We are fallen souls

Please accept ‘our’ humble obeisances
ALL GLORIES TO SRILA PRABHUPADA

Dear Srila Prabhupada…

We are fallen souls; Seekers of truth

Brought together; by a gift from you

Did you really realise what you were about to do

When you dedicated your life and gave us all of you

From the love of Krsna and hunger for knowledge

Was born the Blue Lotus Book Club, the beginning of our voyage

We meet once a month, with our own target set,

Something like, “Please read the Krsna book and see how far you can get”

It’s when we convene, the fun begins…

“How far did you get, what was your favourite part?”

We go around the group and share a piece of our heart

A heart that flows of love for you

For giving us a priceless gift that only you could do

Ofcourse we share in tasty prasadam too

Which we know was also highly regarded by youJ

Where would we be without Iskcon?

Without this base on which we stand upon

You have given us a home to come to

And the recipe to make our troubles few
It is in your books, we hope to see

What the ultimate purpose of life should be

You are most humble in the way you teach

From all we learn, it’s the spiritual world we wish to reach

So the Blue Lotus Book Club will continue to take refuge

In your divine books that carry Krsna’s message

And all the while we will continue to aspire

To serve and please and fulfil your every desire

Thank you Srila Prabhupada, for teaching us the way to reach Krsna, to reach our eternal home, when lost in this material world of pain and suffering, it is all that we are looking for.

Your humble servants
The Blue Lotus Book Club

*****

Offering were asked to be handed in for the national vyasa puja book that will be offered to Srila Prabhupada on Srila Prabhupada’s vyasa puja day. We asked Sunaina to write an offering on behalf of our Book Club and the above is the true feeling she captured of each of the book club members.

If you wondering who Sunaina is, here she is:

:o)

Ain’t nothing like the association of devotees

The temple arranged a hike in the Kloovendale nature reserve, a peaceful private setting just perfect of some good clean fun!

Click here to view the pics.

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A piece of cake

The past weekend was the ecstatic appearance day of Sri Nrsimhadev! So naturally the youth group’s (which took place the day before Nrsimhadev’s Appearance day) topic was Nrsimhadev. On these special days the Lord is most accessible and merciful. So our youth group discussion focused on what we can meditate on to get the most out of this day. We discussed the different things which we can pray to the Lord for. South Africa and actually the whole world is fraught with danger and naturally we turn to the Lord to protect us in these difficult times. While it is natural to pray to the Lord for this we must remember there is something more important and more lasting that we could pray for and that is that we may over come all the many obstacles that cross our path on this journey in spiritual life. This is a more effective prayer as this will certainly take us out of the world of danger and we will be firmly placed in the abode of the Lord where there is no such thing.



On the festival day itself SMD YG hosted the “Nrsinga Café” where the many cakes that we had were sold in no time at all… it is very interesting to see the effect of hunger on devotees ;o)

We also had a little section advertising the youth group where we also displayed the Nrsinga dev figurines we made last week at youth group. The kids especially went crazy for these and guess what??...we sold every single one of our Nrsingadevs’! All monies will be going towards Ratha Yatra.

Besides that, we also had a book table. We sold quite a few books as well.

Thank you, guys, for all your enthusiasm, help and creativity!
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Making the Supreme Personality of Godhead

Last youth group we got our hands dirty making figures of Nrsimhadev out of clay, these will be displayed on Sunday, the appearance day of this Supreme Lord. And if some feel inspired they can even buy one! ... unless of course the makers feel too attached to their own ones :o)

Watch this space to view some of our funky artwork.

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Krishna is there!!

Krishna is coming alive to us who have been reading Krishna book these past 2 months. Krishna is there! Somehow we just need to just tap into His sublime energy. Book club has given us that thin tread of connection that we are slowly trying to strengthen and solidify.

Srila Prabhupada is amazing! As we share our realisations and thoughts, Srila Prabhupada through his words and super cool advice is attracting each of us in different ways. We are all reading the same book but we each get something different from them. As we exchange our fountain of thoughts and inspirations each of our attachment to the Supreme Personality of Godhead is increasing and increasing.

Kandarpa doesn’t make any note but just gushes in appreciation of the different pastimes. She surpasses us all in her reading. Whatever Sunaina and Reena speak has deep meaning and often is missed by the rest of us when we read. Gita Govinda clearly gets to the just of Srila Prabhupada teaching and describes all sorts of points heard from the senior devotees. Aarti quietly observes and we feel she must be hiding all her deep realisations (don’t worry we’ll get her talking too :o) ) As for myself I entertain everyone with my funny illustrations – if I could remember what they mean it might help, but anyway..

Thank you dear Srila Prabhupada! Thank you blue lotus people, you guys are great!

Be sure to finish the remaining chapters of Krishna Book for next book club: 9 June 08.

“What’s in your sandwich?”

“What are you having?” “Well, let see what’s on the menu that’s vegetarian and doesn’t have any fish, egg, garlic, onions, mushrooms … yeah I think that’s about it.” “Oh!” in surprise and confusion, followed by a look of pity.

As Vegetarians or “Krsnatarians” I’m sure many of us have been in this situation where people don’t understand why we are so strict in what we eat and often feel sorry for us that we, in their eyes, have to eat like rabbits. Of course they’ve never seen what it looks like in a Hare Krishna kitchen :o)

This youth group we discussed how we react to people when we are in this situation. How do we try to make them understand our eating habits and what makes us so almost fanatical in choosing our food. Are we being fanatical? What about when we are offered something, do we insult the person by declining? What do we do? What should we do?

Many interesting points came up and interesting ways of dealing with situations. I found the important point is to have compassion for these souls who are too covered by ignorance to realise what they are eating. One way to try to change their perspectives is by giving them prasadam. This often works better than trying to explain the violent act of meat eating. However most often there is someone willing to listen to our explanations and depending on their mentality we can either appeal to their scientific mind or their merciful nature.

Scientifically: It is unnatural for the human body to eat meat. Our bodies are not made like that of the carnivores but rather it is more like the herbivore.

Merciful: every living entity has the ability to feel pleasure and pain. Just because the human intelligence is greater than the animals we should not exploit them by conducting mass slaughter just to fill our bellies.

There is much to be said about abstaining from eating meat – health, religious consideration, karmic reaction, animal violation, etc, etc but there is a difference between the average vegetarian and a Hare Krishna devotee.

The devotee of Krishna only eats the remnants of the Lord and thus we eat only what Krishna is willing to accept. And it is this that makes us hesitant to accept even vegetarian food offer to us by those who are not followers of Krishna. While we can be choosy in what we eat we can not offend people as this will drive them away from Krishna and this is also an offence.

It’s a tough situation; we have to learn how to respond most appropriately in each situation. The important point is that we keep Krishna in the forefront of our minds, if we are going to accept the offering from someone than we must make sure that we try our best to bring that person closer to Krishna.

Please post your comments or questions. This is a vast topic that we only touched upon at youth group.