New Vrindaban Brijabasi Spirit

Dear Devotees,

We will be shutting down internet services for the devotees in the temple to felicitate uninterrupted broadcast of Sri Krishna Janmashtami Celebration Live on newvrindaban.com for all the festivals and celebrations we will have in the temple room from now onwards as per the schedule on newvrindaban.com. Any change in schedule will be announced, else it will be same as per the website. Should anyone need internet for extreme urgent purpose might contact Shyam Pandey directly. Thank you for your co-operation.

Secondly, starting tomorrow, we want to request you all to limit your internet usage specially in the evening to give more bandwidth privilege to the CD team to access information over the internet and connect to remote database. This is a crucial time for them to collect funds for Sri Sri Radhavrindaban Chandraji and they deserve uninterrupted internet connection. If you are not checking your mail or using your computer, please keep it shutoff. Any kind of misuse / excessive use during those hours might result in loosing your priviledge to access internet, thus please refrain from misuse.

Again thank you for your co-operation.

Any question, comments or criticism can be directed directly to Shyam Pandey.

Thank You

Nityodita

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by Bhaktin Rita

On Tuesday, fifteen six- and seven-year olds from Wheeling’s inner city visited New Vrindaban. They were absolutely charmed with their visit. Throughout the afternoon, the children kept asking the supervisors, “Where are we?” and “Are we in India?”

This group had a lot of energy, so they needed lots of room to run and play. They loved walking around the garden and visiting the barn. But the highlight was definitely feeding the goats! The children were so excited to have the goats eat right out of their hands.

Right after lunch, they hit the playground. They swung on the swings, slid on the slide, ran around in the hot sun, and made a lot of noise. But they never ran out of energy! Soon they found a new game — climbing the trees outside the temple. They really shook those branches!

After tree climbing, we started walking toward the lakes. Our first stop was the big elephant. All the kids took turns ringing the bell. Our second stop was the cows. The children climbed atop the white cow for a group picture.

Finally, we reached the lake. The children climbed down the steps as far as they could go, without getting wet. Almost immediately, the swans started swimming toward us. All the children started whistling and calling out to the swans, trying to draw them near.

It worked! One boy especially attracted the swans with his whistling. The children sat on the step closest to the water, and the swans swam right up to step beneath them. We were so close, we could have touched them if we had wanted. We all stayed there for over ten minutes, until the children had to board their bus.

Our scriptures tell us that swans possess a very special quality. Swans can separate milk from water, and drink only the milk. Similarly, humans have the intelligence to distinguish spirit from matter. All day, the children kept asking the adults over and over again, “Where are we?” They were never satisfied to hear that they were in West Virginia. In their hearts, the children knew they were in the spiritual world. All glories to Srila Prabhupada.

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By Navina-Sharma das

Age of Garden: Resumed this year after 6 year lapse

Size of Garden: Nine 50-foot rows

Food-bearing Crops: Bush beans, Beets, Broccoli, Brussel sprouts, Butternut Squash, Corn, Cucumbers, Okra, Peas, Bell Peppers, Spaghetti squash, Yellow Squash, Tomatoes, Zucchini, Pears, Apples

Kalindi comes from a family of folks with green thumbs, but hasn’t gardened in years. “I grew up as one of seven children, and we all worked on my parents vegetable garden. It was huge! That’s probably why they had so many kids: free labor, or at least cheap. They used to pay us a penny an hour.” She was able to bring that culture here until her efforts started leading only to happier (and fatter) groundhogs and deer.

So the fields lay fallow for some time, until Gopisa started to feel like they weren’t taking advantage of the mercy of the Lord, who had kindly given them such nice land. Kalindi was motivated in a different way: she started to miss her favorite food, batter-fried okra. So, back to work it was. And practically all from seeds!

Mother Nature also helped keep things on track. Their television service went out during a recent electrical storm, and Kalindi feels like it was Krishna’s arrangement. Now that the easy temptation of sitting on the sofa and watching her favorite programs is gone, she finds she is eager to get up to the garden and work. Wherever she is, her thoughts are focused on what needs to be done: planting, weeding, mowing, etc. “Gardening makes you feel like Krishna is in control, and it makes me peaceful.”

If you happen to catch her on the way to the temple with a bag in hand, it just might be the first batch of yet another crop that she is taking to offer to the lotus feet of Sri Sri Vrindavana Chandra.

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It’s Krsna’s birthday and everyone is invited,

Where: RVC temple
Date: Thusrsday,August 13th
Time: Begins at 5:30 pm

Schedule of events

6-7 pm- Bhajans
7:00-7:45 Gaura Arotik with special abhishek and fire sacrifice
7:45-9:15 Kalash Abishek
9:15-9:45 Bharatnatyam dance
9:45-10:30 Musical naration
With Sankirtan, Krypamaya and Devananda
10:40-11:30 Sri Krsna Katha
11:30-11:50 Bhajans
11:50-12 Krsna’s Apppearance
12:00- Janmastami Arotik
12:30- Krsna Janmastami Feast

The next day is the appearance day of His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami. The schedule of events will be posted soon. Thank you.

Please come and bring your friends and family .

Tridandi Goswami A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami

Date: January 10, 1972
Camp: ISKCON Bombay

My dear Shyama dasi,

Please accept my blessings. After a long time I have received your letter of December 8, 1971, with presentation. The handkerchief is so nice that this time I have not given to my deity Radha-Krishna, so you will please excuse me. I am using it personally. I am always expecting your letter. This letter has very much encouraged me. So manage New Vrindaban very nicely, keep your husband always in good mood, chant Hare Krishna, and occasionally send me one handkerchief. Next time when I shall go there, I shall eat chappattis made by you.

Hoping this will find you and your son Samba, in good health.

Your ever well-wisher,

A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami

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by Bhaktin Rita

On Thursday, another group of 8-11 year olds from Wheeling’s inner city visited New Vrindaban. To my surprise, three children who had visited last week came back for a second time. They had such good time before, and they kept asking when they could come back – and finally they received permission. The attraction of Prabhupada and Sri Sri Radha-Vrindaban Chandra is undeniable!

This particular group of children became very attracted to chanting the maha-mantra. They exhibited this quality right away. Upon entering the Palace, I introduced the children to Prabhupada. One boy raised his hand. He pointed to Prabhupada’s bead bag and asked, “What’s in his bag?”

I pulled out my own bead bag and showed the children my beads. I explained how to chant japa: Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare/ Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare.

Later, in the Palace temple room, one child was very curious about the Panca-tattva painting. He asked me who each person was, and “are they all part of the same Person?” I answered his questions carefully. At the end of the explanation, I again pulled out my beads. I spoke the Panca-tattva Maha-mantra and the Maha-mantra, so that they could all hear.

At 12:30, the children attended arati in the temple room. They were first introduced to the Deities, and then to the musical instruments. Finally, the children sang kirtan. A handful of the children sang throughout the entire time. One girl who was visiting for the second time spontaneously clapped her hands, without any prompting, and then looked at me for approval. I smiled and nodded my head. One little boy concentrated so hard on playing the karatalas! His head was bent down, making sure he kept the beat: one-two-three, one-two-three.

After lunch, the children walked around the two lakes. They loved seeing the swans and peacocks. When they reached the large statues of Lord Caitanya and Lord Nityananda, they began climbing up onto Lord Nityananda’s dais. They spontaneously sang the Maha-mantra as they climbed toward His lotus feet: Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare/ Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare. Nobody led them – they simply chanted.

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Dr.Nick will be coming to the temple next Sunday, August 9th, at 11am.

He will start a simple clinic for anyone who is interested in seeing him. He will be in the library at the RVC temple. It is free for anyone who would like to get a consultation with him.

We are trying to make this a regular, every two week, clinic. If you would like like an appointment please contact Jayasri (304 845-2638, leave a message)

If no appointments are made it will be first come first serve. Thanks

Reported by Bhakta Chris Fici

To the delight of many devotees living in rural ISKCON communities, the GBC (ISKCON’s administrative authority) recently set guidelines instructing all GBC members to spend 10% of their time boosting farm projects.

Do any GBCs really spend 10% of their time promoting rural projects? Are the guidelines making any measurable change?

The answer is yes — at least in New Vrindaban, Srila Prabhupada’s first farm community. New Vrindaban is building bridges with neighbors over issues such as locally grown food and an ethical approach to ecology. “We’re finding common ground to express shared spiritual values,” says Bhaktin Rita Gupta.

With the help of Malati dasi, New Vrindaban’s resident GBC, Bhaktin Rita organized the community’s first Food, Faith & Farming symposium. The organization strategy was simple: invite a panel of experts, contact the local news media, provide nice prasadam, and leave plenty of time for socializing and touring New Vrindaban Dhama.

The panel included Whitney Sanford, associate professor at the University of Florida; Balabhadra Dasa from ISCOWP; Navina Shyam Dasa, assistant director of the Montessori School in Alachua, Florida; Madhava Gosh Dasa, a resident organic grower in New Vrindaban; and Danny Swan, director of the East Wheeling Community Gardens project. The panelists debated the need for creating a food system which is environmentally equitable to land, animals and people.

Tapahpunjah Dasa, director of The Small Farm Training Center, moderated the talks and peppered the panel with questions about going from values to practical application. The audience—12 of whom live outside of New Vrindaban—eagerly spoke about growing up on local farms. Everyone present expressed appreciation for a return to simple living.

Thanks to local media exposure — an article which appeared in the Faith supplement of the Wheeling News Register — over 30 people attended the symposium. “It was a great networking experience,” explains Bhaktin Rita. “For three hours, people from different religious paths and cultural backgrounds really touched common ground.” The symposium ended just in time for Radha Vrindaban Chandra’s Sunday feast, followed by a hayride up to New Vrindaban’s 6.5-acre organic growing site called “The Garden of Seven Gates.”

“Two more New Vrindaban symposiums are planned for the summer months,” added Bhaktin Rita. “We’re beginning to attract a lot of local people by making Krishna consciousness relevant to their lives.”

Chris Fici is an aspiring monk/writer in New York City. He is the editor for Club 108, the environmental outreach program from New Vrindaban, West Virginia.

by Ry Rivard
Charleston Daily Mail staff

On farms across West Virginia, 204,000 beef cattle now await slaughter.

But at the International Society for Cow Protection’s 168-acre hillside farm in Marshall County, cattle are treated far differently from those that are headed to slaughterhouses and onto plates.

William Dove and his family keep 22 cows and oxen comfortable for their entire lives and plan to chant the holy names of God to each animal as it dies a natural death at their farm outside of Moundsville.

Dove, a Hare Krishna, founded the cow protection society with his wife, Irene, in 1990.

Visitors to farm and to the society’s Web site www.iscowp.org/ are encouraged to adopt an animal for $420 a year.

Many of the society’s 40 or so donors are city folks who cannot take care of cows themselves, Dove said. Each adopter receives dried fruits and vegetables from the garden and a monthly update on their adopted cow or ox.

Just down the road at the New Vrindaban Hare Krishna temple, another cow adoption program attempts to  save cows from slaughter, though the price for donors is a bit steeper: $3 a day or  $1,100 a year to adopt a cow.

Not only are the protected cattle not killed, but the female cows aren’t required to breed, nor are they asked to do hard labor. When one is milked, it is done without a machine and without any pinching or pulling, according to care standards followed by the society.

The society’s oxen are to be castrated as painlessly as possible and trained in a way that develops “a relationship of love and trust.”

“Our whole program is what we call cruelty-free from birth to death,” William Dove said.

The Hare Krishna, who worship the Hindu god Krishna, believe that the cow has special status as one of the “seven mothers” of human beings; the other mothers include biological mothers, nurses and the earth.

“All mothers should hold a position of respect, and since one does not kill and eat one’s mother, the cow should not be killed and eaten,” a brochure from the cow protection society says. Bulls are considered fathers and treated likewise.

Dove said the general public is beginning to understand the “karmic repercussions” of meat eating.

“More and more people are now becoming sensitive to where their food comes from and they are understanding that they don’t need to kill to live – that the meat-based diet is such a violent aspect of society that they don’t really want to support it,” he said.

Dove said the violence done to animals is reflected in society at large – in highway fatalities, in wars, in murders.

Visitors to the farm learn how to train oxen and how to do farm work with them.

“A lot of them already are vegetarians and some of them are vegans who want to have dairy products in their diet but don’t want to support the factory farming,” he said.

But Dove said some people still don’t see the connection between a piece of meat and where it came from. When kids come to the farm, they can hug and pet the cows and “understand where their hamburger is coming from.”

“McDonalds wants to the kids to think it’s a happy meal,” he said. “But if you took the kids to a slaughterhouse, those kids would become vegetarians. ‘This is where my Happy Meal comes from?’ ”

Dove, 63, became a vegetarian as a young man growing up in Hawaii and reading the Bible. He did a lot of open ocean fishing for tunas and marlins. Then he got to thinking.

“I am causing him so much suffering. He is fighting for his life so I can have my tuna fish sandwich,” Dove thought. “So I just thought, ‘If this is the suffering I am causing, I don’t want to do it.’ ”

Since he began working with cows in 1974, several years after becoming a Hare Krishna, Dove has found the animals have a definite personality.

“They’re very loyal to each other,” Dove said. “If a cow is sick and not able to get up – sick and dying you might say – they will come and keep that animal company. It’s not that they will walk away and abandon her.”

On a part of the society’s Web site for visitors who want to adopt an animal, the Doves give a little bio of each animal.

One 2-year-old bull calf is a “gentleman, introspective and kind.”

Kalki, a 14-year-old Holstein cow, is “upper middle management” in the herd. She also likes apples and pears.

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