If one is truly serious about achieving the ultimate goal of human life by perfecting his spiritual inquiry, he must adopt a life style that is conducive to the cultivation of self-realizing knowledge. This life style can be beautifully summarized in the phrase ‘simple living and high thinking’. Here simple living is in relation to maintenance of the body, and high thinking is in relation to the aim of one’s intellectual pursuits.

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The Vedic literatures [Hindu scriptures] state that protection must be given to weak and helpless living entities by the stronger members of society. It is the duty of a householder to protect and provide not only for one’s family, but even for the ants that live within one’s house; what to speak of higher living entities like the cow, who are at the mercy of their owners. The scriptures state that the cow is our mother. We drink the milk from the cow, therefore we must accept her as our mother and protect her. As such how can a civilized society allow violence to come to such helpless living entities, who sustain us all with their milk.”

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(This was originally written sometime around 2001.)

The following article has been written in response to claims by several senior ISKCON leaders that distribution of prasadam to poor people is an offense to Srila Prabhupada and is against his wishes (hence they have given it the name “Food For Death”). For those who do not have the time to go through the entire article, I have included a few quotes at the top to at least balance the accusations made by these people. For anyone who is interested to know the truth of the matter, I request you to read through this entire article, as these ISKCON leaders have been using deception to mislead the public on this subject.

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The Absolute Necessity of a Spiritual Master

Many times people have written to me about their difficulties and despondency in life. Usually they ask how they can attain peace and happiness. Nowadays peace is a very rare commodity in the world. Everyone is looking for it, whether one is an individual, or a nation.

On the individual level we find many people are experiencing turmoil and confusion from within, which prevents them from experiencing any happiness and peace.

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Who was Chaitanya Mahaprabhu?

Sri Chaitanya is the Kali-yuga avatara, and He descended for the purpose of establishing the yuga dharma, which in this age is the chanting of Lord Krishna’s names. He appeared in the guise of a devotee to perfectly show how the process of devotion should be followed and applied. It is something like a teacher drawing on the black board “A B C”. We should not think the teacher is himself learning the alphabets, but he is doing it to show us how to write properly.

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Since the topic has come up, I would like to write a little bit on the topic of religion and conversion as taught within our Vedic texts.

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That the human form of life is special and unique in comparison to other species is accepted in practically all fields of scientific and philosophical knowledge. But what makes the human species so uniquely different from everything else is often lost in the whirlpool of academic pursuit. And because of this, one may sometimes feel that, since the fundamental distinguishing characteristic of man is so often missed by great philosophers and thinkers, it must therefore be an infinitely intricate and complex truth. But to the contrary, one may be surprised at the utter simplicity of this distinguishing trait of man, that due to is very simplicity, has caused it to remain a great mystery to many tremendous thinkers throughout history down to our present day.

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