Krishna-Bhakti, the Ultimate Delight .

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Hare Krishna,

An edict we often hear these days is, "Don't be judgmental." What's amusing about this is that the person who issues this command is judging the person he issues it to. In other words, the edict issuer is himself being judgmental and thus hypocritical. He is guilty of that very thing that he decries, passing judgment on others.The anti-judgmental thinkers draw their apparent strength from the philosophy that there is actually no such thing as good and evil in the absolute sense. They say that all conceptions of good and evil are simply relative and that therefore you can't really tell someone else that they are wrong. What I consider to be good, you may consider to be bad, and vice versa. There is no absolute standard of right and wrong.But this philosophy is bogus. Everyone intuitively understands that there really is such a thing as good and evil. This is confirmed by Lord Sri Krishna in the Bhagavad-gita:

paritranaya sadhunamvinasaya ca duskrtamdharma-samsthapanarthayasambhavami yuge yuge"To deliver the pious and to annihilate the miscreants, as well as to reestablish the principles of religion, I Myself appear, millennium after millennium." Bhagavad-gita 4.8Krishna is making a clear distinction between those are saintly and those who are not. And herein lies the method of not being judgmental while at the same time not being philosophically wishy-washy. All we have to do is allow the Supreme Authority to make the judgments and then live our lives in perfect harmony with those judgments. We will then be properly situated beyond the much decried judgmentalism. We will then defeat the night by the weapon of light, driving wrong away with right, freeing the world from fright, tasting the ultimate delight of Krishna-Bhakti .

QUESTION & ANSWER

Do You The Students are being Initiated on Behalf of Srila Prabhupada?...When the Spiritual master initiates someone, does he do it on behalf of his spiritual master, Srila Prabhupada, since the founder-Acarya is no longer here? Also, what are the requirements for being initiated?Kathleen

Answer

We Initiate Students as Own Disciples as per Srila Prabhupada's Order...Everything we do is done on behalf of our beloved spiritual master, Srila Prabhupada. Of course, if Srila Prabhupada were still physically present we would bring all of our students to be initiated by him as his disciples. But, as per his instructions, now that he is physically departed we initiate our students as our own disciples. In this way both the spiritual master and the disciples are acting under the shelter of Srila Prabhupada's instructions and thus qualify to receive Lord Krishna's unbounded mercy.If you have been steadily chanting 16 rounds and following the four regulative principles for at least one year: no illicit sex, no intoxication, no meat eating, and no gambling, then you may approach the spiritual master for initiation. The spiritual master also will require a letter of recommendation from the temple president of your local ISKCON center.Sankarshan Das Adhikari