By: Vishnurata das
The global COVID-19 pandemic is a warm-up warning by mother nature that everybody should live localized and produce our own food. In this kind of critical situation, nobody is thinking to buy a new car or a new house, nor do people plan to have a nice holiday in Hawaii, but the main concern is that how they will get food.
Srila Prabhupada gave us his clear instruction that we have to produce our own food and be self-sufficient and not to depend on the outside products. But unfortunately, we as the ISKCON members are not sufficiently implementing what our founder acharya has been told us. Now we are facing a great difficulty to run our ISKCON temples, especially big temples, which are very much depending on the donation from the visitors. Due to the COVID-19, the government forced us to stay home in a self-quarantined or “lockdown”, and as an effect of that our big temples especially in India are facing serious problem to run the temple activities and to sustain its community.
Many temple authorities including ISKCON Mayapur start to think on growing our own food for the community devotees. “… we have lots of lands that we can give,… We want to make Mayapur self-sufficient! At least our vegetables” (HH Jayapataka Swami – SB 4.30.37 class in Mayapur on 05 April 2020).
In addition to this, HH Bhakti Raghava Swami also has an appeal (especially to those who are grihastha)
“My request is simple: please come and help fulfil Srila Prabhupada’s request to help establish sustainable communities by relocating in the villages.
I am making this appeal especially to that grihastha who have young children and youth. You have an obligation as parents to give your children proper Vedic training and education which is not available in modern-day educational institutions.
Otherwise, you are doing the greatest disservice by continuing to disconnect them and yourselves from the standard Vedic lifestyle of being localized and self-sufficient depending on the natural gifts of nature, as ordained by Lord Krishna, cows, land and the Vedic wisdom.
India as a nation should have hundreds if not thousands of such rural projects but unfortunately, we have but a meagre handful.
COVID-19 we should know is a wake-up call to really assess where we are and where we are going. We may not have the luxury nor the freedom to make a proper decision next time around.”
Therefore ISKCON Daiva Varnasrama – India is pleased to announce that we would like to give a complimentary copy of a book entitled SPEAKING ABOUT VARNASRAMA for each temple all over the world. This book is compiled by HG Hare Krishna Dasi (ACBSP), this book will help us very much to understand Srila Prabhupada’s mood and mission to re-establish the Daiva Varnasrama and encourage us to live base on natural agriculture and cow protection.
The book can be collected in ISKCON Mayapur by each representative of the temple by signing an agreement letter, it is for free.
For more details on this please contact Vishnurata das at vishnurata.brs@gmail.com or via Whatsapp (+91 9862084531)