The Struggle of a Vaishnava

Om namo bhagavate vasudevaya
All glories to His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Srila Prabhupada
All glories to Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura Prabhupada and Srila Rupa Goswami
All glories to all Acaryas of the Diciplic Secession
Hare Krsna Hare Krsna Krsna Krsna Hare Hare / Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare

Vaishnavism: the worship of Visnu(Krishna) the Supreme Lord

Since time immeasurable Vaishnavism has existed, to be exact, it started when, while sitting in complete darkness and ignorance, the fist demigod, Brahma learned the transcendental nature of the Lord, from the Lord Himself. Brahma, who came from the navel of the Supreme Lord, Visnu is put into illusion when compared to that original, eternally unborn Lord, the fountain-head of all energies and protector of His devotees. In the Brahma-Samita the great demigod Brahma praises and meditates on the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Visnu, Lord Sri Krishna. The Supreme Lord instructed Brahma in the path of Bhakti-Yoga (devotional service). Yet even the great demigods like Lord Brahma and Lord Shiva are put into illusion when compared to the Supreme Lord, Krishna. Indeed then if the great demigods worship and meditate upon the Supreme Lord than we as simple minded bewilder humans should do the same. Although the Lord has unlimited expansions, both personal and impersonal, He is still the Absolute Truth, our ultimate goal should be untainted realization of Krishna, God realization. But it is so hard for our simple minds to try to understand God, and His unlimited expansions, we can not even understand a single speck of it if we are not trying to serve Him, and worship Him. To think that these unlimited expansions of the Lord are existing simultaneously and each having it’s on planet is too mind blowing to comprehend. So we should ask Krishna, the Supreme Personality of Godhead to help us understand Him, and his opulences. But all of Krishna’s expansions are still Krishna, because as I said He is Absolute.

But because this material world is maya (Krishna’s illusionary energy) we are bewildered and forget Krishna, and want only to concentrate on material things, gratification of our senses. We are in this illusionary form and therefore a by-product of this is we forget where we came from, Krishna, this is due to a few things actually. The first thing is when we are born (even as a human) we have an animalistic mentality, we want to eat, sleep, and could not possibly comprehend the first thing about Krishna even if we wanted to at such a young age. But because we were lucky enough to be born humans, this time around anyway, we have the chance and ability to learn about the Lord, and try to have a relationship with Him. If you are a theist or not, you are still always in an internal relationship with the Lord, it just may not be on a God conscious state. We are all part and parcel of the Lord, He is directly in us, this is why we should have a natural desire to go back home to Him, back to Godhead. Even those people who do not believe that Krsna is personal, but only believe in His impersonal energies are still in some sort of relationship with Him, on a subconscious level. The other problem is that we are as of now in the age of Kali, the demigoddess of destruction, we call this age Kali-Yuga.

The Yugas, or ages, has always cycled, and they go from great pureness and knowledge of God, to not so good, to pretty bad, to extremely bad. Unfortunately that extremely bad age is Kali Yuga, what we are experiencing right now. It’s bad and is only going to keep getting worse and worse until we cycle back to the first Yuga. So herein comes the relevance of my title for this, the struggle of Vaishnavism in the age of Kali. In the age where the mode of ignorance and forgetfulness of God is so wide spread that even the post pious religious men have a good chance of falling now into the dark pool of ignorance known as sense gratification. It is a struggle, both for the individual person and for the religions in general. Not only because of the internal things trying to pull our attention to sense gratification, but also the external forces that try to lead us to lives of sin, forcing us to keep taking births in this material world and endure more and more suffering. People in the age of Kali lose the realization that we are not this material body, but rather a soul that is wrapped in this illusionary material body. When we focus on illusion we fall deeper and deeper into illusion and as this happens we fall further away from Krishna, who is the ultimate goal in life. The nature of the Kali age is irreligion and sinfulness, so how can those of us who want to become and remain God conscious combat this horrible age? Well if you are a Vaishnava than you believe that Sri Krsna Caitanya Mahaprabhu who was born in Bengal about 500 years ago was an expansion of Krishna as a devotee of Himself. This was done by Krishna to show humanity how to properly worship Him in this Kali age, and how to escape this material world and go back home to Godhead. This method for going back home to Godhead living in this Kali Yuga is chanting the Holy Names of the Lord:

HARE KRSNA HARE KRSNA KRSNA KRSNA HARE HARE/ HARE RAMA HARE RAMA RAMA RAMA HARE HARE

This is the only cure for this Kali age, the way which Sri Krsna Caitanya Mahaprabhu explained is the fasted way to the Lord in this age of anxiety, death, and corruption. The Vaishnava must constantly struggle to meditate on Lord Sri Krsna, we must know Him as best we can so that we can go back home to Him and escape this hellish material life.

-Bhakta Max

how many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie pop?

Ask the Supreme Commander.

*jumps ship*

how long do the ages last? are they set? who decides when its not the age of Kali anymore?

hare hare

Satya Yuga or Krita Yuga - 1,728,000 years
Treta Yuga - 1,296,000 years
Dwapar Yuga - 864,000 years
Kali Yuga - 432,000 years

Kali Yuga (the Age of Kali) began at the end of Krishna's bodily lifespan (approximately 5100 years ago, 3100 BC) and will last exactly 432,000 years - placing its conclusion near the middle of the 431st millennium AD.

interesting - we've got a ways to go then.... maybe that explains the patience of some of the indians that i know.