Great Throughts Treasury

"It is practically always out of fear for the Lord His cakra order [the compelling natural order of time] that the wives of the godless ones lose their fetuses in miscarriages."

"It is actually the Lord?s mercy that He takes the trouble to rectify our misbehaviour, although faithless persons criticize the Lord?s fatherly vigilance."

"It is the causeless mercy of the Supreme Lord that He always tries to bring us back home, back to Godhead. God is liberated and He tries to make us liberated, but although He is constantly trying, we refuse to accept His instructions. Nonetheless, He has not become angry."

"Just as those who are greedy see everything as a source of money-making, the most perfect devotee sees Lord Krisna everywhere."

"Kapila said: 'Just like a mass of clouds has no knowledge of the powerful wind, a person has no knowledge of this time factor, even though he is being conditioned by it."

"It so happens that because of the cakra of the Controller, the Supreme Lord Vishnu His cakra or disc of Time, the influence of which stretches from the first expansion of atoms to the duration of the complete life of Brahmƒ, one has to suffer the symptoms of its rotating, with which in due course, swiftly before one's eyes, without a blink, all lives of the entities, from Brahmƒ to the simplest blade of grass, are spent. Directly for Him, the Controller whose personal weapon is the disc of Time, one is afraid at heart. Not caring about the Supreme Lord, the Original Person of Sacrifice, one accepts as worshipable that what misses any foundation, preoccupied as one is with one's self-made gods who are like buzzards, vultures, herons and crows and who are denied by the scriptures of our civilization."

"Knowing what and what not relates to the divine of the transcendental position, they who wish to avoid the godless completely give up the perplexities [of arguing to time and place], and place thereto in the absolute of goodwill every moment the worshipable lotus feet in their heart."

"It is very much regrettable that unfortunate people do not discuss the description of the Vaikuntha [spiritual] planets but engage in topics that are unworthy to hear and bewilder one's intelligence. Those who give up the topics of Vaikuntha and talk of the material world are thrown into the darkest region of ignorance."

"Krishna is the ultimate purpose of all sacrifice. He is also the enjoyed of all sacrifices; therefore He is known as Yajna-Purusa."

"Krishna and the sound vibration ?KRISHNA? are non-different."

"Krishna's magnanimous childhood pastimes are so great that simply chanting about them vanquishes the contamination of the material world."

"Let me tell you that the hairs on the head of the Supreme Controller are the clouds o best of the Kurus, and that the intelligence of the Almighty is the prime cause of the material creation, so one says. His mind, the reservoir of all changes, is known as the moon."

"Living beings who are entangled in the complicated meshes of birth and death can be freed immediately by even unconsciously chanting the holy name of Krishna, which is feared by fear personified."

"Logic and arguments are insufficient to understand the Absolute Truth."

"Lord Chaitanya, however, has recommended only one yajna, or sacrifice, called the sankirtana-yajna, the chanting of Hare Krishna, in which everyone can take part. Thus both devotees and fruitive workers can derive equal benefit from the performances of sankirtana-yajna."

"Lord Krishna together with the munis there pacified the shocked and affected family who had lost their friends and members, by showing how each is subjected to the Time that cannot be avoided."

"Love of God is transcendental to liberation [mukti], and thus it is called the fifth stage of spiritual realization, above the stage of liberation."

"Lord Chaitanya has given special stress to chanting of these holy names of the Lord as the basic principle of spiritual advancement."

"Man and woman [by the impelling force of time] evolved from the five elements of matter and by their sexual behavior even more men and women came about in this world."

"Material energy is a partial mixture of time [the time of expanding and contracting]. The Supreme Lord glancing this over from the ether, thus being contacted created the transformation of that touch in the form of air."

"Materialistic way of life is always fearful because at every step there is danger. Materialistic Life is full of anxieties and fear."

"Matter, antimatter, proton, neutron, etc. are all different effects of the Paramatma feature of the Lord."

"Natural time known as the divine cause of the different manifestations of the living entities, constitutes the reason why all living beings live in fear who motivated by cosmic intelligence and such matters consider themselves as separated."

"Men who are like dogs, hogs, camels and asses praise those men who never listen to the transcendental pastimes of Lord Krishna, the deliverer from evils."

"No other cause of death than the almighty wheel of Time in the form of His disc weapon is capable of influencing them in any way."

"O Brahmin, how are the periodical offerings [of S'rƒddha] regulated to honor the deceased and to respect what the forefathers have created and how are the times settled in respect of the positions of luminaries like the planets and the stars?"

"O member of the Kuru family, therefore also your life's duration that is limited to seven days, should inspire you to perform everything that traditionally belongs to the rituals for a next life."

"Next the heart of the Universal Being manifested in which Candra, the god of the moon took his position with the function of mental activity because of which one is lost in thoughts."

"O original father of all, the conditioned souls in the grip of desire are all bound by the rope of the words of You as the Lord of the living beings. I, following their example also offer my oblations to You, o light of eternal time."

"O mother, My devotees will never, by no [change of] time or weapon of destruction, lose Me [and My opulence] who was chosen by them as their dearest self, son, friend, preceptor, benefactor and deity."

"One achieves bhakti [love of God] by hearing and chanting about the Supreme Lord's special qualities, even while engaged in the ordinary activities of life in this world."

"O Unborn One, direct us in making our offerings at the right time whereby we can share our meals and also all other living beings can have their sustenance so that we with our offerings of food can eat without disturbance."

"O purest of the twice-born, what could be the beginning of time and what can you say about the way time, in the context of one's karma, is experienced as being short or long?"

"Oh, Vishnudatta ['protected by Vishnu'; ParŒkchit], to those who are not perplexed this is not such a great miracle. They who without animosity are of goodness to all are by the Supreme Lord of the invincible Time who carries the best of all weapons [the Sudars'ana disc] personally fully liberated from the very strong and tight knot in the heart [that is the consequence] of a false physical concept of life. Even when threatened by decapitation [or other attacks on their lives], those liberated souls and devotees who full of surrender are protected at His lotus feet are never upset by these kinds of emotional states; they have nothing to fear."

"One may guess about [the authority and order of] Your reality [of TIme]. [All] we see is how You, just like the wind scattering the clouds, with Your so very great force [of Time] in the long run destroy all the planetary systems and how all living being find their end therewith because of others."

"One should avoid hearing from a person not situated in Vaisnava behaviour. A Vaisnava is nivrtta-trsna. That is, he has no material purpose, for his only purpose is to preach Krishna consciousness. So-called scholars, philosophers and politicians exploit the importance of Bhagavad Gita by distorting its meaning for their own purposes."

"One should try to keep himself satisfied in any condition of life-whether distress or happiness-which is offered by the supreme will. A person who endures in this way is able to cross over the darkness of nescience very easily."

"One who chants the holy name of the Lord is immediately freed from the reactions of unlimited sins, even if he chants indirectly [to indicate something else], jokingly, for musical entertainment, or even neglectfully. This is accepted by all the learned scholars of the scriptures."

"One does not need great wealth, education or opulence to satisfy the Supreme Personality of Godhead. If one is fully absorbed in love and ecstasy, he needs to offer only a flower and a little water."

"One has to continue chanting the Hare Krishna mantra and preaching the chanting of this mantra because such preaching and chanting constitute the perfection of life."

"One who desires to be free from all miseries must hear about, glorify and also remember the supreme lord, who is supersoul, the controller and the savior from all miseries."

"One who has not listened to the messages about the prowess and marvelous acts of the Personality of Godhead and has not sung or chanted loudly the worthy songs about the Lord is to be considered to possess earholes like the holes of snakes and a tongue like the tongue of a frog."

"One who has no compassion for humanity and does not sacrifice his impermanent body for the higher causes of religious principles or eternal glory is certainly pitied even by the immovable beings."

"One who has unflinching devotion for the Personality of Godhead has all the good qualities of the demigods but one who is not a devotee of the Lord has only material qualifications that are of little value."

"One, who worships the Supreme Lord and His holy name with undivided faith, knowing them to be identical, is considered an elevated, first class devotee, even if he does not understand the intricacies of his own spiritual identity."

"One who is sufficiently intelligent should use the human form of body from the very beginning of life, in other words, from the tender age of childhood, to practice the activities of devotional service, giving up all other engagements. The human body is most rarely achieved and although temporary like other bodies, it is meaningful because in human life one can perform devotional service. Even a slight amount of sincere devotional service can give one complete perfection."

"Passing beyond that navel of the universe, the pivot, the center of spin of the Maintainer [Vishnu], by the individual living being that was purified by the realization of his smallness, the place is reached that is worshipable for those who are transcendentally situated. There the self-realized souls enjoy for the time of a kalpa [a day of Brahmƒ]."

"Performing kirtana and hearing the vibration of the sound Hare Krishna is actually seeing the Supreme Personality of Godhead directly."

"Philosophical research culminates in understanding the Supreme Personality of Godhead. After achieving this understanding, when one becomes free from the material modes of nature he attains the stage of devotional service. Either by devotional service directly or by philosophical research, one has to find the same destination, which is the Supreme Personality of Godhead."

"Persons who smell the aroma of Lord Krishna's lotus feet, carried by the air of Vedic sound through the holes of the ears, accepts Krishna's devotional service. The Lord is never separated from them."