A Guide to Participating in Vaishnava Community Writing Projects

One very powerful way of fixing one’s attention on shastra is to read with the aim of responding in writing to what one has read. The writing process calls upon us to collect our thoughts and make them coherent, comprehensible, and interesting for others. This process can be thought of as a form of kirtanam — glorification — that can be enlivening for oneself and for those who will read your writing.

You are regularly invited to participate in such projects, with the possibility of having your writing published. Here are some details of how this will work:

1.    For one project, we are concentrating exclusively on one of twelve Cantos of Srimad Bhagavatam. Your ‘task’ will be to select some passage — it may be only one verse, or several verses, or a whole chapter, or indeed one single word of a verse, or a point in a purport of Srila Prabhupada — as a springboard for reflection, showing how you appreciate this particular passage.

There are any number of ways you could go about this, but you may find it helpful to imagine a specific audience — a friend, relative, acquaintance, or even some famous person — whom you wish to address and whom you would like to help connect to the Bhagavatam, to Krishna.

2.    You are welcome to refer to specific verses as well as to a specific passage in one or more of Srila Prabhupada’s purports. Be careful not to unnecessarily copy what we can all read in the Bhagavatam. The idea is to bring forth your own voice, your own way of thinking, from your own experience (not ChatGPT’s “thinking”!). At the same time, be careful not to become self-indulgent or ramble about yourself. Try to find a balance and complementarity between the Bhagavatam’s voice and your own voice.

3.    Be coherent: try to have one single message or reflection or mood to communicate as clearly and succinctly as possible. As examples, it might be that you want to share how a certain personality in Canto 4 gives you inspiration, or how you find it difficult to imagine such a person living in the 21st century, or how, after years of wondering how to grasp a particular passage, it now makes sense to you; or why you find a certain passage off-putting or troubling; or how, if you were to make a film representing a certain narrative, you would do such-and-such; or how you think some idea in this Canto could be applied to resolve a problem (your own, a family’s, or of the wider public); or how a certain passage puts into perspective for you some event reported recently in the news…. These are just broad suggestions. There are no hard-and-fast rules except to write with sincerity and for the purpose of self-purification. If you are so inclined, you can write in the form of a short reflective essay, an imagined dialogue, a poem, a rap song, or perhaps a guided meditation.

4.    Self-editing: After you have written a draft of your reflection, leave it aside for a few days or a week. Then, come back to it and re-read it with a critical eye. See if you can improve it in any way (especially to “tighten” it and thereby make it shorter and clearer — more clearly — your voice). Next, have a trusted friend read it and give constructive criticism. After noting whatever improvements the friend suggests, go back and revise your writing (not that you have to accept whatever your friend suggests, but you can take it into account).

5.    If English is not your first language but you have written your piece in English, please try to have someone whose English is better than yours go through it for language improvements. You can also write in your own language and find a friend who can translate it into English (or at least check it, if you engage AI in translating it).

6.    When you have completed your piece and have edited it as best you can send it to the organisers of the writing project. 

Please include your name and email address on the document. Also, give your reflection an appropriate (hopefully catchy) title. Also, please include a very short bio of yourself (e.g. including the year you took up Krishna consciousness; where and what service/occupation you do).

Looking forward to reading your sastra reflection!

—From the invitation letter for the Bhāgavata Smaraṇam writhing project (Devotees’ Reflections on the Srima Bhagavatam – Canto 4) to disciples and friends by Krishna Kshetra Swami. 



Keeping a healthy spiritual diet

Question: 
You said the modern, postmodern culture is distracting, especially by sound pollution, especially in the form of mundane news, all kinds of low language, bickering, condemning others in the public sphere. How do we approach this?

Answer: 
There are, I suppose, a lot of things one could say. The short answer is that there is no hard and fast rule. There are sort of thumbnail guidelines in our tradition of bhakti. Sort of dos and don’ts, and especially in this little book from Srila Rupa Goswami, the Upadeshamrita. There are six things he says to avoid. One is called prajalpa, which is sometimes translated as village gossip, gramya katha. And village can mean literally a village or it can mean the whole world. The globe, the global village. 

A general principle in the practice of bhakti is we want to, as I mentioned before, to engage the tongue. It is also said, the beginning of bhakti is to control the tongue — what is going into the mouth and also what is coming out of the mouth. And that relates also to what is going into the ears. So that is one aspect. 

Another determining factor is what are ones responsibilities — one way this is articulated in the tradition is in terms of varna and ashrama, and that is a whole subject in itself. But ashrama: if you think about it, it is interesting that you have four different stages of life. The student life, the householder life, the retired life and the renounced life. Especially, I would say the householder is the person in the world. And being in the world and engaging with the world in more ways than the other three ashramas, it can be valuable to know what is going on in the world. It can be, for example, to be a responsible citizen and so on. Whereas the retired person might say: well, I’ll read the headlines, I kind of know enough from the headlines. The renounced person might say, well, I’ll hear what the retired person comments to me once a week and I’ll know enough from that. So that could be one approach. But again, I think there are no hard and fast rules except that the principle in bhakti is one wants to keep focused on the goal. 

And related to that principle there are two things. One: life is very short. So, how much time am I going to spend hearing what crazy things are going on in the political blogosphere and so on? Two: this is such an opportunity I have here. And this was drilled, I mean repeatedly, by Srila Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada that this human form of life is very rare. It is so rare, and it is such a special opportunity to become spiritually advanced, focusing on the goal, the goal of life. And he would ask people: what is the aim of your life? What is your aim?

So from these two sides one has to judge for oneself. One can also think of it as diet. What is a healthy diet of physical food? And what is a healthy diet of what I hear? And we want to keep a healthy spiritual diet as our spiritual nourishment.



Read Caitanya-caritāmṛta! 

Question: 
We talked about taking shelter or positioning oneself maximally for being the best version of oneself. And what would your invitation be for us? How can we best position ourselves to grow, to wake up, to nourish ourselves? If there was one thing or a few key things, what would it be?

Answer:
Just because in the last few days and also the next few days, I am focused on a particular text, which is, I think, just a real sort of powerhouse of spiritual vision, namely the Caitanya-caritāmṛta, my short answer would be to get a hold of Caitanya-caritāmṛta and read it. 

The Caitanya-caritāmṛta is an early 17th century text which is telling the life story of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, who is identified in the text as being Krishna himself, appearing as Krishna’s devotee. The idea is that He is, in effect, modeling what it means to be a bhakta, a devotee. He is also imparting teachings to various of His followers and these are not just theoretical teachings but there are many exchanges, some rather dramatic exchanges with some of the other devotees whom he encounters and also other, we might be calling them non-devotees, but persons who are not explicitly on the path of bhakti. It is a fascinating exploration of the application of what it means to cultivate. You use that word cultivate and that specifically is used in His teaching to Rupa Goswami, the analogy of the garden, one wants to water what is called the bhakti-latā. A latā is a creeper plant. And there will be weeds, and the weeds are the various habits which are not helpful. They are ways of acting which are not helpful. These one has to identify and remove. One has to build a fence around the garden to keep out the elephants, the wild elephants, which are compared to what is called aparādha or offense — making offense against others who are on the spiritual path. So this Caitanya-caritāmṛta is giving some nice systematic guidelines for how to practice. So I couldn’t resist to say: read Caitanya-caritāmṛta! 

—From the discussion on Sensing Divinity & Voicing Bhakti of HH Krishna Kshetra Swami with @happyjackyoga (Happy Jack Yoga University) during the online Bhakti Yoga Conference from Godruma Bhavan, Sri Mayapur Dhama, India, on March 9, 2025.