Week #16 Hare Krishna

I’m sure you thought the Hare Krishna’s were just jobless hippies who hang out on campus quads handing out copies of the Kama sutra. Well sort of, I’m sure, but it is a real religion too, a kinda old one.  Oh and before you get your hopes up, that book with the blue guy on the cover is actually not the Kama Sutra it is more likely a mediation guide, something written by Bhaktivedanta Swami or the Bhagavad Gita.  Bhaga-what, is that like the “extraction of the lotus flower” or the “reverse Taj Mahal?”  Sorry to disappoint, but it is actually a 5,000 year old, 700-verse scripture that contains a conversation between an Indian prince and Lord Krishna on a variety of theological and philosophical issues.  Just putting that out there so we’re clear. 

The origin of the Hare Krishnas (International Society for Krishna Con-sciousness or ISKCON) dates back to the fifteenth century A.D., when Chaitanya Mahaprabhu developed The Doctrines of Krishnaism from the Hindu sect of Vishnuism.  This is a lot of “ism’s”, but basically one believed that Vishnu, the Supreme God, manifested himself at one time as Krishna, and the other taught the reverse: Krishna was the chief God who had revealed himself at one time as Vishnu. Oh and if the name “Krishna” didn’t tip you off, we’re talking about the later.  Since my blog is huge in Rajasthan, I am sure this needs no further explanation, but just incase. Krishna is a deity, like Jesus or the Jewish God, and much like one of the aforementioned, Krishna came to earth as a human baby to liberate the devotees.  Since this is not intended to be a encyclopedia of world religions, I’ll only answer the most burring question you likely have about all of this:  why is the Indian Jesus blue? Nope it is not the result of some expired butter chicken, eating outside of a Western hotel, or accidently swallowing the tap water.  Krisha could be blue because all great things on earth are blue, sky, water, Beyonce and Jay-Z’s wonder baby…In Hinduism great people with the ability to fight evil are often blue, so that is likely why he is blue.  So at least we all learned something today. 

Apart from blue baby gods, Hare Krishnas also believe that all existing things go back to a source that is distinct from them, and as part of this system every individual must go through a series of successive lives, yup reincarnation.  You could come back to life as a cow, a British royal, a reality show star, a house cat…all depending on how big of a douche you were in the last life.  Then you get a chance to be a little less douchey and a little less… and in about 17 lifetimes the cast of Jersey Shore will be the cast of Celebrity Rehab season 7.  And that I feel is an accurate summary of the concept of reincarnation.

Hare Krishna’s first showed up on the American radar in the 60s and henceforth were confused with the hippie counter culture.  Or so Wikipedia tells me, I was not alive for any of that, and our formal introduction to the faith came on a muggy summer afternoon on a patch of grass just outside of the Baltimore Inner Harbor in 2012.  In what I like to call week #16 Hare Krishna!

We’d gone to Baltimore because we had never been, and when Brian couldn’t find a deal on Groupon or Living Social for the aquarium and is too cheap to pay the $35 admission, we we’re out of things to do by about 11:30am.  So we were pretty much sitting ducks for the “free meditation” session being offered.  Here is how Hare Krishna meditation works:  You sit on folding chairs in a public park, hold a string of 109 wooded prayer beads between your thumb and middle finger-this is important, you don’t use your index finger because that finger is used to point and accuse, then you repeat a prayer or mantra for each of the beads.  It is just like a rosary only with no dead guy hanging off of the end, and the mantra is said out loud.  So there we sat, in public, chanting the following out loud 109 times:

The Maha Mantra:

Hare Krishna Hare Krishna

Krishna Krishna Hare Hare

Hare Rama Hare Rama

Rama Rama Hare Hare

This should not be that difficult in any circumstance, I mean after the 30^th time you should pretty much have it down, even if you’ve never heard of Krishna and you thought a hare was a rabbit.  To make it even easier, they gave us a sheet with the mantra printed on it to help.  Yet for some reason I still managed to goof it up, even when we were halfway around the Indian rosary.  Regardless, I must confess, it was relaxing.  The whole meditation thing only took about 10 minutes, but it did seem to deliver me to a calmer state of mind.  I say if you’ve got 109 beads laying around or you’re a strong widdler make yourself a prayer strand and get to chanting; it was worth it.  That said, here is why I could never be a Hare Krishna also why I doubt most hippies could either:

• ·       They don’t smoke weed- just to be clear, that is not why I could not be a Hare Krishna, that one if for the hippies, the rest are more Jen applicable.
• ·       The don’t drink coffee
• ·       They don’t drink red wine or craft beer (or other alcohol, but neither do I…that often)
• ·       They don’t eat meat
• ·       They don’t have sex except to make little Hare Krishnas

There may have been other rules too, but those were enough for me.