Srimad Bhagavatam page (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

"Srimad Bhagavatam: The Role of the Bhagavatam in the Caitanya Caritamrita."
Howard Resnick, Ph.D.

Plain Talk About Spanking

<cite>Plain Talk About Spanking</cite>: "

'The most positive social changes around the world have followed mass improvements in the way children are treated.' Robin Grille, author of Parenting for a Peaceful World, 2005.'Children should never receive less protection than adults. . . [we must] put an end to adult justification of violence against children, whether accepted as 'tradition' or disguised as 'discipline'.' Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, Member of the UN Sub-commission on the promotion and protection of human rights, Geneva, 2006.

Parenting means you must repeat yourself, without rancor or ill teimper, but with love an gentleness. Prayer is helpful.

Example is most powerful among teachers. Children internalize their parent's opinions and attitudes on topical, historical, and philosophical issues. Even children who later renounce or denounce their parent's positions - by class, ideals, religion, ethics, etc. - still exhibit patterns of expression and behavior that bear striking similarity to their parents.

My conclusion is that if you believe that a certain way of living or acting is best, live it! Your children will take notice. Whether you will have the satisfaction, during your lifetime, of seeing yoru children mature completely ... no, you cannot. It takes a lifetime. they won't be finished until the end of their lives. The best that we can do is to offer our unconditional love, and an example worth following.

Jewish prayer to mark a transition to something new

SHEHECHEYANU V'KIYAMANU V'HIGIYANU LAZMAN HAZEH

Jewish prayer to mark a transition to something new:
"(Blessed are you, God, Ruler of the universe,)
Who gives us life, sustains us, and brings us to this time/season."

It is said at the start of a holiday, to acknowledge the return of the cycle of the year; and even when eating a fruit for the first time in a season or wearing a new set of clothes. - Rabbi Avivah Winocur Erlick

Boys

Boys respect power. The appeal to a boy to be good falls on deaf ears. Boys don't want to be good, they want to learn, explore, play; being 'good' only enters the thought process of a boy when it can be used as leverage for getting opportunities for these other things. Look at the military, which is quintessentially male culture. No one appeals to anyone to do something because it is 'good.' You will never hear "be a good soldier and make your bed." Wrong mentality. Men, boys, males, respect strength. I will do this because you have the power to make me do it. An oft heard refrain on any playground in the world where boys are playing is "make me!"

Women's appeals to boys, men, males to 'be good,' is the wrong approach. This may appeal to girls, but not to boys. Naturally, a boy may try to be good out of affection for his mother, but not because he values being 'good.' He tries to be 'good' because it is what is important to his mother, or effeminate father. And it is not because boys are by nature ungentle. No. It is simple a matter of their nature. It is biology. I'm not saying that this trait cannot be trained out of them, but that to attempt this is working against nature.

Gaudiya Vaishnavism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Gaudiya Vaishnava temple at Tirupathi

Gaudiya Vaishnavism (also known as Chaitanya Vaishnavism^[1]) is a Vaishnava religious movement founded by Chaitanya Mahaprabhu (1486-1534) inIndia in the 16th century. "Gaudiya" refers to Gauḍadeśa (present day Bengal/Bangladesh) with Vaishnavism meaning the worship of Vishnu. Its philosophical basis is primarily that of the Bhagavad Gita and Bhagavata Purana, as well as other Puranic scriptures and Upanishads such as the Isha Upanishad, Gopala Tapani Upanishad, and Kali Santarana Upanishad.

The focus of Gaudiya Vaishnavism is the devotional worship (bhakti) of Radha and Krishna, and their many divine incarnations as the supreme forms of God,svayam bhagavan. Most popularly this worship takes the form of singing Radha and Krishna's holy names, such as 'Hare', 'Krishna' and 'Rama', (most commonly in the form of the Hare Krishna mantra) which is known as kirtan. The movement is sometimes referred to as the Brahma-Madhva-Gaudiyasampradaya referring to its traditional origins in the disciplic succession of spiritual masters (gurus) believed to originate from Brahma. It classifies itself as amonotheistic tradition, seeing the many forms of Vishnu as expansions or incarnations of the one Supreme God, adipurusha.

Arthur Schopenhauer

Concerning the Upanishads and Vedas, he writes in The World as Will and Representation:

If the reader has also received the benefit of the Vedas, the access to which by means of the Upanishads is in my eyes the greatest privilege which this still young century (1818) may claim before all previous centuries, if then the reader, I say, has received his initiation in primeval Indian wisdom, and received it with an open heart, he will be prepared in the very best way for hearing what I have to tell him. It will not sound to him strange, as to many others, much less disagreeable; for I might, if it did not sound conceited, contend that every one of the detached statements which constitute the Upanishads, may be deduced as a necessary result from the fundamental thoughts which I have to enunciate, though those deductions themselves are by no means to be found there.^[25]

He summarised the influence of the Upanishads thus: “It has been the solace of my life, it will be the solace of my death!”

Quote from Late Prime Minister of India

"If the Bhagavad Gita, the holy text of the Hindu traditions, is printed in millions of copies and scores of languages and distributed in all nooks and corners of the world, the credit for this great sacred service goes chiefly to ISKCON. For this accomplishment alone, Indians should be eternally grateful to the devoted spiritual army of Swami Prabhupada, the founder of the Hare Krishna movement, and to his followers. . .

The arrival of Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada in the United States in 1965 and the particular popularity his movement gained in a very short span of twelve years must be regarded as one of the greatest spiritual events of the century.”

— Atal Bihari Vajpayee - April 1998

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“Solus in faecibus sed profundum variat”

“Succes is the result of good judgement, good judgement is the result of experience, experience is the result of bad judgement.”

“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.” -Samuel Beckett

Bhakti Blog

Isolation in Krishna Consciousness

Srimad Bhagavatam: The Role of the Bhagavatam in the Caitanya Caritamrita.