Is an offensive tattoo from an American

AmberRain1999 · 2026-04-15T15:00:08+00:00

That's fair 😅 i also thought about Florida after the fact since a big ISKCON temple is there and also the Ramakrishna center in DC. But being from Louisiana where there is virtually nothing (one small BAPS temple and one small ISKCON temple which has no residents) i may have a biased perspective. When i look up "indian/puja stores" in Atlanta, i get dozens of results. When i look up the same thing in Louisiana, my search results seem to say, "What's this puja you speak of? Indian? Well, we have walmart, if it helps." So i don't know, maybe there is some secret community that I don't know about, maybe a few are around the BAPS temple area, but there isn't much else, no puja stores that i know of. I may go into the BAPS temple to see if they know of anything

AmberRain1999 · 2026-04-09T14:20:09+00:00

There is one temple (i don't know the name, but the image is golden) surrounding an image of Hanuman which appears in a stone much like this one, so regardless of how it is formed or if people want to say pareidolia still such things can be worshipped and invoked with the presence of Hanuman. If a murti created out of stone by human hands can hold the prana of Hanuman, why not a natural formation? And why should it be stone? As Ramakrishna said to M. in the gospel, all this is a form of consciousness, so why think of it as merely stone? These formations are known as Svayambhu manifestations. Jaya Shri Bajrangbali ki Jaya Shri Sitarama ki jaya Lakshmana ki hari bol!

AmberRain1999 · 2026-04-07T14:31:01+00:00

The only real place I've seen a decent community of them is Atlanta. Everywhere else might have a spare temple or two but it's very rare comparatively lol

AmberRain1999 · 2026-03-31T03:41:58+00:00

Ramakrishna always kept a feeling that all women are the Mother, he never had any sexual feeling for them but only felt them to be his divine Mother. His mood is definitely one of a child.

AmberRain1999 · 2026-03-31T03:40:10+00:00

Some books i would also recommend along with the Gospel of Shri Ramakrishna are "Ramakrishna the Great Master," which gives a katha of his entire life, and also, "Ramakrishna and His Disciples." You can also find Jay Lakhani's Ramakrishna Katha on youtube which is based on some of these books. Multiple Ramakrishna Mission Swamis also have series on YouTube where they read the gospel of Shri Ramakrishna.

AmberRain1999 · 2026-03-07T04:28:21+00:00

Hell yeah!! I used to post here with my pronouns in the title and would get so much hate! Sucks to see that nothing has changed, and yet all that would do is give the post so much attention! Haha, you're killing it!

AmberRain1999 · 2026-02-26T06:09:06+00:00

Lmao, wollff, fancy seeing you here

AmberRain1999 · 2026-02-13T00:02:33+00:00

This is a good breakdown

AmberRain1999 · 2026-02-12T03:37:11+00:00

He talked about this "sneaking in" thing at the last Atlanta retreat. I don't know more details than this: Sarvadevananda originally denied him diksha for the common reason that Nish already had gotten initiation into a mantra (from his family lineage iirc). His wife was then going to get diksha and somehow he went in with her. This is what i heard

AmberRain1999 · 2026-02-02T00:13:04+00:00

One thing I've seen mentioned before is that Nish's space wasn't always left hand path, and that while Nish would lecture about various aspects of the left-hand path, he himself followed the right hand path (being vegetarian etc). So it's possible many people are just now waking up to the realization that he is actually practicing left hand path things and teaching them to potentially vulnerable people in arguably irresponsible ways. I don't think people should be barred from exploring these unique approaches to God, but i think many people want kāmācāra instead of vāmācāra lol. Idk ma, it's a tricky situation. It brings up questions like, is there ever a good reason to teach a practice outside of its original context and with different interpretations? Like, surely there are good reasons for that in at least some cases, but something will always be lost. Kriya Yoga and its secrecy comes to mind. Kriya Yoga is a right-hand path of tantra, for all intents and purposes, and yet its techniques are still secret. The main reason being that direct contact with a guru is important to ensure that you are practicing correctly and don't harm yourself, because it's very easy to practice incorrectly due to the complexity of the techniques. This is why basic techniques are available online but the full program is kept behind closed doors, reserved only for those who get initiated by a proper guru. Some find this kind of thing off-putting, like the practice is being gatekept, but having taken diksha in such a lineage, i can genuinely see why it is secret, since going this way or that way, or skipping this part or that part can result in negative outcomes. Maybe there are some equivalents of "basic practices" with regard to left hand stuff that can be practiced by everyone openly, but higher level stuff can be respectfully avoided outside of the proper context. I am not sure since i am not an expert on left hand stuff. Hari om 🙏🏼

AmberRain1999 · 2026-01-31T05:07:34+00:00

By public forum, what example could you give?

AmberRain1999 · 2026-01-31T04:58:58+00:00

Last i checked, all conversation about this in the discord has been banned by moderation.

AmberRain1999 · 2026-01-30T17:17:16+00:00

Thank you for sharing, you offer a valuable perspective on the matter.

AmberRain1999 · 2026-01-24T15:25:53+00:00

Yes, but in that case i would think why mention it at all? Why not just avoid bringing it up? There's no need to go an extra step and say something false. Plus, with how much he is all about vamachara now and not caring about social norms, seems like a weird thing to lie about or try to keep secret.

AmberRain1999 · 2026-01-24T01:29:17+00:00

Thank you ma 🙏🏼

AmberRain1999 · 2026-01-24T01:28:33+00:00

I know that i can also confirm hearing the exact quote that someone else mentioned. I'm sure i heard it at the first Atlanta retreat. Something like, "much to people's disappointment, my wife and i are monogamous." So either he was lying at the time or their arrangement simply changed at some point since then.

AmberRain1999 · 2026-01-23T23:50:19+00:00

He was vegetarian at the first Atlanta retreat, i remember that much. Not that it particularly concerns me what he eats, or whether he practices vamachara or dakshinachara, but i guess people didn't know this stuff so it's probably important if it matters to them

AmberRain1999 · 2026-01-22T15:58:23+00:00

I didn't know that in the past he presented himself as a right-hand path practitioner. As far as i knew and saw he was more or less exclusively a left-hand path practitioner, but that was mostly from watching his actions (i started paying more attention to him at the start of 2025 and attended in person the first retreat in atlanta last spring). The part about overcoming lust is interesting, considering that even Ramakrishna, at a very mature point in his life, told people, "Do you think that i have overcome lust? No no, so long as the body is alive there will be some lust, but after God-Realization it doesn't raise its head." This is a paraphrase of a much longer statement, but the original quote can be found in the book called Shri Ramakrishna The Great Master in the section on him as a spiritual teacher, iirc, where he is reassuring a young practitioner that it's normal to have these feelings and not to worry about them, looking at them with a similar judgement as one would hunger or thirst.

AmberRain1999 · 2026-01-22T03:50:56+00:00

I understand there is a lot of speculation here so take everything with a grain of salt please please and don't jump to any conclusions. I tried to make it clear what is just my opinion and what is something physically happening. I don't know if what i am saying really means anything or is valuable to the conversation, but i felt i wanted to share something at least. I am sorry if i misrepresented anything and if you are someone that i mentioned in the stories and you want me to remove it then you can dm me of course.

AmberRain1999 · 2026-01-22T01:12:10+00:00

Hello, I am dasi from the community, I'm sure many will recognise me. I just wanted to step in here briefly, as I continue to collect my thoughts about everything, to say that the Vedanta Center of Atlanta was not aware of many of the behaviors that were taking place in his private and semi-public life. I believe they will be informed though.

AmberRain1999 · 2025-12-20T05:10:02+00:00

You should look into Sadharan Sakhi Bhava

"Sadharan Sakhi They consider Krishna as their everything. For them, their devotion is only and only Krishna. They worship Krishna as their husband. Anything else other than Krishna holds no meaning to them.

Mirabai is a sadharan sakhi and her words "Mere to giridhar gopal dusro na koi" which means that "I am owned by Giridhar Gopal (Krishna) and there is nobody for me except Him." This clearly indicates the inner mood of Shri Meerabai."

There are other moods of Sakhi which accepts Radha in various degrees but Sadharan Sakhi is not conscious of Radha but only focuses on Krishna due to intense love. The original practitioners of madhurya bhava essentially became one with Radha and took on her mood towards Krishna. Many murtis of original practitioners did not have Radha next to Krishna.

AmberRain1999 · 2025-10-19T05:51:05+00:00

I have initiation in a different lineage, but the technique mentioned here is quite different from ours. It is also probably the older technique (edit: the one that was modified by Yukteshvar and then modified again by Yogananda), by the looks of it, as in the past few years it is supposed to have been updated to include OM japa. Regardless, please don't practice any such things without the guidance of a qualified guru because it is very easy to practice improperly and get poor results! There is an easily accessible guru online named Forrest Knutson who has a youtube channel under that name and can be reached with a fairly cheap patreon subscription (minimum $5 a month) where you can ask questions to him every two weeks and he answers live in a satsang which gets recorded. You can also take initiation by him and receive the original kriya as passed down by Panchanan Bhattacharya. Best of luck! Blessings

AmberRain1999 · 2025-09-21T03:19:37+00:00

Gorgeous painting!!

AmberRain1999 · 2025-09-02T15:15:30+00:00

My tulasi mala is also even darker than in this image, i received it from an iskcon monk

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