Sahadeva Dasa Brahmacari's Blog Sharing the sublime teachings of Gaudiya Vedanta through writing. Based in Dallas, TX Absolute reality is available ...
The Supreme Personality of Godhead said: O Pārtha, when a man gives up all varieties of desire for sense gratification, which arise from mental concoction, and when his mind, thus purified, finds satisfaction in the self alone, then he is said to be in pure transcendental consciousness (BG 2.55) Real pleasure does not come from things, stuff, or temporary relationships. Pleasure only comes from…
No matter how hard one works in this world, they will have to lose it all at the end of life. Success and failure are the same when applied to temporary pursuits. In the Bhagavad Gita , real success is described as the sober acknowledgement of this world's illusion of temporary happiness, and a subsequent orientation to the path best suited for overcoming the miseries constantly placed before us.…
If you're reading this, there's a one in four chance you're doing it to avoid something else that you should be doing. 1 In other words, statistics show that 25% of adults are chronic procrastinators on some level. How did it get this far? 2 Levels of procrastination are caused by our choices in the world. In the Bhagavad Gita , Krishna describes how reality is covered with three lenses of…
Epistemology, or the study of knowledge, is a very important thing to understand. What do we know? How do we know what we know? And how do we know what we know is worth knowing? The first thing to address is how we acquire knowledge in the first place. Looking towards philosophical schools from India, eight general categories of validly measuring knowledge known as evidences ( pramanas ) are…
Usually when we think of idols, we may think of the old television show: American Idol , celebrities, or K-Pop superstars… all new presents kindly gifted to us by modernity. Throughout religious thought in the western world, idols have been given a bad reputation, but not the aforementioned ones. The conception of idols is largely attributed to this section from the Hebrew testament: “Thou shalt…
Growing up as an American, I never felt an impetus to learn another language. America is huge, English is the official language, and it became the lingua franca of the whole world practically, so what is the use in learning something else? I could just spend more time playing video games instead, right? 1 It wasn’t until I was about 20 years old when it dawned on me that understanding more than…
"Everything that comes into existence, however and whenever it does so, is created within You, by You, from You, for You, and in relation to You" SB 10.85.4 This verse from the 10th canto (section) of the Bhagavatam is the one of the most succinct, specific, and beautiful definitions of what God is in his entirety found in any of the world's great literary, philosophical, or theological works. All…
One of my dearest mentors instilled something very valuable in me this year which has simultaneously startled and excited me: thinking. Or, at least, that’s how he put it. Just, “thinking.” I would elaborate on it a little more for clarity and say “being thoughtful” or “critically thinking about things.” Actually analyzing things and trying to understand them as they are. “Athato brahma jijnasa”…
Wow what a doozy, May is gone already. Although I spent little to no time reflecting, I feel like it was especially, experientially, very reflective for me. On many occasions I found myself facing personal challenges that I felt I had long overcome. It was sobering, humbling, and ultimately, a very joyful month. It was also surprisingly busy which is part of the reason my writing has been…
Michigan is my second favorite peninsula in the United States (and possibly in the world). There are some reasons for this which will be disclosed in the contents of this entry. The first one is, of course, Florida, because that is where I’m from. One always holds a little fidelity for their homeland. Traveling with Paramesvara Prabhu over the past month and a half is what brought me to Michigan…