Here’s a funkin’ mix by DJ Vraj, hot off the press. Dhruva had some CDs of it at Janmastami, and I got a rip.

It’s 28 minutes long, and is a mix from Vraj’s record collection. Neither of us can remember all of the artists who got mixed up in there. The first track (Gaya Goura Madhu Sware) is a devotee from South America. The “Hari Haraye Namah Krishna” track is a nationally acclaimed musician from Venezuela. There is a track from Sridhama das in NZ in there, and the last track is from DJ Vraj’s last album “Anti-materia”.

I’m not sure where the others come from. If you can identify a track, then please leave a comment.

Here it is:

DJ Vraj Mix Janmastami 2006 MP3 (40MB 28:49)
DJ Vraj Mix Janmastami 2006 OGG (31MB 28:49)

A note on the difference between ogg and mp3:

You should use ogg if at all able to. Ogg is a free format - mp3 is a patent encumbered format. Iriver and IAudio media players play ogg format files. Ipod players do not play this format (you are forced to use mp3). A practical consequence of mp3’s patent encumbrance is that any devotees who wish to sell their music online using mp3 must pay a royalty to the patent holder. There is no such charge for the ogg format, which is also technically superior to mp3.

You can check out Vraj’s album Rise and Shine (released a few years ago now) on Amazon.

Candidasa writes about the power of eating together.

A recent article in Time magazine discussed the same subject:

Studies show that the more often families eat together, the less likely kids are to smoke, drink, do drugs, get depressed, develop eating disorders and consider suicide, and the more likely they are to do well in school, delay having sex, eat their vegetables, learn big words and know which fork to use.

Param Satya is going to be preparing the prasadam with which the devotees will break fast at midnight on Janmastami.

Here in Australia where we are now, and in many parts of the world, devotees talk about an “Ekadasi Feast” to break fast at midnight.

When we arrived in Peru devotees there had never heard of such an idea. They customarily broke fast with the “full bloque“, as they put it (those guys can put away grains…). The first year we were there a GBC man circulated an email instructing that the feast should be Ekadasi prasadam.

In the interest of historical accuracy:

As I understand it, the concept of the “Ekadasi feast” comes from a garbled transmission of Srila Prabhupada’s instructions on how to observe the day.

These instructions are in his letters (you can find them in Siksamrita and the Vedabase), and also in the biographical works of early disciples (it was in Lilamrita or Hare Krishna Explosion or somewhere similar that I read about this).

The idea is that Janmastami is a day when fasting is observed, and that the fast should be broken at midnight with some light prasadam ala Ekadasi, which means some fruit or nuts. Feasting is then observed on the next day, the day of Nandotsava, Nanda Maharaja’s festival for the birth of his son Krishna.

Having a feast at midnight after a day fasting is of questionable sanity from a health perspective, and a little hard to find enjoyable, which is really what feasting is all about. How you break a fast is an important part of the fast from both the material (you can up to kill yourself by breaking a dry fast with too much water) and spiritual perspective (refer to the histories of King Rantideva and Maharaja Ambarisa for examples).

On the first Janmastami (it may have been a Gaura Purnima - the detail may differ, but the principle remainss the same) the devotees where all waiting eagerly in the temple room to break fast. Swamiji (as they knew Srila Prabhupada) prepared so many wonderful preparations for the Sunday Feast each week, so they couldn’t even begin to imagine what incredible banquet of delights this day would bring.

Srila Prabhupada descended the stairs at the appointed hour bearing… a plate with cut up pieces of apple, which he distributed to the devotees.

The instruction from Srila Prabhupada that I read in a letter where this matter was discussed was essentially:

Break fast at midnight with something like Ekadasi prasadam (when you are just supposed to take a few non-grain / bean things like fruits and nuts to keep your body going and the mind nominally pacified). Feasting is observed the day following.

I remember Hanuman prabhu talking about a book he was writing about how to observe Ekadasi according to the actual instructions that were given by Srila Prabhupada. He said to me:

In twenty years, the speculations will have increased ten fold. Right now, even though Ekadasi is supposed to be about fasting there is a special Ekadasi cookbook in the kitchen filled with the most opulent preparations imaginable. It’s like the goal is to avoid austerity.

If it continues this way, in the future on Ekadasi devotees will be chanting “Ekadasi Ekadasi” on their beads, and if you say the word: “Grains”, they’ll pull out a gun and shoot you.

Hanuman has a great sense of humour. The part about not saying “grains” refers to another “tradition” (where did it come from?) of not singing Bhaktivinode Thakura’s song Prasada-sevaya on Ekadasi because “it contains the word ‘anna‘, which means grains”.

According to some, you can’t sing that devotional song on Ekadasi because it contains a word that can be translated as “grains”, but you can of course say “grains grains grains” as you explain why you can’t sing the song.

Up to now I have never encountered an appeal to sadhu, guru, or sastra in support of this tradition, just an appeal to tradition and an obviously twisted and faulty logic. I’d be interested to know what kernel of truth gave birth to that conception - I certainly haven’t been able to find out from any of its proponents so far.

Krishna addresses this pramana, “tradition”, in his Govardhan-lila, and Srila Jiva Goswami discusses its shortcomings in his work on epistemology (how to get valid knowledge) Tattva Sandarbha.

Local audiences, this isn’t a personal dig at anyone, so please don’t take it like that, it’s just me commenting on my journey. International audiences, well, you don’t really care do you? I’m just some guy in a remote country who’s mildly interesting enough to read his site, and hardly threatening to you…

Call me a pedant if you will… and yes, I will be eating whatever is there at midnight, according to what my body needs / can sustain, including the obligatory cashews and caramel. At midnight. After a day of fasting. Now that’s what I call austerity…

I’m not going to do a dry fast and do that though. A year or two ago I did a dry fast and then ate something at 1 am (it’s never midnight) and wiped myself out for a good couple of days. Not advisable. This year I am going to drink water during the day, take some fruits if needed to sustain my energy in the afternoon, and take a small amount of prasadam at midnight in the association of devotees.

With the rigors involved in a public program of the scope that we are doing this year there is small room for error (like losing control of the fire element in the body) so I am prepared to sacrifice whatever benefit there may be in doing a full fast in order to be able to execute that service with full attention. Another year, or another life, when I have no responsibilities on the day I can do a full fast and simply chant from start to finish.

The other thing that we have to balance with the fasting is the impact on our ongoing service. Thursday is another day, and Friday yet another. Atma Yoga is closed one day and we have an obligation to the public that must be fulfilled.

We’re “flying the flag” with a Sunday Feast on steroids at the Graceville State School Hall, 23 Acacia Rd, Chelmer, from 3 pm until late.

The place has a great PA and lighting system and a modular stage made out of nine or ten units like the one we have at the Sunday Feast.

It’s the perfect facility for preaching and we will have one like it someday soon. It is currently used by a church on Sundays - they paid for the lighting system to be put in. I’ll have some photos after the event to show you.

This is meant for people who think about what they are doing and what the consequences are.

Individual actions aggregate into larger social and economic manifestations.

Most people, unfortunately, are only concerned with themselves and the immediate short term effects of their actions on themselves. However, there is always an intelligent sector of society which is capable of more long range thinking.

The bottom line:

• You should not use Internet Explorer 7 because if do you will be contributing to an economic monopoly which is designed to maximize profits for a particular corporation, and because of this narrow focus has the effect of stifling innovation.
• You should not use Internet Explorer 7 because if you do you will be contributing to locking yourself into vendor dependence with a vendor who has shown that when the economic incentive is removed, they will not address security or usability issues.
• You should not use Internet Explorer 7 because it is a strategic tool that is used to foster dependence and eliminate “competition” (from Microsoft’s perspective, which equals “choice” from your perspective).

Here is some history for you:

Netscape Navigator, based on NCSA Mosiac, was the first “commercial” web browser. When I first got on the Internet in 1994 it was in pre v 1.0 beta, and it was being given away freely. At that time there was no TCP/IP stack in Windows and it was necessary to use a third party one such as Trumpet Winsock.

In 1995, as Netscape Navigator gained traction widely as the standard in web browsers, Bill Gates got the epiphany that the Internet was the future, and refocused Microsoft on catching up. Internet Explorer 1.0, released in 1995, was built on licensed Mosiac technology.

Internet Explorer was then developed through six version iterations up to 2001. If you read the official Microsoft IE history page you get the idea that here was a great web browser that was being built and developed to serve the public (the customers). The reality is that the web browser was being built and developed to eliminate Netscape Navigator. Once Microsoft achieved that aim, through first giving their browser away, then bundling it, then building it into the operating system, along with licensing agreements with PC vendors that have been judged anti-competitive in US and European courts, Microsoft stopped developing Internet Explorer.

Five years. No new version.

Until Firefox came along and gave people choice, gave them new innovations in web browsing. Prior to the rise of Firefox there were other options, such as Opera or Mozilla (which is what Netscape Navigator became when they open sourced the code, and what Firefox is based on). However, since none of these represented a threat to Microsoft’s market share, they did nothing.

Once Firefox started grabbing 10% of the market share, however, Microsoft sat up and dusted off IE.

Their idea is to give you some shiny things and get you to take the red pill and go back to sleep. Once they kill Firefox, it will be business as usual. Microsoft is focused on maximizing profit. That means not doing unnecessary work to increase value to you when they don’t have to.

Using Internet Explorer 7 means helping to kill off the competition, and returning to a position of dependence and servitude on a corporation that exists to take your money and give you as little as possible in return. It’s called “maximizing shareholder value”.

You can read more in Wikipedia’s entry on the History of Internet Explorer

F-spot can export photos directly to Gallery, so I’ve installed Gallery 2 on my site now. I can now click photos in F-spot on any of my desktops, and then directly export them to the website with a couple of clicks. How cool is that?

Check out the new photo gallery.

THE Devil has been unfairly and wilfully maligned and deserves a reassessment, according to a new study.

Finally the big man gets some understanding.

This new reading of the Christian material is closer to the philosophical understanding of the Gaudiya Vaisnavas and Hindus (as in philosophical / religious traditions originating in India) in general.

It also resolves several problematic questions about free will, predestination, and agency - specifically with regard to Satan’s free will, role, and responsibility for his actions.

Most Christians believe that Satan was an angel named Lucifer who rebelled against God at the beginning of Creation. After being thrown out of Heaven, he tempted Adam and Eve into sin, and since then has strived to win souls for his kingdom of Hell.

But Professor Kelly argues that none of this is in the Bible, and that it represents conclusions drawn by the early church fathers and read back into the Bible.

Professor Kelly argues from Luke iv that Satan is a minister of God in charge of the world.

“He’s a government heavy, whose main job is to test human beings and to accuse them of their misdeeds, but he is cynical and overzealous in performing his duties,” the professor says. “We can think of an unscrupulous and feared official investigator or prosecutor, like J.Edgar Hoover or senator Joseph McCarthy.”

source

Lord Balarama’s appearance. Today is also the anniversary of the Brahma Vimohana-lila, as I remember it. Not sure where this comes from, but I heard that Lord Balarama was not present when the cowherd boys were stolen (and hence wondered when he saw the effects on their parents of Krishna’s expanding Himself into their forms) because he was held home due to His birthday.

Here is something that arrived in my inbox this morning. Good advice:

All blame is a waste of time. No matter how much fault you find with another, and regardless of how much you blame him, it will not change you. The only thing blame does is to keep the focus off you when you are looking for external reasons to explain your unhappiness or frustration. You may succeed in making another feel guilty about something by blaming him, but you won’t succeed in changing whatever it is about you that is making you unhappy.

- Wayne Dwyer

All glories to the lotus feet of Sri Nityananda-Rama.

Tonight, Jhulan Yatra at the temple in Graceville.

Our resident photographer, Sukanthi Radha, left for London last night after a year as part of the family here in Brisbane.

Just before she left I showed her how to use F-Spot, the photo management software that she has installed on her laptop as part of the Fedora Linux operating system.

Using F-Spot I’ve been organizing the more than 7000 photos that Sukanthi has taken across NZ, Australia and England in the last three or four years. As a demo I’ve created (using tags and the one click “Export” feature of F-Spot) a gallery that shows the evolution of the platform at the Sunday Feast over the time that Sukanthi was taking photos at the Sunday Feast.

Click on “Prev” to travel forward through time (I couldn’t figure out how to reverse the order). Many thanks to all the people who have “taken to the stage” and lead kirtans, bhajans, and spoken at the Sunday Feast over the past year.

And many thanks to my dear godsister Sukanthi Radha devi dasi for your participation and contribution here over the past year. You’ve made a big difference and we will miss you. I think of it as a leave of absence more than a parting of the ways. It makes it easier.

Many planks and sticks, unable to stay together, are carried away by the force of a river’s waves. Similarly, although we are intimately related with friends and family members, we are unable to stay together because of our varied past deeds and the waves of time.

- Srimad Bhagavatam 10.5.25

The Evolution of the Sunday Feast: Start Here

Something in one of the feeds to ISKCON News.net corrupted the disk cache and I had to wipe it out. The page will straighten itself out over the next few hours.

Your destiny is created daily, not in a day.

Whatever you do every day - that is what you will become.

Unfortunately blogspot doesn’t allow the photos that are published on blogs on their site to be displayed from within webpages on other sites, so Ride Within and Madhava Ghosh’s photos don’t display on ISKCON News.net. If anyone has an idea of a way around this, I’m all ears.