Pariprashnena — Q&A Archive

I heard that in Australia in the early days there devotees used to offer Pepsi on the altar, before they knew better, and also hippies used to place their new jeans on the altar in San Francisco to offer to Krishna, but these practices were stopped by Srila Prabhupada.

Did devotees use to offer their bullock carts to the Deities in the old days? Or their horses? Ox carts? I dont remember hearing any such injunctions, but I dont know everything. Maybe the stories of Srila Prabhupada telling devotees not to offer Pepsi on the altar to the Deities belongs in the book of things that Srila Prabhupada never said?

We should offer everything to Lord Krishna. But I am not so sure that means we need to drag everything and anything to the temple and plop it all up on the Lords altar. Imagine the piles of computers, Ipods, and who knows what else! :)

The offer before use mentality is devotional, no doubt. What raises the alarm is the karma-kandiya tendency of the mislead hindu community given a scape in our temples in exchange of money or religious prestige on both parts.

...just where are these " car-puja " ceremonies taking place ?

Offer yourself to Krishna, and then everything else becomes His by extension. That is bhakti.

i never heard about this. are there any pictures online?

Many temples have vans or cars that are used for various services. I can understand "car puja" if the car is used for these purposes. However, If this is performed for donating members of the congregation, I can see how it would be viewed as a business.

I have seen it in many temples. Basically someone buys a new car and they bring it to the temple to get blessed. Maybe the mentality is offering it to Lord Krishna, I guess I never thought of it. But the whole ceremony of doing some puja and putting lemons under the wheels and breaking a coconut is kind of odd. Plus they usually use worship paraphelina from the deity room (usually what they worship Tulasi devi with).

I suppose in Vaishnava/Vedic tradition there are ceremonies for vehicles, breaking coconuts for a new ship or whatever, but I have seen the pujaris actually doing PUJA of the car. Maybe some pujaris need to explain to us.

I think my favorite of all was the beautiful picture of an "ATM machine puja" in one of ISKCON india temples.

Question what to do if local management organised it anyway?

" I have seen it in many temples " ...can you name three ?

I did one of those ceremonies :( in AU. A group of young indians came and asked for a puja for the car. I was offered a donation which I turned to the temple. I do not know exactly their intentions but I was sweeped somehow as I was the senior brahmana pujari at that time/spot.
I placed a Prabhupada picture in the bonnet and did a simple pooja.
I never saw a thing like that but after having a taste myself I would prefer to explain to the indians about how they have to chant hare krishna and be strict vegetarians and forget about watered-down karma-kanda thingys.

btw I found this:
http://hinduism.about.com/library/weekly/aa030403a.htm

crazy

Mishra:
Thanks for the link, perfect!
Call your local Hindu Temple and ask to set up an appointment.

is it Hindu, yes,
is it Vedic or Vaishnava, i dont know,

Any experts in puja tattva? Actually our ISKCON pujaris are sometimes very intelligent as Mishra prabhu said, to put a picture of Shrila Prabhupada and worship that in the car. Maybe that is what they are doing and I am just making offenses!

Seems to me the point of bhakti is missed by those who consider the idea of offering a car etc....my understanding is that if we are following the process correctly, our consciousness is such that we think of everything belonging to Krsna, including a car or ipod. In that way we use these things with the correct consciousness and do not become intangled in the "this is mine...for my enjoyment" mentality.

> hippies used to place their new jeans on the altar in San Francisco to offer to Krishna

Though the altar is not the right place, offering new clothes is specifically prescribed:

ataeva gautamambarisa-samvade'97
ambarisa navam vastram phalam annam rasadikam
krtva visnupabhuktam tu sada sevyam hi vaisnavaih

(Hari Bhakti Vilasa 9.343, from Visnu Smriti, conversation between Gautama Rsi and Ambarisa Maharaja)

A Vaisnava should always offer new clothes, fruits, grains, and juices to the Supreme Lord Visnu before he accepts them for himself.

Thats interesting Veda. Somehow or other I am on the Back to Prabhupada subscription list, although not one of them.

Did anyone see the new issue where the devotees in Germany dressed Krishna and Radharani up as Lord Shiva and Parvati for Shiva Ratri? I thought it was bad enough when pictures of Lord Shiva were hung up at ISKCON temples. Is this really supposed to be done? Where will it end? Will they dress Krishna as Ganesh next? I dont want to criticise but I would like to know what they were thinking and if that is the new standard now.

While Im on the topic, they seem to be saying that because there are eighty gurus now it is worse than when there were only eleven, even though Srila Prabhupada said to add more in the future I think. And they say there are less devotees now or something, even though there are four hundred temples compared to the one hundred that were around when Srila Prabhupada was here. I guess they are blaming ISKCON gurus for the lack of devotee followers. Since they think only they are "the real Hare Krishna Movement". They also say only Indians and Russians go to Gour Purnima now every year. Tell that to the American devotees in the community I live in. I plan on going to India myself sometime soon.

Im on that list too but I dont even open it. They send it to anyone they can get a snail mail address.

Dressing Deities must be regulated by acaryas and arcana manuals. Ive never heard about Sri Sri Radha-Krisna being dressed as Sri Sri Siva-Parvati. Pictures of Sri Siva are not a problem imho since he is a great Vaisnava. Dressing Krisna as Ganesa (hati vesa) is done on one day in Jagannath Puri. Again, Ive never heard if Prabhupada said anything about it in relationship to ISKCON.

If there are less devotees is hard to say since there are no official stats. Congregations are bigger in some places than in others. Certainly many other devotees go to Gaura Purnima. They will say whatever to denigrate ISKCON, you know.

What i witnessed was that ,they place pictures of Guru and Krishna and some dieties like Nrisimha on the car(below the front windscreen)and offer puja to the dieties.Not the car.the car does not even have conciousness.its a dead matter.
So tthe puja is offered to Krishna (on the car)not the car.
Offering puja to the car is completely bogus

I saw a car for sale once that Srila Prabhupada had ridden in. And one time I was in Bhubaneshwar, and the devotees all offered my guru a car(stop reading here if you dont want to hear this). He was about to go to Gada Giri. I was told to go into the car and we were surrounded by all the devotees. All you could see outside the window was a thousand devotees. I felt pressed in, like they could have picked up the car if they had wanted to. Even off in the most distant spaces I could see regular persons from Puri were stopping to see who was inside the car, my guru Gour Govinda Maharaja.

I got to ride in three other cars with my guru too. Once from LA to San Diego, once for a very short time in Kolkatta, and once in Washington the last time I ever saw him.