PADA: Recent update is -- more and more Ukraine civilians and non-combatants are hunkering in their basements, with no food, no water, no heat, and if they try to leave, they get shelled or shot. Not sure where all the devotees are in the mix here. Apparently some have left for Poland or elsewhere.
My advice is, get out if you can. You can always get new stuff ... but getting another new body is a lot more trouble than replacing your property. Not sure how the invading soldiers doing all this carnage are thinking they are going to make themselves look like the liberating heros they think they are. They certainly do not look like liberating helpers to most folks.
Killing people is of course the result of massive killing of animals, and it cannot really be checked because it is collective karma. At the same time, I feel bad for any types of devotees having to go through this mess, very tragic. Unfortunately, karma is all around us and within all of us, even us neophytes.
Srila Prabhupada says that the material world is -- danger at every step, and he is not kidding. Even here -- around San Francisco -- there are always many car wrecks on the freeway, various shootings and stabbings, drug overdoses, and basically people are getting severely hurt or killed every day. Very dangerous world everywhere. In sum, there is no safe place ultimately anywhere within the material energy.
Anyway, these folks survived to tell their story, goody. ys pd
Devotees' report from Kharkov, Ukraine:
Today by the grace of Krishna, we came to distribute krishna prasadam in the subway. Guys, it's just like in a movie of post-apocalypse. People live right on the floor. With dogs, cats, things.
On different types of bedding. Crowds of people. Sleep, chat, read books. They said there were 2,000 people in the subway station. There was a huge queue. We fed at least 500 people.
Today there was soup - 110 liters, drink of 2 types - 80 liters, a lot of bread of 2 types, 3 types of sweets. Oh, what an amazing bread we made. Fragrant, nice smells. Prabhupada's books were also handed out. Filming inside was prohibited. There are entire communities living inside the trains. This war brought these people together. They became like one family. We left and they simply clapped and thanked us very much. One guy is reading Bhagavad-gita right now. Another guy came up to us and asked for a book.
A lot of children. Everyone took sweets. I deliberately walked around the entire station and went into each train car to give food.
These are the situations that make many of us think about the meaning of life. If we ask the Lord to save our lives, then we must understand why? And who am I to save my life? Am I special? What have I done for the good of mankind? What have I done for the good of society? How do I live? Why do I live and for whom? This question hangs right in the air above each of us. I am asking the Lord to save my life not that I can just eat, sleep, go to the toilet, and spread hate and gossip on the Internet.
It must be preserved in order for me to bring values to society. I must bring value to God and to people. We have to strive to bring to others the light of knowledge and the values of life. Many are offended by war, but war is one of the aspects of this word. It teaches us to value our human life and not to waste it simply on animal needs. Man is not an animal. When a person begins to live like a beast, he is deeply dissatisfied and tries to settle down somewhere. War reminds us of the frailty of material existence.
War teaches us to appreciate those we love, to see the needs of others. And so we live in a cocoon of marginal consumer relations, where a person's life is needed only in order to satisfy their needs in a sophisticated way. And it loses its value. Under normal circumstances, these 2,000 people would never have become a family. War teaches us to appreciate life and enjoy the simple things. Yes. This is a tough training.
Mother nature already tried to inspire us naughty children with a whisper of love, then with the voice of conscience ... It didn’t work out. And now we need a mouthful of suffering. May it sparkle with fresh colors of love, kindness, joy, abundance, prosperity for that we will share with the world. Appreciate your life and help others understand its value. Then there will be no wars in the world. Material nature will not need to resort to such harsh methods of teaching. And this will be only when the Supreme Lord is pleased with us.
PADA: Crazy video of an old lady calling her relatives in Russia explaining that she is now in Poland and her house is blown up. And the relatives told her there are no houses being blown up there, she needs to see a psychiatrist. No one in Russia would ever come there to blow up her house, she must be hallucinating. Wow! Denial, ok just like ISKCON.
Repeating history?: HOLODOMOR : The famine-genocide of Ukraine, 1932-1933 In June of 1933, at the height of the Holodomor, 28,000 men, women and children in Ukraine were dying of starvation each day. The land that was known worldwide as the breadbasket of Europe was being ravaged by a man-made famine of unprecedented scale.
Stalin and his followers were determined to teach the Ukrainian people “a lesson they would not forget.” Tens of thousands of Ukraine’s intellectual, spiritual, and cultural leaders were arrested, some subjected to show trials and executed, most sent to prison labor camps, often resulting in death. Ukraine’s best farmers and their families were banished to remote territories, where many perished. Of those remaining, many resisted and staged fierce rebellions against the imposition of collectivization which would transfer not only all their property but their independence to the state. However, even though most eventually relented, Stalin’s government not only continued to increase quotas, but imposed severe new restrictions on travel in search of food, blockaded entire villages from receiving food, fuel or other necessities, and repeatedly sent out brigades of activists to raid rural households and remove anything edible.
While millions of people in Ukraine and in the mostly ethnically Ukrainian areas of the northern Caucasus were dying, the Soviet Union was denying the famine and exporting enough grain from Ukraine to have fed the entire population. For 50 years, surviving generations were forbidden to speak of it, until the Soviet Union was near collapse.
PADA: Crazy video of an old lady calling her relatives in Russia explaining that she is now in Poland and her house is blown up. And the relatives told her there are no houses being blown up there, she needs to see a psychiatrist. No one in Russia would ever come there to blow up her house, she must be hallucinating. Wow! Denial, ok just like ISKCON.
ReplyDeleteRepeating history?: HOLODOMOR : The famine-genocide of Ukraine, 1932-1933
ReplyDeleteIn June of 1933, at the height of the Holodomor, 28,000 men, women and children in Ukraine were dying of starvation each day. The land that was known worldwide as the breadbasket of Europe was being ravaged by a man-made famine of unprecedented scale.
Stalin and his followers were determined to teach the Ukrainian people “a lesson they would not forget.” Tens of thousands of Ukraine’s intellectual, spiritual, and cultural leaders were arrested, some subjected to show trials and executed, most sent to prison labor camps, often resulting in death. Ukraine’s best farmers and their families were banished to remote territories, where many perished. Of those remaining, many resisted and staged fierce rebellions against the imposition of collectivization which would transfer not only all their property but their independence to the state. However, even though most eventually relented, Stalin’s government not only continued to increase quotas, but imposed severe new restrictions on travel in search of food, blockaded entire villages from receiving food, fuel or other necessities, and repeatedly sent out brigades of activists to raid rural households and remove anything edible.
While millions of people in Ukraine and in the mostly ethnically Ukrainian areas of the northern Caucasus were dying, the Soviet Union was denying the famine and exporting enough grain from Ukraine to have fed the entire population. For 50 years, surviving generations were forbidden to speak of it, until the Soviet Union was near collapse.