BOOKS of His Holiness Satsvarupa Dasa Goswami

The Waves at Jagannatha Puri

The Waves at Jagannatha Puri

The Puri waves, the Puri waves catch your metaphor in rise and fall of waves on beach. Don’t go too far out! But what is the length of each piece, chorus, stanza? It’s shallow—five breaths and two sonatas—no longer. It’s all here in trance and steno pad. This age it’s all computers, but I don’t go for that. The Puri stanzas. Roll in in praise of Gaurariga…

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The 26 Qualities of a Devotee

The 26 Qualities of a Devotee

Five hundred years ago, under the personal direction of Lord Caitanya, Sanatana GosvamI wrote all about Vaisnava behavior in Hari-bhakti-vilasa, and Srfla Rupa GosvamI wrote Bhakti-rasamrta-sindhu. In modem times, His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhu- pada has given us the essence of Vaisnava behavior throughout his writings, especially The Nectar of Devotion and The Nectar of Instruction. And Srila Prabhupada’s personal activities…

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Stowies

Stowies

There are many stories frightening and fatal relating to stowaways, but I will tell you the one that scared me most, because it involved personal friends, a married couple. The husband is a respectable gentleman, but his beautiful and delicate wife lacked proper immigration papers, so he placed her in the trunk…

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Stories of Devotion

Stories of Devotion

In the Introduction to Nimai dasa and the Mouse, I justified the use of fiction in Krsna conscious literature, as long as the Vaisnava parampara is kept intact, and the “rasa,” or devotional mood is in order. I do not want to repeat all that here, but I would like to at least ease my readers and myself into the present story. It employs fiction based on the facts of the Seventh Canto of Srirnad- Bhagavatam…

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Sri Krsna

Sri Krsna

Srila Rupa Gosvami enumerates the sixty-four transcendental qualities of the Supreme Lord Krsna. These qualities appear in Chapters Twenty-one and Twenty-two of The Nectar of Devotion, Srila Prabhu- pada’s summary study of Bhakti-rasamrta-sindhu. The devotees, who are never satiated with hearing the Lord’s glories, relish these descriptions…

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Songs of a Hare Krsna Man

Songs of a Hare Krsna Man

The poem series, Songs of a Hare Krsna Man, came to me after hearing Allen Ginsberg read on a recording Jack Kerouac’s Mexico City Blues (242 Choruses). Kerouac prefaces his poems with this Note…

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Sketchbooks of Joy

Sketchbooks of Joy

When I first contemplated compiling this small collection of drawings, I thought of the title, Sketchbooks o f Joy. Then I backed away from it. It just seemed too effusive. Perhaps it reminded me of the “ Baskets of Joy…

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Samadhi Diary

Samadhi Diary

This book is a diary that I kept during August- September 1993 while I was feeling an unmistakable pull to become more focused in my relationship with Srila Prabhupada and more tangibly directed by him. The nature of diaries is that they are bound by what we have to say at a particular moment. We don’t go back and change them later. Sometimes the expression is feeble, perhaps not even wholly Krsna conscious, but it’s a flowing out, the inhalation and exhalation of life as we are living it at any specific time…

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Remembering Srila Prabhupada

Remembering Srila Prabhupada

You didn’t want a book about you. “Give us volumes of books on Krishna,” you said. Finally in your last days you assented— we may do it if it is spiritual. There is a way you liked us to speak of your achievements and of old days, especially your first in America, and a way we spoke with you for hours in your room, sometimes discussing Krishna’s lila and instructions, sometimes Kaliyuga’s horrors, sometimes your own activities: you brought our lives together…

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Radio Shows

Radio Shows

This is my private radio station. The red light is on over the door, warning, “Recording, Do Not Enter.” It’s 3:24 P.M. Time costs money. I had better get started. I remember as a teenager listening to Jean Shepherd’s radio shows. I was about seventeen when I started tuning into them. My sister, Madeline, who was two years older than me, made fun of my devotion to him…

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