Hare Krishna - The search for Godhead in Boston
This article "Hare Krishna - The search for Godhead in Boston," was published in The Boston Globe, April 27, 1969, in Boston, Massachusetts.
By Robert Taylor
****************************************
The movement of sensitive,
non-conformists young Americans
eastward has a long tradition.
****************************************
When Krishna Consciousness first came to the U.S. two years ago, it was widely advertised by ex-hippie converts as "Sweeter than acid, cheaper than pot and non-bustable" but the Society has since de-emphasized itself as an ecstatic alternative to drugs. Chanting the 16-word Hare Krishna Mantra is an act of love.
HARE (pronounced HAH-ray) is the name for the Hindu god Vishnu, "the bringer of delight," Rama (pronounced RAH-mah) is the incarnation of Vishnu as the manifestation of responsibility. Krishna is the God-narrator of the Bhagavad-Gita, one of the chief Hindu religious books. Therefore the chant names different aspects of God. ...
A. lay visitor questions one of the devotees. ....
Q. Is Krishna Consciousness a Hindu religion?
A. No. Hindus are polytheists. We believe in one God.
Q. But you retain many of the aspects of Indian religion.
A. India is the last country during a debased age to honor the spiritual.
Q. What did you think of Richard Nixon's speech, accepting the nomination, when he said a great period of joy at being alive in America lies just ahead?
EVERY Sunday at noon the Glenville Avenue temple offers a Love Feast or Prasadam, at which food is offered ritually to Krishna, then eaten by devotees and guests. The word Prasadam means 'mercy' and applies to all foods used in this manner. It might be well, however, before attending a Prasadam feast, to consider the ceremony not only in the light of its religious significance, but as a social and cultural phenomenon.
By and large, Krishna Consciousness attracts the young. There are logical reasons for it; young people tend to be venturesome, their commitments flexible. They are idealists, open, naive and unformed, but all the same, idealists. They are vulnerable to the exotic. And they are, above all, exposed to the numbing despairs of a militaristic society that exalts power, conformity, lust, violence, hypocrisy and consumption; whose churches are a branch of corporate finance; and whose spiritual happiness is equated with the happiness of the state. It is easy, of course, to mourn the lack of intellectual rigor on the part of the young, their acceptance of a philosophy beyond the Western sphere before they have scrutinized the avenues of Western religious thought (how nice it is to be able to find God by chanting Hare Krishna when poor Dante had to tread the circles of Hell and Kierkegaard diagnosed the Sickness Unto Death); but rather than impose these alien values or dispute the viability of Asian metaphysics, it is probably more pertinent to indicate that the movement of sensitive, articulate and non-conformist young Americans eastward has a long and interesting national tradition.
The tradition goes back to the beginning of the 19th Century, and is notably witnessed in such men as Emerson, Thoreau, LaFarge. It has never entirely vanished. The union of East and West has inspired many of our finest minds. The late Catholic monk, Thomas Merton, was much influenced by the work of the Zen philosopher, D.T. Suzuki; Lewis Mumford, Justice Douglas and Walter Gropius are only a few contemporaries striving to combine diverse religious and cultural currents. A few years ago, Nancy Wilson Ross, the author, discussed, during an interview, positive and negative sides of the discovery of Eastern religion, first by the beats then by the hippies. "America wouldn't be in trouble in Vietnam, if we had a State Department that comprehended the rudiments of Buddhism," she said. Expecting the government to comprehend religion - even as a matter of practical foreign policy - was, she concluded, unrealistic.
***********************************
Expecting the government to
comprehend religion, even as
a matter of practical policy,
is unrealistic.
***********************************
THE traffic from West to East, Christian missionary activity, the pilgrims who sought answers in the Orient, has tended to overshadow the traffic in the other direction. In 1893, an unknown and magnetic teacher, Swami Vivekananda, created a sensation by turning up at a conference on religions at the Chicago Fair. Since there was then a taboo on travel for orthodox Hindus, especially highborn Brahmins, and since Vivekananda came without money, trusting faith to see him through, his missionary journey (resulting in the establishment of The Vedanta Society here) became a gospel epic. Swami A. C. Bhaktivedanta, the preacher of the doctrine of Krishna Consciousness, arrived in this country in September, 1965, almost equally unknown. Basically, he proclaims that ours is a period of quarrel and chaos where the lengthy meditative disciplines of more serene ages no longer serve bellicose humanity; and the prescribed method of devotion is the "Kirtan" or repetition of the 16-word litany. The Swami's most prominent follower is the poet Allen Ginsberg, no stranger to India, but there are approximately 300 initiates maintaining 20 Krishna Consciousness centers throughout the U.S. and Europe. An initiate must surrender himself to the spirit with the fervor of a medieval friar. The sect has more than 20 rules concerning the higher life, and the cardinal principles are vegetarianism, sexual propriety (the begetting of children is the only lawful condition of intercourse), abstinence from intoxicants (which includes not only substances such as cannabis and Old Crow but caffein and nicotine) and from gambling. The primal mistake of modern civilization, the Swami asserts, is to "encroach upon others' property as though it were one's own," which again reminds you of Vietnam.
I WANTED to attend a ceremonial called The Installation of the Deities. A priest of the Allston temple phoned to say that he didn't know if the Installation would take place; he was awaiting orders from Los Angeles. This prejudiced me. I have been in Los Angeles and if I felt any residual spiritual vibrations there, it must have been due to the shade of Aimee Semple McPherson thumping on a mother-of-pearl tambourine. Presently, however, the temple called again: authorization had been granted.
The next day, stumbling over hummocks on Glenville Street, which is mainly a street of distempered apartment houses where you might expect graduate students to live, practical nurses, retired bank tellers and widows who keep a parakeet, Los Angeles seemed insulated and unimportant. The temple possessed the secretive shabbiness of a structure that might in another incarnation have been a bookie hang-out; but over the facade romped the cheerful chalky praises of Krishna.
INSIDE, the air was heavy with the odors of Indian cooking, tomato chutney, rice an ghee and turnips, mingling with incense. On one side of the room a pink satin canopy enclosed a shrine; in front a small altar displayed framed photographs of the Swami and other spiritual masters, bouquets and fruits. The room was adorned by paintings of deities, Hindu legends and Krishna in his manifestation of cowherd. A table of devotional literature, including the Swami's magazine, "Back To Godhead," stood near the door.
"Would you mind taking off your shoes?" a young man said. He wore a yellow dhoti. His name was Sats Varupa, but he had been born Stephen Guarino. Since no one else had arrived, I watched him prepare for the service. He knelt before the shrine and lit candles. When he had finished his devotions we sat on the floor and talked.
*******************************************
Listening to Sats Varupa expound
on Vedic scripture, one was struck by
the prismatic gentleness of his manner.
*******************************************
"God's nature is absolute," he said. "God's nature is perfect. God may enter any form He likes."
Listening to him explain the forms of a worship based on immeorial Vedic scriptures, one was struck by the prismatic gentleness of his manner. His head was shaved, with a prescriptive skull-lock hanging in a brief braid. He was austerely tall, his face as lean as his body, the visage, except for the "Telok," the branched mark of Fuller's earth on the bridge of the nose, as mild as that of a stone Crusader lying on the of his worldly memories. But the Crusades are the wrong analogy for Sats Varupa: what impressed one about him as exponent of Vedic scripture was the extreme American-ness of his special grace. He suggested, let us say, a Dunkard, a Shaker, a member of the Oneida Colony, and this sense of community blessed by tolerance and assurance of blessing, this sense of an earlier utopian America was present in all there who to the superficial adult eye might be rejected as hip, flip and foolish, and who might - in the unlikely event that anyone heard - just possibly help heal a society that has long since relinquished its claim to redemption.
WHILE we talked, devotees entered the temple. Sats Varupa addressed them: "Hare Krishna," and to me, "It's like the natural cry of a baby. Everybody is seeking pleasure, but doesn't know where to find it. They are looking for pleasure on the platform of the senses. Hare Krishna."
He is a social worker, and every penny that he and his wife earn goes toward the upkeep of the temple.
During the service itself I sat beside Mrs. Sats Varpua (Guarino) who described the details of the rite. A girl in a sari danced before the shrine. The voices chanted above the tender tapping of double drums. Eyes closed, swaying, Sats Varupa rose to his feet and moved through the clack of small cymbals.
They circled before the altar: The girl's hands described supple arabesques. Hare Krishna ... Krishna Krishna. ... She was fluttering her hands now, head thrown back, hair spilling across her moist face. The tempo of the music, cyclic, plaintive, accelerated. Sats Varupa shuttled with a small skipping motion, behind her. Suddenly the girl began to leap up and down, her beads jouncing. A camp-meeting fervor crackled in the smoky air. Hare, Hare. ... Then, like the descent of one hand clapping, silence. A priest, cradling a conch shell which brimmed with water, emerged through a beaded curtain from a rear room and flecked droplets upon the congregation. The flowers upon the shrine were distributed to devotees; the deities within the shrine were appropriately festooned.
********************************
"If you have a Name for God,
chant it, whether it be Jesus,
Jehovah, Allah, Buddha, Tao,
Rama or Krishna."
********************************
Prayers through incense. The initiates, chanting, prostrated themselves, touching their foreheads to a brightly-patterned Oriental carpet. Ecstatic dancing meanwhile resumed, other girls fetched steaming vats, mounds of yams, the paraphernalia of a large feast, and arranged the food on mats before the main altar. Prayers hummed through the ceaseless dance. Krishna's images, shimmering past veils of incense, regarded the vanishing point of the infinite..
Mrs. Varupa said: "This is the way to be always happy."
I nodded.
"His Divine Grace The Swami A. C. Bhaktivedanta has said, 'The young flowers of the world will distribute the flavor of Krishna Consciousness.'"
"Do you get any older people?"
"We have no restrictions. His Divine Grace is 72."
"It's easy to lose the way to happiness."
"My life was zero," she said. "I had a feeling of zeros. So many zeros."
Later we ate the food which had been dedicated to Krishna.
An article in "Back to Godhead" releates the visit of the Swami to City College, in New York. After addressing the students, he asked:
"All religions say that if all people would unite by following that particular religion, there would be peace in the world. Is Krishna Consciousness different?"
"Yes. It is the easiest method. We do not seek to convert people to a religion. If you have a Name for God, chant it, whether it be Lord, Jesus, Jehovah, Father, Allah, Buddha, Tao, Rama or Krishna."
I DESCRIBED my visit to Glenville Avenue to three men over thirty. One had attended in fact the weekly Love Feast.
"Hippies," said the first.
"They're achieving a sense of mature identity," said the second.
The third, the man who had actually witnessed the service (he is an adventurer) said:
"There, but for the grace of God, go my own kids."
COMPUTER-BRAIN HOOKUP NEAR ... THE REASON WHY THEY TAKE LSD. ... ENEMY ROCKETS HIT SAIGON ... SKIDOO WILL BLOW YOUR MIND WITH LAUGHTER ... SUBWAY GUARD KILLS MAN WHO HECKLED RIDERS ... 11 DIE, 50 HURT ... LONG-TERM INVESTING STILL THE SAFEST WAY ... HARE KRISHNA, HARE KRISHNA, KRISHNA KRISHNA, HARE HARE ... 'WE GAVE HIM EVERYTHING,' MOTHER SOBS ... HARE RAMA, RAMA, RAMA, HARE HARE.
Photo 1: They circled before the altar, the girl's hands describing supple arabesques, her hair spilling across her moist face.
Photo 2: The priest flecked droplets of water on the congregation from a conch shell.