ISKCON Adds a Center in Thailand,
Reprints Thai Books by Srila Prabhupada
Bangkok Hare Krishna Food for Life now makes trips to the Thai-Cambodia border here to feed Cambodian refugees. Also underway is a weekly program of food distribution at orphanages and schools.
Recently, the devotees opened a preaching center and invited Phawin Ransibrahmanakul, the head priest to the royal family, to be the honored guest. An adjunct to the established temple, the new center will serve especially as a place for dinners with businessmen, administrators, and scholars.
Devotees here are increasing their distribution of literature with the reprinting of Thai editions of Srila Prabhupada's Beyond Birth and Death and The Golden Avatar.
Church Advised to Follow the Devotees
Sydney Dianne Feeney, a guest speaker at a national conference here of Catholic clergy, told the assembly that if they wanted to counteract the decline in the number of Catholics, they had better take to the streets, as the members of the Hare Krsna movement do.
Catholic leaders in Australia have expressed much concern that young people often have a negative view of orthodox faiths, seeing them as "irrelevant" and "too institutionalized." Feeney, who is the academic dean of the Churches of Christ Theological College, spoke in favor of a new approach.
"Eastern religions like the Hare Krsna movement," said Feeney, "are getting out into the street where young people are…. They meet them in their own territory and accept them in their own territory, then set out to reform certain types of behavior and inculcate a certain moral code."
Ms. Feeney also presented findings that twenty-five percent of the Australians accept the idea of reincarnation.
Devotees Feed Quake Victimes in Mexico
The earthquakes in Mexico City in September left unscathed two ISKCON centers. Devotees at Centro Cultural Govinda distibuted prasadam (food offered to Krsna) to thousands of the homeless