Western Cult Has New Deity: Lord Krishna
This article, "Western Cult Has New Deity: Lord Krishna" was published in Washington C.H. Record-Herald, January 24, 1970, in Washington Court House, Ohio.
By SUSAN EVERLY
Associated Press Writer
NEW YORK (AP) - Midafternoon in the hurrying crowd, six young men in long saffron and white robes, their heads shaved, sway past Saks Fifth Avenue begging with extended conch shells and chanting to their Lord Krishna.
Sunday when the drug and crime infested East Village is sleeping off another Saturday night, young people in a walk-up second-floor storefront quietly dress multicolored wooden deities and prepare food for a Sunday feast in honor of their Lord Krishna.
A 17-year old boy shaves off his long shaggy hair and leaves his home and parents in suburban Long Island to serve his new Lord Krishna.
Lord Krishna is the god of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, which claims to have temples in more than 20 locations in the country.
The new Western cult serving an ancient Hindy deity is part of a growing interest among young people of Eastern philosophies - and Eastern ways of life - which stress spiritual experience rather than material concerns. In recent years there has been a growth in the United States in devotees of yoga, of interest in Zen Buddhism, in Indian music and the wearing of Eastern garb.
Krishna devotees are mostly in their late teens and early 20s. Many were hippie-types; some were drug users.
"We're not going to get the Midwestern college kid," said Chandan Acuarya, a member of the East Village temple. "We're going to get the kid with the long hair who has sensed that it is a money-grabbing world."
Chanadan, 22, was formerly Christian Kindler, a rock musician and commercial writer in Montreal. "I was making all kinds of money, but I was going out of my mind," he said. "That's why I'm here."
The key to the new Hindu cult is the chanting of the ancient 16-word mantra: "Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare."
"This is the authorized process by which one can develop an unalloyed love of God - God realization," said Brahmananda, president of the New York temple. "This chanting establishes a link between the living entity and the absolute truth."
Translated, the Hare Krishna asks: "Krishna, Oh my Lord, give me relief from illusion of this world and attraction to the material world. Bring me to serve you."
The colorful Sunday feast draws many more people than the 30 some devotees.
Then a crowd of young people flock to the temple. Some are attracted to the cult's philosophy: some are curious; some come for the free meal.
Chanting begins softly as burning incense coils a thin smoke throughout the room. One robed devotee, tinkling finger cymbals, rises slowly and sways before the flower-decked altar.
A brief sermon informs the visitors of the values of Krishna consciousness. "Transcendental bliss" can be theirs, they are told.
Then the rugs are rolled and devotees and vistors settle down for a vegetarian feast. Some visitors linger and go out into the street chanting and begging with the robed devotees.
But for the initiates, Krishna Consciousness is more than a Sunday lark.
It is a way of life founded in 1966 when Swami A. C. Bhaktivedanta arrived from the East with what he said was the "divinely appointed task" of carrying to the West the prescribed method for devoting to God - the chanting of the Hare Krishna. He set himself up in a lower Eastside storefront. The curious came, some remained, and the temple was founded.
Krishna life is highly regulated for all followers. Beginning at 5 a.m., their day is crammed with devotions, ritual cleaning of themselves and the temple, other chores and chanting and begging in the streets.
Following the law of the Vedic scriptures, they give up all intoxicants, drugs, alcohol, coffee and tea, abstain from sex except for procreation within a Krishna marriage, avoid gambling: and don't eat meat, fish and eggs.