View from the Pew
A look inside Hawaii's houses of worshipBy Mary Adamski
The Sunday night experience recalled a first venture into a Pentecostal Christian prayer service. Exuberant worship
marks enlightening
Hare Krishna ‘love feast’The "glory and praise" refrain was so simple, and as it was repeated again and again, the participants seemed to be getting high on the very sound they were making ... louder and louder, drums and tambourines taking a beating, clapping and dancing as they expressed their fervent feelings.
An outsider is intrigued, then begins to question where's the theological content and wonder when will this wind down so we can sit down. Then for days afterward, the simple refrain pounds in your head over and over and over again.
"Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare; Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare."
I admit being cynical about those folks seen for 30 years in parks and public sidewalks -- even airports in low-security days gone by -- perceiving their joyful noise-making as flouting the establishment and hyping T-shirt sales. Hard to believe how different the reaction then and now to a shaved head!
What was happening Sunday night as two dozen believers sang names of God at their Nuuanu temple was not aimed at an audience. It was weekly devotions at a "love feast" at the International Society for Krishna Consciousness center on Coelho Lane.
The glory and praise continued for 30 minutes while a bare-chested priest offered incense, flowers and food at the ornate altar which bears dancing images showing different aspects of Krishna, "the Supreme Person of God. We offer the first bite to God," said temple president Kusha Devi Dasi. The fifth-generation islander is the first woman to hold that elected position and one of about 200 Oahu ISKON members.
The evening would end with everyone joining in the Prasadam, a communal meal which Devi Dasi said is considered a spiritual dinner because it is offered to God. "We are not just beings that eat, sleep, work and mate, but we do all of it in full consciousness of God."
But first came Sunday School, and that's where the theology comes in. The lesson by Suresvara Das, also known as Richard Hall, who recently arrived from North Carolina, was simple basics aimed at a group of Open Table Pilgrimage visitors. By the way, he's not related to the temple president; "dasa" or "dasi" means servant and is part of a name assumed when an initiate becomes a devotee.
That involves taking vows: no alcohol, no illicit sex, no gambling and no meat. "Glutting the material senses ... won't bring happiness," said Hall. "In a broader sense, we don't gamble time away on pursuits that take us away from a relationship with God." Hall made his vows in 1971 in Detroit to the man who brought Krishna consciousness to the United States in 1965.
Much like a "born again" Christian's recollection of his watershed spiritual experience, Hall gave an anecdotal tale of his vows to A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada.
A statue of Prabhupada seated on a divan was decorated with flowers and a pattern of tangerines. Before his death in 1977, he spent several months translating Hindu scriptures into English at the Oahu temple, a converted mansion donated by a grandson of Henry Ford.
"We are in a place where a saint lived," said Devi Dasi who, like Hall, holds a senior position within the worldwide organization because she was a direct disciple of Prabhupada. The former Dayna Minton took her name when she made her vows 33 years ago.
She will leave Monday for India, where she is involved in a temple building project in Nandagaon and in an ISKON program to shelter widows. In October she will attend a United Nations interfaith conference for women in Geneva, she said.
The Hare Krishna movement follows a 500-year-old tradition of exuberant expression within the 3,500-year-old Hindu religion. But "Hindu" is not a word that its followers would use, said Hall. It's a label created by foreigners, a variant of "India." The religion is based on writings, the Vedas or Vedic scriptures, and is called Vedanta.
Devotees gather daily at 4:30 a.m. for quieter worship, prayers and mediation.
Their lively expression of faith is not the only path for a follower of Vedanta. That, too, reminded me of the variations within Christianity. At the back of the room Sunday, some worshippers sat on mats, chanting quietly, not moved to swing and sway in prayer.
One man explained that the exuberance is a practice of newer converts. He said the people sitting at the back were mostly of Indian ancestry and had a lifetime of worshipping, often at temples and shrines where the religion began.
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Mary Adamski covers religion for the Star-Bulletin.
Email her at madamski@starbulletin.com.
