An unofficial, eclectic, mostly tangential, view of aspiring devotee life. Best viewed with Sense of Humor 8.0 or higher. The cows may come, the cows may go, but the bull is always here.
“If you are going to hunt,” Prabhupada said, “then you should hunt for a rhinoceros. In that way, if you don’t succeed, everyone will simply say, “Oh, it couldn’t be done anyway.’ But if you do succeed, then everyone will be surprised. Everyone will be amazed.”
Srila Prabhupada Lilamrta 33: A Lot of Ground to Be Covered
“To hope is to risk frustration. Therefore, make up your mind to risk frustration.
“Do not be one of those who, rather than risk failure, never attempts anything.”
Thomas Merton. New Seeds of Contemplation. (New York: New Directions Books). 104
MILLERSBURG, Ohio – A Holmes County municipal judge on Wednesday arraigned five Amish men on charges of kidnapping and aggravated burglary after police said they attacked an Amish man and chopped off his beard.
According to a Holmes County court employee, the judge arraigned three Amish men who waived extradition Tuesday in Jefferson County Common Pleas Court: Daniel Mullet, 37, Johnny Mullet, 38, and Levi Miller, 53, all of Bergholz. Two other men also were arraigned: Lester S. Mullet, 26, of Hammondsville and Eli Miller, 32.
The men are being held on $50,000 bond. A preliminary hearing is set for 11 a.m. Oct. 19 in Holmes County.
According to police, the five men were part of a group of Amish men returning from a horse auction Oct. 4 when they told their driver to pull up to a Holmes County house. The Amish men burst into the home and cut the hair off men and women inside and cut the beards off the men, said Holmes County Sheriff Timothy Zimmerly. He said the victims included a 13-year-old girl and a 74-year-old man.
The men also are believed to have taken part in other beard and hair cutting actions.
Jefferson County Sheriff Fred Abdalla believes the Mullets’ father, Sam Mullet, ordered the attacks that have taken place in Jefferson, Holmes, Carroll and Trumbull counties.
Beards and hair carry spiritual significance in the faith. Amish men typically grow beards as adults and stop trimming them when they marry, and the beards – and women’s long hair – are held in high esteem.
Sam Mullet said in an interview with the Associated Press that the beard cutting was a religious statement made in response to how other Amish communities in the region are treating his Bergholz congregation. Sam Mullet would neither confirm nor deny he ordered the attacks.
“I think I have replied your former letter also, which I hope you have received by this time, and I am so glad to learn that you are feeling very happy in New Vrindaban.
“The basic principle of our life in Vrindaban will be cow keeping. If we can keep cows sufficiently and grow our necessary foodstuffs, then we shall show a new way of life to your countrymen . . . completely spiritual life in healthy atmosphere in divine consciousness.
“And you will have ample opportunity to educate children and write books for them because there is sufficient matter for publishing such books from the Puranas, Mahabharata, Srimad-Bhagavatam, and many other allied literatures. There are thousands of ideal historical events, which if we can put with suitable pictures, it will be a great idea and people will like to have such literature.
“I have got many ideas for developing the new Vrindaban scheme and if Krishna gives me opportunity I may be able to show something very wonderful in your country. “
Note how when they danced they crossed one foot over the other. This was when Srila Prabhupada’s instructions on how to dance authentically were still being followed, not like today when any half hearted shuffle passes for the dancing mentioned in the “chanting, dancing, and feasting” of bhakti yoga.
It may be dancing but it isn’t bhakti yoga dancing unless one foot crosses over the other.
Since the early 1960s, music fans have found Bob Dylan spirituality fascinating, and many of them have identified Dylan as a kind of spiritual guru. This book, written by a scholar who is a longtime fan, examines Dylan’s mystique, asking why audiences respond to him as a spiritual guide. This book reveals Bob Dylan as a major twentieth- and twenty-first-century religious thinker with a body of relevant work that goes far beyond a handful of gospel albums.
To listen to Michael Gilmour’s interview about this book on WJK Radio with Dan and Jana, click here.
For some reason I have a corrupted sound driver and uninstalling and reinstalling the device isn’t working so I wasn’t able to listen to this interview. Anyone who could give a review of it feel free to leave a comment.
Interested in solar electricity for your home but can’t afford the upfront costs? Check this out (it works for them because they take advantage of tax credits and various writeoffs):
This morning, at the Renewable Energy Finance Forum (REFF-West) in San Francisco, I announced a new $75 million investment to create an initial fund with Clean Power Finance that will help up to 3,000 homeowners go solar. This is our second investment in residential solar, and we’ve now invested more than $850 million overall to develop and deploy clean energy.
As we said when we made our first residential solar investment, we think it makes a lot of sense to use solar photovoltaic (PV) technology—rooftop solar panels—to generate electricity right where you need it at home. It greens our energy mix by using existing roof space while avoiding transmission constraints, and it can be cheaper than drawing electricity from the traditional grid.
Purchasing a solar system is a major home improvement, but the upfront cost has historically been one of the biggest barriers for homeowners. Solar installers across the country don’t always have the resources to find financing for customers, or the capital to provide it themselves. And for investors like Google, banks and others, it can be difficult to enter a fragmented solar market with many companies, and get connected to individual homeowners.
That’s where Clean Power Finance comes in. They’ve developed an open platform that connects installers with investors like Google to provide financing to homeowners. Solar installers sign up with Clean Power Finance to get access to the company’s comprehensive sales solutions, including consumer financing from investors, like the Google fund. This enables installers to sell more systems and grow their business. The installer builds the system, the investor (in this case, Google) owns it, and homeowners pay a monthly payment for the system, at a price that’s often less than paying for energy from the grid. Maintenance and performance are taken care of by Clean Power Finance and its network of installers. …
A devotee should not see anything as being separate from the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Krsna. Ether, fire, air, water, earth, the sun and other luminaries, all living beings, the directions, trees and other plants, the rivers and oceans -- whatever a devotee experiences he should consider to be an expansion of Krsna.
Thus seeing everything that exists within creation as the body of the Supreme Lord, Hari, the devotee should offer his sincere respects to the entire expansion of the Lord's body.
Chaitanya Caritamrta Adi 1.106:
"Essential truth spoken concisely is true eloquence."
Rabindranath Tagore:
A mind all logic
is like a knife all blade.
The hand that uses it will bleed.
Albert Einstein:
Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
Marcel Proust:
The voyage of discovery lies not in finding new landscapes but in having new eyes.
Claude Debussy:
Works of art make rules; rules do not make works of art.
Thomas Merton:
There comes a time when it is no longer important to prove one’s point, but simply to live, to surrender to God and to love.
Albert Einstein:
Imagination is more important than knowledge.
Jack Rebney (the Winnebago man):
I don't want any more bullshit from anyone and that includes me.
Great Book To Have
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