Southwestern College, Santa Fe
What’s Up With Me and Krishna?
I think I have some kind of destiny crossing with Lord Krishna, 8th avatar of Vishnu. Which, on the surface of things, seems unlikely for a kid from Cleveland proper. But I think there is something to this anyway…He just circles back and around, over and over, like a lived and breathing mantra, throughout my life…
Last night we attended a Kirtan (call and response Indian devotional music/chanting), where one of the singers (Jaya Lakshmi, for those who know her music, playing with Ananda Yogiji) was a devotee of Krishna and Radha; so there was lots of Krishna chanting, and actually I am listening to them now, as I type (yeah, I bought the CD), singing “Hare Krishna Hare Krishna, Krishna, Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama, Rama, Hare, Hare…” You know that song. Tonight’s version is amazingly beautiful, with a minor chord and unanticipated harmonies that add lushness to the aural-scape..
“Lord Krishna, Lord Rama (both avatars of Vishnu, the supreme)–Take away my Sorrows, Bring Bliss and Joy.”
As prayers go, that is a pretty good one, I have to say. I would vote for it, though personally, I typically find myself short in the sorrows department, so please, if you would, super-size the bliss and joy……
…So in 1971, our Ohio State roommate Kim (who Al, another roommate, only recently found up in Colorado through some private dick), “joined the Krishnas” and would go down to High Street in Columbus, Ohio, by the book store, and chant with the other Krishnas. The way you would invite me for a coffee, Kim would say “Hey, Jimmy, wanna go chant on High Street?” In my seventeen year old way, I was kind of like “What the hell?”, but OK with it too. It was not a judgmental “What the hell?”, but one of wonder. I would politely decline…”Thanks, Kimbo, I have a paper to work on….but thanks…”
This goes back a ways.
…Then we would go over to the Krishna temple and have free vegetarian food, and argue with the guru guys, but having fun, and being respectful, and we would hang out and pretend to know stuff…It was kind of sweet…Seventeen years old, fresh out of a thousand years of broken-down and rickety Catholic dogma , having no idea what a Hindu was, and less of an idea where the Krishnas came from, but having a 17 year old’s Scorpio-headed opinion on the matter, nevertheless, as you can imagine.
The Krishnas ultimately came to be seen as an airport laughingstock in America, which I get, though I find it very sad in its own way. We did not get that the Bhagavad Gita, which seemed at the time like “The Cult’s Goofy Manifesto”, dredged up from who knows where, is one of the most gorgeous and storied books of the Mahabharata, and indeed in world literature. I re-read it a few months ago. It is a stunning tour de force of spiritual literature, and one of the great repositories of perennial wisdom known to human kind. Arjuna and Krishna.
How did THAT get to be a joke?
…In 2010, we were in Mathura, India, the birthplace of Lord Krishna, along the Yamuna River, which also runs through Vrindivan, a city which the Krishnas are replicating in western West Virginia. No, I am not kidding. I have been there a number of times. It is cool…I have an old pic of me there, at the Palace of Gold…
Anyway, Mathura is a trip, and it is ancient beyond words, and there is a Krishna temple there, of course. (Some towns have Hanuman Temples, some other kinds of temples, but there are NOT a ton of Krishna Temples in India….We found one in Mathura, one in Delhi…) We drank in the Krishna Consciousness there, forty years after the High Street scenes, and it was clear that Krishna is not one to be taken lightly, that Krishna is not meant to be just the savior of junkies and goofballs from Cleveland, Ohio. He is a major dude in the theatre of world spirituality.
OK, so a lot of drug heads were drawn to the Hare Krishnas, and they were not really grounded. (Same with the Children of God, Jesus Freaks and on and on…) So what? You prefer they keep using heroin and breaking into your trunk? It was not a bad choice, not a bad bridge of surrender out of chaos and self-destruction. They went for The Illustrious Blue One, in lieu of the dark road they were on…
…(That is another connection. My dad’s name was Gil, which shifted at some point to “Blue Gil”, which, when we all became aware of the Gita, became “The Illustrious Blue One.” I would actually reference my old man as “The Illustrious Blue.” Probably not to his face, as he would not have had the vaguest notion, plus he was a tough guy Irishman. But what a funny archetypal mish-mash to be carrying around in my teenage head, with your old man carrying not only the old Irish, but the Krishna energy.)
So tonight I am sitting here listening to Kirtan music, playing my guitar along with Ananda Yogiji, singing Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna, Krishna, Hare, Hare….Seriously, it is really a very nice version…
…Just like George Harrison did too, on My Sweet Lord…It was a number one hit on Billboard, the first one of any single Beatle after the break up, and Rolling Stone Magazine calls it the 460th best song on the list of the 500 Greatest Rock Songs of All Time. Unimaginable. A Krishna chant, #1 on Billboard. You gotta be kidding me.
…So Columbus, Ohio was a coming of age…The National Guard commandeered the campus with assault vehicles, we were reading Bobby Seale, Abbie Hoffman, Eldridge Cleaver, the Upanishads, Jerry Rubin, W.E.B. Dubois, On the Road, and the Krishnas were chanting and drumming, “Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama, Rama, Hare, Hare…” and we were hanging out at their temple, teenagers grasping at something large, beyond the free biryani and vegetables, not having anything like a clear sense of what it was. But we were on to something.
My favorite color has always been blue. Who knows. Last night’s Kirtan, Kimbo, the Illustrious Blue One, Tuk-Tuk rides in Mathura, the fabled town of Krishna’s birth…and then there is a huge poster of Krishna and Radha to my left, in our kitchen, he blue, of course, playing the flute, moo-cows and peacocks surrounding, brought home from the magical Pink City, Jaipur…
That’s a lot of decades and stuff to weave together on a Monday night…At Southwestern College, we have a distinctive focus on the spiritual dimension of things, though as an institution, we are not affiliated with any particular lineage, embracing them all of them as coming from an original Source…I have always found more resonance with New Thought, with the Celtic Druids, others here at Southwestern with the Paqos of Peru, or the Sundancers up in the Dakotas, some with an enlightened Christianity, some with Buddhist tradition, some with nothing more specific that Mother Earth, Pachamama…
We assume too, that this spirit dimension, however you understand it, is alive, though sometimes dormant or under-nourished, in the lives of our students and clients. We feel it is a good thing to awaken that dimension, though we would never presume to know how it will show up for you, in the shape of what Light Figure, in the traditions of what culture…
I have always thought my Light Figure was Finn McCool, and he is most certainly one, but tonight I have to consider the probability that Finn and Krishna shared some kind of destiny crossing as well, and that I somehow am part of those lineages in a way that I will never presume to understand…For now, I will keep playing along with the record, and feeling some kind of ancient connection to forces that are older and bigger than anything I could create in one little lifetime of wandering the planet, listening for the next time the universe sends the ancient chants and mantras my way…
Hare, Hare….
Jim Nolan
About the Moderator
Jim Nolan is in his 6th year as president of Southwestern College. He has worked for a dozen universities or colleges, both online and on the ground. He holds a Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology, and attended graduate school in English/Irish Literature. He reads a lot of books, takes a lot of photos, plays guitar, got married in India in 2010, and has a wire haired fox terrier named Barney. He is the opposite of a guru, whatever that is called.
