We Are Not These Bodies:
Identity and Transcendence among American Devotees of Krishna
By Rachel Williams
Oberlin College Class of 2012
Honors advisers: Baron Pineda and Erika Hoffman-Dilloway
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Krishna Consciousness: Exploring Spiritual Essence, Transcendence, and Coexistence, Lecture notes of Religion
This document delves into the philosophy and practices of Krishna consciousness, a spiritual tradition founded by A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada in the United States in 1966. The author discusses the importance of transcendence in Krishna consciousness, the compatibility of this tradition with other faiths, and the role of devotional service in achieving spiritual growth. The document also touches upon the history of ISKCON, the significance of the Maha-mantra, and the devotees' perspective on Krishna consciousness and other religions.
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We Are Not These Bodies:
Identity and Transcendence among American Devotees of Krishna
By Rachel Williams
Oberlin College Class of 2012
Honors advisers: Baron Pineda and Erika Hoffman-Dilloway
Content and Purpose of this Paper: The Devotee's Identity as Spirit-Soul
This study focuses on the beliefs and practices of American members of the International Society of Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), popularly called the Hare Krishnas. Many Americans misunderstand the history and beliefs of the Hare Krishnas. Particularly in the early years of ISKCON's presence in America, many concerned “anti-cultists” reacted against what they viewed as a dangerous cult and threat to American values. While this paper is not an overt attempt to negate these ugly stereotypes, I do hope to demystify the beliefs and practices of a school of thought that has inspired American truth-seekers for more than fifty years.
The devotees I researched live in the Cleveland metro area in the United States, but many of their beliefs and activities center around a philosophy expounded by ISKCON's founder, A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, born in Calcutta, India in 1896. Prabhupada arrived in the United States in 1966 to preach a philosophy based on thousands of years of writings passed down through the Vedic tradition of India. ISKCON is unusual, therefore, in that its founder left
India to become a missionary in the West.^1 While most Americans are familiar with the concept of (usually Christian) missionaries leaving the U.S. to preach in Asia, few of us pay attention to the Asian theologians who have arrived in the West to share their philosophies with us.
(^1) I am aware of the rejection, by Edward Said and others, of the simplistic East-West/ Orient-Occident dichotomy. I use the term “West,” without the scare quotes, because Prabhupada and other insiders also use such terms intheir conversations and writings. Insider's use of East-West dichotomies has little to do with Said's concern over “Otherizing” a foreign people.
their perspective. I attempt to do so by detailing how Cleveland ISKCON practitioners, many of whom are not what most people would consider “Indian,” understand the relationship between their social identities and religious practice. I wanted to discover whether the local devotees would identify as Americans, as Indians, or as Hindus. In the end, I realized that understanding devotee's identity actually involves thinking outside, or transcending, such boundaries between nations and between religions. Prabhupada says in his writings that “we are not these bodies,” and devotees often repeat the maxim, which is very important within ISKCON. This paper discusses the meaning of “body” within ISKCON as well as the methods for transcending it. Since American, Indian, and Hindu are considered by ISKCON members to be designations for the material body, many devotees work to eliminate such terms from their thinking altogether. By identifying with their spirituality instead of their material surroundings, devotees believe they can sever the bonds that trap souls in the world of illusion.
This paper suggests, then, that while outsiders speak of the Krishnas in terms of Indian- American and Hinduism-cult dichotomies, the devotees themselves support a transcendental philosophy that erases group boundaries of nation, religion, and even species. I discuss devotees' attempts to transcend group distinctions by viewing themselves as immortal souls transmigrating from one species of life to another, birth after birth. In particular, I focus on the connections between religion and nation-states, the boundaries that nationalist and sectarian thinking create between groups, and the attempts of Cleveland-area devotees to transcend such boundaries. My analysis is grounded not only in the reading of Krishna texts, but also in my personal experiences with local devotees.
Methods: Literary and Participatory Experiences with Krishna Consciousness I initially became interested in Krishna consciousness while studying abroad in India the
spring semester of my sophomore year, because one of the American girls in my program was a devotee of Krishna. At that time I was unfamiliar with the American stereotypes of the Krishnas. I attended my first Krishna kirtan in India, completely unaware that Krishna temples in the United States had been offering similar services for almost fifty years.
One year after I returned from India, I saw posters around Oberlin College advertising its first-ever Bhakti Yoga Society (BYS) gathering at Fairchild Chapel. The Society was founded by a fourth-year Oberlin student who had been engaged in Krishna worship since high school. I enthusiastically began attending meetings, and when it came time to apply for honors, I knew
that I wanted to craft my thesis around Krishna devotion in the United States.^2
Since the beginning of my research for this project, I have visited three ISKCON temples and three pan-Hindu temples in the United States. In particular, I have regularly attended the “Wednesday program,” a weekly event that includes kirtan (singing/chanting), lecture, and prasadam (spiritualized food) , at Prabhupada Manor in Cleveland. My attendance at this program has been made possible by the generosity of the many devotees who offered me rides between Oberlin and the Cleveland temple, at least thirty minutes each way. I have also attended nearly every BYS Sunday service since the Society's inception in the spring semester of my junior year. My field research comprised hundreds of informal conversations with devotees as well as outsiders. I kept intensive field notes, making an effort to record my observations and conversations as quickly and thoroughly as possible following the field experience.
Aside from this fieldwork, I have read dozens of books on the subject of Krishna consciousness. Many of these were books written by Prabhupada, but I also took ample (^2) I am greatly indebted to Nārāyaṇa, the adult devotee who leads Oberlin's BYS programs , for his insights into the Hare Krishna Movement, as well as for his willingness to proof-read my thesis for factual errors.
A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada founded the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) in the United States in 1966, but the philosophy of ISKCON extends back to Krishna’s lifetime some 5,000 years ago, according to devotees. Krishna’s life had two main phases. As a child, He lived with His aunt Yasoda and uncle Nanda in pastoral Gokula (Ramakrishnananda [1898]:11). Everyone in Krishna’s village, most of whom were cowherds, thought of Krishna as an ordinary child and loved him as their own friend or kin. According to Swami Ramakrishnananda, “their natural affection towards him made them frequently forget his superhuman character,” and today’s devotees also privilege their personal, loving relationship with Krishna above the awe inspired by His infinite power (Ramakrishnananda [1898]:25). Krishna frequently performed miraculous feats, however, thereby proving his status as “the Supreme Personality of Godhead,” as many ISKCON members call Him. Such miracles include the slaying of multiple demons, lifting of Govardan Hill, and revealing of the entire universe in His mouth.
The young version of Krishna is also famous throughout India and elsewhere for His tendency to steal butter and milk from the gopis , or the cowherd women of Gokula. In His adolescence, He performed amorous pastimes with the young gopis in the forest outside of the village. Krishna was a naughty, playful, but much beloved child, and though we human beings should not imitate many of His behaviors, His relationships in Gokula provide us with examples
Illustration 2: Young Krishna in Gokula,courtesy of Krishna.com
of personal, intimate relationships that we can form with God. Scholar David R. Kinsley talks about Krishna’s “divine play,” remarking that “God, like the child (in this case, as a child), belongs to a world that is not bound by social and moral convention, a world where fullness and bounty make work superfluous” (Kinsley 1975:15). God is seen as a trickster, a lover, belonging to a “joyous realm of energetic, aimless, erratic activity that is pointless, yet significant” (Kinsley 1975:15). In the same way does God create the universe in which we live; our universe is His eternal play. It is “pointless, yet significant” in that God’s actions are not bound by reason as are human actions, yet we must not disregard His creation for its lack of purpose.
During the second phase of his His life, Krishna ruled over the Yadu kingdom of Dvārakā. He had 16,108 queens and maintained each of them in her own palace (Prabhupada 1996 [1970]:65). As a king, Krishna advised his cousin Arjuna on the battlefield of Kuruksetra in a dialogue that would eventually become the famous Bhagavad-gita , one of the most popular scriptures in India. In Prabhupada’s words, the Bhagavad-gita teaches “five basic truths,” namely “what God is, what the living entities are, what [material nature] is, what the cosmic manifestation is and how it is controlled by time” (Prabhupada 1972, 1983:7). The Bhagavad- gita is probably the most important text for ISKCON members, with the lengthy Srimad Bhagavatam, which includes a description of Krishna’s youth in Gokula, as a close second. These two scriptures belong to a larger Hindu literary tradition called the Vedas.
Several thousand years after Krishna’s disappearance from this earth, Lord Sri Krishna Caitanya Mahaprabhu was born in 1486 in Bengal (Prabhupada 1989:23). Devotees believe that Lord Caitanya was Krishna Himself, come to preach a philosophy of devotion for the modern age (called Kali-yuga in the Hindu time cycle). Caitanya promoted a process called sankirtana , or the devotional, congregational chanting and singing of Krishna’s names. The most famous
some devotees to London to open another temple there. As fortune would have it, the devotees met The Beatles in London, and the famous rock band helped the “Hare Krishnas” gain popularity. They also helped to finance temples in England. In only a few years, Prabhupada's movement had become international. Today there are around fifty ISKCON centers and rural communities in the United States alone, and many more scattered throughout more than eighty different countries (Prabhupada 1972, 1983:716-17).
Undoubtedly, ISKCON experienced many setbacks as well as successes in its early years. During the 1970's and 80's, the Hare Krishna Movement fell victim to what anthropologist Larry D. Shinn calls “the great American cult scare” (Shinn 1987:13). Anti-cultists Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman listed the “Hare Krishnas” as one of the “largest and most dangerous cults” in the United States, along with the Moonies, the Way, the Divine Light Mission, and Scientology (Shinn 1987:18). ISKCON was accused of “brainwashing” its members into mindless “robots”
or “zombies” through hours of repetitive chanting^4 (Shinn 1987:19).
Some concerned Americans, most famously Ted Patrick, kidnapped devotees from the temples and forced them to undergo a process of “deprogramming” in which devotees were submitted to “physical restraint, sleep deprivation, stripping of all vestiges of cult dress and artifacts, and intense interrogations [and] sometimes food deprivation, physical abuse, and threats of harm” (Shinn 1987:155). One of the most striking cases, to me, involved a kidnapped devotee who was forced to eat hamburgers and french fries during deprogramming, despite ISKCON's avowed vegetarianism. The labeling of ISKCON as a “cult” fueled the ignorance and stereotyping already associated with an imported, and consequently foreign and unusual, (^4) Detractors failed to realize that chanting is one of the most common meditative practices in India, even outside of ISKCON. The accusation of “brainwashing” through chanting is ethnocentric, privileging Western spiritualpractices above those of India.
religion. Shinn's book, The Dark Lord: Cult Images and the Hare Krishnas in America , discusses the cult scare in greater detail and attempts to negate the negative stereotypes associated with the Hare Krishnas.
On top of the cult stereotypes, ISKCON members faced much distaste from the American public due to their money-raising techniques. In fact, when I tell American adults that I am studying the Hare Krishnas, the most common reaction is something like, “Oh, those people who used to harass us in airports!” While ISKCON's presence in airports and other public places originally began as an attempt to raise spiritual awareness through book distribution, tactics changed when the organization faced financial problems (Rochford 1985:186). Eventually, many ISKCON members were forced to lie about their identities (i.e. dress in Western clothing) and to sell goods unrelated to ISKCON's mission, all in the name of raising funds. Ex-devotee Nori J. Muster discusses the reluctance with which many ISKCON members collected funds in her autobiography, Betrayal of the Spirit. She laments the various tactics used to increase revenue, including the wearing of wigs and Western clothing, guru-sponsored “marathons” which devotees could win by collecting the most lakshmi (money), deception and even, for the female devotees, flirtation (Muster 1997:35-36).
The unsavory money-raising practices of American devotees grew to such monstrous proportions that the airports and other public places began to file lawsuits against ISKCON. In 1978 O'Hare International Airport in Chicago was closed to devotees attempting to raise money, and in 1981 the U.S. Supreme Court ( Heffron v. ISKCON ) ruled that devotees could no longer distribute literature or solicit donations at state fairs (Rochford 1985:187). The bad press did little to remedy ISKCON's already tenuous reputation.
In 1977 in Vrndavana, India, Prabhupada died, leaving behind, as Squarcini and Fizzotti
quips about airport solicitation. Devotees now generally raise money through their day jobs as opposed to fundraising, and in 2004 Squarcini and Fizzotti estimated that some three quarters of devotees internationally “adhere to ISKCON principles from an external lay position” as opposed to a monastic lifestyle in the temples (Squarcini 2004:34). The devotees I know in Cleveland and elsewhere are all “householders” with professions and family lives just like other Americans. They attend “programs,” meetings with other devotees, when they can, and they try to chant sixteen rounds of japa each day, read Prabhupada’s books regularly, and maintain a vegetarian, intoxicant-free diet.
Anthropological Discussions of ISKCON
The handful of anthropological and sociological studies written on the Hare Krishnas, while informative and relatively unbiased, in my opinion fail to address the spiritual essence of Krishna consciousness: its focus on transcendence. I have already mentioned Larry D. Shinn's The Dark Lord , which attempts to negate outsider's accusations of ISKCON as a cult. E. Burke Rochford, Jr.'s Hare Krishna in America also discusses ISKCON in relation to prevailing accusations of cultism. It also focuses on recruitment strategies. Francine Jeanne-Daner's The American Children of Krsna also discusses recruitment, viewing youth's conversion to Krishna consciousness as a rejection of the “materialism, rationalism, and the almost religious acceptance of science espoused by their parents” (Daner 1974:1).
While the aforementioned ethnographies effectively address issues of social concern, I suspect that many devotees would feel these books have rather missed the point. The devotees I know would explain their conversion not as a rebellion against the ethics of their parents. They joined because they believed that Prabhupada's words were true. They seek not to react against contemporary culture, but to transcend it.
Cleveland devotees have used the expression, “the proof is in the pudding.” In their minds, scholarly discussion means little compared to the feelings of bliss experienced during chanting and singing. David R. Kinsley's The Sword and the Flute attempts to transmit the feeling of Krishna devotion to his readers, but unfortunately his book makes no mention of ISKCON in the United States. Kinsley privileges religious emotion above rational, academic argument, and consequently his approach more closely approximates the experiences of religious practitioners themselves.
In my opinion, it is time to move beyond outdated stereotypes about the Hare Krishnas and to start listening to the rich, thought-provoking theology that ISKCON has to offer. In her essay Fear of Religious Emotion versus the Need for Research that Encompasses the Fullest Experiences , Edith Turner discusses the anthropological taboos against scholarly belief in magic, spirits, gods, ghosts, and healing. Turner also mentions her own experiences of being healed by non-biomedical treatments and even goes so far as to declare, “There is energy healing” (Turner 2003:116). She encourages anthropologists to retain their rational outlook but not to be so skeptical as to deny the reality of their own firsthand experiences. Agreeing with Turner, I have conducted my field research with the assumption that the beliefs of the Hare Krishnas could be true , either entirely or in part. I make no attempt to rationalize or “explain away” their beliefs.
Identity and Transcendence among the Hare Krishnas The meaning of “immortal spirit-soul...”
Krishna devotees will fondly echo Prabhupada's phrase that “we are not these bodies,” and indeed the concept of bodily transcendence may be one of the most important in Krishna consciousness. Some Americans may find, however, that they define the “body” differently than do Prabhupada and many of his followers. In the ISKCON understanding, the “material body” is
age. A person's beliefs, attitudes, personality, tastes, and behaviors all change throughout his life, but none of these things should be equated with the eternal, unchanging soul. But if the soul is neither body nor mind, what is it? The question is difficult to answer, even for devotees, and may in fact require a mystical perception to understand fully. We find many clues, however, in the Bhagavad-Gita. First of all, the soul is sanatana , eternal. Everything else in the material world “comes into being, stays for some time, produces some by- products, dwindles and then vanishes” (Prabhupada 1972, 1983:16). In contrast, “the living entity is never born and he never dies” (Prabhupada 1972, 1983:17). Readers may note that “eternal” means not only that which stretches on into the future forever, but also that which was “never born” and has always existed, which stretches back into the past forever as well. In addition to its eternality, the soul has a consciousness similar to that of Krishna (Prabhupada 1972, 1983:9). Devotees say that consciousness is the symptom of the soul which inhabits our bodies, and no body can continue to live after its soul has left. In the material world, however, pure consciousness is covered by material, temporary circumstances “just as light reflected through colored glass may appear to be a certain color” (Prabhupada 1972, 1983:10). In ISKCON cosmology, the “material nature” which covers and tints our consciousness has three varieties: ignorance, passion, and goodness. People who act in the mode of goodness will achieve higher birth in their next life, but they will not necessarily achieve Krishna’s eternal abode, which is transcendental to all three varieties or “modes of material nature.” Prabhupada explains that “when the living entity [soul] now covered by the modes of material nature is freed from ignorance, passion, and so-called goodness, he becomes one with the Absolute Truth” (Prabhupada 1984 [1961]:79). The way to free oneself from material nature is through pure devotion to Krishna, which is always considered transcendental. Even though
devotional service involves practices which appear material—singing, dancing, eating, etc.— devotees believe that when such practices are done only to give Krishna pleasure, they become transcendental. Devotional service, consequently, is believed to restore our consciousness to its original, pure state of love for God. Pure consciousness, because it thinks only of Krishna, is always blissful. Devotees sometimes talk about the material body in creative ways that refuse to equate body with selfhood. For example, one devotee who was suffering from a cold told me, “My body is sick today.” Another described a man as “having a black body.” To say “I am sick” or “he is black” would imply that the eternal soul could fall ill or could have a color. This paper addresses the ways that American devotees craft their personal identity. When I discuss the selfhood of devotees, I refer not their bodies, but to their immortal spirit-souls. In the Bhagavad- Gita souls are also called jivas or, simply, the living entities. During one Oberlin BYS program, Nārāyaṇa demonstrated the ISKCON understanding of selfhood through a trick that Prabhupada used to use. He asked the students to point to different parts of their bodies, like their hands, legs, head, etc. Then he said, “Alright, now point to you .” The students were uncertain where to point and consequently did not move. Nārāyaṇa then explained that we speak about our bodies as though they were objects that belonged to us, because we are not these bodies. Writer and devotee Steven Rosen explains selfhood in a similar way: Now, can the body be conscious of itself? The immediate answer is no. My body cannot beconscious of itself; rather, I am conscious of my body. This simple reflection on the nature of consciousness makes it clear that there is a separation between the body and the self, the livingbeing within who is conscious of the body. To extend this idea, let us admit that we do not really know if the body is conscious of itself. do not know because we are not the body (Rosen 1997:10). We
Rosen’s argument belongs to a large body of philosophical literature dealing with the nature of
The uniqueness of man... According to Prabhupada, the material world contains 8,400,000 different types of bodies through which a soul can transmigrate, from the body of a cat or dog to that of a human being (Prabhupada 1984:14). Our tastes and preferences, as well as our pleasure and suffering, depend upon the type of body we inhabit. According to Prabhupada all animals, including humans, engage in “eating, sleeping, defending, and mating” (Prabhupada 1990:6). Humans differ from animals, however, in their ability to understand and practice religious principles. Of the millions of “material forms” available to spirit-souls, the human form is most conducive to God- realization (Prabhupada 1990:6). Many devotees agree with Prabhupada that the human form is particularly well-suited for the cultivation of God-consciousness, and consequently one must take to devotional practice while he still has the good fortune of wearing a human body. Over the summer I attended a Ratha Yatra festival in Chicago's Loyola Park, where an ISKCON member (with a middle-aged, Indian body) approached me. He assumed that I was unfamiliar with ISKCON, and he used the concept of human uniqueness as a recruitment strategy. He asked me about the differences between humans and animals, and then he explained the human body’s special constitution for religion. The fear of failing to use the human life to one’s advantage, as well as rebirth in the animal kingdom might inspire neophytes to adopt ISKCON principles, particularly the practice of chanting. Prabhupada argues, however, that religious practice has declined in this modern age of Kali-yuga , the last and most degenerative stage in the Hindu time cycle. Instead of using the human life to worship Krishna, many people are simply finding methods for improving upon the animal activities of eating, sleeping, mating, and defending. Prabhupada critiques modern “progress,” therefore, by comparing it to animal life. He jokes, “A dog is running here and there
on four legs, and you are running on four wheels. Is that progress?” (Prabhupada 1990:5). Prabhupada says that those who believe themselves at the height of material progress are in fact no better than dogs, because they manipulate the material world to live comfortably while completely ignoring spiritual progress. Why waste this potential to return to Krishna, instead behaving like an animal? Though animal souls are equal to those of human beings, their bodies are (in most cases) inferior. Prabhupada continues, in Civilization and Transcendence , to elaborate upon the ways in which modern humans resemble animals as they pursue food, sleep, sex and defense. He argues that “my sex pleasure and the dog's sex pleasure is the same. Of course, a dog is not afraid of having sex on the street, in front of everyone. We hide it in a nice apartment” (Prabhupada 1990:7). Prabhupada’s point is that we need not waste the human form in pursuance of sexual pleasure, because even dogs can enjoy sex. The cultivation of God- consciousness, however, is a higher pleasure than sex, because animals cannot enjoy devotional service. Of the sensual pleasures of fine food, Prabhupada continues, “a pig has a certain type of body, and his eatable is stool...'Let the pig eat halava [an Indian sweet].' That is not possible...Can anyone, any scientist, improve the standard of living of a pig?” (Prabhupada 1990:7). A pig with a taste for halava is, nevertheless, still a pig. Human beings who eat expensive, fancy foods and live in big houses, similarly, are no better than humans who do not enjoy such finery. In Kali-yuga , scientists have helped raise the human standard of living: we now eat more and nicer foods, live in big and fancy homes, sleep in warm beds, etc. While these are material improvements, many devotees consider them spiritual regressions. The difference between a “first-class man,” as Prabhupada would say, and his inferiors, is not a matter of wealth