Tonight I'm going to Krishnafest for the first time! I'm really excited and looking forward to it! http://www.krishnalounge.com/fest/
Amazing! Had a great time! Music, mantras, a speaker, and lots of dancing and awesome vegetarian food!
The music was chanting "hare krishna rama rama" and it started off very slow and relaxing, the bodhi singing it beautifully. We all sat on pillows as we listened to the mantra. then it gradually got faster and more excited and everyone started dancing. A mantra is a sacred chant in Hindu or Sanskrit. The speaker was a young bodhi who spoke about pride, arrogance, people thinking they were only of flesh, how in this way we're all crazy, because we're not just meat but a soul. Then after all that sitting still, another dance! more fervored and excited. People jumping, chanting, celebrating. incense and roses passed around. Then just when you're so tired from dancing and you've worked up an apatite.... Dinner time! Usually it's $5 but this night's dinner was sponsored. The bodhi's give everyone giant silver plates and start passing around the most amazing vegetarian food, huge portions until your full. I went home with sore legs, a full belly, and a happy soul.
Hare Krishnas are duplicitous and really good at it. Your average Hare Krishna doesn't even know that the mantra comes from the Kalisantarana Upanishad. They think Prahupada made it up. I remember going to the big Krishna parade in venice when I was younger and watching how a couple HKs threw stuff and made fun of a Down Syndrome HK sibling. There's nothing mystical, superlative, original, authentic, spiritual, or divine about Hare Krishnas. Spirituality is a solitary and singular pursuit. All the HKs offer is a nifty little cult to take your mind off of spirituality and to fill your time with trivialities.
I hear you that you're a skeptic based on your lone experiences, but I doubt you were at this Krishnafest so I think it's inappropriate to say "thus all bodhi's and krishnafests are fake". everyone there was quite educated, wise, and kind.
Your average ISKCON member barely knows who Prabupada was. Now, I don't have a problem kirtan, or group chanting at all. I see a role of community in spirituality. But I had some dark experiences in ISKCON. The perpetrators are gone now, may their name and memory be erased, but they left many, many scars, on many, many people. Also, from the OP, Hindi is the national language, and Hindu mantras are rarely in it. As you said, Sanskrit is the language. Hindu is the faith.
Huh... The poster in the link sounds like someone I knew. What I experienced was the worst of fundamentalism from people who didn't get the tradition. I have hope that ISKCON can grow beyond it.
I've never heard of or seen any of these bad experiences at Krishnafest, and its unfortunate that it's getting a bad rep. the place that I went to was fun, wonderful, everyone was kind and considerate and respectful, everyone had a great time.
Well, I was in ISKCON before you were born. It's been a while! But the problems continue, from what I'm hearing from more recent ex devotees. I still manage to find a few bucks for them.
