Om Namo Bhagavate Vasudevaya!
Om Namo Bhagavate Sivanandaya!
Om Namo Bhagavate Chidanandaya!
Om Namo Bhagavate Krishnanandaya!

Namaste!

Sri Krishna – The Guru of All Gurus
by Swami Krishnananda

This day happens to be the most blessed and adorable day of the advent of Bhagavan Sri Krishna, which goes by the name of Sri Krishna Janmastami. Sri Krishna is considered as Jagatguru; he is the teacher of all teachers, the Guru of all Gurus—Krishnam vande jagadguru. There is no Guru equal to him. We consider Bhagavan Sri Krishna as an incarnation of the Supreme Being. You may have heard through your studies that there have been many incarnations of Vishnu: Narayana, Matsya, Kurma, Varaha, Narasimha, Vamana, Parashurama, Sri Ramachandra and Bhagavan Sri Krishna.

One of the traits of the human being is to observe and evaluate everything from the viewpoint of the human being only. We judge even God from our point of view. “Where is the goodness of God,” we ask, “when He has created a world of evil—tempests, tornados, earthquakes, sufferings, drought and flood? What kind of God has created this world? God could have created milk and honey through the waters of the Ganga, instead of giving plain water. He could have created a round earth, without ups and downs, so that we may not fall down and break our legs. Why did God not do that, in all His capacity?” This is how we think. So the object that we think remains what it is, and it refuses to get into the yardstick of comprehension of the human being. People find fault with Rama and Krishna, also. “What kind of Rama is he? He killed Vali, and banished Sita, and so many things.” We do not understand that these Avataras are the indications and symbols of the development of divine consciousness. There is a gradational ascent through the evolutionary process of consciousness, into greater and greater perfections. Rama was not supposed to have behaved in any other way than he did behave. It was one stage in the evolution of the incarnation. He was Maryada Purushottama, an ideal human being with all the qualities that we can find in a human being; and we cannot, and should not, expect qualities which are not in a human being, because he is Maryada Purushottama, a perfected human being—God manifested as a gentleman.

Here we have Sri Krishna Avatara, which is supposed to be a symbolic representation of the manner in which God Himself works. Nobody can know how God works, and whatever idea we may have of the manner in which God works, it is not appreciable to us because He devastates our ideas of propriety, ethicality, necessity, humanness, and social values. Everything is put upside down. We have systems of observation psychologically, humanly and socially. These are turned upside down by God. Actually, God is nothing but the total topsy-turvy operation of the human way of thinking. It is a Shirshasana of the consciousness of man that is required to understand what God is. We should not stand on the footstool of our consciousness, but on the brain of our consciousness.

The universal comprehensiveness and adjustability in a perfected order is something incomprehensible to a human being. We cannot think the whole universe in our mind; and God is supposed to think only in that manner. God's thought is universal thought, whereas our thought is social thought, family thought, community thought, national thought, political thought, army thought, police thought, court case thought, and any other thoughts we have in our mind.

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August 19th is the holy celebration of Lord Krishna's birthday.

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The following article has been posted at Sri Swami Krishnanandaji's site:

• Darshan with Swami Krishnananda during 1995: Bhakti Yoga, Viveka, Self-Realisation, Guru
• Darshan with Swami Krishnananda during 1995: Suffering and Disease
• Darshan with Swami Krishnananda during 1995: God and Human Egoism
• The Sri Vishnu Sahasaranama Stotram has been updated in both the Html and Pdf formats
• Darshan with Swami Krishnananda during 1995: Maintaining a Continuous Awareness of Universality
• Darshan with Swami Krishnananda during 1995: Contradictory Pulls

 

Yours in the service of Gurudev,

Pannirselvam

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BOOK SYNOPSIS

Lord Krishna, His Lilas and Teachings
by Sri Swami Sivananda

It is very difficult for busy people to go through the whole book of Bhagavata. Therefore, I have condensed Sri Krishna’s life, Lilas and Teachings in this book in a most palatable and tasteful form. Even if you study one or two pages daily, you will develop devotion towards the Lord and attain eternal peace, bliss and immortality.

May you all drink the nectar of Bhagavata! May you all be endowed with faith and devotion to the Lord! May you all lead a life of purity and righteousness! May Lord Krishna be your centre, ideal and goal! May His blessings be upon you all! May the truths of Bhagavata be revealed unto you all, like the Amalaka fruit in hand, through the grace of Sri Krishna! Glory to Sri Vyasa and to Sri Suka!

May Lord Krishna, the joy of Devaki, the very life of Radha, the indweller of our hearts, the beloved of the Gopis protect and guide you all! May you all hear once more His sweet flute, the celestial music of the soul! May He become the charioteer of this body! May you all abide in Him for ever and enjoy the eternal bliss and supreme Peace!!

For more information, please see: Lord Krishna, His Lilas and Teachings

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Please visit our online bookstore for further details.

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PHILOSOPHY OF LIVING: In the course of his instructions to a devotee, the Master observed, “To live is to serve. To live is to give. To live is to forgive. To live is to control the mind. To live is to strive for perfection. To live is to love all. To live is to make others happy. To live is to share one’s possessions with others. To live means to remember the Lord at all times. To live means to be gentle, to be pure, to be courageous. To live means to be good and do good.”

After a pause he concluded, “If you do all these you will attain peace and immortality.”

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“Lord Krishna was born in a set of circumstances most undivine, most unspiritual, most negative. He was born in prison; both His father and His mother were shackled to the walls, their hands chained. Their cells were closed, cut off, barred and locked with cruel guards watching them. It was midnight in the month of Sravana. It was pitch dark; the sky was overcast and it was raining heavily. Thus everything that the Bhagavad Gita says is inauspicious—night time, the dark half of the month, the sun on its southward journey—were present. Lord Krishna, thus, had everything inauspicious; but even in such a set of absolutely inauspicious circumstances, there was ultimately a glorious triumph for the Divine. All that stood in opposition, all the asuric forces that time and again most determinedly tried to put an end to this advent were overcome. And one feature here that is noteworthy is that in spite of the most dire, inauspicious, unfavourable, asuric, dark circumstances—which seemed hopeless—Devaki and Vasudeva never lost faith.” – Swami Chidananda

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