Mazar-i-Sharif will probably be familiar to those who are old enough to remember the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. It was the first Taliban city to fall to the US army, and subsequently became famous for a prison uprising in which a CIA officer was killed and an American named John Walker Lindh was found fighting with the Taliban.
In a previous article (The Vedic People of Scandinavia) we highlighted the very clear Vedic connections in Scandinavia. Without repeating those details, we know that the Aesir (Norse gods) are etymologically connected to the Vedic Asuras. But how did these traditions arrive in such a remote place? There is one highly controversial theory worth exploring.
On December 25th we celebrated Hanuman Jayanti at our ashram in Chennai, where the presiding deity is of Sri Panchamukha Hanuman. From morning till evening thousands of devotees visited for darshana of Lord Hanuman. Bhajans were sung by devotees, and prasadam was distributed to all of the guests throughout the day.
Here is a small story of an interesting meeting we recently had with a sadhu from Jharkhand named Hari Baba. He stays in a small village in Jharkhand, and was attending the annual Gita Yagya at Rambaba Ashram, near Jamshedpur. He is a very unique sadhu, always in a type of inner trance, not very aware of the outside around us.
98 year old sadhu Brahma Chaitanya Das, who is known in Odisha as Chakratirtha Baba is visiting our temple in Chennai on his way to Rameswaram for tirtha yatra.
Sugar – we all crave it, from children to adults. We indulge in it, from sodas, cakes, and assorted candies, during times of sadness and times of celebration. But crystallized sugar, first invented in India, has a dark history, involving conquest, secret societies, and exploitation.
Did you know that Mayapur was once the capital of the Eastern Empire of India, and that the king’s palace lies in ruins a short walk from ISKCON Mayapur?
Just behind Chand Kazi’s samadhi are the ruins known as Ballal Dhipi, which even today no one really knows much about. If you ask locals they have no idea what it is or what it was. Up until 1980 it was a giant earthen mound 30 feet high, covered in grass. No one knew what was underneath.
The following pictures are from the Hanuman Jayanti celebrations at our Panchamukha Hanuman temple in Chennai this year. In North India Hanuman Jayanti falls in April, but according to the Tamil calendar it falls in the months of December and January. This year it was in early January. Due to other work we are a little late posting these pictures, so we apologize for that.
The following pictures show the celebration of Kartika Purnima at our Jagannatha temple in Bhadrak, Odisha.
Below are some pictures from the deepotsava festival at our temple in Chennai. For 30 days, for the month of Kartika, devotees would offer lamps to Lord Damodara and Panchamukha Hanuman every evening, accompanied by kirtan.