ISKCON leaders, and such obvious aparadha and apasiddhanta - was that it would lead to inauspicious outcomes.
Anyone who tells you that chanting Harinam can lead to an inauspicious outcome, or that if it is chanted at the “wrong time or wrong place” it can lead to an inauspicious outcome, is preaching nama-aparadha. As well as the eighth offence, it is the tenth offence: “to not have complete faith in the chanting of the Holy Name and to maintain material attachments, even after having understood so many instructions on this matter.”
What happened to the calibre of ISKCON leader like Subhag Swami, who leapt from the Vyasasana at 10pm at night in Wellington, yelling “Die chanting! Die dancing!” and headed out on harinam with us in Courtney Place back in 1999?
Instead, today we have a large number of ISKCON leaders who are indistinguishable from any other UN-indoctrinated human leader, and who are preaching historically revisionist apa siddhanta.
ISKCON Auckland published a newspaper notice naming six of us who were at Parliament and denouncing us. I consider this a badge of honour. To be “condemned” for chanting Hare Krishna is the goal of life.
They also published a letter saying that we get to do public Harinam in New Zealand due to the good will of the government. In 1976, while in New Zealand, Srila Prabhupada was asked by a reporter: “The city council is trying to stop your men going out and chanting on the street. Do you get much opposition like that?”
Srila Prabhupada responded: “Yes, but we do not depend on city councils. We depend on Krishna.”
Up until 2019, this was standard. In 2022, it became a radical doctrine in ISKCON.
In terms of “negative outcomes” from chanting Harinam at Parliament, one year and one day after Freedom Village burned down, I was married to a devotee that I met in the kirtan there. I have a video of the day we met - February 12, 2022. We were weathering a cyclone in Freedom Village, and devotees had prepared sweet rice using milk from Gopika, our cow at Nurturing Soul.
Muchukunda lead a roaring kirtan in our tent, and we were distributing hot sweet rice prasadam to people. In my video, I capture my future wife distributing prasadam to people with a beaming smile on her face.
Weeks after the Freedom Village burned down, we held a 24-hour kirtan at Nurturing Soul, attended by many of the people from the Village. In the early hours of the morning, with few of us chanting overnight, I looked across the barn and saw her beaming that smile at me.
As I look at the photos of our wedding, I see one taken from where I was sitting one year ago, and now the two of us are sitting side-by-side where she was sitting, and the sacred fire of our Vivaha-yajña is before us.
I’m sorry. You can say whatever you like, but there is just no way in the three worlds that you could ever convince me that chanting Hare Krishna at Parliament was the wrong thing to do. I was 100% clear when I went there, and in the year since then, my faith has just increased.
As Srila Prabhupada’s god brother, BR Sridhar Swami said: “I will not be so bold as to say that I have seen God, but I have seen signs along the way, and I am encouraged.”
But I want to be very clear here. Arguing for or against something based on its consequences is a philosophical deviation. It is Arjuna’s argument in the first chapter of the Bhagavad-gita. Krishna tells him to do his duty without consideration of victory or defeat, profit or loss.
The “auspicious results” for me personally out of chanting at Parliament are not evidence that it was the right thing to do - any more that speculation about possible “inauspicious results” are an argument against it. Chanting Hare Krishna is always the right thing to do. It is absolute, and that is the meaning of absolute. It is not relative to anything in time or space.
Why do I mention these “auspicious results” then? To demonstrate that arguing even against something relative based on speculation about the outcomes is pointless. No-one can predict it. You don’t know what will happen. That is why dharma is the only way to go. And the Yuga-Dharma is Prema Nama Sankirtana. The arguments advanced against the Harinam Sankirtan Yajña at Parliament are deeply philosophically deviant.
I offer my dandavats at the feet of those devotees who advanced them. The first offence against the Holy Name is “to blaspheme the devotees who have dedicated their lives to propagating the Holy Names of the Lord”. While offering dandavats to those personalities, I refute their arguments and reject their conclusions. And I do so without fear of incurring sin, for on the field of Kuruksetra, it is my duty “to counter-attack in battle with arrows men worthy of my respect like Bhishma and Drona”.
Both on the basis of sastra and siddhanta and my own personal experience, pratyaksha, the chanting of the Holy Name is all-auspicious. The Holy Name is never contaminated. The dharma of this yuga is the chanting of the Holy Name. It has no limits. No wrong time, no wrong place. It is never the wrong thing to do.
Param Vijayate Sri Krishna Sankirtanam! Total World Victory of Hare Krishna.
Memories
Krsnananda
It was like the 60s when Prabhupada came to thompkins square park. Ive never experienced anything like that before where there was on the one hand all this beautiful chanting and book distribution and on the other hand there was this whole element of it being illegal and rebelious.