He contemplated for long time thinking how should he cross the river. He kept starring at the river for long hours and then he was about to quit his plans of crossing the river, a saint arrived. He asked the saint about how to get to the other side of the river. The saint replied, "You already are on the other side."

namanta eva - You should come to the altar like this and fall flat in front of the altar. That is namanta eva. You just bow down in front of the deities. You go to the temple, have your own altar like this, the house is the temple. This is how wherever you see the picture, you just fall down before the picture. Create this tendency.

To reduce the necessities, is not the goal of our existence. But it is needed to reach to the goal of our existence. Reducing the necessities is required to achieve the goal of our existence.

. The body, which is too much looked after, goes old very soon. than the body which is roughly used. That is we don’t care much, we take rest minimum possible, and then we get up for mangala arati, we do this devotional service, then that body, Krishna’s mercy, may survive longer. It doesn’t mean that they don’t die. But that body survives longer.

In Mahabharata we find that Lord Parasurama ferociously fought and destroyed the Kshatriyas 21 generations and many kings started felling in various directions to save their lives. At that time celestial voices came from the sky and said ” O Bhargava Rama!, please stop this deadly extermination.”

There is one villager you know. And he has a field opposite to his cottage. So the field opposite grows cotton. Cotton is grown in his field.  The owner of the field, sells it to a man who collects it in the field you know in the village.  This man sells it to a dealer who sells it to another who transports it to Bombay.

And if you don't utilize your human time, in remembering the Supreme Absolute Truth Krishna, then how long does He take to withdraw everything from you. He has thousands of hands. He can withdraw within no time.

If your karmas are pious, in the sense that you are attracted to the complete perfect whole Krishna, then you will have a bit of chance to have the human body born in śucīnāṁ śrīmatāṁ gehe. (BG 6.41) śucīnāṁ means saintly family.

I remember Maharaj always said that the moment we foresee any unfavorable situation in our life, we should take shelter of Krishna. Taking shelter of Krishna means taking shelter of Srimad Bhagavatam. Srimad Bhagavatam is the only scripture which is literary incarnation of Sri Krishna and has the potency to resolve all the problems.

Lord Rama is the perfection of all peace. The Lord is completely self satisfied. The Lord is known as āpta kāma, or one who can fulfill His desires by Himself. He does not require anyone's help to satisfy His desires. So where is the question of any disturbance in Him?

Sugriva was given back the kingdom after killing Vali, Rama is waiting for the rains to abate, for that is when Sugriva will come and help Him find Sita. But the rains have stopped and still there is no sign of Sugriva. Rama gets angry and tells Lakshmana that he should carry a message to Sugriva.

The Supreme Lord does not become disgusted with anyone or anything in the actual sense of the term. Since He is the source of everything, He being the Supreme father does not become disgusted with His creations.

Lord Rama is the Supreme Personality of Godhead who awards fearlessness to all the living entities. So there is no question of His being in fear. In His incarnation as Lord Rama, the Lord exhibited the mellow of Bhaya or Fear to show an ideal example to the human beings on how to uphold Dharma by being afraid to perform unrighteous acts.

Rama, along with Lakshmana distributed all the wealth to the brahmanas, the children, the old-aged and the pitiable. There lived a brahmana by name Trijata, and his young wife, having been afflicted with poverty, urged the brahmana to go to Rama and get something in charity.

The construction of a bridge across the ocean with the help of the restless monkeys is indeed an astonishing, uncommon, amazing pastime of the Lord. Monkeys are known for their restless nature and often our mind is compared to a monkey. If this is the case with one monkey, how can we imagine managing lacs of monkeys?

With all the love and compassion He had for Sita mata, Rama became ready to take any blame on His personal account but remained ever-vigilant to His mission of maintaining religious principles in the human society and also for all the world to glorify the chastity of Sita mata for ever, thus making a great sacrifice.

As we saw earlier, there was no necessity for the Lord to take assistance from the monkeys. But out of great compassion, He engaged them all in His service. After the war was over, Indra appears before the Lord and asks the Lord any boon He wants. Then Rama requested Indra to bring back to life, all the monkeys who had lost their life in the battle.

During the great battle with Ravana, we see that when Ravana lost all his weapons, the Lord did not fight but asked Ravana to go back and come later with weapons. The Lord never thought for a second that for all the atrocities committed by him, Ravana deserves to be killed unarmed.

Ravana senses danger when he hears that Rama has crossed the ocean and reached Lanka with the Vanara army. It is unbelievable, he tells himself, yet it has come to pass that the entire Vanara army has built a bridge and crossed over to his kingdom. In his own interest, he decides to send two rakshasa spies, Suka and Sarana, to assess the enemy’s strength.

Seeing the great qualities of Rama and the affection that He had for the populace and their affection in turn for Him, Dasaratha decided to crown Him as the prince and hand over the kingdom to Him. He consulted on that with his ministers and then called the people in his kingdom to express his desire to them.

Karunya or compassion is the feeling of empathy on seeing others suffering. For conditioned living entities like us, who are always prone to committing various kinds of sins, our only shelter is this quality of compassion which the Lord possesses. So we may call it as the king among all qualities of the Lord.

Rama’s valour was such that even the enemies praised it. Ravana himself says during the battle, prakhyātavīryasya śatroḥ rañjanīyasya vikramaiḥ (SR 6.104.4) He glorifies Rama as one who has illustrious powers and then goes on to say that He delights others through His valiant feats.

Rama pierced through seven sala trees [which look like palm trees] with His single great arrow, which not only pierced the trees but also perforated through a mountain, and to the depths of netherworlds. Such was the greatness of a single arrow of Lord Rama.

King Janaka announced that whoever can lift the bow and tie the string will be qualified to marry Sita. Prompted by the king, over 5,000 servants placed the bow on a big vehicle with eight wheels. The bow that came rolling in was as bright as the sun. Showing the bow, the king said to the assembled guests that even the gods were not able to string it.

When mother Sītā was kidnapped by Rāvaṇa and the Rākṣasas, Lord Rāmacandra, as the Supreme Personality of Godhead, could have married hundreds and thousands of Sītās, but to teach us how faithful He was to His wife, He fought with Rāvaṇa and finally killed him. The Lord punished Rāvaṇa and rescued His wife to instruct men to have only one wife.

Lord Sri Ramachandra is famously known as 'Maryada Purushottama', that is, He strictly follows Vedic rules and regulations and never transgresses them. This may make us think that there are no rasas in His pastimes. But when we go through Srimad Ramayana, we find that the Lord exhibits various rasas in His dealings with His devotees.

Of the many processes of attaining the Supreme Lord, in kali yuga the easiest process is chanting and hearing the glories of the Supreme Lord. This glorification is the best medicine for the suffering souls and also this medicine will work for all classes of living entities irrespective of their material situation.

The final lesson that Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu teaches in this pastime is that a devotee, especially a preacher, should keep moving on, like a river and never be attached to place, name, fame, followers etc. The situation in Varanasi became so conducive for Caitanya Mahaprabhu that He gathered thousands of friends, well-wishers and disciples by His purity. But that purity is further glorified when the Lord revealed the last of His opulence - renunciation.

The complete path of bhakti-yoga is based upon the process of becoming humble and submissive. By the grace of Lord Caitanya Mahāprabhu, all the Māyāvādī sannyāsīs  were very humble and submissive after hearing His explanation of the Vedānta-sūtra, and they begged to be pardoned for the offenses they had committed by criticizing the Lord for simply chanting and dancing and not taking part in the study of the Vedānta-sūtra.

Our beloved spiritual master H H Mahavishnu Goswami Maharaj says that when one does sinful deeds, it will not be possible to even chant the names of Lord properly. So initially Ratnakar could not even pronounce "Ra-ma". He could tell only "Ma-ra". But as an expert spiritual master Narada Muni did not give up his efforts in helping Ratnakar.

Actually everything in this world is related to one another because the Supersoul is present in everyone's heart and in every atom as well. When one sees the Supreme Lord in everyone's heart by rendering pure devotional service, then his relationship with every other living and non-living entity is manifest in his heart. According to the level of one's purity, the relationship is established.