Sound Bhakti

I have a book. It's called "Compost Everything," and the author argues that anything could be composted. I mean, theoretically. Actually, of course, you wouldn't want to throw an aluminum can in there. It would take longer than your life to actually go back into the earth. However, almost everything else organic is compostable. And he argues that it's just how long you want to wait. Even a piece of a log you could throw in wood. If you go to the forest, which we did recently, you look around, and you see the tree. A huge tree, lying there long enough, just deteriorates and goes back into the earth. So you can compost anything. There's only one thing you can't compost: the soul. Because, as Krishna mentions in the second chapter of the Bhagavad-gītā, it's not compostable. You can't cut it, you can't dry it. It can't wither in the wind. Put it in water, it doesn't get wet. It's impervious to material nature. In fact, he mentions in the 13th Chapter, it never mixes, kind of like oil and water. They don't mix tog

The mantra is like a flower airplane. Okay, so far? Is everyone's good ? Okay, so it's ready to take us up, and we have to, of course, board the plane. That's our job. The aircraft comes. The flower airplane is there, but we have to be ready to board the plane means you have to have a ticket in hand, means enthusiasm to chant. And when you go to the airport, they announce certain things. They ask you questions before you get on the board. One of them is, has anyone unknown to you given you anything to carry? Have they ever asked you that? They also ask you, did you pack your own bags? Or Did anybody else pack them? Put something in your bag? So when we're preparing to board the airplane, we have to know who gave us what's in our consciousness. Has our awareness been under our control at all times? Has anybody unknown to you, like some random person on the internet and on TikTok given you something to hold in your mind of unknown origin? It is just random because it could be dangerous,. And so we have to pre

Balance doesn't always look perfectly straight and I notice with balance, you're trying to pull back to the center, at least when I do it. Knowing what the center is and being able to come back to that regularly is very important. And more seva, "śuśrūṣoḥ śraddadhānasya vāsudeva-kathā-ruciḥ syān mahat-sevayā viprāḥ puṇya-tīrtha-niṣevaṇāt"; it's a way in which when we do seva, we get a deeper desire to hear and chant and when we hear and chant, we get a deeper desire, they're complimentary. So it's nice to notice it and be aware of how we're feeling, and make sure that we're feeling okay. It's important to take care of ourselves. (excerpt from the talk) ------------------------------------------------------------ To connect with His Grace Vaiśeṣika Dāsa, please visit https://www.fanthespark.com/next-steps/ask-vaisesika-dasa/ ------------------------------------------------------------ Add to your wisdom literature collection: https://www.bbtacademic.com/books/ (USA only) https://thefourquestionsbook.com/ ----

This tendency to diminish anything anyone else is doing comes from the envy within the heart. But Rūpa Gosvāmī says, a miracle happens by the association of pure devotees, and that is gradually one's heart changes, and there's no more envy within the heart. And therefore 'nindādi-śūnya-hṛdam īpsita-saṅga-labdhyā,' the person then becomes free from nindā. Do you know somebody who is a professional at criticizing what they're called? A nindaka, or, you know, nindanīyā, like a kīrtanīyā. The kīrtanīyā is they're always singing Haribol! But a nindanīyā is somebody who's always singing other people's faults, and they criticize everyone, but that idea or impulse doesn't enter within the heart of a sādhu. So tolerance, steadiness, and mukhyā prasādāt and they're long, long lists of qualities of the sādhu. In this verse 'satāṁprasaṅgān mama vīrya-saṁvido bhavanti hṛt-karṇa-rasāyanāḥ kathāḥ (SB 3.25.25),' there's the most important quality mentioned of all, and that is that the sādhus are always speaking about Kṛṣ

Without spiritual strength, we can't maintain niṣṭha or steadiness in practice. So to this end two points about practice. One is it's really hard to make it up at the last minute. Sometimes people become serious about Kṛṣṇa consciousness, but they're, of course, Khaṭvāṅga Mahārāja is an example. Even at the last minute, you can, you should try, and you can do it. But generally, if you try to pass a test at the last minute by studying the night before, it's very difficult, because it takes time to develop momentum, to have spiritual strength or acumen in any particular subject. So don't try to make it up at the last minute, because we've seen people near death, and then they say, I'd like to do it, but I don't have the yoga-balena, I don't have the spiritual strength. So remember that your practice is giving you the spiritual strength now so that you'll be prepared especially for death. Because you have to be able to be strong when you leave this body in order to attain the destination that requires niṣṭha,

Śāstra is amazingly relevant to our lives. One realization I've had about reading Śrīmad-Bhāgvatam, especially at Kārtik time when we were able to read long sections at a time and hear the whole canto in a month, is that it solves all problems, which originate in the mind. There are very psychological anomalies that arise in the minds of humans, especially in mine, and by hearing Śrīmad-Bhāgvatam, they become resolved. That's a practical application, and you don't have to do a lot except be there and hear it. That's one of the principles that you were mentioning about Kṛṣṇa coming and sweeping—it's the vidhunoti principle that He's there actively cleaning the heart if we're actively listening with devotion, and that's very practical also. People are always trying to position themselves in the world so that they don't suffer. It's the main thing everyone does—try to avoid suffering. But when you hear Śrīmad-Bhāgvatam, it's the natural way that your suffering diminishes because of the way it resolves the psych

The sense of devotion is there within the heart of every being. It's intrinsic, and by stimulation, it becomes awakened. We might say that a seed is stimulated. It lies dormant in a little package, perhaps. And then when you take it out, bok choy, little seed, and you say, come here, little fellow, and you put him in his own cup, you get some nice rich earth that doesn't have any contamination and make it moist, and then it's a little warm, sun's coming down, and the little seed in there goes like, I think I'll wake up. Now, there's something to wake up for, and it sprouts and pops up. And so the sense that we have of love for Kṛṣṇa, they're dormant. What's the word I just asked you for? stimulate means? Research Department: Stimulate is a verb, and it means rouse to action. Vaiśeṣika Dāsa: And where does it come from? Research Department: It comes from the Latin stimulatus, which is a past participle of stimuli. Vaiśeṣika Dāsa: And what does it mean? The root? Stim, just look at the etymological dict

In the Bhagavad-gītā, Kṛṣṇa says in the 10th chapter that of all the sacrifices, Japa is the best. And we can consider why that is so. There are many different processes of devotional service that are easy to enter into. For instance, the Sunday feast, or any type of prasadam, anyone can do, or we can walk in and dance in kīrtana, even if we don't know much about Kṛṣṇa consciousness, lots of people do that, but to deliberately take time to use your own voice and your time to commune with God by saying his name over and over again is unique, and therefore it's the only vow that Prabhupāda asked us to do. There are other things he said, don't do. But this is the only one thing he said, you make a vow. The word devotee actually means one who makes a vow,voto. Voto comes from the word 'voto', or the word vow comes from voto, devoto. And the word vrata is the origin of that, that you make a vow. So vows make the world go round. In fact, as we can see, in some countries, there's a way in which people draw up a co

In the Gītā-māhātmya, there are descriptions of the miraculous benefits one gets from hearing the Bhagavad-gītā. Of course, we're not interested in miraculous benefits other than attracting Krishna's attention and gaining more service. Nonetheless, the Gītā-māhātmya describes and sees if hearing even one chapter of the Bhagavad-gītā, vignette about those who have died then somebody read the Gītā and they came back to life, and so forth. Each chapter has some unique story in the Gītā-māhātmya. There are also descriptions of the ways in which, even by hearing one verse, then it says, no, half a verse, no, even in one pada, just one word from the śloka, what to speak of chanting the whole Bhagavad-gītā on an ekādaśī. We live for austerity, right? Yeah, it's what makes life. We just read it in the last chapter about daivī-sampāt. There's a way in which we must become greedy to collect this daivī-sampāt that we can use in Kṛṣṇa's service, become more effective in teaching others, and so forth. I congratulate eve

This chanting is a very intimate way of connecting with God. We're using our mouth, our tongue—the very place where we can express things to other people. We can make ourselves known, and over and over again, we're making ourselves known to Krishna. We may not even know what we're doing at first, but that's why we have to be careful and put some guardrails on the way we act in our life so we don't sully the process of chanting. In our mind, we're ready for it when we chant. If we just stay ready for chanting in our lives, then we show up for it in a way that we're appreciating that these syllables are not just syllables of liberation, but of reestablishing our relationship with Kṛṣṇa. It is our relationship with Kṛṣṇa when we're chanting. It's direct. Again, we may not see it exactly at first, but then we can take it as medicine,what Avneesh Prabhu said in the beginning, he takes it because his doctor told him, "And here's your prescription, You take this." But we have to remain intelligent also. We can't fa

Once you have a book, it can be delivered anywhere in the world. It's one of the miracles of books. One thing I love about books is their delivery systems. And when you have something worthwhile delivering, it's very exhilarating to unleash that on the world. People like to send things out into the world that might have a good effect. If they're in a lower consciousness, they like to send things out that don't have such a good effect. People send out computer viruses and they sit back thinking, "Oh, how many people's lives did I mess up?" And of course, people have missiles they like to shoot and like ruin parts of the world by their destructive nature. But how nice is it to have something you can send out into the world that does good for everybody? Doesn't that feel good? Wouldn't that be a nice job if you had that job? That all you did was send out little missiles that, when they explode, everybody became happy and it solved all their problems. How would you like to have a bomb that solved everybody's pr

The night has come to an end and the light of dawn is entering. O jiva soul, arise and give up your sleep. Chant the holy names of Lord Hari, who is the giver of liberation; the enemy of the Mura demon; the supreme enjoyer; the all-attractive one; and the horse-headed incarnation, Hayagrīva.(1) ------------------------------------------------------------ To connect with His Grace Vaiśeṣika Dāsa, please visit https://www.fanthespark.com/next-steps/ask-vaisesika-dasa/ ------------------------------------------------------------ Add to your wisdom literature collection: https://www.bbtacademic.com/books/ (USA only) https://thefourquestionsbook.com/ ------------------------------------------------------------ Join us live on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FanTheSpark/ Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/sound-bhakti/id1132423868 For the latest videos, subscribe https://www.youtube.com/@FanTheSpark For the latest in SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/fan-the-spark ---------------------------------

In the Nāmāṣṭakam by Rūpa Gosvāmī, which is a great inspiration to anyone who's practicing Kṛṣṇa Consciousness, he says, 'ayi mukta-kulair upāsyamānam' (verse 1). That is, "Oh how wonderful it is that all the great sages worship The Holy Name." This is the main focus that they have in their worship. I often think of Vālmīki Muni because he was in such a slump as a living entity that when he got an instruction to come out of his stupor; that is, he had sunk so low that he had become a hunter and he felt completely contaminated by that. So when Nārada Muni told him to chant Hare Kṛṣṇa, he said, "I can't do it." Have you ever been in a state where you knew what you were supposed to do, but you couldn't do it? Nārada Muni considered it so important and the main means for him to come out of the condition he was in that he kind of tricked him. He said, "Then don't chant Rāma, just chant Marā (death), because that's the state of mind you're in as a hunter, that you've actually become attached to killing other livi

kṛte yad dhyāyato viṣṇuṁ tretāyāṁ yajato makhaiḥ dvāpare paricaryāyāṁ kalau tad dhari-kīrtanāt Whatever result was obtained in Satya-yuga by meditating on Viṣṇu, in Tretā-yuga by performing sacrifices, and in Dvāpara-yuga by serving the Lord’s lotus feet can be obtained in Kali-yuga simply by chanting the Hare Kṛṣṇa mahā-mantra. (SB 12.3.52) https://vedabase.io/en/library/sb/12/3/52/ ------------------------------------------------------------ To connect with His Grace Vaiśeṣika Dāsa, please visit https://www.fanthespark.com/next-steps/ask-vaisesika-dasa/ ------------------------------------------------------------ Add to your wisdom literature collection: https://www.bbtacademic.com/books/ (USA only) https://thefourquestionsbook.com/ ------------------------------------------------------------ Join us live on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FanTheSpark/ Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/sound-bhakti/id1132423868 For the latest videos, subscribe https://www.youtube.com/@FanTheSpark For th

There's two kinds of association with bhāgavat or the person bhāgavat that means a person who's a pure devote dedicated to pure devotional service. One is called vāni and the other is called vāpu. Vāpu means you get the personal association.In other words the person's physically walking around the planet and if you go there and you have some association you can see the person, maybe render some service, be in the same room and so forth so that's one of the important kinds of association. But even more important is called 'vāni'.Vāni means listening to the words of the person and that can be done, yes through zoom. We have done this.We've had the experiment already, forced experiment albeit that that everyone had to resort to isolation but we weren't really isolated because we had the sound vibration. So we felt ourselves improving not only did we improve, I mean I didn't cuz I barely ever do but everyone else did. And there's a way in which we were able to get a lot of things done in service and this has com

The Holy Name is even more merciful than Kṛṣṇa. The holy name will go everywhere with you, pursue you, chase you down. Come to the material world saying, hey, wait a minute. Come back. So we can, we can make The Holy Name our main priority and the chanting of it. And if we can actually enter deeply within Japa, and indeed make Japa great again every day, then we'll make tangible spiritual advancement, and that's necessary, otherwise we lose altitude and forget how important it is to be a devotee. And we can even just put it as a secondary thing. It's happened to thousands of people. So don't be embarrassed to Make Japa Great Again. You don't have to be a great devotee. Don't be a great be a good devotee. But do Make Japa Great Again. ( excerpt from the talk 20:16) ------------------------------------------------------------ To connect with His Grace Vaiśeṣika Dāsa, please visit https://www.fanthespark.com/next-steps/ask-vaisesika-dasa/ ------------------------------------------------------------ Add to your w

Well, it's kind of natural that we lose track sometimes of what we're doing because the world's very topsy-turvy. And many things come upon us that we weren't expecting. We may think, "Oh, I can hold forth in any circumstance," and then a circumstance comes and we say, "Except for this one," or, "This is the exception," and then, you know, we can be thrown off course. So part of this, as I mentioned, I think, the other day, balance doesn't mean being perfectly still but it means knowing how to pull back to the center. And the practices that we do when we are on course are never lost; they're there as an asset that you can call upon and remember that you did it before and you can pick it back up again. It's helpful to not be too hard on yourself and to just pick up where you left off. Don't lament too much and just start. How can you keep the taste, as you mentioned? You answered your own question: coming to a place where we have more association. Also, it's helpful to re-establish your priorities in life. (ex

So one of the habits of speech Kṛṣṇa talks about is speaking beneficially. Have you ever said anything to anybody in your household that wasn't beneficial? I'll take that as a yes. There may be a way in which, even towards, I heard this saying once. I don't know if it's true, but it sounds true to me, 'you only hurt the ones you love.' There may be a way in which you could say things out of a sense of being dissatisfied or grouchy, and may say something mean, mean-spirited to somebody, even somebody that you don't mean to say it to. And if you learn how to curb that tendency to say hurtful things, and you also filter before you speak and think is this beneficial, what I'm saying, it's one of the filters you can put on and you practice that. These kinds of practices, including body, mind, satisfaction, and speech, which is especially beneficial because this is one of the great secrets of becoming a better person and getting the highest, developing your full potential in life. You didn't hear it here first,

And if you've ever been in that situation where you got multiple answers to your question, if you look it up on YouTube, everyone will tell you something different, because everyone has a different angle. So Subuddhi Rāya was very confused, so he was advised to go to Caitanya Mahāprabhu. And he asked Lord Caitanya, after telling him of his situation, what should I do? And Mahāprabhu gave a very simple answer, and straightforward, would you like to know what his answer was? The solution, it's three words: Chant Hare Kṛṣṇa. One may say, Oh, that's too simple. I need a political solution. I need to take it to court. I need some other way to rectify the situation. But Caitanya Mahāprabhu's approach was very simple. Chant Hare Kṛṣṇa and I read a letter that Prabhupāda wrote to one of the members of ISKCON who had brought Prabhupāda Some conundrum, and Prabhupāda wrote back, he said it's the same old answer in its three words. Audience: Chant Hare Kṛṣṇa! That's right. So the simple approach, according to Occam's

Gaslighting is horrible. It means not taking responsibility for your actions and blaming others. It's usually done in a very subtle way, where the person being victimized doesn't realize it for a long time, until later when they realize, "Oh, I didn't do anything wrong; that person put everything on me." We can also slide into this adverse consciousness where we gaslight God. So don't do that, says the shastra. Just be honest. Admit that God is the supreme controller, admit that everything belongs to Him, and live a happy life. You won't be bereft of anything, just like I gave my garland away and got a new one. That happens. One might think that if they don't hold on to all their stuff, they're going to be a loser. But it turns out that those who think, "I'm going to just serve God the way He asks to be served: 'patraṁ puṣpaṁ phalaṁ toyaṁ,' offer things to me, don't consider them yours and covet them. Offer them to me, you will enjoy much more." Because there's a quality to one's life then: first of all, one