New Vrindaban Brijabasi Spirit

Srila Prabhupada Requests That Pittsburgh & New Vrindaban Projects Be Developed Conjointly – Nov 1970.

From a series of letters written by Srila Prabhupada outlining his vision for New Vrindaban.

Thanks to Vanipedia for the source material.

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November 08, 1970

My Dear Hayagriva,

Please accept my blessings. I beg to acknowledge receipt of your letter dated 27, Sept. I’m very pleased that you’re opening a nice center in the important city of Pittsburgh. Please develop the Pittsburgh and New Vrindaban plan conjointly. If Pittsburgh center can help contribute financially to our New Vrindaban, that will help relieve many financial problems. I am often thinking of New Vrindaban and I’m so much glad that you have taken the initiative to establish that program. Before I came to your country, I was thinking to establish an ideal Vedic community. So please work very hard to make New Vrindaban grow.

I will agree with you that we must not strain by having more devotees there than we can fit comfortably. Things must be done in such a way that no one feels inconvenienced. That is one of the problems of our modern metropolis. Everyone is packed together so tightly that the condition is always unbearable. Develop things in New Vrindaban in the natural way, so that gradually, as you have more facilities, more men can come. So far as purchasing the property and schoolhouse owned by Mr. Caufield—that is very nice proposal. So I propose that if you can collect $15,000. Then I will loan you the remaining $5,000. from my bookfund.

Your essay “The Spiritual Master: Emissary of the Supreme Person” is so nice, so why not have ISKCON PRESS publish it and then all our students can study it.

Here I am working in Bombay to establish one Krishna Consciousness Headquarters for India. There are many big influential industrialists in Bombay and the climate is very nice. So it Krishna desires, we will have a temple here. If I get such a nice temple, I may call all the men who are in India to come here, and at that time you may come also. Presently Hamsaduta, Acyutananda Swami, Jayapataka Swami, Madhudvisa Swami, and some others are in Calcutta. Kirtanananda Swami is with Ramananda in Gorakhpur and Gurudasa and Yamuna with some other devotees are in Delhi. So everyone here is trying to establish a temple and we will see where Krishna wants us to have it.

Please offer my blessings to your good wife Syama Dasi and your growing boy Samba, and I can hardly wait until he grows big enough to defeat all the mayavadis.

Hope this will meet you in good health.

Your ever well-wisher,

A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami

ACBS/adb

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Please worship the land of Vrndavana, where a dark youth, who is the personified wonderful treasure of supreme transcendental bliss, plays in waves of eternal transcendental amorous love with a golden young queen who is the personified sweetness of love.

[Source : Nectarean Glories of Sri Vrindavana-dhama by Srila Prabodhananda Sarasvati Thakura, Sataka-2, Text-29, Translation.]

Please click here for more photos

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Come and bathe your soul in the soothing words of the great acaryas’ prayers.

Monthly Bhajans:

Friday May 2, 2014

Gopa & Damodara’s House

6 – 8 PM

New Vrindaban’s Transcendental Throwback Thursday – 05/01/14.

Each week we highlight an earlier era of ISKCON New Vrindaban.

This week’s challenge: In this famous photo, there are two devotees & a cow. Can you name all three?

Extra Credit: What year was this photo taken?

Post your guesses on the “who, what, when, where & why” in the comment section at the New Vrindaban Facebook Page.

Technical stuff: We share a photo Thursday and confirm known details Sunday. Let’s keep it light and have a bit of fun!

Special request: If you have a photo showing New Vrindaban devotees in action, share it with us and we’ll use it in a future posting.

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Video of Bhakti Vasudeva Swami leading New Vrindaban’s Kartik 24 Hour Kirtan – October 19th, 2013.

Flower & vegetable seedlings started in the Palace Greenhouse

Greetings from the garden…..

This week has been all about preparation. In the picture above you can see just a fraction of the vegetables and flowers waiting to be planted in the gardens. Some of the more hardy plants like kale, mint, lettuce, and beets are all ready hardening off. This means they are taken out of the greenhouse and left outside in their current containers to get used to the environment. Three types of mint have already been planted in the beds along the lodge ginger mint, banana mint, and spearmint.

In the Garden of Seven Gates the sugar snap peas and shell peas are growing nicely, they enjoy the cool nights. We also had our very first vegetable harvest of the year, asparagus. For some of our other seedlings we are building simple cold frames using cement blocks and old windows. The frame is placed on the ground and is used to house, protect, and harden off seedlings and small plants, without artificial heat. The windows are removed during the day and put back on top at night to protect the plants from the cold. The new lilac bushes along the gate are starting to bloom and soon we will be seeing many types of beautiful flowering buds in the garden.

The first Pittsburgh Festival of Colors on Sat. April 19, 2014 was fabulous!

The crowd at Pittsburgh FOC

This family-friendly event was a big hit in Schenley Park, Pittsburgh. It was the first time that the Festival of Colors had come to Pittsburgh, and we heard from many that Pittsburgh wants to do it again next year! Pittsburgh is a great city with a diverse cultural spectrum. About 5,000 Pittsburghians and others were there at the Festival.

There were many Festival tents set up around the perimeter of Flagstaff Hill in Schenley Park. The T-shirt tent was packed all day. There were line-ups at the colors tent, but they kept things moving right along. Smiling faces were seen leaving the vegetarian lunch tent, where free home-made cake was available to all.

One of the event staff at a T-shirt table said: “The bands had the crowd going, and everyone participated. It was very enlivening to see so many people who would ordinarily not be chanting Hare Krishna to now be chanting and dancing, having the time of their lives.”

A festival participant, who was not from Pittsburgh, told us, “I was impressed by the diversity of people who attended the festival, and everyone really seemed to enjoy it. For instance, there were two Muslim women wearing their head coverings and, when they went to the table for Festival Of Color T-shirts, I was thinking ‘how are they going to wear these’? Well, they just pulled them on right over their headdresses and later on, I saw the same ladies totally covered with colors. Actually, before I came to the festival, I had expected to see mostly college kids, but, instead, I discovered mothers with teenage daughters, and all ages of people. From the looks of things, everyone had a great time.”

Some other quotable quotes from participants:

“Good day, good vibes, good people!”

“You will see very happy, laughing and smiling faces, you will see peaceful faces, you will see contentment on the faces. And you will not find a sad face.”

And one young lady had a very special, once-in-a-lifetime experience:   “Hey! So I got proposed to on stage by my boyfriend at this year’s Festival of Colors! What an amazing experience and fun way to get proposed to! Glad to have shared it with everyone there.”

“Did he just propose to me? My gosh!”

The happy couple

Another festival-goer exclaimed, “The weather was perfect, the music was wonderfully  LOUD and absolutely amazing! So much true talent on that stage today, the brilliant colors being thrown in the air at intervals transformed the park into a Spiritual/Psychedelic Wonderland, the likes of which haven’t been seen in many years! Everyone was having a blast and chanting the Holy Names, and talking philosophy with people, as well as displaying their own wide variety of talents and crafts. The Prasadam (blessed food) was delicious, as always, thank you Kitchen Crew!”

One very grateful participant exclaimed, “I thoroughly enjoyed this party from start to fabulous finish! This was a wonderful event to balance the somber moments of the Easter season with moments of joy! I danced, I smiled. I had almost 200 hugs to add to my current goal of reaching 40 thousand overall hugs in my lifetime! What a celebration! I hope we get to do it again next year! ”

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Srila Prabhupada at the Bahulaban Temple, June 1976.

Srila Prabhupada Encourages Devotees to Cooperate & Expand New Vrindaban – July 1974.

From a series of letters written by Srila Prabhupada outlining his vision for New Vrindaban.

Thanks to Vanipedia for the source material.

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July 26, 1974

My Dear Hladini devi dasi:

Please accept my blessings. I beg to acknowledge receipt of your letter dated July 17, 1974 with enclosed photographs of Lord Jagannatha. I can see that you are very nicely taking care of the Deities, and this is much appreciated by me. Now you stick to this process of worship of the Deity and you will advance more and more in Krishna consciousness. I very much enjoyed my stay in New Vrindaban, and was glad to see everything going on very nicely. So now just cooperate with the leaders there and expand it more and more.

I hope this meets you in good health.

Your ever well wisher,

A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami

ACBS/bs

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