Parental Advisory
Submitted by Harmonist staff on August 18, 2010 – 5:59 pm9 Comments
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For Gaudiya Vaishnavas, the right reason to worship Narasinghadeva is as Bhaktivinoda prays, “to beg at the lotus feet of Lord Narasingha for the benediction of worshipping Radha and Krishna in Navadvipa, perfectly safe and free from all difficulties.”
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I`ve heard something similar from my family members
You guys are killing me!! Such a good one guys! Really nice. Isn’t it so true…? Parents rather we have any antisocial lifestyle…as long as it is still conventional. Auspicious lifestyle is too off the charts for them!! Weird…
Sniff white-out? No body does that any more!
My brother and I were lucky. When her friends would express concern about her children joining a cult, our Mother said, “No sex!! No drugs!! GREAT!! The answer to my prayers!!” But this is the more popular response, unfortunately.
I joined when I was 21 and my parents were not against it but I had to talk to a lot of concerned parents of younger devotees. Nothing as extreme as in the cartoon but I did hear once that a father would rather see his daughter keep taking drugs rather than join ‘the cult’. What can be done? You have to confront the ignorance with the torchlight of knowledge.
Why is it, if I tell my father, I am a heroin addict, “Oh son this is good”, “I robbed a bank”, this is also good, “I murdered five thousand innocent cows”, oh that should be nice on the BBQ, “I stole cloathes from the shop”, oh this is excellent, but when I said I went for the mercy, just one drop of Sri Gurudevs’ mercy, they huddle in a corner, like I am an Adams Family freak, six headed monster, a killer of children. ‘Ah, it must be the age of Kali’. “Why can’t you be ‘normal’, like your brother, have a good job scrubbing toilets, why do you want to go this Hare Krishna people. Because in this day and age, I don’t meet decent honest people and really generally very nice honest people anywhere else.
Except the other day, one nice Karmi from Coles on line, I rang to say my wallet is lost or stollen with my redicard, so I have to cancel the order the next night which is yet to be delivered. She says Okay and five minutes later rings back and says, “This is okay, the food will be delivered exactly as ordered, but when you get the new redicard, then arrange to pay for it”. There are some decent karmis left.
And some not so decent devotees.
But would be unjust not to mention that there are also different parrents.
I have seen several times people wanting their children to live in the temple, begging temple president to accept them with tears in their eyes. These were parrents of drug addicted kids, who lost their hope to help them otherwise
It wasn’t quite this bad for me.
Me (around Feb. 1970): Well, Mom, I’m finally going to do it. I’m going to move into the Hare Krishna temple.
Mom: But you have such a strong mind!
Me: Yeah, I know. That’s my biggest problem.
Mom got over it and a couple of years later spent considerable time on a portrait of Srila Prabhupada.