Human Life

Further to the previous post - my observation is that in her 20s a female is able to use her physical characteristics to attract partners. Once she goes into her 30s she needs to rely more on her character. Unfortunately, many women endowed with positive and powerful physical characteristics don't feel any need to invest in that, until it's too late...

Its seems that religion is not immune to evolutionary pressures...

If people are straying from the church, he says, it’s the church’s fault for not doing a “better job.”

“There’s a lot to be done to make worship more vibrant and to make the preaching more relevant for people,” he says. “Religion is not just ideas, it’s the bonds of community, and if you get so [insular] that you don’t hold people, you have a problem.”

- Why some Americans mix Christianity, Eastern religions, Christian Science Monitor

Another great quote from the article:

Others, though, argue that religious purity is a non sequitur.

“The thing that is forgotten in these discussions is that any single religious tradition is itself already a composite,” says Harvey Cox, a professor at the Harvard Divinity School whose 1965 book, “The Secular City,” is considered a theology classic. He considers the idea of isolated religious traditions to be “a big myth.”

“What we have are streams that have been fed by other streams and have fed other streams all along,” he says. “Even what is advertised by clerical leaders as the kind of ‘pure package’ is already the result of the collage.”

Dr Harvey Cox was a contributor to "Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna: Five Distinguished Scholars on the Krishna Movement in the West".

Vasu Murti has an article by Dr Cox on his site: “A SOURCE OF INSPIRATION”: Krishna Consciousness and the Judeo-Christian Tradition -
A Guide to Interfaith Discussion.

Actually, it's Sitapati and David Jorm on Sex and Marriage, but "Sitapati on Sex" has a better ring to it.

This week's podcast episode now available for download:

• Sex and Marriage - December 12, 2009

Both Ananda Subramanian and Gauranga Kishore wrote blog posts about sex and spirituality recently.

Coincidentally, this is part of the topic of the live podcast that David Jorm and I are doing this Saturday at 10 am AEST ("Sex, Marriage and ISKCON"). You can tune in here. You can also contribute via facebook, twitter, or by phone - (+61 431 929 675).

For my ten cents for today: Ananda, Kama-sutra seems to indicate to me that sex for pleasure (including sex acts that do not produce offspring) has always been part of Indian civilisation, as is the case with all human societies, and in fact with all mammals. As you point out, however, chemical contraceptives have not.

Sex for pleasure and sex for procreation are not necessarily contradictory. In fact, both are mentioned together in the Bhagavatam:

Thereupon, for sexual pleasure, begetting offspring and tasting heavenly nectar, the Lord developed the genitals, and thus there is the genital organ and its controlling deity, the Prajāpati. The object of sexual pleasure and the controlling deity are under the control of the genitals of the Lord.
- Srimad Bhagavatam 2.10.26

Here are the kirtans from tonight, recorded with just a pair of Behringer N2 condenser mics, with a little bit of stereo compression from a dbx 166xl:

• Krishnafest kirtans from Saturday September 2009

the link should be fixed now

Leading tonight were: Vraja Dhama; Daya Maya; Krishnapada; Sitapati; Prema Yogi; Sitapati (or something like that)

Enjoy!

The part about plant consciousness is around 22:00.

We had a parallel program for children during yesterday's Maha Kirtan.

Organisation and execution was headed by Tulasi devi dasi, Krishnapada's wife.

It started at 1pm with an outdoor picnic for the kids. At this point there were not so many. However, those who were there had something to eat, and their parents could attend the kirtan from the beginning.

In December 2006 I visited my mother back in Auckland, New Zealand. Prahlad and I went to church with her on Sunday morning. After the worship (singing) part of the service, all the kids went to Sunday School. I took Prahlad there, and observed that the first thing they did was give the kids a biscuit and something to drink. It ensures that you don't have to deal with empty stomachs and disturbed minds. If they are not hungry, they won't eat. If they are hungry, you'll be glad they ate...

Mother Tulasi and helpers. Bhakticandrika and Caru Mukhi did face painting for the children through the afternoon.

The children did a different activity every 30 minutes. One of the activities was "cooking" - mixing up the ingredients for muffins (which were then taken away and baked) and decorating some cookies. The baked muffins were then offered and returned for another prasadam slot later in the afternoon.

There was a balance between indoor, sedentary activities, such as this art and craft session; and outdoor activities. Variety stimulates interest.

In this shot local Tae Kwon Do instructor Jaya Vijaya gives a 30 minute self defense lesson to the kids. A former Australian Tae Kwon Do champion, Jaya Vijaya's Hanuman Self Defense school is covered in a feature article in the current issue of "Back to Godhead" magazine (Do or Die with Jaya Vijaya).

The kids also had a singing / music workshop with local pandit Diwakar; a treasure hunt; and races (sack race, three-legged race, potato and spoon race)

At various times the children joined the kirtan party for 20 minutes. Whether you're leading the kirtan, giving a class, or organising a kids program - the principle is the same: "Always leave 'em wanting more". Generally speaking, it's better to give measured small doses that inspire and increase enthusiasm than to put out a flame by pouring a whole bucket on it at once.

Bhakticandrika designed this certificate, and each child was given a certificate for attendance. The blank space is for placing stickers and stamps that they get for each activity. The idea is to make the experience as memorable and engaging as possible.

Just as facilitating the sound experience requires advance planning and preparation, to run an effective engaging kids program requires advance planning and coordinated effort:

Preparation for this program began two weeks beforehand, and many hours (and dollars) were spent in the days leading up to, and on the day itself, to prepare environments and experiences.

The more effort you put into preparation, the better able you are to facilitate an engaging experience transparently.

There are many great photos of the maha kirtan too. I'll do another post later, highlighting the different kirtans that took place on the day.

The photos above (with the blurry exception of the one of Jaya Vijaya, taken with my cellphone camera) were taken by Krishnapada and Ananta Vrndavan, and are hosted in their facebook accounts.

This is the fifth post in my series on Building a Krishna Conscious "Mega Church". See also the previously published Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5.

Note: Since I wrote this a couple of weeks ago, I've been thinking about various programs that we are doing here in different venues. In the case of the temple I think Children is Function 2 after sound. In the case of the Sunday Feast and Krishnafest at our house I think that Presentations is Function 2. This doesn't mean that one is more important than the other, it's just the order of implementation. In the case of the Sunday Feast, for example, Presentations is a low-hanging fruit. On the other hand there are not facilities for easily spinning up a Children's Program there. In the case of the temple, there are plenty of children, and potential facilities for a Children's Program, so there it's both easier, and a greater imperative.

Also, someone mentioned a kitchen in response to an earlier post, the one about Sound. I have put a kitchen in a separate category of functions, and we'll come back to it later. OK, on with today's show...

Function 2 - Children

I'm going to go out on a limb here and put Children as function 2, rather than Presentations. In places like Gaura Yoga [website] and the Loft [website] in New Zealand they focus on Sound and Presentations, and have no facility for children. That works fine as center for young, single people. But eventually those young, single people are going to become married couples with children, so they will need some facility.

That doesn't mean that Gaura Yoga and the Loft will have to transform, but the organization will have to build out its capability to service those needs in some facility.

Personally, in working within an existing community, I'm focusing on sound first, then children second, rather than presentations.

My friend Krishnapada put it like this: "If McDonalds have facilities for children I think we should too".

Think about this. Let's say that you have a facility to which 400 adults and youths will come at a time. Let's say that half of them are married couples. So that's 200 people, or 100 couples. Let's say that on average they have 1 child - some will have none, some will have two or three. That's 100 children for 400 people.

Of course you could have a facility that is not child-friendly, but that's hardly making it easy, is it?

Here are two other points:

1. People sometimes ask me why I am so enthusiastic in Krishna Consciousness. It's simple. When I was a kid my mother raised me reading the Bible, and then sent me every weekend and every school holiday to a Bible camp, school holiday program, or youth group event, where they poured resources, attention, and intention into the program and the children on it. If you want to influence the value structure of a generation of devotees then you have to look after the kids. If you want to keep recruiting first generation devotees who were raised as atheists, then don't worry about them.

2. If you want parents to come back, then you provide something for their kids. McDonalds understand this. Krishnapada told me that his 4 year old son Shyam points to McDonalds and says: "I want to go there", just from seeing it from the outside - he's never been in. It's so attractive. McDonalds understands: get the kids, and you get the parents. Now, if you can give the children a valuable formative experience based on solid moral principles and values, what parent is going to say no to that?

For children's facilities you actually need more personnel, energy, money, and planning than you do for the adults. Children require more diversity of activities and facilities. You cannot put 400 children together in a big room for an hour and deliver one experience for them all. They need to be segregated and provided with an age-appropriate experience.

At Buckhead Community Church, which has facility for 3000 adults, they have one auditorium for the adults, and four floors of facilities for the children.

Each of those floors contains age-appropriate facilities for children from toddlers through to teenagers. On the first floor for the younger children they have a small stage/auditorium area where they do a Wiggles-type presentation [wikipedia article on the Wiggles], before splitting the children into groups in rooms where they play with toys and do other activities. In this way they have both a large group experience and a small group experience each week.

You can see a bunch of pictures and a video that I took of the young children's facilities when I visited this church in 2007 here.

At Buckhead, which is one of Andy Stanley's churches, along with Northpoint Community Church, they understand that people have different needs at each phase of life, for example, as a child, as a new believer, as a newly-wed, as an adult, as a father, etc. They distill this down to three essential messages that they repeat the these people over and over again in a variety of ways. For the youngest children it boils down to: "God Loves Me. God Made Me. Jesus Wants to Be My Friend For Ever".

Taking a cue from this, each year since he turned 5, I've taught Prahlad an additional prayer that we recite each night before sleeping. We now recite four prayers together (actually 5, because I also taught him Our Lord's Prayer from the Bible). In these prayers I have encapsulated what I discern as the essential devotional philosophical underpinnings that are most appropriate for him to imbibe at that time.

The Maha Kirtan for Kids program [poster | program] here on September 13 is the beginning of this. We've got the sound system to a certain level now, and it's time to put some energy into our program for the children.

The current temple design that we are working with has zero, as in no facility for children. It's based on a design for a bunch of single people to cram into an ashram and go out until they flame out.

A purpose-designed facility has sufficient spaces to facilitate age-appropriate programs for the number of children who come based on the number of adults who are facilitated. The program that goes on in that facility needs to dedicate sufficient resources as in personnel and money to that program to make it work.

For the older youths there is a section upstairs, as mentioned previously, with their own sound system and stage, and also break out rooms for small group discussions. It's an expanded version of a Loft preaching center, like Gaura Yoga or the Loft in New Zealand.

Conclusion: Invest heavily in children's facilities and programming.

Next: Function 3 - Presentations.

This is the fifth post in my series on Building a Krishna Conscious "Mega Church". See also the previously published Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.

Function 1 - Sound

The first function that the facility has to facilitate (that's why it's called a facility - it's a form that makes a particular function easy) is the chanting of the Holy Name.

The environment must be designed around sound vibration - after all, this movement is meant to be all about sound. Forget about turning to India for state-of-the-art sound design. You can get your subject matter from there, but delivery is a Western contribution.

The main space has to be acoustically designed. This is a science, but it's not rocket science. Auditoriums are tuned for sound. The space needs to be designed from the get go for acoustics, or it needs to be repurposed with acoustic materials, such as baffles and acoustic panels.

Next, it needs to be wired for sound. The model here is any environment which is purposed for sound, such as an auditorium, a concert hall, a nightclub, etc. There needs to be a multicore running down the length of the facility, either under the floor on in the wall. A multicore is a huge snake cable with thirty or forty cables inside it.

You need a massive mixing desk, multi-band graphic eq for the room, compressors and multi-effects units, and a number of wireless rigs. Sound is what it's all about.

The thing about technology, and this is from years of personal experience, is that there is a sweet spot that you have to reach to take advantage of it. Before you get to that sweet spot the technology creates as much interference as it does benefit. Let me give you some examples: When your microphones keep feeding back, or the cable malfunctions unless it's held at an angle, or the output of your power amp doesn't scale sufficiently, your technology gets in the way as much as facilitates. When you lay down the bucks and have a graphic eq, noise gate, a compressor, and a wireless hypercardioid mic, all that goes away, and all you get is the crisp, clear sound of the message, with no distraction by the medium. When your singers can't hear themselves and strain to sing and miss notes, when your mrdanga player can't hear what's going on and misses a change, when there is too much treble in the sound reinforcement and not enough power (bass), when the sound distribution is uneven (loud at the front and inaudible at the back), when there are speakers or ugly stands between the people and the kirtan party, technology is not helping you. When you lay down the bucks and mount speakers out of line of sight at front and back with a 180 degree phase difference, with distributed subwoofers, and provide foldback for the performers with in-ear monitors with dedicated mixes, then all that goes away and all you get is the experience of the kirtan, with no distraction by the medium.

You have to spend big on this to make it happen, and when you do, the results are awesome. No-one but the most observant goes away saying: "Wow, did you see that they were using in-ear monitors?" The technology has reached the sweet spot and become transparent. They just go away saying: "That was the best kirtan ever!" If you introduce a low level of technology then people will notice it. They'll go away complaining about the microphone or the sound.

The facility needs a dedicated sound mixing area and sound engineers. I visited Buckhead Community Church in Atlanta, Georgia, where I participated in their morning worship service (you can check out my photos and videos of the opening service here). They had two engineers working a desk halfway back in the auditorium. Basically the design there was like any number of dedicated auditoriums that I played in in bands as a teenager. In a tour of the facility afterwards I was shown an area on the third floor where the youth have their own worship service with their own band. They had their own stage, own PA system with mixing console (all smaller than the main one, but much more developed than ISKCON temple I've seeen), and their own lighting rig.

I got my start in audio engineering at the Sandringham Baptist Church on end of my block on Mt Albert Rd in Auckland, New Zealand. The church sound man, Clem, gave a number of training sessions for interested persons in the congregation, to develop a sustained sound engineering capability for the church. When you see me rolling cables using that particular technique, that's his training.

Now you can say: well, there is no way that we can do all that. But guess what: it can be done, and I'm going to prove it.

A Culture of Music

Above I mentioned getting the subject matter for the sound. Of course, any sound system is going to be worthless without something to put through it. A zero amplified even a million times is still zero. Something out of time and out of tune just sounds worse when it's miked up.

In order to field a powerful experience for people, it's necessary to have a vibrant culture of music. This takes investment of resources - time, energy, and money.

Where you spend your money and time is where you will see growth. Creating a long-term culture of music takes short to medium term investment with no immediate return.

Quality instruments need to be purchased and maintained. Events and artists need to be sponsored. Cultural exchange needs to take place. Seminars need to be held.

Australia's biggest Christian megachurch, Hillsong [website], started life in 1983 as Hills Christian Life Centre. In 1986 they started an annual music conference, called Hillsong. By the early 90s this music conference had reached a stage of momentum where CDs were released. These CDs became wildly popular and the church rebranded itself as "Hillsong", since that was what they were known for.

When I visited Buckhead Community Church in Atlanta, Georgia in 2007 I met with the music director, a hip young guy in jeans carrying an electric guitar. When I told him I was visiting from Australia he revealed that he and three other members of the church band had just returned from a visit to Hillsong.

Conclusion: Invest in sound.

Tomorrow: Function 2 - Children.