This is Kevin, a cool guy I met at our temple in San Diego. He at the time worked at Lucky D’s hostel in downtown. He helped us place our newspaper rack in the hostel.

Lots of great news from your favorite program, Sastra Dana!!!

Our publication, 16 Rounds to Samadhi newspaper, has been growing. We now print 30,000 copies per issue. That is 10,000 copies more than what we used to print. We are now making significant presence in the streets and shopping malls of San Diego and Los Angeles. Our newspaper racks can be found at almost every health food store in San Diego and numerous other places.

Our goal is to print 100,000 copies per issue. It costs $2,300 to print 30,000 copies. So far the printing costs have been covered by the donations of our readers. Thank you.

To further increase the growth of this operation we will need more funding. The plan is to sell ad space in the newspaper. To sell ads, we need to be visually present in public. That involves having hundreds of our newspaper racks all over the city.

Racks are of two kinds: wire and metal or plastic outdoor racks. Wire racks cost $25 a piece. Plastic outdoor racks cost $80 a piece. Metal outdoor racks cost $250 a piece. At the time we are barely covering the paper’s printing cost. We absolutely have no funds for purchasing racks. Any donations you make towards the purchase of racks will greatly help.

To cope with this problem we’ve been searching out abandoned racks, restoring them, painting our logo on them, and putting them back in the streets, now loaded with our publication. In this way we are hopping to make the needed visual presence in order to provoke interest of business to advertise in our publication.

We are also going to incur about $1,000 in legal fees to obtain all the needed permits for placing our racks in public.

Krishna consciousness is meant to change and uplift the world. We have lots to offer to the world and particularly to the fellow American. The content of our newspaper is precious, invaluable, and urgently needed by the people. We wish to make at least as much presence in public, if not more, than the City Beat and San Diego Reader for example.

We hope you are sharing the same vision and want to join the spiritual revolution.

• Plastic outdoor racks cost $80 a piece.
• Wire racks cost $25 a piece.
• To print 30,000 copies of our newspaper costs $2,300.
• Make a DONATION

Our newspaper rack at Lucky D's hostel in downtown San Diego.

This is what the racks look like when we get them.

And this is what they look like when we fix them.

Some of our racks. They are waiting to be distributed in public places.

Sastra Dana's newspaper at Von's gas station in Pacific Beach, San Diego.

Sastra Dana's newspaper at Von's gas station in Pacific Beach, San Diego.

Sastra Dana's newspaper on Garnet Ave. in Pacific Beach, San Diego.

This rack is located in Ocean Beach, San Diego, by the People's store.

This rack is located in Ocean Beach, San Diego, on Newport ave.

Newport Ave in Ocean Beach, San Diego.

plastic & wire racks

• Plastic outdoor racks cost $80 a piece.
• Wire racks cost $25 a piece.
• To print 30,000 copies of our newspaper costs $2,300.
• Make a DONATION

Sastra Dana’s publication, 16Rounds to Samadhi, is one of the very few printed materials produced to reach out to the non-devotee audiences. The latest issue, issue five, is printing as we speak (type). Here you can preview it before it hits the streets of San Diego and Los Angeles, bringing people spiritual education. To sponsor printing and distribution of 16Rounds, CLICK HERE.

 

For the past several days we’ve been graced by the presence of His Holiness Danavir Goswami. While down here in San Diego, Maharaja noticed our publication, the 16Rounds to Samadhi newspaper. He enquired about it from us, looked at it, and saw the newspaper racks that are being placed by Sastra Dana all over the city of San Diego and, on somewhat smaller scale, in Los Angeles. Maharaja was very excited about this program and our publication and stated the following (see video):

“The Smell” is a club in Los Angeles downtown. It seems to be a place of gathering for artists, musicians, youth, and creative folks.

For the past several weeks I’ve been corresponding on facebook with a fellow who just turned eighteen. He has become a devotee of Krishna and that is what we had in common and what brought us together on facebook. After corresponding with him for weeks I eventually found out that one of his first contacts with Krishna consciousness was a book he found at The Smell, this club in downtown Los Angeles. Guess what! The book was placed there by Sastra Dana!!! Woohoo!

Srila Prabhupada often said that our books are like time bombs. Once they are distributed, they are just waiting to go off and create a spiritual revolution in the harts of their readers.

4.0 Deli is a restaurant/bar close to the San Diego State University and it is a popular hang-out place for the SDSU students. Sastra Dana has a newspaper rack there. In these photos you will see Radhika Devi Dasi and a fellow that Radhika and Rohini found at the restaurant. He was reading our publication.

Radhika Devi Dasi

Radhika and a 16Rounds reader/admirer

Radhika and a 16Rounds reader/admirer

inside the 4.0 Deli restaurant

This visitor to the 4.0 Deli restaurant is holding our publication.

4.0 Deli restaurant

Serigo Canela & Rohini DD

VIDEO:

16 Rounds To Samadhi is a Sastra Dana publication, a newspaper.

We have a newspaper rack in front of Henry’s in Pacific Beach, San Diego. Henry’s is is one the largest health food stores in San Diego and, as you can see, our rack is right by the entrance door.

We tried several times to put a book rack in this store and it was honestly very difficult. We were turned down, one time after another. That is where the beauty of the newspaper is. Basically the content of our newspaper is identical with the content of our books. The difference is that the content of the newspaper is packaged differently. It’s graphics and design make it look contemporary, doesn’t have that religious look and feel to it. Nowadays lots of people are put off by religion. As I said, we tried to put a book rack in this store many times but it just never worked. However the store managers didn’t have a problem with having us distribute our newspaper at the store’s entrance off our newspaper racks.

This is truly wonderful. How much more wonderful can it get, that our publication, a Hare Krishna publication, is available at such popular, mainstream places? This place, for example, Henry’s, is super busy. If you watch the video you will notice vehicles coming and going, constantly. So many of these people now have a chance to read a Krishna conscious information, a wisdom lacking in these modern times.

Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, Henry’s, Ralph’s, and many more such places carry our publication. This is something we previously were not able to accomplish with book racks. I think this is a grand success for the mission of Srila Prabhupada and that of Lord Caitanya Mahaprabhu.

So please plug in, help out. There is much more to do. We have a hundred or so racks out there and we could have thousands of racks carrying our publications. We should have no difficulty competing with San Diego’s reader, LA Times, City Beat, etc. But we need help, your help. We need help financially. You can donate money for this cause. If you have some talents, skills, you could help in that way. We need graphic designers, illustrators, people that can draw comics, people who can write, people that are good with editing English, etc.

CONTACT US to volunteer, plug in, and help the mission.

To make a DONATION, click here.

Thank you. Hare Krishna.

Rohini Mataji manages this rack.

Sergio Canela is Rohini's assistant.

We have just published the fourth issue of the 16 Rounds to Samadhi newspaper. We’ve printed 20,000 copies, plenty to feed the numerous racks we have in San Diego and Los Angeles. Preview it here:

To make a donation towards printing of the 16Rounds newspaper, click this icon:

To learn more about this shot CLICK HERE.