“Although God has no parents as He is eternal and is the father of everyone, yet He can agree to become someone’s child – have a little baby form and a devotee to serve Him as a parent. As a parent, the parents think that they are bigger than the child.

The parents always want to protect the child. Even though Krishna is the Supreme protector of everyone. His parents always think, “I have to protect Krishna. If I don’t protect Krishna, some danger will befall Krishna.”

So the parents actually become greater than God in that relationship – Krishna comes with the shoes of His father on His head and serves His parents. He is Supremely independent. He likes that sometimes His devotee is in a superior position.”

“The actual consciousness that one needs to achieve is nirmama and nishkinchana , to have nothing. Having nothing can be achieved by a grihastha if he accepts everything as Krishna’s.

Bhaktivinod Thakura prayed,”Manasa deho geho, jo kichu mora, arpilo tua pade Nanda Kishore“, “My mind, my body, my household, whatever normally one would consider their’s, whatever it may be, I am simply offering at your Lotus Feet, Nanda Kishore. Everything is Yours.”

If someone takes up their service in that attitude, then grihastha life will not be a big impediment. But if one is very attached to his family life, and thinks, “This is all mine, and I will give a little bit to Krishna,” then it is difficult for him to get a taste of the nectar of Krishna consciousness.”

Everything is Krishna’s and He has given me this service and I should do something to serve Him. Everything is His,” – if they have this proper attitude, it will not be an impediment. It is very important to develop this proper attitude. So, in the varnashrama system one should first be trained to be a brahmachari, learn vairagya vidya, and apply these things practically when he enters grihastha life.”

“One time Prabhupada was sitting with his hand on his head and he was saying, “You don’t know what it is like to run a world-wide spiritual movement. You don’t know.” The inference, with the way that he was holding his head, was that it was a big headache.

Prabhupada was so concerned that we all stay together, that we all work together, that we all cooperate to spread the Krsna conscious movement. We have many, many devotees now and it’s important that the devotees get cared for, and feel cared for.

So part of the function to care for the devotees, is through the diksa guru. He is the manifestation of the Madana Mohana vigraha, the sambanda vigraha. There’s also the help of the many different instructing spiritual masters, or siksa gurus, who is a representative of Govindaji, the abidheya vigraha. The goal of life is Radha-Gopinatha.”

“We want that people should be successful in their life and they get back to Krishna in the end of life. It used to be that people would live until they are old and renounce and take sannyasa, leave their bodies and go back to Godhead. But right now, there is no guarantee how long someone is going to live. I mean, the people in the world tower didn’t know that they are going to leave their body in the next minute or the people in the hijack aircraft. So many things are happening now.

So we don’t know how long we have to live. We have to also practice Krishna consciousness and not leave it.

We have to go on chanting through our brahmacari, grihasta, vanaprastha and all the ashramas at anytime. Not only because we want to be Krishna conscious when we die and go back to Krishna but also so that we also know that this is the greatest happiness and this gives us peace and equilibrium.”

“Prabhupada really wanted us to be dedicated to carrying out his mission. We can be inspired how he carried out the mission of his spiritual master for us to carry out our mission which is Prabhupada’s mission, to carry out the mission of our Founder-acarya. And we know that all the subsequent generations of devotees–some of Prabhupada’s grand-disciples are members of our GBC–we’re already an endangered species, we’re going to eventually be in extinction, all the direct initiated disciples of Srila Prabhupada.

So we need to create this culture, our spiritual corporate culture. We are dedicated to carrying out the order of Srila Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, that’s the spiritual culture we are implementing.

If everybody maintains that–we know that his culture also is to ‘fulfill the desires of the previous acaryas’–then we’re completely linked up with the guru-parampara. That’s means we get the full empowerment and the full energy coming down from Krsna to the guru-parampara, to all of us.

That’s what empowers ISKCON, our connection. Krsna consciousness, Prabhupada repeatedly said, can’t be spread simply by some material adjustment. It has to be done by being empowered.”

“When we offer our services to Krishna’s devotee, Krishna is more pleased. He does not forget us. How can we serve Krishna directly? If we are given an opportunity to be in the Krishna’s pastime or Chaitanya Mahaprabhu’s pastime, then we can serve him directly. But to get that blessing, we must serve the devotee now.

Prabhupada explains that by serving in Krishna Consciousness in this life, then in the next life you can take birth in some universe where Lord Krishna’s or Lord Chaitanya’s pastimes are going on  and you can become involved in those pastimes. But the purpose is to serve Krishna through his pure devotees.”

“Lord Caitanya said that though Lord Krishna’s pastimes are not physically present now, we could serve Krishna in separation. That is actually perfection in devotion – when we serve Krishna in separation.

Similarly while the spiritual master is present, it is an opportunity to try to learn as much about devotional service, so that you can take advantage because when the spiritual master is not physically present, you have to serve in separation.

So the ideal thing is to learn as much as we can when we have the opportunity.”