Kirtan with First United Methodist Church's Confirmation Students

Every we are visited a blissful group of young students from the ages of 7-13 along with their supportive parents and youth leaders.  The students and parents always ask very nice and intriguing questions following by a lovely kirtan.

After the program we always get a lot of thanks about how they enjoyed the presentation and everything else.

Father of the Fallen–Experimental space hip-hop video about Śrīla Prabhupāda

Prabhupāda–Father of the Fallen

Surrendering to your love
by your mercy I find a treasure of pastimes
our heart and soul cannot find 
a love in the morning sky
no fire no moon no stars compare to your loving arms
father of the fallen
deliver me from misery
revealing and speaking through hearts
your light shot right through the dark
dispelling the lifetimes within me
destroying all of my ignorance
detangle me from this flesh and thought
I disengage from this burning world
Bryan Hamilton (Bhagavan Narada Das) w/ Courtney
Video by Kavi das.
Bryan Hamilton is an american producer and musician born in Corpus Christi, Texas and based in San Antonio. He released a total of 6 projects (2 mixtapes and 4 albums) in 2011 independently under his "Dreamland Collective" inprint. Most notably is his self produced compilation of SA's finest vocalists entitled: "Welcome To Dreamland". Which placed #2 on San Antonio Current's best albums of 2011

Unboxing of 2nd set of Nava-Vraja-Mahimā by Śivarāma Swami

Parenting tip: clean up is million times more fun with kirtan

She usually loathes clean up

Kirtan Dance class at Irma Rangel Leadership School For Girls

After our Kirtan and Drum show in the auditorium we invited kids for face painting and kirtan dance class in the cafeteria.

Full story on ISKCON New - ISKCON Dallas Visits Young Women’s Leadership School

Kirtan for 500 students at Irma Rangel Leadership School

After the mrdanga presentation of Kalindi and Sri Rupa, Advaita Acarya Das gets the crowd involved as they spontaneously rush the stage and dance.
featuring an appearance by Giriraj Swami!

Full story on ISKCON News - ISKCON Dallas Visits Young Women’s Leadership School

Ekadasi–the first Hare Krishna Zombie short film

Many are familiar with the Hare Krishna Zombie movie Dharmageddon featuring the devotees of the San Antonio.  But years before this movie hit the box office there was another.  A short inspired by the mind of Jagannatha Puri Dham Das.  This short is for all of those who are watching the clocks tick by this fasting day. 

ISKCON Member Opens Council Briefing With Sanskrit Verse

Last year I was invited again to do the invocation prayer for the City Council of Dallas on behalf of Mayor Tom Leppert.  You can see the previous years invocation here.  

Gaura Purnima Afternoon

The afternoon the beautiful kirtans continued. I had the pleasure of interviewing members of the the Rock/Metal band Karma from San Antonio. They came up to Dallas on a excursion with the brahmacaris from San Antonio headed by Advaita Acyarya Prabhu.

Woodrow Dance Party and AZITIZ

Woodrow High School came to the temple today for a field trip. Woodrow is a local public school about 5 minutes from Kalachandji's Some of the devotees go to the school as well.

First we gave them a very short introduction to Srila Prabhupada and the temple. Then Haridas started it off with a short bhajan. After that bhajan we taught them the Maha Mantra so that they could sing along. After everyone was singing we then had some dance lessons, Swami Step, then as the kirtan progressed we all just went wild.

Then we had a great lunch in the restaurant with questions and answers. This was followed by a photo shoot outside in front of Tamal Krishna Goswami's Samadhi
As the students got on the bus they all remarked about how much fun that they had.  One girl said, "I going to be singing that song (Hare Krishna Maha Mantra) all day long." another student wrote me this, "i liked it. it was the best part of the field trip"



After the school visit I was pleasantly surprised to see Lalita Garrett, hip hop star of AZITIZ. http://www.myspace.com/spiritsoulja  She was on tour in Dallas for hip hop shows.  She lead a wonderful kirtan accompanied by Sri Rupa who originally learned mrdanga from her.  She said it was her first time playing harimonium in 4 years. 
Kalachandji Kirtan

AZITIZ -X2U

AZITIZ - Aishman Baba

Halloween Block Party Maha Harinam Kirtan 2009

(led by Caitanya Chandra Das, and HH Giriraja Swami)

(led by Nityananda Chandra Das)

About 100,000 people every year attend this event in Oak Lawn, the gay & lesbian district of Dallas Texas.   Each year thousands upon thousands of Martians, animals, zombies, presidents, popes, cartoon characters, seasons, babies, and so on joined in singing and dancing in the kirtan.  


His Holiness Giriraj Swami, who drove in from Houston to attend this event, remarked in the Sunday feast class that everyone is getting Krishna mercy through the Holy Names.  That the souls of the ancient Romans, and Vikings and so many other types of beings are out there now in so many new bodies.   They are now appreciating the holy name. 

His Grace Mishra Bhagavan said,  "I heard in a class that Srila Prabhupada gave in New York 1976 that once someone dances in the harinam sankirtan Krishna takes note of it and makes sure that person soon goes back home, back to Godhead."


I had to leave at midnight but the rest of the devotees stayed to 2:30 am.  Haridas took the kirtan to another level after we had left.  He gave out several dance orders of "throw your hands in the air"  "squat of the ground," "Now jump up high" and several others that the crowd obediently followed. At this time the crowd dancing with the devotees was in the hundreds.  The police at that time asked the devotees to stop, telling them that the festival is supposed to end at 2am and that if the devotees did not stop their kirtan no one would leave.  


One of the dancers, Frankie Hart, took the following photos.

, originally uploaded by frankie hart.

, originally uploaded by frankie hart.

, originally uploaded by frankie hart.

, originally uploaded by frankie hart.

, originally uploaded by frankie hart.

Originally uploaded by frankie hart

, originally uploaded by frankie hart.

, originally uploaded by frankie hart.

Your humble servant,
Nityananda Chandra Das

Here is a video that an onlooker caught on camera last year.

How to build the King of the Hill, Giriraja Govardhana out of cake.

Every is big in Texas, each year we have an 8ft carob cake for Govardhana Puja / Diwali Festival.  But it seems that the hill gets  bigger every year.  

We are little spoiled here in Dallas.  Years before devotees noticed that if the hill was made out of carob cake rather than the usual halava it was more likely to get devoured faster.   Not in the mood wasting the Lord precious food, carob cake is the steady staple.


So how to build a massive hill out of cake?  
Well unless you have 5,000+ people you will need some filler. First we start off with an 8 ft by 4ft board covered  in tinfoil.
   Then  we take sheets of Styrofoam boards and cut away at them to make it look sort of like an Aztec pyramid.  Cover the whole thing with tinfoil.  
Bake about 30 trays of soft carob cake and make about a gallon of frosting.  Followed by 2 gallons of halava to cover the ground level and touch ups.
   Cover the whole hill with cake cement all the building blocks (cakes) with frosting.  Then cover every thing with green colored coconut flakes as grass.  Then you can take baked crust to be the beds of lakes and fill them with blue sweet rice pudding.  Decorate the entire hill with all sorts of inedible animals, and edible vegetation.  Then underneath the hill you can make a Vrindavan village as seen in the video blow.

Here is the finish product. We ended up with about 900+ guests and about 30 students from Mountain View College who came to View Govardhana Mountain. 

Hare Krishna
Your humble servant,
Nityananda Chandra das

Valentine's Day - the day I became a monk

In 1999 on Valentine's Day I decided to join the temple as a full time brahmacari, a full time monk. So actually Valentine's day is one the most important day of my life.

This years Valentine's Day was also a great blessing. Our temple was blessed with association of His Holiness Indradyumna Swami as well as his famous disciple Sri Prahlad Prabhu. They were both guests of honor at our TKG Academy fundraiser. This event was wonderful. It first began with an amazing play by the youth of the gurukula. This play, His Holiness Bhaktimarga Swami is called "The Witness", it is the story of Lord Sakshi Gopal who is portrayed very nicely by Sakshi Gopal Das

This was followed by a great mrdanga presentation by Virabhadra, Sri Rupa, Haridas, and Kapil. This is the first time that had ever even done such a presentation.

Then His Holiness Indradyumna Swami spoke for about 15 minutes about the significance of gurukula, Krishna Conscious schooling which was then followed by amazing feast featuring foods from six different international festivals, Christmas, Kwanzaa, Hanuka, Diwali, Ramadan, and Chinese New Year.

This dinner was made more delightful by the wonderful kirtan led by Sri Prahlad Prabhu which is found on the on the top of the blog. Enjoy! Anandam buddhi vardanam!
Hare Krishna
Your humble servant,
Nityananda Chandra Das
ps. If anyone would like to see more videos or get DVD it can found here http://Rupa.com also to learn more about His Holiness Indradyumna Swami and his transcentental adventures please see http://www.traveling-preacher.com

ps.s see Benloka's new Valentine's video about "What is Love" an interview with His Holiness Jayadvaita Swami

Office in the Sky

Just finished installing our live video in our temple room. Rupa Madhurya Prabhu of Rupa.com was the brains and I was the brawn of the project. This is me setting up office about 30 feet up in our temple room. It took a lots of trials and errors as there are so many minute things that can go wrong. On Monday we spent about 6 hour straight but with no success. We purchased a device that transfers the internet via the powerlines. This however seemed unstable due to the distance between the office and temple room and because of the power surges caused by our heavy duty air conditioning/heating unit. Then the router that we were using was having difficulties. Rupa configured our two internet connections to run on the same system, but dedicated the second connection to only serve the camera and radio. This is our temple room schedule.

The altar is open from:

4:30 AM - 5:00 AM

7:00 AM - 11:00 AM

12: 00 PM - 12:30 PM

4:00 PM - 7:00 PM

8:00 PM - 8:45 PM

*Central Standard Time (CST)

enjoy!!
Your humble servant,
Nityananda Chandra Das


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