“Hare Krishna is really unusal approach to us. See pictures. Their costume, their make up, their behavior. You will not be surprised because you are used to seeing cosplay photos. But in case of Hare krishuna, their behavior is also completely strange in Japanese society. they sing a song with unfamilliar language on the street, and beating the portable drum crazingly ringing while walking, suddenly start to dance in crowded place. And the most odd point is that they are always smiling in spite of staying in Japan ! sorry but it is impossible not to think that they are expensive drug addiction people eventhough it’s maybe not so.

But it is very difficult to explain why they are behavioring so without thinking about it or it must be very special method they have. I really want to know their special method to get high.

and this time, I encounter the moment when non-related non religion Japanese start to devote religion ! see the following picures !”

Check out the photos of Ratha Yatra in Tokyo at the link below. A few familiar faces from my time there in 2000. Madhu-mangal, the temple president (chanting above), and the brahmacari who took me to Shinjuku station to distribute books.

MasaManiA: Hare Krishna maybe not drug addict but

On Saturday, Charles, Rebekah, and I went to the Festival of Colors at the Spanish Fork Krishna Temple. The temple is beautiful and obviously very different than anything in the area. The domes and arches looked gorgeous against the clear sky and snow-covered mountains……

The LDS Church gave $25,000 for the building of this temple. BYU students attend festivals all the time. Granted, some of them are probably in a World Religions class and have to go. But festival posters are always all over campus. I feel stupid for not going sooner. I always wanted to, but would forget or something would come up, but then last week my husband saw a poster up at a gas station of all places, got the web site address, got event details, and we went!

alalei: Saturday and the Festival of Colors

Here is a good round up of what is working for a number of preachers incorporating marketing and the internet into their missionary work.

terry storch @ fellowship church: What’s Working?

Excerpt:

“Direct mail works!
We saturate our city’s mailboxes with every new series we begin. We have found that attendance spikes dramatically when these mailers “drop.” The most interesting thing we have discovered through talking with people is that many came to visit after receiving 4 or 5 direct mail pieces. Persistence works.”

There’s a great line from the movie “Swimming with Sharks”. It goes something like this: “If you don’t rebel against the system when you’re 24, you’ll never amount to anything, and if you’re not a part of it by the time you’re 30, you’ll never do anything.”

I haven’t seen (or even heard of) the movie. I read this in “Leadership Lessons of the Navy Seals”. Great book. Food for Thought.

I figured out why the authentication plugin was not working. In Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 there is a package called php-gd which needs to be installed to provide the GD library (Graphics Drawing) functionality for PHP. In Fedora Core 2 this was in the main php package. Now it’s been separated out into a separate package. That’s why my little captcha (that’s the thing where you have to punch in the code you see in the picture) was not working after the migration.

So now that the php-gd package is installed the captcha is working again, and comment spammers can’t post without going through the authentication mechanism.

At the moment I am wanting to go to Auckland, New Zealand. There are three things I want to see there. I want to see Sri Sri Radha Giridhari, the Deities at New Varshan, the Hare Krishna farm outside of Auckland city. I want to see my mother and father, brothers, sister and nephews and niece, and I want to see the Auckland Loft facility.

Everything begins with desire.

Here you can see a gallery of “transparent screens”. Got a digital camera and too much time? Make the wallpaper on your workstation or laptop a photo of the scene behind your machine in your workspace for a transparent monitor effect. I might try it if I get some time and the facility, just to see what the psychological effect is like. I spend a lot of time on my computer at work.

I’ll post a screenshot if I do it.

The best ones in the gallery seem to be laptops. When the lighting effects of the photos and the real world ambient don’t match up the effect is greatly reduced. This one above is one of the best I feel.

Here are a couple of mp3s of this morning’s kirtans in the Brisbane temple. Gurvastakam (18.3MB), and the Deity Greeting kirtan (7.9MB). Murari Caitanya das is leading both of them. There were others, including yours truly leading Guru Puja, but I didn’t record them. More to come later…

Yeah man, mp3 recorders rock! =)

Comments are off at the moment until I get a chance to reconfigure the site. Since I shifted the blog to the new server the comment spam protection hasn’t been working. I have to find time to fix it before allowing comments again, or it will fill up with spam….

I have been giving my “Fundamental Elements of Krishna Consciousness” seminar for the second time round for the past two weeks. This time round I have an mp3 recorder to grab them with. Last time I tried to record the classes with my minidisc recorder, but it wasn’t terribly efficient.

I try to make everything I do reproducible in a way that allows others to extract value from it, and also to further improve on it. The handouts and recordings of sample deliveries of this seminar are available from the Focus On Preaching website - www.focusonpreaching.com.

The handouts are available under the GPL license - freely distributable and modifiable as all scripture has been since the beginning of the universe. Purity is the force, not centralized control.

I meditated on different licenses, including the various Creative Commons, but at the end of the day, the Goswami grantha, Bhagavad-gita, Srimad Bhagavatam, etc is all released as public domain. GPL licensing simply prevents anyone from artificially claiming proprietorship and restricting it further.

The Vedic system relies on other mechanisms for preserving purity and fidelity. Modern copyright, although it might say it aims at this, is actually all about exploitation of resources.

“By following his qualities of work, every man can become perfect. Now please hear from Me how this can be done.” Bhagavad-gita 18.45

Authentic leaders are focused on people, not products. They are concerned with facilitating the process, not forcing the product.

This means that they endeavour to engage each person appropriately. Each person has their nature. Their nature is expressed when they are doing something that are good at and that they are passionate about, or in other words that they enjoy doing. An authentic leader helps people to discover what their nature is, and then engages them in such a way that allows them to dovetail this nature with the organizational goals.

This has the effect of nurturing people and helping them to connect with and develop their potential. The flow-on effect of this is that they become more inspired and more empowered. Increased production follows as a natural consequence, but a leader is not focused on the product, but the process.

When a leader is correctly situated in seeing themselves as a servant of those who are following him or her, they are able to act in this way. When a leader sees the people as a means to fulfill his goal of making a name for himself, he will utilize them, rather than engage them appropriately. Square pegs will go into round holes. People who are inappropriately engaged become disturbed and create a disturbance for everyone else in the organization. Some temporary results may come, but the organization will not be healthy, and in the long term will be a failure.

A feature article in New Scientist reveals 13 of the out of place pieces that reveal that we haven’t solved the Rubik’s cube of the universe yet, and also challenge us that we may have to wind it back a few steps to get to a resolution….

“If the results turn out to be real… the implications are profound: we may have to rewrite physics and chemistry.”

New Scientist 13 things that do not make sense - Features

According to the Housing Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey quoted here.

“Whatever actions a great man performs, common people follow. And whatever standards he sets by exemplary acts, all the world pursues.”

Bhagavad-gita 3.21

“Leading from the inside out” means to model the change that we want to effect. As Mohandas K. Gandhi said: “We have to be the change we want to see.”

There is no use in simply telling people what to do. Studies have shown that people capture 10% through hearing, and 90% by seeing. “Seeing is Believing”. An authentic leader has to embody their principles.

At the same time, the authentic leader is not simply trying to align everyone with their vision for their own purposes, using them as resources in their quest for World Domination, or in other words in order to aggrandize and gratify their ego. It’s not about “the change that I want to see in the world“. A leader is so called because he or she is leading the way - they are transforming themselves in terms of their highest potential, and they offer to empower others to do the same.

People follow these leaders, they allow them to have significant influence in their lives, because they see in that person their highest aspiration - the realization of their potential, and they say: “I want to be like that person”. Leaders therefore lead in inner transformation, and they empower others around them in the same way. This process automatically gives rise to results in many different spheres.

We have to be focused on the process and not fall into the trap of simply imitating the products. An authentic leader is not using people to achieve results. An authentic leader is very much focused on empowering the people who follow him or her, and results come from this automatically, as a natural consequence.

To be able to do this a leader has to be detached from the results, or they will begin to view the people in terms of the results. Instead the leader has to see the people in terms of their necessities and their potential.

Working in Open Source has really brought this point out to me. A leader is not a controller - a leader is a facilitator. The end product is actually unknown - it will be the product of many people working together, whose full potential is not even apparent at the beginning. If a leader works with a concrete plan that everyone has to slot in to, then there will be problems. The leader’s vision, while wider than that of those who follow him, is still limited. If a leader instead gives a direction that everyone will head in, and also helps with focus, while being open to new revelations about the people they are leading, they should be continually surprised as the potential of the people on their team is realized.

The people do not exist to serve the vision of the leader. The vision of the leader is a tool with which to serve the people by providing them with a means to realize their fullest potential. “People are the Focus” is another post.

“What is night for all beings is the time of awakening for the self-controlled.” - Bhagavad-gita 2.69.

The first moments of a leader’s day are the most important. “Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise” as the popular adage has it. A leader is proactive, not reactive, and starts the day with a clear vision of where they are going and what they need to achieve to get there. During the day that clear sense of direction will inspire others, and will enable a leader to make wise decisions about priorities.

The early hours, around dawn, are the best hours of the day. The world is quiet, and most people are sleeping. The leader is awake, reflecting, connecting with the mission.

Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code uses this time to write, beginning at 4.00 am. He says: “If I’m not at my desk by 4:00 A.M., I feel like I’m missing my most productive hours.”

To be an effective leader takes self discipline. Getting up early because you are forced to, such as in the army, does not necessarily make you a leader. It is when you get up early to connect with the mission from your own internal motivation that your leadership potential begins to be realized.

In Pilates “connecting with the core” is an essential concept. Pilates teaches us that when we are connected with our core we have greater stability and strength. That core is called “hara” in Japan, a point two inches below the navel and inside the body, and it is the generator of power in martial arts. Stability and power come from this point when the practitioner is properly centered.

Similarly, when a person is properly centered on their mission, that connection with the core mission becomes their source of stability and power. As the changing circumstances of the days, months and years buffet him like waves on the ocean, he (or she) maintains his focus on a distant point that he is working towards. Keeping that focus over a long period of time is one of the results of connecting with the mission as the first priority every day.

Here are a few of my daily meditations:

“The first thing I have to do is to connect with the mission. Connect with the mission. Connect with the mission.”

(This is the mantra that I recite every morning in order to shake off the confusion of sleeping, and begin this process.)

Samsara davanala-lidha loka - “The whole world is on fire”. This Krishna Consciousness mission is so urgent that it cannot wait even for one second.

“It is my desire that every sincere and tender hearted member of this mission be prepared to give 200 gallons of blood for the nourishment of the spiritual corpus of this world.” (Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Prabhupada)

“The only reason I am still here is because the last time I fell over I got back up. You’re not a loser if you fall over. You’re a loser if you don’t get back up. I have to push on. Push on! Push on!”

After I connect with my core values: the sense of urgency and the need for determination and persistence, I usually begin to review my current strategic objectives, and examine the relative priority of each one, and get some kind of idea of where I am going to spend my time during the day, as it becomes available, if indeed it does become available.

Time management is another subject, but by being centered in the mission and connected with those core values and core strategic priorities, a leader is able to seize the initiative when it presents itself, and be proactive in pushing ahead, rather than being indecisive and ineffective. The more one is connected with the mission, the more aligned with the strategic priorities their actions will be. This is known in Sanskrit as vyavasayatmika-buddhi, or “one-pointed intelligence”.

“Those who are on this path are resolute in purpose, and their aim is one. O beloved child of the Kurus, the intelligence of those who are irresolute is many-branched.” Bhagavad-gita 2.41

By connecting with the core mission in this way, everything else during the day becomes related to it.

kurvana yatra karmani
bhagavac-chiksayasakrt
grnanti guna-namani
krsnasyanusmaranti ca

“While performing duties according to the order of Sri Krsna, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, one constantly remembers Him, His names and His qualities.” Srimad Bhagavatam 1.5.36

“Those who made their once-yearly trip to church on Christmas may want to think again. Research shows that regular churchgoers live longer.
A 12-year study tracking mortality rates of more than 550 subjects older than 65 found that those who attended services at least once a week were 35 percent more likely to live longer than those who never attended church.
The research also found that going to church boosted seniors’ immune systems and made them less likely to suffer clogged arteries or high blood pressure.”

Church attendance linked to longer life - The Washington Times: World - December 27, 2004

In addition to John C. Maxwell’s “Leadership Wired” I also read Dan Reiland’s “The Pastor’s Coach”. Both come from INJOY.

Here is a link where you can subscribe to these ezines. I definitely recommend them.

The expert devotees also can discover novel ways and means to convert the nondevotees in terms of particular time and circumstance. Devotional service is dynamic activity, and the expert devotees can find out competent means to inject it into the dull brains of the materialistic population. Such transcendental activities of the devotees for the service of the Lord can bring a new order of life to the foolish society of materialistic men. Lord Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu and His subsequent followers exhibited expert dexterity in this connection. By following the same method, one can bring the materialistic men of this age of quarrel into order for peaceful life and transcendental realization.

Srimad Bhagavatam Canto 1 Chapter 5 Verse 16

Everybody’s busy, but what are we doing? | csmonitor.com
“We increasingly define ourselves and our families by doing, not being,” says Chuck Darrah, an anthropologist at San Jose State University in California, who spent 200 hours with each of 12 working families, following them on their daily rounds. “Once you start defining yourself by what you do, that involves activities that take time.”
…
“We’re becoming more efficient,” Darrah notes. “That raises a question: efficient and productive for what purpose? Is that what a good life means, to be efficient and productive?”

As motivational speaker Zig Ziglar says: “You’ve got to be before you can do and do before you can have!”

Or as Bhakti Tirtha Swami puts it in his book Leadership for an Age of Higher Consciousness II, a real leader has to “lead from the inside out.”

As the saying goes, “Physician heal thyself”, or as the Biblical saying has it: “Before you remove the mote in your brother’s eye, remove the log from your own.”

Integrity is a fundamental quality that a leader has to have. Integrity means congruency between what they say, and what they do. People will lose confidence in a person who doesn’t walk the talk, and that person will not inspire them to allow him to have influence in their life.

First be, then do.

A leader has to take time every morning to connect with their mission and their core values. And then everything that they do during the day should be in relation to that core. The more connected with their mission a person is throughout the day, the more powerful their leadership can be.