Hare Krishna comes of age but escaping the past never is easy

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Hare Krishna comes of age: the movement has matured into a mainstream religion after years of tumult and scandal—but escaping the past never is easy

 

 

 

Michael Kress

 

SUPER BOWL SUNDAY, and Boston is fixated on its Patriots. Yet, here, in the city's chic Back Bay neighborhood, I am with just about the only people not thinking of football. Here, as most pregame parties are starting, a horn sounds, and a familiar chant is repeated over and over: "Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna...."

If you thought the Hare Krishna’s faded away with bell-bottoms and disco, the scene at 72 Commonwealth Ave. tells a different story. This former boarding house serves as the local temple of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON)--the Hare Krishna’s.

While the mantra may bring back memories of a past era, a look at the worshippers this Sunday makes clear these are vastly different Hare Krishnas than those once ubiquitous in American cities. Thirty years ago, this room would have been filled to capacity with devotees looking every bit the stereotype: white, young, wearing colorful robes, the men sporting heads shaved except for one tuft at the crown of their scalp.

That was then, but this is now, and these are the faces of Krishna in the 21st century. The robed monks are here, but fewer in number. They are worshipping alongside people dressed in jeans or other casual clothes. Maybe half the faces are white, with the rest belonging to Indian immigrants and their American-born children. They are students, pharmacists, computer programmers, stay-at-home moms. If they were not here, chanting in praise of a Hindu deity whose likeness graces the ornate altar, they could blend in easily at any of the Super Bowl parties going on throughout New England.

"It's entirely possible these days that a Hare Krishna could be living next door to you and you wouldn't know it," says Middlebury College professor Burke Rochford, who has studied ISKCON since the 1970s. "They're just now part of the culture in ways that the average person couldn't have imagined some 20 or 25 years ago.... Now we're looking at what I just think of as an American religious community."

If the Hare Krishnas seemed to capture the nonconformist zeitgeist of the 1960s, today's ISKCON likewise reflects the reigning cultural mood, with its emphasis on responsibility and balance--of career and family, of spontaneity and constraint, of worldly and otherworldly pursuits. Today's Hare Kristmas live as part of, and not apart from, mainstream American society. The overwhelming majority make their homes outside the temple, work in secular professions, get married, have children, and cope with all the accompanying anxieties, like paying rent, finding quality schools, and being solid citizens and good parents.

For support, they look to their religious community, putting ISKCON in a role it is not used to playing. "We're addressing the needs of their kids for Sunday School, and parking lots, and playgrounds," notes Anuttama Dasa, an ISKCON leader and spokesman. He speaks enthusiastically about committees and training programs and systems--just the kind of institutionalization early converts were fleeing.

"Twenty-year-olds who are single can live pretty simple," Anuttama points out. "You don't need playgrounds if your whole community is 20-year-olds. You may not need marriage counseling. You may not need to deal with a lot of the different kinds of social issues that churches and synagogues all over the country deal with."

It was not an easy transition, but without it, ISKCON easily could have faded away like so many flash-in-the-pan spiritual fads. That it is still here is testament to the dedication of its members and the attractiveness of its message. Yet, its history also provides a cautionary tale about the dangers of unbridled spiritual exuberance and what it takes to "make it" as a religion in the U.S. Four decades after its founding, ISKCON is both thriving and struggling, hopeful for a bright future while facing immense challenges just as it is getting its house in order.

It was on another Super Bowl Sunday, this one in 1992, that Paul Swinford fast stepped into a Hare Krishna temple. Thirteen years later, now known as Premananda Dasa, he is pastor of the Boston community. At 40, Premananda again is adapting to a major transition. After living in the temple for 10 years, he got married and moved to New Hampshire, where his wife, also a Hare Krishna, works for a financial-services company. He continues to work full time for the temple, so among other adjustments, Premananda has joined America's commuter class, now driving 90 minutes to the place he called home for a decade.

After graduating from college, Swinford worked in grassroots politics before joining the corporate world to pay off debts. He developed an interest in spirituality and was intrigued by the personal relationship with God promised by the Bhagavad Gita, a Hindu scripture central to ISKCON theology. After that first Sunday service, he started attending regularly and worshipping at home. He then took a step that increasingly is rare. His debts paid off, he quit his job to move into the temple. There, he eschewed bookselling--the occupation of most temple residents then--and instead assumed a variety of administrative roles: treasurer, secretary, congregational director.

Like ISKCON broadly, the temple is at a pivotal moment in its history. The temple was slapped with an anticult lawsuit by a former member in 1976, a common occurrence then. After spending more than 20 years wending its way through the system, the two sides settled for an undisclosed sum in the late 1990s. That financial burden removed, the community can look ahead for the first time.

"For us to have finally gotten to a point in the late 1990s where we had no debts, where we had all our invoices paid, this was revolutionary for us practically," Premananda says during a conversation in his temple office, the first time I have seen him in "Western" rather than devotional clothes. What will the community do with that freedom? Premananda goes on excitedly about "cultivating congregational leadership" and "systematizing" management. "When ISKCON started, it was a missionary organization, and most of the emphasis was placed on expanding the mission. Right now our primary emphasis is more liturgical and pastoral."

Boston's Hare Krishnas range in commitment from occasional attendance to near-constant presence. Many are in their 20s or 30s and joined within the past 10 years. Young couples and their toddlers represent hope for the future, while devotees in their 50s and 60s constitute a solid foundation. The temple is undergoing a major management reorganization and, with only 16 devotees living in-house, lay leadership will be key. A committee will work on articulating a long-term vision for the temple, and a "theological director" will be named.

"Will we be a community that continues to struggle with just a few devotees taking responsibility and some degree of a revolving door, people coming and going?" Premananda asks. "Or will we go where the primary source of our stability and strength is the congregation, and inspire members of the congregation to take more leadership roles, more responsibility roles?"

Throughout ISKCON, similar transformations are taking place. Temple presidents attend management courses; counselors offer premarital classes; and lay leaders worry about college acceptances among day-school students. Temples are participating in interfaith activities, running social service programs, and building for their members "parking lots and playgrounds," a phrase Anuttama uses frequently.

"We've kind of done things in the past by simple inspiration, perspiration, and we're starting to see more clearly that we need more structures, systems, and things like that," Anuttama explains. "Our duty is to make sure we create communities and an institution that care for the variety of people's needs, so they want to come to us. We can't think they have to come to us. That'll be our downfall."

In Boston, Premananda dreams of someday opening a seminary and establishing a rural community to supplement the urban temple. That is for another day, though. First, there is the business of smoothing out everyday temple management and strengthening the commitment of existing congregants.

Before leaving his office, I comment on a bookcase prominently displaying a surprising title: Nori Muster's Betrayal of the Spirit, a bitter memoir of the author's ISKCON involvement. The name alone made me assume that people like Premandanda would treat the book derisively, but he accepts Muster's rebuke. "It's something that helps to remind me I have a position of responsibility in the temple," Premananda maintains. "If we don't learn from the past, I'm afraid we'll repeat it."

When an elderly monk arrived in New York by ship in September, 1965, no one could have predicted that he would establish the first major orthodox Hindu presence in the West--for Westerners.

 

The story of the man known as A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada is lore among Hare Krishnas. Inspired by his gum to spread Krishna consciousness in the West, Prabhupada left India at 69 and suffered two heart attacks on the voyage. Chanting in New York's Tompkins Square Park, Prabhupada began to gather disciples and launched the International Society for Krishna Consciousness in July, 1966. With public chanting and proselytizing in places like airports, ISKCON grew rapidly, opening new temples and farm communities regularly.

Four decades later, the movement maintains 50 temples in the U.S., and a total of nearly 400 worldwide. It claims 100,000 adherents in America and 1,000,000 globally, though accurate statistics do not exist and scholars say the numbers likely are smaller.

Prabhupada brought with him a monotheistic Hinduism known as Gaudiya Vaishnava, which is based on the teachings of the 15th-century Bengali monk Caitanya, himself considered an incarnation of Krishna.

 

Caitanya preached devotion through simple living and the repetitive chanting of the Lord's name, giving birth to the mantra that defines ISKCON in the Western mind. In the U.S., Prabhupada adapted the tradition in some ways; most notably, he preached gender equality and initiated women into the priesthood, which was not done in India.

Living "Krishna conscious" starts with refraining from four activities: gambling, intoxication, meat eating, and illicit sex, which is taken to mean sex without marriage and only for procreation within marriage. Temple life is rigorous, with morning worship beginning before dawn. On Sundays, the entire community gathers to worship and feast.

ISKCON offers different levels of formal commitment. The most common is "initiation"--receiving a devotional name and vowing to chant 16 rounds daily. In ISKCON's early days, most devotees also took a second vow, becoming priests, which allowed them to worship on the altar. Many took vows of celibacy.

Prabhupada's early disciples took to it with such zeal that being a serious Hare Krishna came to mean the total commitment of monasticism. Book distribution and proselytizing became their primary focus. They severed ties with their former lives, including their families and, through missionary work, encouraged--sometimes pressured--new recruits to do likewise.

Cult hostility

From the beginning, Hare Krishnas faced hostility, as Americans took one look at their youth robed and shaved and cried "cult." Ironically, it was partly ISKCON's fidelity to tradition that made Americans uncomfortable; while other Eastern transplants--such as Transcendental Meditation--did not demand major lifestyle changes, Prabhupada's followers fully embraced an Indian religion and culture.

"Dancing in the streets with okra robes on your men, women in saris with the red dot on their forehead, and reciting in Bengali old Krishna stories that originate from the 16th century is absolutely deemed to be cultic," asserts Larry Shinn, president of Berea College and author of Dark Lord: Cult Images and the Hare Krishnas in America. "But the 'strange' behavior is really Indian and Hindu. It's not some aberrant human being who's developed this system in the last 10or 15 years."

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Despite the success of those heady early days, ISKCON's problems were germinating even then. Suddenly living chaste and temperate fives under the authority of a guru was difficult, especially since so many converts were refugees from the sex-and-drugs counterculture.

 

 

Some became involved in illegal activities. Despite Prabhupada's progressivism, some refused to initiate women, railed against female sexuality, and were abusive to women and children. In addition, ISKCON was, to a large extent, a victim of its own success.

"I don't think Prabhupada was expecting the movement to explode the way it did, and it did. So you had one elderly swami and the next thing, you had tens of thousands of disciples. Who's going to manage all those people?" asks Edwin Bryant, a professor of religion at Rutgers University and co-editor of The Hare Krishna Movement: The Postcharismatic Fate of a Religious Transplant. "Kids that were one minute smoking pot and living hedonistic lifestyles, the next minute they were shaved up and they were temple presidents." Prabhupada "left the planet"--a Hare Krishna euphemism for death--in 1977, as the movement was still expanding.

 

Instead of appointing a successor, he left ISKCON in the hands of a coterie of gurus known as the Governing Body Commission (GBC).

 

Leadership struggles and misbehavior throughout the 1980s led to ISKCON's first major exodus. That also was when devotees began moving out of the temples en masse---for marriage and jobs, and because ISKCON's financial problems made supporting large numbers of monks unfeasible.

Though undertaken for pragmatic reasons, Anuttama says the move to "householders"--family-oriented congregations--actually represents a return to Caitanya's original ideals, which never called for large-scale renunciation.

 

Ultimately, the householder trend would be considered the most important factor in ISKCON's survival and a sign that it truly refocused its values after the dark days of scandal and tragedy. Valuing the nuclear family may not seem revolutionary, but to many early devotees, children were little more than a distraction. "Dump the load and hit the road," went a saying about pregnant women in ISKCON.

Take Ananda Tiller, for example. Born in 1975 to Hare Krishna parents, Tiller started at the Dallas gurukula (boarding school) when she was four. Her father was the community's head priest, but he had little interaction with Ananda and her brother. Their mother was off proselytizing and made only occasional visits. At the gurukulas, students encountered a rigorous curriculum of religious instruction, and Tiller says she learned to write her name in Sanskrit before English. Teachers--entirely untrained--railed against the evils of the outside world, with which children had few encounters.

Tiller endured physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. "As a child, my body, mind, soul-everything--was given to this God and given to these people, and they took it all, even my six-year-old body," she relates.

In 1986, Tiller and her brother switched to public school. There, she was terrified, encountering the things her teachers had warned about. "It was extremely confusing," she recalls of the transition. "We really never left that city block when we were in Dallas, and all we knew was that in the outside world were these devilish meat-eaters that were going to poison our minds."

Tiller's teen years were filled with drugs, sex, and suicide attempts. Other gurukula alumni are homeless and some have committed suicide. Today, Tiller is the mother of two and has been working to recover from the trauma, though it is a daily struggle.

Part of moving on, in her eyes, was joining a $400,000,000 lawsuit brought against ISKCON by nearly 100 former gurukula students. At first unsure she wanted to take part, Tiller visited the Dallas temple in 2001 for the first time in 15 years. "These memories just started flooding me. I became very bitter and wanted to see some changes."

Krishna leaders claim those changes already have occurred. By the time the suit was filed, ISKCON had been reeling from the scandal for a decade, since the first whispers about abuse in the gurukulas began circulating in the early 1990s. In 1996, a group of alumni made a presentation to the GBC describing their experiences and, around that time, the last of the North American gurukulas was closed.

ISKCON established two organizations in response to the revelations. Children of Krishna offers support and financial compensation to victims; it has distributed about $250,000. The Child Protection Office has three purposes: investigation and adjudication of abuse allegations; grants to victims; and establishing awareness and protection programs in ISKCON temples and schools.

In an unusual step, the editor of an official ISKCON publication asked Rochford to write an article documenting the abuse. The piece was published in 1999 and, before long, ISKCON's voluntary revelation of the horrors that took place in its schools became international news. The lawsuit was filed soon after.

Insisting they have nowhere near the $400,000,000 demanded by the suit--a claim scholars confirmed--several of the temples filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, which allowed them to negotiate a settlement of the lawsuit while ensuring the temples retain enough funds to stay open. As part of the process, ISKCON invited any abused gurukula alumni to submit a claim, and about 400 came forward, on top of the 100 named in the lawsuit.

ISKCON officials insist they are working not just to salvage temples but to do right by the victims. "As individual devotees, and as parents, and as elders, and as an institution, we bear a tremendous moral responsibility to help these kids," Anuttama reasons.

Critics, though, say the changes do not run deep enough. "There are some really wonderful, smart, liberal people who were always jumping up and down saying that something had to be done," suggests Mafia Ekstrand, a longtime Hare Krishna and Bryant's co-editor. "But the only reason the rest of them listened was out of fear of what would happen if they didn't."

Modeled after Indian boarding schools, the gurukulas were supposed to create a new generation of committed Hare Krishnas, but the schools failed their children in a tragic way. "They were going to be the future leaders," Bryant says. "Instead, the vast, vast, vast majority all left."

Closing the gurukulas

Today, the gurukulas are closed, abandoned in favor of a more Western model: Sunday schools and day schools. Family and home have replaced mission and temple as the center of Hare Krishna life.

ISKCON gets credit from observers for dealing proactively with the tragedy once it was revealed. At the same time, though, the attorney spearheading the lawsuit, a veteran of abuse suits against institutions, including the Catholic Church, says the abuse described by gurukula alumni is the worst he has encountered. It will take years for ISKCON to move past the tragedy fully, just as it will take a lifetime for the victims to feel whole again.

"Child Protection Office Closing!" The article, written by the head of the office, appears on a Hare Krishna website and blames "tens of thousands of dollars in unfulfilled pledges" for the demise of the six-year-old office. I ask Anuttama about it. He says he has funds saved for the office and is fund-raising aggressively to keep it open. "I will die before that office closes," he insists.

Though a false alarm, the office has seen its budget shrink yearly. Nevertheless, it has investigated about 300 alleged abusers, and adjudicated about 100 cases. Punishments include banishment from leadership positions, restitution, and writing apology letters. Lately, the office has focused mostly on running healing seminars for abused children and developing prevention programs. While praising the office for its sincere efforts, critics see the process as inherently flawed.

"The GBC is trying to police itself, which never really works in an organization," Ekstrand charges. "If you are accused of doing these horrible things, I think the only thing to do is open up and allow professional outsiders to investigate what happened, let them make decisions based on their investigation, and let those decisions stand."

She says that the Child Protection Office's decisions are not always followed, and that the office is not empowered to mete out severe punishments, such as perpetual banishment from positions of spiritual leadership. If an abuser truly repents, Ekstrand says, "You should probably go and wash dishes and clean toilets and show that you' re really humble and you regret things."

To most Hare Krishnas, the abuse tragedy is not an everyday presence. Krishnas I encountered expressed several responses to the scandals: many religions have to deal with abuse, so ISKCON is not unique; it is in the past and ISKCON has eradicated it; the perpetrators were acting against Krishna's true teachings.

I also found another reaction best summed up in the words of Mangala-Arotick Dasi, a 28-year-old convert who lives with her husband near the Boston temple: "I feel responsible. Just by aligning myself with this society, and with this group, I've voluntarily taken on that experience, that identity, and that responsibility."

Worship over, it is time to feast. The vegetarian meal is itself an offering to Krishna, prasadam. As the congregation fans out to eat and socialize, I sit with Nimai Nitai, at 52 something of an elder statesman at the Boston temple. Outside of this community, Nimai Nitai is Nicolas Carballeira, a doctor of naturopathy who teaches at Tufts Medical School and works at a health center. A Hare Krishna since 1977, he is retiring this summer to move into the Boston temple, where he will offer counsel and train young devotees.

As his prasadam gets cold, he tells me how he left ISKCON in the mid 1990s, and returned five years later. "I had some gurus who fell down and left the movement," he relates, "and I didn't feel that ISKCON was doing its job of making sure that spirituality was the first and foremost thing."

Leaving ISKCON did not mean abandoning Krishna, as Nitai joined an India-based Hindu sect whose founder came from the same spiritual lineage as Prabhupada. Still, he returned to ISKCON in 2001. "If you know the principles and the practices, it's not easy. There's not much support out there for what we do," he reveals. "Without ISKCON, it would be virtually impossible in the West to attempt to follow this path."

Coming back, he found ISKCON a vastly changed place. "When the movement had great wealth, it attracted a number of people who did not have fully spiritual motivations," he contends. "Now that the movement is poor--surviving, but poor. Those who have remained have remained because they truly believe; they truly practice; and they truly care."

Nitai dreams of creating a fully American ISKCON, one that does not look to India for names, clothing, food, and liturgy. "If we are to have a future--and I believe we are--then we have to adopt forms that are more consonant with Western styles." Listening to him muse about the future, it was easy to forget the challenges threatening ISKCON. For one thing, as his story shows, ISKCON and Krishna-consciousness no longer are synonymous. Schismatic groups are siphoning off ISKCON members, while many individuals worship privately, without temple affiliation. "The tradition has taken root here, but the more time that goes by, it seems that ISKCON does not have a monopoly anymore," Ekstrand observes.

Additionally, a major demographics problem looms. Though I met several dedicated young people in Boston, new converts are few in number, and missionary activity no longer is a priority. The children of early converts mostly have fled the movement, scarred by their gurukula experiences.

The Indian wave

One source of vitality for ISKCON has been Indian immigrants, without whom many temples would be in serious trouble. In some places, ISKCON offers the only Hindu worship, but even given options, many Indians choose ISKCON. The movement, though, remains run almost entirely by white converts and, in many temples, the two groups do not mix much. "We may have, in time, the very curious possibility of having a largely East Indian congregation with white-faced Westerners preaching and serving on the altar in Hindu temples ..." Rochford surmises.

Even in ISKCON's much-praised move to householders, Bryant sees a problem: Without monks, who will maintain the temples? Already, many American temples have brought priests from other countries to oversee worship. ISKCON, Bryant says, has failed to produce charismatic individuals who can lead by the example of their high spiritual attainment and bring in new converts. "Ultimately, people want to see," he offers. "They don't just want to hear philosophy."

Then there are finances. Bookselling, once the movement's economic backbone, no longer provides substantial income. Communities rely solely on donations and, Rochford indicates, "They're struggling in most every instance to get by."

That is true in North America only. Abroad, ISKCON is thriving--especially in India, where the Hindu movement founded for Westerners is surprisingly popular. Bryant suggests that, for Indians eager to Westernize, ISKCON offers a bridge between past and present, traditional religion imported from the coveted West. Even there, though, all is not well. When it comes to child abuse awareness, Anuttama relates, "They're where we were 20 years ago"--which is to say, in denial. At least one American who oversaw a gurukula rife with abuse is rumored to be teaching in India. Anuttama says he tells Indian Hare Krishnas: "Don't make the same mistakes America went through...."

Still, the movement's stunning new Indian temples attract political VIPs and religious pilgrims alike, while in the U.S., ISKCON hopes just to keep its existing temples open. "The future is going to be one of continual change, but I think it's going to be one where a movement that's already straggling, financially and otherwise, is likely to continue to struggle," Rochford reasons.

The struggle is not just for resources; the soul of ISKCON is at stake. Battles rage on many fronts: the role of women; denominational authority vs. local autonomy; the limits of dissent; the abuse and its aftermath. It would seem that the liberals are winning. More women than ever serve as leaders; websites feature vociferous debate on everything from theology to the lawsuit; and child abuse prevention is a clear priority. "But at the same time," Ekstrand warns, "there is a very strong fundamentalist contingent, and they are going to be fighting all of this tooth and nail."

For their part, ISKCON leaders are finding that doing the things an American religion does is not easy. Reaching the proper balance between institutionalization and expressive spirituality is a major challenge, contends Anuttama, who, like many, joined ISKCON to escape organized religion. "How do you address those broader needs of parking lots and playgrounds and marriage counseling but not lose the essential spirituality that inspires religious people?" he asks, offering an answer that centers around core ISKCON values.

"People become overwhelmed with wanting to possess more and own more and lust for power and economic exploitation. If we stay true to our principles, then we will be okay. But if we forget that and if it becomes just a superficial affiliation, then we can be in trouble."

Schism; lagging attendance; debates over women's issues and the limits of religious authority; struggles to maintain spiritual focus despite pressing material needs--sounds eerily like an American religion. If the Hare Krishnas figure it out, maybe they can inform the rest of us.

Michael Kress is a freelance writer based in Cambridge, Mass.