Radha Krishna Deity Fund - Parsippany Temple

With immeasurable joy and elation in our hearts, we would like to share perhaps the most important milestone in our journey to build a new ISKCON temple in Parsippany.

For decades, many members of our temple community have had a sincere desire to worship deities of Sri Sri Radha Krishna. We received preliminary approval from ISKCON's Deity Worship Ministry to obtain and begin worship of deities of Sri Sri Radha and Krishna at our new temple, ISKCON Parsippany after discussions with the Deity Worship Ministry to develop a suitable and sustainable standard of worship for Their Lordships.

Srila Prabhupada wrote that the "worship of Radha-Krishna Deities is the ultimate pinnacle of deity worship." Thus, this moment is one of tremendous gratitude and excitement as we eagerly prepare to welcome Sri Sri Radha Krishna to Parsippany and work in a spirit of devotion and cooperation to complete and offer a magnificent temple to Them and, subsequently serve Them together as a community. "This is very important business, Deity worship. The more the Deity is decorated, the more your heart will be decorated with Krishna consciousness.” (Srila Prabhupada Letter, October 7, 1974)

We have retained Pandey Murti Walla from Jaipur, India to carve the most beautiful and exquisite deities of Sri Sri Radha Krishna. The legendary Pandey family has carved the majority of deities in ISKCON, especially during Srila Prabhupada's time. The deities will be carved over the next several months and a member of our temple will travel to Jaipur to monitor and oversee the progress.

We have started a new fund, exclusively for our Sri Sri Radha Krishna Deities. The fund will be used to cover the costs of the exquisitely carved deities of Srimati Radharani and Sri Krishna from Jaipur along with 20 opulent dresses, night dresses, jewelry such as earrings, chokers, belts, necklaces, flutes, hair and other items of decoration to allow to serve our Sri Sri Radha Krishna deities together with our other deities with matching outfits and gorgeous and opulent jewelry and other articles of worship. We have set the target amount at $125,000. Our tremendous gratitude to Sri Raman and Maya Sharma for donating $51,000 towards this fund and thus the remaining amount is $75,000. We ask all devotees and community members to contribute towards this fund in accordance with their means to reap in the immense benefit of installing deities of Sri Sri Radha and Krishna:

"By installing the Deity of the Lord one becomes king of the entire earth, by building a temple for the Lord one becomes ruler of the three worlds, by worshiping and serving the Deity one goes to the planet of Lord Brahmā, and by performing all three of these activities one achieves a transcendental form like My own." – Srimad Bhagavatam 11.27.52