Joined: Sept 2007 Gender: Male Posts: 259 Karma: -9
Mi Vida Loca « Thread Started on Apr 7, 2008, 7:48pm »
This is dedicated to Swarup Das and his lovely wife Chitta.
Recently I have become fascinated with the life story of Swarup Das (ACBS) and his partner in crime, his wife, Chitta Devi Dasi (ACBS). Maybe some of you have as well. A short while ago Swarup began posting at Gaudiya Repercussions his life story. What a great time I have had reading how a 17 year old kid from Long Island, NY, became a Hare Krishna devotee in 1969 in New York City, and quickly became the international secretary for ISKCON. This meant that his job was to among other things, deal with the fledging society's mail. He was the person you communicated with if you wrote to ISKCON for a book or I guess whatever. He left ISKCON in the early 1980's and has lived mostly in and around the San Francisco Bay area ever since.
He quit posting at Gaudiya Repercussions and has continued with his story at his own blog at http://swarupdas.multiply.com/
All the stories he told of the early day of ISKCON, that he wrote at Gaudiya Repercussions, are now available at his blog. He has in the past been encouraged by the professional pubishing community to write his memoirs for publication, luckily for us, he is doing so now at his blog.
In an email exchange where I was telling him how much I appreciated his time and effort in writing about the early days of ISKCON he asked me for my story as well in order to get to know me better, since we do not know each other.
I am assuming some of you may want to know me as well (if not, skip the rest), since I am a well known and controversial devotee on the interent, yet only a very small number of you know actually know me in person. And even then none of you know my whole story. So since Swarup is so kind to tell his life story on his blogs, I was inspired to do the same here for those who wonder where this crazy guy is coming from.
"Phase one in which Doris gets her oats"
I was born in San Diego in 1959. For the next 11 years we moved around a lot because of my dad's job. He worked for Bendix corporation as a civilian contractor for the U.S. Air Force. He would run satellite tracking stations at Air Force bases. We lived in Spain for a few years, the Canary Islands for a few years, Hawaii for a few years, San Diego, Lompoc, and Barstow also for a few years. My mom got sick of moving so my dad quit his job and went to work for my uncle, his older sister's husband in New York City.
So we moved to Long Island. For the first few years we lived in the same town that my aunt and uncle lived in, Manhasset, which is this beautiful wealthy enclave on the north shore, the so-called "Gold Coast" area of Long Island. We weren't wealthy, my aunt and uncle were wealthy, but we got a deal on an expensive home because the owners son was going to keep his attic apartment and part of the basement for his speaker business. He was a cool hippy, and this was 1970-72.
But my 1 year older brother screwed things up and my parents decided to get out of Manhasset because they thought the kids in the junior-senior high school were a bad influence because of drugs. My brother's friends were all into hash and weed, speed and pills etc, and my brother being my brother, got involved in dealing, even though he was only in the 8th grade. Some dumb friend of his left a stash in our mailbox for my brother, and my parents found it. So my parents got paranoid, since my brother was a straight A student, that he was going to ruin his life. So we moved away from Manhasset to get away from his "druggy friends" - to yuck - Hicksville. Which at the time was the most populated of all the little towns on Long Island, and also was famous for at one point having the largest student body of any high school in America. It was nothing like Manhasset. Manhasset is this beautiful coastal wealthy village with one of the top rated High Schools in the country, a bunch of rich kids, a bunch of celebrities, right by the ocean, really the best of Long Island. Whereas Hicksville was far from the ocean, drab suburbia, and strictly middle class with a bland dull school system. And oh yeah, with far more drugs and druggies then Manhasset, Hah!
So that was where I lived from the 8th grade till graduating High School. I had a bunch of relatives all around the metropolitan area, on Long Island and in Jersey, all from my father's side of the family, all jewish. My dad's parents were immigrants from Russia and Poland. My dad was born in Chicago, but when his parents divorced he moved with his mom to Brooklyn, where he spent most of his youth and where his older sisters lived nearby.
So I had a bunch of jewish relatives on my fathers side, and on my mothers side I had a bunch of "average" americans, mixed catholic and protestant, Irish, Swedish, Danish, who all lived in California, mostly in the San Diego area.
In High School I was a disinterested student, really just cheated just to pass and graduate. My friends and I were all stoners and drinkers, and Hicksville High was pretty much all stoners and drinkers. A very stoned place at a very stoned time, the 70's.
So after graduation I was invited by my brother to spend the summer up in Ithaca. He had a full academic scholarship to Cornell, and he and his friends had rented a nice old victorian mansion by the river to live in instead of the dorms on campus. He and they were all Deadheads. My brother had been an acid dealer all through High School and he was continuing the business up in Ithaca. It was an amazing summer, we had huge acid parties at our house, all kinds of beautiful hippie chicks were always wandering in and out, it was a fun place to be. That's when I started reading books on yoga and buddhism and all the usual new agey type of stuff that was popular back then. I began to do yoga, and then the summer ended. I wasn't interested in College, but I was interested in heading out to California. So off I went to San Diego where I hooked up with my best friend from High School who had also moved there. We got a place at the beach, Mission Beach, maybe a mile or 2 from the ISKCON temple. I would be a devotee within a handful of months. That's enough for now. The beach is calling, I can hear my name on the wind, lol!
« Last Edit: Feb 21, 2009, 8:47pm by buddysattva »
Joined: Sept 2007 Gender: Male Posts: 259 Karma: -9
Re: Mi Vida Loca « Reply #1 on Apr 8, 2008, 3:36pm »
Part 2
Where god smacks yours truly upside the head
I was born into an atheist family. My parents weren't militant atheists, they were just not believers, and therefore I was raised without religion. In fact my parents never mentioned religion or god in my presence, they were just indifferent to spirituality, not antagonistic. I thought belief in god was stupid. Like many common atheists I thought religion was all made up by power seekers in order to control people. Because I had no faith and never had a spiritual experience I believed that whatever others claimed to have experienced was just either lies or hallucinations. I was an utter materialist.
In High School I started taking psychedelic drugs. Immediately my perspective on spirituality changed. Like countless others before me my "doors of perception" were opened and I was able to see that there was more going on in this world then what was visible to my eyes. I experienced what many people who taken psychedelic drugs claimed to have experienced, that is, a vision of some higher mystical power at work in our world, a mystical unifying presence which seemed to be operating in other dimensions then we ordinarily perceive. Many a materialistic cynic took psychedelics and had their views changed radically over night. The counterculture that was born in 1960's was the result of a massive number of people taking psychedelics.
Like Huxley my defining psychedelic trip was with a mescaline based plant. Peyote has been used for thousands of years amongst native americans in their religious rituals, similar to the use of soma by vedic peoples. The belief was that when you took peyote that your spirit guide would appear to you and instruct you.
I had taken LSD and psilocybin mushrooms but not a mescaline based plant. While my experiences had radically altered my perception of the possibilities that reality could offer, I hadn't stopped being an atheist. None of my experiences I saw as being spiritual or having anything to do with god. At that time I also started to be involved with yoga practice. I read Yogananda and other popular yoga books. I practiced hatha yoga with pranayama and meditation as well. Still I was an atheist.
Then after I had moved to california my brother and a friend met some native americans at a rainbow gathering, in I think New Mexico, they bought a bunch of peyote and then came back with them. So one night we all took peyote for the first time. This was totally unlike the other psychedelics I had taken. My spirit guide showed up. Except it was made clear to me that my spirit guide was in control over nature and of everyone.
The best I could describe what I experienced is in a movie I saw called 'Fallen' starring Denzel Washington. In the movie a man is executed by the state for being a serial killer. But after the execution there continues to be killings with the same method as the dead serial killer. As it turns out the real killer is a spirit demon named Azazel who can possess someone completely simply by touching them. In one scene He travels from body to body, first in a police station then along a sidewalk in a city by touching people one after another, each time possessing them for a moment or two while taunting Denzel (who plays a police detective) and showing off his ability to possess people.
So I experienced something very much like that. God showed off his ability to control everyone by speaking through them to me, possessing them for a few moments at a time, but with the addition of also showing control over all of nature, and of showing me various other things within my mind when I closed my eyes. Such as how god creates things through manipulation of the elements at the atomic level. All in all I spent all night and the next day communicating with god in a variety of ways. Since I had been recently going to the iskcon temple nearby for the free food, I was led there during this trip to get something to eat. When I walked in Acyutananda Swami was sitting on a little dias about to give a class, he was singing and playing mrdanga. I was seriously affected by the chanting, I had been to kirtan before, but there was something extraordinarily powerful this time. I was still being communicated with by god, it hadn't stopped since it started some many hours earlier. Then the chanting stopped, just a minute or two after I had walked in and sat down. God took control of Acyutananda who looked directly into my eyes and said "This is Krishna Consciousness". Then he gave a class, and for the first time I understood Krishna consciousness, for the first time I knew there was a god, in fact he was speaking to me right then and there.
All that occurred in September 1977. I had been visiting the iskcon temple regularly for around a month because they were the place to go if you lived at the beach. It was a very popular place for all the hippies and surfers and new age types who lived in the area. The food was free and it was really good and plentiful. They had some great cooks and a guy whose only job was to grow all kinds of sprouts and make huge amazing salads. Nowadays I think you have to pay to get prasad, and I am not sure what the scene is like since I haven't been there to visit in over 15 years. But back in september 1977 it was a very happening place to visit for free great food. The sunday feasts were huge affairs with amazing kirtans. There were at least 50 full time devotees and anywhere from 400-500 guests, with almost everyone chanting and dancing ecstatically. This was before sunday feasts in iskcon temples in America turned largely into more of a place for Indian families, there were Indians, but not that many. Mostly it was hippies, yogis, new age types, surfers, students, of all races. It was "the" place to go on sunday evening at the beach, it was the major social event for the week for thousands of people.
Then in November Srila Prabhupada passed on. I remember the mood of the temple changed quite significantly during that time. Everyone was quite somber and some seemed easily agitated. I had been studying the Gita and the Bhagavatam for a few months while also chanting everyday, I was becoming more involved with doing service at the temple as well. A friend of my brother who had gotten a big inheritance bought some property out in the area just north and east of San Diego called Ramona. The property was on some beautiful secluded area which used to be some kind of health resort. It had numerous buildings and cottages, a main meeting hall with a restaurant style kitchen, gardens, a vineyard, pool, etc. This guy wanted to turn it into some kind of new age healing center and so he invited all types of people to come out there to live to try and get the place going.
So I moved there, and basically the guy wasn't so sure on how to do what he wanted to do. It became just a hangout for a bunch of hippie new agey types, but a really nice hangout. I stayed there until February 1978 when I decided that I was too far away from the iskcon temple for my own good. I missed the kirtans and the prasadam and I knew that I had to become a full time devotee if I wanted to really use my time and energy in pursuit of Krishna consciousness.
So I called a devotee friend and he came out to get me, he was to become my "bhakta leader" in the months ahead. He had only been in San Diego a short while after moving there with his family from Michigan. Within a year he would become the temple president of the San Diego temple, and then some years later the GBC for the western United States, a position he still holds today. A few years after I had moved into iskcon, Ramesvara Swami, the zonal acharya, would try to buy that property I was living at for an iskcon farm community and gurukula. It was due to Badrinarayana's visit to come and pick me up. He was amazed with the place. But it was too expensive and they ended up buying property up at Three Rivers next to Sequoia National Park out by Visalia. Eventually that area would become a large devotee community "the Badger community", Badger is the name of a small town nearby to Three Rivers. And now there actually is a planned iskcon multimillion dollar Indian style temple and community out in the same general area where I was living. Here is a project page http://www.iskconofescondido.com/
But back then I was just Bhakta Dave, the first "new bhakta" in ISKCON's and Danavir's "New Bhakta Program", which was created by Danavir Das in 1978 as a movement wide standard of how to train new devotees, and which was first implemented by him in San Diego...on little ole me. They even had a "New Bhakta Program" newsletter, where I am described as the first person in the program. Oh what joy to be taken into the shower by Danavir and taught "how to take a proper shower" while wearing kaupins, and then to be taken into the toilet and taught "how to pass stool properly" while still wearing nothing but kaupins, by Danavir. Boys will be boys lol!
Stay tuned for the next episode where I realized I joined something more like the mafia then a yoga ashrama.
« Last Edit: Apr 21, 2009, 4:59pm by buddysattva »
Joined: Sept 2007 Gender: Male Posts: 259 Karma: -9
Re: Mi Vida Loca « Reply #2 on Apr 9, 2008, 4:27pm »
Funky little shack
There is nothing quite like being told that you have to live the life of a renunciate monk in order to "make spiritual advancement", be made to sleep on wooden planks or on hard floors because "austerity helps you make spiritual advancement", shave your head and wear pinkish Hindu monk clothing because it will get you out of your "bodily concept of life", get up at 3:30 a.m and take a cold shower and then chant mantras for the better part of the next 4 hours, be expected to be totally sexless and to suppress any sexual feeling or thought "for the sake of spiritual advancement", only to then be surrounded all the time by 30 young women who are almost all single and pretty, who are all dressed up in pretty Indian saris with Indian makeup and jewelry, and who are all basically horny as hell and not afraid to stare at you or bump into you or try to make small talk "for their service" while pretending not to notice you, everywhere you go.
That was the hilarity of ISKCON brahmachari existence for me. Before I joined ISKCON of course I knew there were lots of pretty young things involved, but I thought that they would pretty much keep to themselves for the most part, kinda like nuns or something. I expected ISKCON ashrama life to be something very monastic and serene, kinda like what I had seen on the television series Kung Fu.
In reality it was more like a living in a soap opera about a mafia clan, except with a bunch of pretty young girls flitting around the place trying to get guys to like them enough so they could get married. Then of course married life would be a very regulated affair. Husband and wife would be model renunciates, even though living together as man and wife they would only have physical relations in order to procreate.
Hold on a second while I try not to die from laughing my ass off.
ISKCON, at least in those days, was the most sexually charged place I have ever experienced. We were all supposed to be renounced monks, even the married couples, oblivious to sex and romance, absorbed in thoughts of God and the afterlife. And we were, to some degree. Most of us didn't do many of the "normal" things an average person does in modern societies, and we all spent countless hours every day chanting and hearing lectures on spirituality. Also we would get up from sleep every morning in time to start group chanting and worship at 4:30 a.m, every single day. But the reality is that when you put a bunch of young men and women together, all day every day, most of them single, all your talk of celibacy and sexlessness ends up going in one ear and out the other. There was constant sexual drama going on, either between single people, or between husbands and wives, or between cheating spouses.
The kirtans were especially hilarious. In the front of the temple room were all the men singing and dancing, but every time you turned your head would be a bevy of young beauties dancing around and looking straight at you, knowingly trying to tease you, even the married women. What was especially funny was when a woman would talk to you, usually they would approach as if they are servile, with their heads slightly bent down, acting as if they are there to serve you as some type of slave girl. They knew what they were doing, maybe not all of them acted like that, but most did, and it was calculated to make guys desire them. Remember this is supposed to be a yoga ashrama where sex desire was taught to be a sign of spiritual immaturity and weakness. Yet everywhere you turned there were young breasts going up and down while dancing or walking around, young beautiful women in exotic makeup treating you like you were their slave master, with constant lustful stares and other sexual enticements. It was no wonder that so many ISKCON devotees were always so self-deprecating about how they were so fallen and the lowest of the low.
I grew to despise my initiating guru. Among other things (looking disgusted with me for not collecting enough money during one night over the Christmas holidays during the infamous "Christmas Marathons") he actually tried to use the lure of giving me a young girl as a way of controlling me. He would threaten to "never give me a wife" if I didn't "surrender" in a more expected fashion. Not that I needed him to give me a girl, I was propositioned numerous times by young women, either directly or through others. But the threat of using sex as some kind power play over me was what finally led me to become disgusted with him. I just accepted that ISKCON after Prabhupada was going on in the proper way. After all I was a new devotee, what the hell did I know? There was the guru who was like a mafia don; there were his close friends (often sannyasis) who were like underbosses or consiglieres, and there were the temple presidents who were like capos. The rest of us were like soldiers. In every way an ISKCON temple back then was like the mafia.
This is from howstuffwork.com
Quote:
How the Mafia Works
The Structure of La Cosa Nostra
The leader of each family is known as the boss, or don. All major decisions are made by the boss, and money made by the family ultimately flows to him. The boss's authority is needed to resolve disputes and keep everyone in line.
Just below the boss is the underboss. The underboss is the second in command, although the amount of power he wields can vary. Some underbosses resolve disputes without involving the boss. Some are groomed to replace the boss if he is old or in danger of going to jail.
Beneath the underboss are several capos. The number of capos varies depending on the overall size of the family. A capo acts like a lieutenant, leading his own section of the family. He has specific activities that he operates. The capo's territory may be defined geographically (as in, "everything west of 14th Street belongs to Louie 'The Key' DiBartolo.") or by the rackets he operates ("Alfonze 'Big Al' Maggioli is in charge of illegal gambling."). The key to being a successful capo is making money. The capo keeps some of the money his rackets earn and then passes the rest up to the underboss and boss.
The "dirty work" is done by the soldiers. A soldier is the lowest rank among made men. They're part of the family, but they hold little power and make relatively little money. The number of soldiers that belong to any given capo can vary tremendously.
In addition to soldiers, the Mafia will use associates. Associates are not actual members of the Mafia, but they work with Mafia soldiers and capos on various criminal enterprises. An associate is simply someone who works with the mob, including anyone from a burglar or drug dealer to a lawyer, investment banker, police officer or politician.
There is one other position within the family that is somewhat legendary -- the consigliere. The consigliere is not supposed to be part of the family's hierarchy. He is supposed to act as an advisor and make impartial decisions based on fairness rather than personal feelings or vendettas. This position is meant to elected by the members of the family, rather than appointed by the boss. In reality, consiglieres are sometimes appointed and are not always impartial.
Mafia Divisions
The Mafia is not an actual organization itself. There is no head of the Mafia. Instead, the word Mafia is an umbrella term that refers to any of several groups of gangsters who can trace their roots to Italy or Sicily.
In broad terms, there are five Mafia groups, defined mainly by the regions they operate in or the regions they originated in. All five groups have their hands in criminal operations that span the globe and have set up operatives in many different nations. The Sicilian Mafia originated on the island of Sicily. The Camorra Mafia began in Naples, and the Calabrian Mafia originated in Italy's Calabrian region. The Sacra Corona Unita is a more recent group based in the Puglia region of Italy. Finally, La Cosa Nostra is the American Mafia, although this group can trace its history back to Sicilian families as well as some of the other Italian groups.
What I came to realize after the initial stage of getting used to my new environment and adjusting to a radically new lifestyle, and after going through the "Bhakta Program", was that I was expected to be a foot soldier in money making schemes, with all the profit going to the leaders, who usually did none to almost no real work and never any hard work. It took around 4 months after I joined to come to this realization.
I will always remember a friend of mine named Hari Dasa getting kicked out of the temple by Gunagrahi, the president of the San Diego temple at that time. His job was collecting donations, or as it was euphemistically called: sankirtan. One day Gunagrahi, who I guess didn't like the fact that Hari Dasa's locker (we had lockers, like in High School, where we kept our personal belongings) was locked, busted into it and found some money. Evidently Hari Dasa was holding out on his collections. He would keep a small portion every day because he wanted to go to India for the Gaura Purnima festival in Mayapur. This enraged Gunagrahi. He took all of Hari Dasa's stuff and dumped it on the sidewalk and angrily threw him out of the temple. When I showed up I saw Hari Dasa sitting on the curb with his head hanging down looking devastated. I asked someone what happened, and it came as no surprise to me.
Gunarahi Dasa was the president of the San Diego temple when I joined. He had a nasty angry violent streak in him. One time when he wanted me to do something while I was relaxing with some friends, and I didn't respond fast enough, he grabbed me by my feet and tried to drag me down a flight of stairs, the whole time with a bizarre grin on his face, as if he was getting sexually turned on by his power trip. Not long after I joined he would be forced into taking vanaprastha and relinquish his temple president role by the boss, er zonal acharya, Ramesvara Swami. He had done something to his wife, beat her and possibly raped her, I got different stories from different devotees. She was a delicate artistic type, and from gossip I heard Ramesvara arranged to keep his wife from having Gunagrahi prosecuted if he would accept loss of power and forced into sannyasa. These details may not be totally accurate since I got different stories from different people, but I remember his wife leaving and that he was forced to leave his position and take vanaprastha. From that incident came the rise of Badrinarayana from being the San Diego new bhakta leader and Ramesvara underboss, to temple president and eventual Ramesvara replacement as GBC in charge of the region.
Gunagrahi would go on to buy a motorhome and drive around the zone with a few guys where he would hold preaching programs while trying to make new bhaktas. I was one of the first guys to go with him. Before he bought his famous motorhome he had a converted panel truck. The back section was turned into a tiny temple replica. Gunagrahi, myself, and a guy named Bhakta Paul headed out to the wild wild west in search of preaching glory. We lost Paul in the Grand Canyon. We had been travelling around New Mexico and Arizona and Gunagrahi was being his usual obnoxious self. He seemed to revel in insulting people and physically and mentally trying to intimidate you or actually physically abusing you. After a while Paul had enough, even though he was a big guy and Gunagrahi wouldn't pull his crap on people he feared could kick his ass, still just being in close quarters with such an obnoxious jerk who was supposed to be some type of spiritual authority was too much for Paul. He claimed to have lost faith in Krishna Consciousness when me stopped at the Grand Canyon to camp for the night. He was a real mild and kind and sweet guy. He was the type of guy who couldn't tolerate the countless obnoxious power trippers found amongst ISKCON leadership as being representative of a bona fide spiritual tradition. His personality and psyche was too fragile for the rough and tumble "spirituality" of ISKCON, and he was not alone.
I remember after Paul left, Gunagrahi and I headed into Flagstaff, a pretty college town. Usually we went to peoples homes who had some previous contact with ISKCON. We would arrange in advance to show up, then we would stay a few days to a week holding one or more programs. We would hand out flyers and cook, but mostly I would do all the actual work. Gunagrahi expected also for me to finance the whole operation by dropping me off in parking lots to do "sankirtan". He was never happy with me because I was not a good collector. I wasn't a good collector because I resented having to wander around parking lots for 6-10 hours trying to con people into giving me a donations; only to have that money go into nice homes and apartments and cars and travel money for the leaders who did no real work, while I slept on hard floors, couldn't get a dime for anything, and was treated like crap. They actually wondered why I didn't have enthusiasm to support their lifestyles by being their personal slave. Anyways, usually when I was forced to do "sankirtan" I would actually only do it for maybe an hour altogether, I would spend the rest of the time doing something else: reading, going to a movie, going to a restaurant, whatever. Then I would show back up to the parking lot where I was to be picked up shortly before I was to go.
So in Flagstaff Gunagrahi convinced the guy whose house we were staying in to give up his life, his girlfriend, his money, and leave with us to go join the San Diego temple as a new bhakta brahmacari. So we pull into Pacific Beach and park across the street from the temple, it was around 7:00 a.m. and we could hear kirtan. I could tell the young guy was excited. As it turns out we arrived during Guru Puja. In fact this morning was unusual because Ramesvara Swami was visiting and Guru Puja was being done for him. There he was sitting on his huge vyasasana with maybe 100 people all around worshipping him, offering him flowers, full dandavats at his feet, the whole deal. If you have never seen Ramesvara Swami do an internet search. He is a little mousy looking guy who would make all types of weird faces whenever he spoke or really did aything. Everything about him was kind of strange, not what you expect a real guru in an Indian tradition to look and act like. Well this whole scene unfolding before his eyes freaked out our new bhakta. He wanted his money back and he wanted to leave, immediately. I remember Gunagrahi laughing about about how he wasn't gonna give the kid back his money. OHHH! what a gavone! fugedaboudit!
next time: Aloha Oy Vey - or - Is that a banana in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?
« Last Edit: Feb 21, 2009, 9:02pm by buddysattva »
Re: Mi Vida Loca « Reply #3 on Apr 9, 2008, 5:31pm »
Yeah i noticed the same thing at the Iskcon temple i used to visit, all the younger generation devotees were so horney all the time( including me). fighting and bickering among each other( i stayed out of this and just observed), when really it was just the build of sexual tension that was not being released in a proper way. That one thing i dont agree about iskcons full withdrawal of sexual desires, its impossible to do such a thing. Sex is not all material, if the conscious is right its the joining of two spirits in the sex act that brings a new soul into the world, so i dont see how sex can be just a material thing, as its the two souls in the sex ritual that are bringing a new soul into the world, this ritual is a joining of two loving souls who love each other in relationship. just the same as what the humans say about the relationship between radha and krsna.( I say humans because god personally has not come down and updated the texts, supposerly did that 5,000 years ago, but now everything is just a jumbled mess of translation and human intervention).
Joined: Sept 2007 Gender: Male Posts: 259 Karma: -9
Re: Mi Vida Loca « Reply #4 on Apr 11, 2008, 9:37pm »
Maui Wowie
Have you ever been in a car accident where you could see it coming but knew that there was nothing you could do to stop it? If you have, what did you do?
One fine rainy day I was asked by the temple president in San Diego to transport some of Prabhupada's books to the San Diego temple from somewhere up north, I don't remember where I was to bring the books from, this was back in 1978 after all. Fallbrook is a farming community and wealthy enclave situated around half-way between San Diego and Laguna Beach on the eastern side of the famous U.S. Marine training base "Camp Pendleton", which is just north of Oceanside CA alongside the coast. Fallbrook is famous for it's wetter then normal climate for Southern California, and for it's avocados. In fact Fallbrook calls itself the "Avocado Capital of the World" More then likely the avocados at an average American supermarket are from Fallbrook. So there I was driving a van of book cases through Fallbrook in the pouring rain. I was stuck behind a slow moving car and I decided after a while that I had had enough and tried to pass it. We were on a single lane road and I had to pass it on the left through the oncoming traffic lane. Since it was raining and misty it was hard to see very far head. I started to pass him but spotted an oncoming car and decided I wouldn't risk trying to pass. As I was slowing down and going back to where I started, my right front bumper slightly touched the back rear bumper of the car I was trying to pass. He had slowed down thinking I was going to pass him and we just barely touched as I was going back behind him. The next thing I know is that I lost control of the van and was headed left and about to go flying off the road. I had hydroplaned due to the wet road. Just off to the left of the road there was a steep drop of around 15 feet and I went flying over it at around 40-50 mph.
I thought I was going to die. I knew there was nothing I could do to prevent the crash because the car was skimming over the watery surface of the road very fast and there was only a single lane between my van and a 15 foot drop. It took around 3 seconds from being bumped to flying over the small cliff. After 1 second I knew I was screwed and I thought I would die. It all happened too fast for me to become frightened. I just took my hands off of the steering wheel, closed my eyes, and started chanting the maha-mantra in my mind.
I never blacked out. I remember exactly what happened next. One moment I was flying off a cliff with my eyes closed while chanting; then everything became silent around me while I continued to chant with me eyes closed for a very short amount of time, maybe 10 seconds. I felt nothing. Then I opened my eyes and I found myself laying in a wet grassy field with a totally smashed van around 20 feet from me. My thighs ached and I wasn't able to stand up. So I crawled up the embankment to the road where someone had stopped. They had seen the accident. They asked me if I was alright and I kinda crawled into the back seat of their car as they sped me to the Fallbrook Hospital which was just a couple minutes away. I was really in no pain unless I tried to stand, if I did then my thighs really ached. At the hospital they quickly took me to get x-rayed, only to find that there was nothing wrong, just bruised thighs. After the cops showed up at the hospital all the staff came to see me. The cops had told them that my van was crushed, it went nose first into the ground crushing it like an accordion. They thought that I would be dead. They were literally stunned to see that I didn't have a scratch, only bruised thighs.
What had happened was that when the van impacted with the ground the front windshield broke away and I went flying out through the front windshield area hitting my thighs on the steering wheel as I left the van. The van then rolled to it's right. If I had been wearing a seat belt I would have been crushed. During that entire episode I was totally conscious and chanting with my eyes closed, yet felt nothing at all, I didn't have any sensation of my body during the accident. I knew God wanted to show me a little something about control.
For a month or so I was unable to do much service because I could barely walk. So they had me man the reception desk. The San Diego temple is just a few blocks from the most popular beach in town on a main boulevard. So we had lot's of people popping in to see what we are about and or to get some prasad, often times with very little clothes on (swimsuits and bikinis). This was back when we didn't charge for prasad so it was a popular place for the local youth. This gave me a lot of time to kick back and read; to have relaxing chats with visitors over plates of sumptuous maha-prasad; and to watch videos and just generally get into a more relaxed serene ashrama kind of lifestyle. This was really the first time since the end of my 3 months in the "New Bhakta Program" that I wasn't being pressured to go out and collect money.
I remember this attractive European middle aged woman who used to visit the temple almost every day while I was at reception. She was always dressed up in some kind of new agey feminine garb, or even a sari, with lots of jewelry and bangles and makeup and perfume. Her thing was to try to get me to preach to her in the reception area while she would try to seduce me. She would invariably start bringing up sexuality in silly ways; it was obvious she was just trying to see how far she could get. I thought it was funny and entertaining so I never tried to stop her and would always go along with her game. After a while when it became evident that she couldn't get me to have sex she stopped showing up; until the next person took over at reception.
There was a new bhakta who caused quite a scene when we went out on harinam, and at the temple. He was a young black guy; he was around 6 feet 9 inches tall with a muscular build. He had been a professional boxer. We used to get harassed out on harinam by drunks when we would chant in Horton Plaza in downtown San Diego. Then one day some guys started to harass us when this giant black guy with a shaved head and a dhoti confronted them, it was priceless. The guys tripped over each other backing quickly away, we never had problems again.
It was during this time that I started to get uncomfortable living at the temple. When I first started going to the temple there was a certain mood the devotees had; a kind of all for one and one for all family vibe. There was closeness and a genuine feeling of affection. After Prabhupada left I noticed those feelings start to erode. More and more there seemed to be a stress on money making. Leaders were treating people differently depending on how much money they could bring into the temple. If you were a "sankirtan devotee" then you were exalted, if you were not then you were not very sincere, or at least not as sincere as the collectors. Not only was this philosophy implied, it was also explicitly preached about openly in classes or in general conversation. There began to be cliques of "sankirtan" devotees who were being encouraged to look down upon everyone else. They would have their own classes, their own kirtans and their own prasadam. What used to be a loving family type of vibe between devotees turned into a cliquish corporate type of vibe.
Around this time the original "Food for Life" program started. On their website today it says
Quote:
The project started in 1974 when an elderly Indian swami, Srila Prabhupada, implored his yoga students not to allow anyone within a ten mile radius of his ashram to go hungry. The program grew quickly, and today Food for Life is active in over 60 countries worldwide.
And on Wikipedia it says
Quote:
Food for Life as a project was initially inspired by elderly Indian Swami, known as A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. In 1974 when watching a group of village children fighting with dogs over scraps of food, the Swami became upset and told his students, "No one within ten miles of a temple should go hungry...I want you to immediately begin serving food." [5] In response to his plea, members of ISKCON around the world were inspired to expand that original effort into a global network of kitchens, cafes, vans, and mobile services, all providing free food, and establishing daily delivery routes in many large cities around the world.
In reality Food for Life started in San Diego, in either late 1978 or early 1979, I don't remember exactly. I was the first full time devotee working on it. It started out as a "dinner program". I don't know who, but someone had the idea that we should turn the temple into a restaurant in the evening serving free high quality prasadam before the evening program of Gita class, kirtan and puja. The idea wasn't to feed starving people, it was to convert people. In fact if you were a homeless person you weren't allowed in; you could get prasad brought to you at a side door. So my full time job was to cook, and to set up the temple with little tables and mats, and to serve; similar to how you might eat at a traditional Japanese restaurant. There would be live music with a few devotees singing bhajans. It was really quite nice, and very popular, we were packed every night. Seeing our success they started doing the same up in Los Angeles and other temples as well. But after a while it became obvious that people were not joining and the costs were not seen as worth it; so it ended. At the same time the temple bought one of those trucks that you can sell hot food from. This was thought to be a cheaper way to make bhaktas through prasadam. At the time there was a big competition between the gurus over who could make the most disciples and who could make the most money and sell the most books, but mostly who could make the most disciples. The biggest competition was between Ramesvara and Jayatirtha. They had the most devotees and the most prosperous and dynamic zones. In our zone Ramesvara was always going on about competing with Jayatirtha, also with Tamal Krishna to a lesser extent. So really the origin of Food for Life was not about feeding the needy, it was about making disciples in order to be seen as the most successful guru and to make make the most money. So Someone came up with the name Food for Life and created a sun logo and plastered it in on the truck. Prasadam would be cooked (at first by mostly just me) at the temple; cheaper prasadam then before; mostly kitchari and halava, and then taken out to various places. The idea was that the higher class of people we had been getting at the dinner program were too well off to surrender and join the temple. The beach area wasn't a poor area of town; that's why we weren't making new bhaktas; or so they thought. The thinking was to target poorer areas and then hope more of them would join because they had less to give up. Funnily enough it was more successful then the dinner program at making new bhaktas; mostly latinos from the poorer areas of town.
This was also the time where I refined my cooking skills. I had been working in the kitchen ever since I joined. The new bhaktas were always sent into the kitchen during Bhagavatam class in the early morning to help with the big morning meal and deity offerings. We had lot's of new bhaktas so I would go in around half the time. We would chop veggies, role chapatis, clean pots, etc. We couldn't cook because only initiated devotees were allowed to cook. Before I joined the ashrama I had worked as a cook at several restaurants. Growing up I was always interested in cooking and would learn to cook over time. Of course Indian cooking was completely different. It is more complex and difficult to learn and get competent at, especially when it comes to cooking and spicing large amounts of food. I was working in the kitchen with some real good cooks who were also my friends, Raktaka and Dhiman, whom I watched and studied. I gradually learned how to cook proficiently.
One day I was asked to drive a new latino bhakta up to Los Angeles in order for him to get some legal matter straightened out. I friend of my brother whom I had gotten to know when I had spent the summer after High School up at Cornell, was visiting my brother who had moved to a nice place with his new wife above the tiny community of Alpine in the Laguna Mountains east of San Diego. So I called him and asked if he wanted to take a trip up to Los Angeles to visit the temple community. He said yeah, so off I went in the morning with the new bhakta. But instead of going north we headed east. He was surprised but calmed down when I said I was picking up a friend who wanted to meet the devotees. As we were going to L.A. I thought it would be nice to show my friend (and his beautiful European girlfriend who came along) the new Laguna Beach temple. They had just bought an old large church building right near downtown a block from the beach and had turned it into a beautiful temple. So we visited. As I was pulling out the van to head up to Los Angeles I bumped into a parked car. The road was a dead end road and it was very thin with cars parked on both sides; while I was driving a huge long van. I heard people talking at me in spanish immediately. There were 3-4 latino guys just above us working on someone's house. They saw what I did and were trying to get my attention. They seemed to be saying it was alright, that I just hit a bumper, they said to forget it and get out of there. So I was relieved and took off. So we ended up having a good time. My friend loved the diorama museum; he loved the prasadam; and we took off back down to San Diego stopping at some beaches along the way. All in all a fun day. But it would come back to haunt me a few months later.
I had gotten pretty bored of the temple and discouraged with the new cliques and new attitudes, it just didn't seem like the cool place I had joined around 1 year earlier. I had been initiated by Ramesvara Swami 6 months after moving in the ashrama in 1978; but I never felt a real connection with him. He held himself off as aloof and superior to his disciples. He treated me impersonally, as my boss, as if I was expected to be his servant because he was the boss of the company; never even having a conversation with me. Not the best way to connect with people and get them to trust you as your spiritual master. I believe a real guru should be down to earth and be able to connect with people as friends and family rather then as your boss in an organization. Anyways I was kinda fed up. I guess another devotee was as well; but probably for other reasons. His name was Yudhisthira Das.
He joined the temple shortly after I had and we became friends. He is a big guy and famous for being the kind of guy the temple authorities would get to do something which needed someone big and threatening. Many years later he would marry a woman who was a law professor and who became one of ISKCON's legal advisors and lawyers, her name is Radha Dasi. But back then he was married to a pretty girl named Malati. For some reason he asked me if I wanted to take off for Hawaii with him. So the plan was on. He was going to pay for it by selling his van and then we would take off for paradise. He had spent some time growing up in Hawaii and going to school there; whereas I had also lived in Hawaii but I was 1-2 years old at the time and didn't remember any of it. The only thing I knew about Hawaii was from watching television from when I was younger. I really knew next to nothing about Hawaii. Other then it being a tropical paradise where you would get sent to if you won a game show, I knew nothing about it.
Shortly before the time came for us to leave Yudhisthira told me that the temple authorities were angry with me and looking for me over something to do with a car accident. Evidently what had happened in Laguna Beach wasn't alright. Somehow the accident had been traced back to the temple and to me. A week or so earlier Badrinarayana had approached me and said that he heard that I was planning on blooping to Maui. I guess Yudhisthira had told someone and it got back to Badrinarayana. He asked me why I wanted to leave. I didn't know what to say, but I said I wasn't feeling the love anymore in the temple. He scoffed and said I was in maya. He then warned me away from visiting Dhiman Das who had moved to Maui a while earlier and who he was trying to convince to come back and cook. So I didn't want to deal with Badrinarayana over the car accident right before we were to leave, he may have tried to stop me or slow us down somehow legally. So we agreed that I would spend the night in Yudhisthira's van and then the next day head up to L.A. where we would sell the van and then fly to Maui. Which is what we did.
We landed in Maui in the afternoon. We didn't have much money so we decided to camp out in Iao Valley. The next day of course we immediately went to visit Dhiman Das who was living in Wailuku, which is a couple of miles from Iao Valley. I hadn't taken any "intoxication" in over a year; but when Dhiman offered us some ganja I couldn't resist. I had been a big fan of ganja since I was 13 years old and hadn't had any in a long time, and never as a serious devotee. I was curious as to how it would be after I had changed so much since the last time I had any. I wasn't expecting it to be such a powerful experience; it had never been like this before. Everything became very surreal; almost like I was living in a scripted out scene in a cartoonish movie. Dhiman rented out a jeep and said he wanted to take us out to Hana. So off we went.
Hawaii is considered by many experienced world travelers to be the most beautiful place in the world. In Hawaii the experienced traveler and the locals know that by far the most beautiful place in Hawaii is the "Hana side" of Maui. "Heavenly Hana" it's called. It's the eastern rainforest side of Maui. That part of the island is really just one large volcano, Haleakala, which rises over 10,000 feet from sea level. It's the second largest mountain on earth, a few thousand feet shorter then the Big Island of Hawaii which is the largest, going over 50,000 feet from the bottom of the ocean to the top. The northern and eastern side of Haleakala is the side which traps the clouds of the prevailing winds and then they dump lots of rain. It's a gigantic rainforest with over 60 streams racing down the volcano, each with countless waterfalls falling one into another; all the way from way up high to the ocean. It's an incredibly beautiful place teeming with delicious wild fruits; i.e. different varieties of mangos, guavas, passionfruit, avocados, bananas, papayas, rose apples, coconuts, all kinds of citrus, and even different types of berries and nuts. Here check it out
So there we were on the road to Hana; considered to be the most beautiful drive in the world ( http://images.google.com/images?q=road+to+hana ) And I was stoned for the first time in a long time, very stoned. I had never even imagined such a beautiful place. As we got deep into the rainforest we ran across some Rose Apple trees which were in season. There were thousands of rose apples scattered along the side of the road and off into the forest. They look kinda like red apples but are more juicy and have kind of a sweet rose smell and delicious rose like taste. While we were eating them in the jungle by a waterfall and pool I was so blissed out that I actually believed that I had somehow entered into the spiritual world, literally. The place was so unreal with fruit and waterfalls and pools everywhere in a sparklingly stunning gorgeous rainforest that I was overwhelmed. Being so stoned probably had something to do with it. In my mind I was being told that "this is heaven, this is Goloka" over and over. I was really in a kind of blissful state of shock. 5 years later when I was living in the most beautiful part of Hana side in an area called Nahiku, where my neighbor on one side was George Harrison, and on the other side was my good friend the supreme goddess herself living as a 13 year old, with her hippy parents and beautiful sister and stunning girlfriends, and where I would meet Krishna face to face for the first time, I would come to realize the significance of what happened that first time I stepped foot on Maui.
Yudhisthira and I split ways a week or so later. We had been camping at Waianapanapa State Park in Hana and he headed off with an old friend to the Big Island. After a few days I split to Honolulu to see what was going on at the ISKCON temple there. At the time the temple president, Narahari Das, wasn't there. He was getting a boat donated to him on the mainland and he was going to sail it back to Hawaii. This was a famous story in ISKCON at the time. The BTG did a bunch of stories on it and eventually a cover story on it.
The Honolulu temple is a big house (plus 3or 4 smaller cottages) on a large property in a wealthy neighborhood up near the top of Nuuanu Valley. It's a very wet place and it's where people drive if they want to take a quick drive from one side of the island to the other through a tunnel at the top of Nuuanu Valley. ISKCON rents it out for 1$ a year from Ambarisha Das, or at least they did when I was there, or that is what they told us. It was there where I encountered for the first time, and really the only time, openly gay devotees living in the ashrama. There were around 5 or so devotees living in the brahmacari ashrama who were openly gay; even if one or 2 of them didn't realize how openly gay they looked and acted. Apparently some time before I arrived there was a gay black sannyasi named Sudama Swami who was the temple president. That somehow attracted or at least created an atmosphere of gay acceptance there. I had never even encountered a gay devotee, or at least one that I knew was gay, anywhere. The temple atmosphere was totally unlike the southern California temples. There was kind of a party atmosphere, which Hawaii tends to bring out, but also more of a close knit family vibe as well. And of course a handful of gay guys who brought a lot of drama as gay guys are famous for doing. What cracked me up was this one gay devotee, a collector, they were almost all collectors, brought back a guy he met and was wrestling around with him on the big front yard of the temple one night, yet no one would say anything. The gay guys were all really nice actually, even though they tended to flirt with you when they talked to you. All the other guys seemed to be used to them and I got used to them as well even though at first I was put off and thought it was really inappropriate. It would be a while till Narahari showed up with the yacht. The temple was much nicer without him there. I noticed the temple devotees vibe got tenser after he came back.
Next time: Stoned Love
« Last Edit: Feb 24, 2009, 8:38pm by buddysattva »
Joined: Sept 2007 Gender: Male Posts: 259 Karma: -9
Re: Mi Vida Loca « Reply #5 on Apr 17, 2008, 11:09pm »
You Gotta Fight For Your Right
If you are Japanese, from Japan, there is a good chance that you will go or went to Hawaii on your honeymoon because it's the most popular Japanese honeymoon vacation destination. And because you are so very polite and therefore fearful of confrontation because you are Japanese, when the person who stops you on the streets of Waikiki gives you a fake flower and then tells you it is the custom to give a donation for some charity, you will give. Then when that person looks at the money you gave as being an insult for not being enough you quickly apologize and hand over some more money. Then when the person seems to get angry and berates you in Japanese for offending America and Hawaii you get desperate because you are with your new wife on your honeymoon in a strange land and don't want to cause offense or be seen as a loser by your wife. As you walk away after paying $100 to a total stranger you feel relieved that the episode is over and get back to enjoying your honeymoon in beautiful Hawaii.
I doubt there were bigger collectors in all of ISKCON then those in Waikiki. The good ones who were able to learn some Japanese language skills and culture and who weren't afraid to try to intimidate Japanese men on their honeymoons into submission, were regularly able to bring in $500-$1500 per day, and that's after the skim. One lady devotee, Laulyam Devi Dasi, I was told was able to make for herself between $500,000 to $1,000,000 over a short number of years. Although I later heard that somehow she ended up losing most or all of it either through theft or something else. Those were the days that ISKCON was making a lot of money, especially in Ramesvara Swami's zone which Hawaii was a part of.
Our zone had somewhere between 100-200 full time collectors. The biggest earners were of course the women who on average were making $200-$500 per day, except in Hawaii where men were better suited at intimidating and making Japanese men feel embarrassed and could therefore make more money. I really got to understand how the women were so good at what they did many years after I had left ISKCON. One afternoon when I was flying from Los Angeles to Hawaii (1992) I was sitting and waiting for the boarding to begin. I was approached by a very pretty very young woman who just walked up to me and started a conversation. I could tell she was an ISKCON devotee but I didn't say anything because I wanted to see what she would do. I was really amazed at how she just started out by basically appearing to flirt and make small talk, and then after a while got around to trying to sell me a book. I could see how easy it is for them to charm and flirt their way into getting older men to give lot's of money, she was really good at making me feel like she was attracted to me.
So basically at that time our zone was rolling in the dough and collectors were treated and held up like stars of a sports franchise i.e. they could do no wrong. And so it was in Hawaii that because the openly gay guys were good collectors that their gay drama was allowed to go on and they were treated with kid gloves by the temple president. In fact you could say that he treated them almost like he was their pimp. They would spend a lot of alone time with him, give him massages, etc. I thought it was weird and not conducive for the reputation of the temple. I was still a new devotee, I had only been initiated for less then a year and I was pretty convinced that what I was being taught (homosex is very sinful) in ISKCON was the absolute truth. I had full faith in what I was being taught. I saw the gay shenanigans going on as being harmful to "our mission" of making new bhaktas. At that time it was being driven into our heads that making new bhaktas was of paramount importance. We would get a lot of visitors to the temple and I thought that the openly gay devotees would be a major impediment in making new bhaktas, I thought they would scare away new recruits. I didn't realize at the time how if you were making a lot of money for the temple that you were pretty much excused from anything you may have been doing that would get other people thrown out or in trouble. This miscalculation would get me thrown out of the temple. I wrote a letter to Ramesvara telling him about my apprehensions about the potential for making new recruits due to the gay situation. Big mistake. Word got back to Narahari, the temple president. But this was still months in the future.
Meanwhile right after Narahari got back to Hawaii with his new boat I was made the head of the kitchen, the head cook. As I would come to find out over my ISKCON career there seemed to always be a chronic shortage of qualified cooks; so I was always in demand even though I wasn't a collector. They had given up on trying to make me a full time collector when I would never come back with more then $20. Narahari seemed to like me; he seemed like a nice enough guy but like most ISKCON temple presidents that I ever worked under he had the strange habit of treating you like he was your boss rather then a spiritual brother or friend i.e. that you were his employee in a business rather then an unpaid volunteer working for the "benefit of mankind".
When I wasn't busy in the kitchen I would work a few hours helping to make candles. Around that time someone had come up with the idea of making decorative carved candles to sell. Ramesvara's temples in Honolulu, Los Angeles and Denver set up candle factories. The one in Honolulu was very small in comparison to the others which were quite large operations. This is an example of what they looked like, in various other colors, sizes, and styles
My job was to pour plain white wax into molds. Then those cores would be taken into the dipping room where they would be dipped in different color waxes and then from there they would be carved. One day while I was pouring (this was outdoors) a devotee walked by and a drop or two of hot wax splashed on him. This was no ordinary devotee, he was a really big guy and more of a fringie then a full time devotee. He was a disciple of Srila Prabhupada and married to the biggest collector. He was also close friends with Narahari and could be a violent aggressive sort of person. The kind of devotee who was used as a temple enforcer if needed. He was also mentally unstable and kind of depressed. As soon as the wax hit him he flipped out and angrily pushed me hard and was seemingly ready to do me some serious harm. Immediately another guy appeared out of nowhere and got right in his face and told him that he would have to go through him to harm me. I thought for sure there was going to be a fight right then and there. They were both the same height, but the guy who was coming to my aid was much thinner and younger, he looked like a hippy with long blond scraggly hair and a scraggly small blond beard. The other guy was very muscular and you could tell he worked out with weights a lot. But the angry guy backed down and then walked away. That was when I made a friend who was called Coconut John. He would regularly bring coconuts to the temple and do other odd jobs and his girlfriend was a temple devotee/collector. He took me up to his house which he had illegally built just up a ways off of Nuuanu Ave in the jungle. It was less then 1/2 mile from the temple. I couldn't believe it when we stepped off of the sidewalk and into the jungle and after less then 50 yards there was a really big house, with a deck, all made of wood, sitting there in the jungle.
A short while later the devotee who had pushed me came up to me and apologized. He said that he hadn't known who I was, but when he saw I was in charge of the kitchen and that he could see that I was doing a lot of service, and that he liked my cooking, he felt really bad about threatening me, but he clearly had some mental problems and a few years later I heard through the grapevine that he had killed himself on the temple property.
Being in Hawaii and in ISKCON was quite different from most of my other ISKCON temple experiences. We were a short ride from countless beautiful beaches which we took advantage of. It was perfect weather all year around, always either in the 80's or on the hottest days of summer in the low 90's during the day, and then in the low 70's at night, and there are waterfalls and pools a short 10 minute walk from the temple. Most ISKCON temples I have ever been in have tried to push a mood of constant service combined with renunciation of material pleasures. The Hawaii temple had more of a mood of enjoyment. There were birthday parties with cake and ice cream, trips to the beach, to the waterfalls, and there was no kind of harsh authoritarian mood of control over your time. One evening a guy named Paulie showed up at the temple who seemed to know most of the guys in the brahmacari ashrama. He was a young surfer fringie devotee. There were a number of those types of guys who would come by the temple now and then. He invited a bunch of us to go out for the evening. It seemed like this was something that happened occasionally but it was the first time for me. So around 7 of us piled into his car and we drove and parked up by the Punchbowl Cemetery which was close by. It overlooks Honolulu from above. Here are some photos of Honolulu from Punchbowl Cemetery
Next thing I know is he pulls out some joints and lights them up and we all get stoned. I hadn't had any ganja since Maui, which was around 3-4 months earlier. I guess they would do this whenever Paul came around when he wasn't surfing on another island. It was a blast, the ganja was the strong Hawaiian variety, we played music and hung out for a few hours and then headed back to the temple. We rolled into the temple around 11 pm and I went to the kitchen and brought out a bunch of delicious prasadam and we feasted. All in all a very fun night that we would repeat quite regularly whenever Paulie came by. A year or 2 later Paulie would move to Los Angeles and I would hook with him there when I was the assistant new bhakta leader and...but that's getting ahead of myself.
Well things were going nicely for a while, I even worked on the new boat, which was made out of teak wood, in the harbor occasionally. I remember when I was working on the boat all of a sudden a Hollywood production showed up and they started to film part of an episode of "Charlie's Angels" right nearby in front of me. Well, I guess it couldn't last forever. Ramesvara eventually got my letter which I had mailed months earlier and he got in touch with Narahari about it. I don't know what went down between them, but I am sure nothing happened to the gay situation. By then I no longer cared anyways, they had all become my friends, in fact a few of them would go out with us when we would go out at night with Paulie to get stoned. But Narahari was pissed off with me. He called me into his office and asked me if I had been getting stoned. I was surprised. I was sure he knew but hadn't been saying anything because it was a very loose temple and he just didn't mind as long as things got done. In fact from what I had seen of his lifestyle I was sure he wasn't following the 4 regulative principles himself. So I didn't know what to say. Then because there was someone else in his cottage with us who was very straight laced, I decided to lie.
The next day he told me I had to leave, that "mother earth couldn't abide liars". I wasn't alone in being kicked, 3 other were kicked out as well. The only guys who were getting high and were not kicked out were the gay guys. A few years down the road Narahari would come out as a heroin addict and leave ISKCON taking the boat with him.
So it was aloha for Hawaii for me for a few years. Off I flew back to California.
next time: "L.A. Woman"
« Last Edit: Feb 21, 2009, 9:10pm by buddysattva »
Re: Mi Vida Loca « Reply #6 on Apr 18, 2008, 7:21pm »
Thanks for posting that, Buddy S. Svarupa and Chitta are old friends from my days in LA. I remember when we were on a flight to India in 1977 and he mysteriously disappeared. I searched all over the plane for him and could not find him anywhere. Suddenly he reappeared a few hours later. I think he must have snuck down that secret passage into the cargo hold like in the movie Passenger 57. Either that or he is quite a magician or maybe a master of disguises.
Joined: Sept 2007 Gender: Male Posts: 259 Karma: -9
Re: Mi Vida Loca « Reply #7 on Apr 23, 2008, 2:12am »
Took a look around, see which way the wind blow
(play spot the devotees in this video)
After being asked to leave the Honolulu temple I flew back to San Diego and moved back into the brahmacari ashrama. I kinda wondered why Badrinarayana had payed for my ticket, but it quickly became apparent. San Diego needed a head pujari. I was called into Badrinarayana's office and he asked me what I thought about moving to Denver. I was being traded to another team...so they could get a head pujari. I had been bored with San Diego before I left for Hawaii and I was still bored with San Diego, so I said alright. Kriya Shakti Devi Dasi wanted to leave Denver and move back to San Diego. I think she joined ISKCON or spent her early years there and she was a dedicated pujari. Denver needed someone to work in their new "Bliss Bar" candy factory. I wasn't told about the candy factory before I left. Right off I didn't like the Denver temple. There was a distinct difference between the Southern California temples and the Honolulu temple and the Denver temple. The Denver temple had a very low energy about it, kind of almost a lethargic dark mood, or so it seemed to me. Svavasa was the temple president and a young blond tall enthusiastic guy named Anuttama was the sankirtan leader, he is the public spokesman for ISKCON these days and Svavasa has been the president of the L.A temple for over 20 years. Immediately I was told I would be working for another guy who ran the farm community. It was in the Rocky Mountains, which started a few miles west of Denver. He also owned the "Bliss Bar" business. I don't remember his name but I seem to remember that he had 2 wives. I was not pleased to learn that I was expected to spend my days in a candy factory but I decided to go along with it and see what happened.
The factory was a storefront which had been converted into a kitchen in the back room, and in the front there was a wrapping machine. Bliss Bars were essentially what devotees called luglus or lugdus. We had a big vat fryer filled with oil which we would drip chick pea batter through a sieve in order to make little fried crunchy balls. We also had a few stand alone industrial size cooking burners where we would cook dates and raisins and sugar to make a syrup. Then we would mix the fried crunchies and date syrup and pour it out onto large baking pans to cool. After cooling we would cut them into squares and take them into the front room to be wrapped by the wrapping machine. The wrapping machine wasn't automated, a person would have to take each luglu and feed it into the machine to get it wrapped. It was a low tech operation and it was very boring.
Since the guy who owned it was really only concerned with making money a lot of the Bliss Bars we sent out (we had them in health food stores around the country) were cooked in foul tasting over used almost rancid oil. There were just 2 of us who were running the factory, me and my old friend Haridas who had gotten kicked out of the San Diego temple by Gunagrahi a while earlier for "skimming the take" on "sankirtan". We both hated working there and were planning on leaving. What made our plans speed up was when we were told the factory was being moved to the farm community in the mountains. That farm community was a short lived and undermanned operation which neither of us wanted anything to do with. Especially since it was clear we were just being treated as slaves and would end up in freezing weather with slave like accomodations. We were not getting any profit, we slept on hard wood or on the floor, and we were expected to do as we were told as if we were slaves, while the guy who ran the farm and owned the candy business had a few young wives and expensive cars and nice homes. Svavasa was in on it as well. He was making profit off of the business and had a really nice home and expensive cars. I was always surprised when ISKCON leaders would treat us like they did. They would be living luxurious lives and doing almost no work while expecting us to act and live like slaves. Then they would say we were insincere or "in maya" if we didn't go along with them.
So after a week or so I just stopped going to work. I stayed in the library section of the temple which was upstairs in a litle loft. I would watch videos and just hang out. When they came looking for me I just refused to work in the factory anymore. Svavasa and the owner of the factory came up and tried to convince me with a lot of hand wringing involved, but it quickly became apparent to them that I wasn't going back to work. They were pissed off but I looked at them like I couldn't care less, and they gave up. They knew they were taking advantage so how hard could they press me? So then they tried to get me to work in their candle factory. Like Honolulu they were making carved decorative candles but on a much larger scale. Well I wasn't going from one factory job to another in order to support the lifestyles of the temple leaders. So I called Badrinarayana and told him I was going to bloop or he could fly me back out to California. He bought my ticket and I flew into Los Angeles the next day.
Back then L.A was still a large community, this was back in 1979-80. The exodus of Prabhupada's disciples hadn't really started to begin yet, some were gone but most of them were still there, around 300-400 people I would guess. For those of you unfamiliar with New Dwaraka it's a street where for around 300 yards ISKCON or devotees own or rent most of the properties on both sides of the street. It creates the feeling that you are living in a community cut off from the rest of L.A. even though it really isn't. There were kids everywhere, devotees hanging around all over the place, a place unlike any other American temple community.
These pics are from recent days from google street, back then those streets and sidewalks would have devotees everywhere.
It was so big with so many devotees and so many things going on that there was less supervision over you if you really wanted less. I didn't want any supervision at all. So at first I would do odd jobs. I noticed that the sankirtan devotees ate breakfast in their own dining hall in the morning and that they were eating this terrible baking powder bread. It was some mistaken attempt at making whole wheat biscuits by someone who didn't know what they were doing. I told one of them that I could make some nice hot whole wheat bread roles for them, that got him excited and the sankirtan leader asked me to make some the next morning to see if they liked it. That became my new morning job and I gained the gratitude of all the sankirtan devotees. I would also help out at other times in the kitchen cooking at various times. I also became a part time receptionist for the temple. I would bring the temple president his lunch prasadam which got a lot of women upset because that gave me first crack at the maha prasadam and I would take way more then needed and then I would feed my friends, but mostly I just kicked back and had lot's of free time to chit chat and hang out.
This went on for a while until I was approached by Caru Dasa who was running the fledgling "Festival of India" out of L.A. He asked me to be the cook. There was around 6-8 full time devotees working on this project under Caru Dasa. He had a bunch of huge pandal tents, exhibits, musicians, etc. Basically the stuff you would see set up at the Ratha Yatra at Venice Beach in L.A every year was what we would take and use for the Festival of India programs. Maduha Dasa was the person who was in charge of the labor of setting up and taking down and basically running the whole physical operation, he also did most of the work himself, except for the cooking. Caru would set up the events which were mostly at colleges. My job, with no help, was to cook for up to a few thousand people at a time. I told Caru that instead of trying to make a subji for that many people, which is what he wanted, that it would be cheaper and easier and faster to make Barats or Bada, fried balls of spicy ground lentils which are like meatballs, in a spicy tomato sauce. I made him some and he agreed. Before the first festival started we had a meeting and Caru warned us that if any of us flaked out and quit that he would see to it that our devotional careers would be finished. He was serious! Caru had a bit of a temper, which I would come to find out shortly.
After a couple of festivals in the L.A. area we went down to do a festival at San Diego State University. While the festival was being set up I was in the San Diego temple kitchen doing the cooking. I had 3 large woks full of tomato sauce cooking away. In one of them the sauce got a little burned. I was doing too many things at once and didn't stir it enough. It wasn't badly burned and it actually tasted like barbecue sauce with a smokey flavor. It was still edible and I didn't have any more tomatos to make more sauce. Plus I was out of time. That sauce had to be used. It would only be used on a portion of the Bada. Plus there were plenty of other things to eat which I had made: pakoras, rice, halava, chutney, and raita. So the festival went on nicely until near the end when Caru walked up to me with an angry look on his face. He was royally pissed off about the tomato sauce! He treated me like I was some great offensive demon because the tomato sauce wasn't perfect! I thought he wanted to hit me he was so mad. The reality was that the sauce was fine, I didn't get any complaints from anyone but him. I decided that I had enough of Caru with his threats and his anger issues and the fact that I was a volunteer for no pay while he was making money. The festival was "for profit" and Caru was keeping all the money. So I took off for my brothers house in the mountains nearby east of San Diego for a few days. Somehow they figured out where I was and called the house up but I wouldn't take their call. That was it for my slavery to Caru.
After getting back to L.A I was asked by the new bhakta leader who was a friend of mine from San Diego to be his assistant in charge of the new bhaktas. He was famous for having a nice speaking voice and was often used as an announcer at feasts and dinner programs. He was a black guy from Jamaica or some other Caribbean island, and he used to have a job as an announcer for some kind of entertainment at a resort or nightclub. So I was given my own room next to the new bhakta ashrama, and a van. My job was to take the new bhaktas out on harinam every day when they weren't busy doing other things. Shortly after that my surfer friend Paulie-from Honolulu-showed up at the temple one day with a friend of his. That was the fringie devotee who would take out a bunch of the brahamcaris at night in his car to enjoy some ganja and then back to party it up with some prasadam back at the Honolulu temple. So he asked me if I had time to go to his place by the beach and hang out. I said sure and I grabbed us a bunch of prasadam and we took off in his friend's VW and headed to Manhattan Beach. As soon as we took off Paulie pulled out a joint and we got high.
I hadn't had any ganja since Hawaii, and I really enjoyed it. So it became a regular thing where 3-4 times a week when the new bhaktas didn't go out on harinam that I would drive the van to Manhattan Beach which was around 20 minutes away, with a bunch of prasadam, and we would get high and hang out. Paulie would then give me some ganja or hashish to take back with me. I would be continually stoned for the next many months. When I was at the temple I would get high in my room before mangal aratik and also during the day and evening. Those are my fondest memories of my time living in ISKCON. Before I started getting high I was really quite bored, everything had become a routine. When I was stoned everything changed. Everything became fun and interesting. I really enjoyed going to kirtan and class, I enjoyed japa, I enjoyed reading, I enjoyed everything about ISKCON life and I was blissful all of the time. What had become boring and repetitive over time had became fun and interesting once I started taking ganja. This may seem offensive or illusory to some, but I was more into the philosophy then ever before. I would spend hours every day pouring over the Bhagavatam and Caitanya Caritamrta whereas before I would get tired of reading after half an hour. I figured if ganja made me more into bhakti then how could it be bad?
Then came the big GBC meetings in L.A where they were trying to figure out what to do with Jayatirtha and Hansadutta and Sridhar Maharaja. It was like a mini Gaura Purnima festival in Mayapur. All the zonal acaryas and GBC flew to L.A with their entourages for what seemed like a few weeks of meetings. The L.A. temple community had never been so packed full of devotees. There was kind of a circus atmosphere. Every morning a different zonal acarya would give class, and then later another one would give another class. They were being treated like celebrities and they were each trying to out perform each other to gain the most respect for themselves as "pure devotees". The most popular amongst the newer devotees were Bhavananda and Harikesa. Bhavananda's classes were very theatrical and Harikesa's were very intense. Because of his popularity then, there came the famous Bhavananda ITV video called Bhavananda in Hollywood; the one which began with "The Eagles" Hotel California. It had Bhavananda in various places around L.A. "preaching" Krishna consciousness.
During the meetings my job was to bring them their prasadam when they were in Ramesvara's apartment during breaks. I was stoned and blissed out and would bring the food into their kitchen and set their plates up while they would chit chat amongst themselves socializing, sometimes they were wandering into the kitchen area to see what was for lunch and talk with me as I set their plates up. I could see that they acted very different when they were amongst themselves then when they were out with the ordinary devotees. They were like a boys club, joking around without the posing and pretentiousness, all except Ramesvara who was maybe inhibited by my being there or maybe he was just humorless and antisocial. In public they would act like what they thought sadhus should act like, all serious with their hands in their bead bags always chanting, all aloof and pretentious and superior and condescending.
So it came to pass that Jayatirtha was going to become glorious and take sannyasa, at least that was how it was presented. They told us nothing of the scandals that were causing these meetings, they just said they were holding meetings. Then all of a sudden Jayatirtha showed up and he was being lionized as a saint for giving up "householder life" in order to dedicate himself as a sannyasi.
A while after it was all over the new bhakta program came to an end and Paulie had flown back to Hawaii. I then met Brahma Dasa and his pal Rangaji. I had made friends with Rangaji back in Honolulu. They had just come back from India. Rangaji convinced me that we should travel around the country selling record albums to make money for ourselves. This was during the era when ISKCON temples in America were buying 'cutout' record albums and then reselling them in parking lots and other places. Cutout records are surplus records. If they make too many albums and they end up sitting in storage too long they end up selling them in bulk at a big markdown in price. You could get albums from 10 cents a piece on up. They would cut the corner so that record stores would know they were surplus albums if you tried to resell them to record stores. So the plan was to get a car, buy a bunch of records, sell them, make a lot of money, then fly to Hawaii to have fun. We did that for around 2 months or so. We started in Chicago because Rangaji was an old Radha Damodara bus party guy and he thought there was better "picking" in the midwest. So there we were on Chicago's south side, and also in nearby Gary, Indiana, the ghettoest ghettoes, driving around parking lots trying to sell black people record albums. Lucky for us that there always seemed to be an unlimited supply of "Parliament Funkadelic" and of George Clinton's and Bootsy Collin's records for sale very cheap. They are like gods in the black community. ISKCON devotees must have sold millions of their records that they will never get credit for.
I wanted to go the temple in Chicago for the sunday feast but Rangaji didn't want me to go. I guess he thought I might ditch him, but I convinced him I just wanted some good food. Just my luck I walk in and Ramesvara is giving the lecture. He spots me. So I have the feast and then when I'm about to walk out Tripurari Swami stops me and tells me Ramesvara wants to speak with me. I say sure and he walks away. I head for the restroom to clean up and then I was going to make a quick exit. I think they felt I might take off because Ramesvara and Tripurari and some other devotees came into the area near the restroom and waited for me. I could hear them talking about me and asking me to come out and speak to 'my guru'. I decided to see how long they would wait. I didn't want to speak with Ramesvara at all. After a few minutes Ramesvara got annoyed and embarrassed that he's standing there waiting outside of a restroom for his disciple. So he angrily stalks off with his entourage saying something about how he wasn't going to waste his time. I got out without having to deal with them.
We continued on until we weren't getting along anymore. By then we had made our way to San Diego. We weren't making the profit we hoped because of car payments and gas and living expenses. So we went our separate ways. I first went to the Laguna Beach temple and was immediately made their head cook. Agnideva was the temple president and got really annoyed with me for practicing hatha yoga. For some reason it really pissed him off and he told me to stop doing it! The next time he caught me he told me I had to leave. But my friend from Hawaii was there and convinced Agnideva that he should allow me to do hatha yoga because I was having some back problems. His name was Bhayahari Dasa. I knew him from Honolulu. He's a real fun partyer type of devotee, and also a really good drummer and great kirtan singer. He had spent a lot of time in India learning the traditional Bengali way of playing and singing. Being a drummer before he was a devotee helped out. He was highly respected and will liked by most everyone. A short while later Agnideva's wife noticed that Bhayahari and I were going out at night dressed in 'karmi' clothes. I remember one night we got high and went to some big Laguna Beach art fair. Laguna Beach is famous for being an "art colony" besides it's being a super wealthy suburb of L.A. They have a famous big art fair once a year and we went. That's when Agnideva's wife spotted us. They thought I was being a bad influence on Bhayahari, which is hilarious if you know Bhayahari. It just goes to show you how clueless temple leaders could be about the people they think they know so well. Bhayahari and I would have some really wild adventures in the not so distant future, but for then, with Agnideva already being pissed at me over the hatha yoga thing, I was asked not so politely, to leave. So I went back up to L.A.
My friend from San Diego asked me to join him in his "preaching center" temple in the San Fernando valley; which is a 30 minute drive from L.A. over the hills. His name was Krishna Bhajan Dasa. Later he would join the Narayana Maharaja sanga and take sannyasa, he is now known as BV Sajjana Maharaja. I knew him from when I had first joined ISKCON. He had been the head of the men's sankirtan in San Diego and was a top collector for many years. Eventually he left and moved to L.A and set up the preaching center in a 2 bedroom house in "the valley". He was all alone and asked me to live there to help him out. He had always been a really friendly humble nice guy and a friend, so I agreed. There were just the two of us. He would spend most days out collecting or doing whatever, and I would hang around the temple getting bored and doing all the cooking for breakfast and for the programs we had at night, and help him with the kirtans and puja. We would get a small amount of people, some Indians and a few others, it wasn't going all that well. But there was this one young woman who was the temple regular. Often she would come with her young speech impaired son. She was in her early twenties and very pretty, quite sexy actually, and in fact was in the process of trying to seduce Krishna Bhajan when I had moved out there. She had split from her husband and had become interested in Krishna consciousness and had started going to the small temple which was not far from where she lived. She haddeveloped a crush on Krishna Bhajan. He knew it and talked to me about it and warned me about her. He wasn't interested in her advances and she was realizing that.
So we became fast friends. She started to confide in me and since I had nothing to do most of the time and she had some good ganja...well...we started hanging out. One night when I went over to her house her ex-husband showed up. When he was knocking at the door she decided to tell me for the first time that he was a really huge guy, and a black belt in some martial art, and that he never wanted to break up with her and wanted to get back together! There he was at the door with her going to open it and let him in with me sitting in her living room late at night! I was thinking, uh oh, here comes trouble. But luckily she convinced him that I was her hindu pastor. After some begging to let him get back together with her where he tried to get a kiss but failed, he split. She told me that she had a boyfriend in the past who convinced her for a while that he was Jesus. Oh boy I thought, what did I get myself into. Even though she was really hot and sweet, I thought that Krishna Bhajan may have been right when he told me he thought she was a little nuts. Shortly after that Krishna Bhajan felt the temple was a failure and closed it down.
So back we went to L.A and the girl moved up to a new apartment by the temple as well. Just my luck she goes and has a talk with Ramesvara Swami about me. She was new to ISKCON society and didn't really now what was taboo. I guess she went to say that she was a new devotee in the community and had known Krishna Bhajan and myself from the valley. I don't know how or why, but she ended up telling him that we were close and were getting high! I think Ramesvara got jealous, at least that is how she made it sound when she told me about their meeting. A few days later Ramesvara "orders" me to take off for Tucson, Arizona, the middle of the desert, in order to be a slave to some inept sannyasi named Ganapati Swami who was attempting to start a temple. At first I thought that she was angry at me and was trying to get me in trouble, then I realized that she was just naive. The night before I was supposed to leave I was having dinner at the Govinda's restaurant across the street from the temple on Venice Boulevard with my friend Maharaja Dasa. She walks in with her kid and walks up to us and says she wants to talk with me outside. So I told her that Ramesvara was sending me away. She got upset and starts to tell me how she moved near the temple because she wants to get married and be a full time devotee. She was basically saying that maybe we would get married. I was a bit stunned. I wasn't ready for this information. I told her I was going to Tucson the next day. I was thinking that even though she was really hot, that I wasn't ready to commit to someone I didn't know all that well, and I wasn't sure if she was serious or had some other motive, maybe she was just horny and wanted a devotee to be with for a while. Not such a bad deal actually, pretty damn good deal actually. But at the time I was still barely 21 years old and hadn't yet totally overcome the brainwashing that I should do what my diksa guru ordered me to do. So off I went to Tucson.
next time: Love on Haight
« Last Edit: Feb 21, 2009, 9:15pm by buddysattva »
Joined: Sept 2007 Gender: Male Posts: 259 Karma: -9
Re: Mi Vida Loca « Reply #10 on Apr 25, 2008, 10:39pm »
I'm glad you guys are enjoying the stories, there's a lot to come still. I've left out a bunch of stuff so far e.g. my time in satellite temples in Phoenix, Albuquerque, and Salt Lake City, and a lot of other stuff. But that's just to keep it from being too tedious. I'm just keeping in the stuff that may be entertaining or that exemplified the time and the place.
Re: Mi Vida Loca « Reply #11 on Apr 27, 2008, 2:38pm »
Did you sell the film rights to your unauthorized autobiography yet?
What I think we need to see you do with this at this point is fast forward to when you finally severed your ties with the mother ship and bring us up to date from that point in time. You can then flash back to the rest of that IGM era of your life. In other words, we've been there, done that. Of course, if that is going to disrupt your flow, then you can ignore that suggestion. It is, after all, just a suggestion.
Did you sell the film rights to your unauthorized autobiography yet?
What I think we need to see you do with this at this point is fast forward to when you finally severed your ties with the mother ship and bring us up to date from that point in time. You can then flash back to the rest of that IGM era of your life. In other words, we've been there, done that. Of course, if that is going to disrupt your flow, then you can ignore that suggestion. It is, after all, just a suggestion.
Yeah, we'll call it "Forrest Gump 2: The Cult Years"
I want to go in chronological order for story structure purposes, but I'm almost through with ISKCON anyways.
Joined: Sept 2007 Gender: Male Posts: 259 Karma: -9
Re: Mi Vida Loca « Reply #14 on Apr 28, 2008, 6:57am »
Tangled Up in Blue
I'd driven all around the American southwest during my ISKCON days. From either San Diego or Los Angeles I'd set out into Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and New Mexico. Once you get out of the Southern California metropolitan areas and over the coastal mountain ranges you hit desert. It remains desert going due east all the way until you hit central Texas, that's over 1,000 miles. It's not all the same type of desert though, you have high altitude and low altitude deserts. You can go from the most desolate place on earth, Death Valley California, where there are salt flats and sand dunes, to a richly forested desert like the area around Tucson.
Area around Tucson
The desert around Tucson must be the cactus capitol of the world. They are everywhere, all shapes and sizes, and many give delicious fruit. Here on Maui where I live, long ago Christian missionaries imported cactus from that desert and planted it in areas near the coast, on the dry side of the island, in the hopes of stopping the native Hawaiians from having sex outdoors and in the open. They also imported Kiawe tress from South America (they have thorns) for the same purpose (or so the local legend goes). Both of those plants spread all over the southern dry part of the island probably by birds carrying the seeds. Nowadays the Kiawe trees are everywhere, but the cactus only remains in small cactus forests around the Makena Beach area where you can go pick the delicious fruits.
Prickly Pear Cactus from Makena, Maui
Ramesvara sent me and another devotee to Tucson to aid Ganapati Swami, a new sannyasi then, in developing the preaching in Tucson. I had been to Tucson previously with Gunagrahi when we were travelling around the southwest together. We had stayed at a wealthy contractors home who had become a gaudiya vaisnava through reading Prabhupada's books. He had a really nice big home, a pretty nice wife, and a couple of adorable young daughters. He had taken us for the weekend to his "cabin" (a million dollar cabin) up in the mountain resort area surrounding Tucson, it seemed because he wanted to show off his wealth. Later I heard through the grapevine that he would become inimical to ISKCON after one of his daughters was molested when they were in Berkeley during Hansadutta's reign. But at that time he was very friendly and helpful with money. When we arrived to the house which was serving as the temple we found 2 other bored devotees and a tired looking Ganapati Swami. I couldn't see how this sannyasi was going to be able to be very effective in Tucson. Tucson is the quintessential getaway for wealthy liberal people seeking to escape the big city. It's a very wealthy and picturesque city full of professional people who consider themselves new agey and sophisticated. Ganapati Swami was a very low energy uncharismatic kind of somber devotee, the exact opposite of Gunagrahi, and the exact opposite of what would be needed from a leader of a fledgling devotee community at that time in that place. I could see right off that this project was doomed to failure. Which it was. Many years later devotees would be very successful in Tucson, see http://www.sedonavedicculture.com/chaitanyacenter.html They have inspired the Indian community, which was not happening back in 1980, and they don't appear to be officially owned or run by ISKCON today.
As soon as we arrived it became evident that Ganapati wanted us to basically be his full time money collectors. The guy I had driven out to Tucson with (forgetting his name) was a Prabhupada disciple who had been a big collector for many years. But I could tell he was getting pretty fed up with being used. He used to be one of those super enthusiastic serious brahmacari sankirtan guys who were forever out collecting large amounts of money. We had the use of Ganapati's motor home to go out and collect with. The very first day we went out the 4 of us headed to a mall parking lot and stepped out into the 110 degree fahrenheit heat for 1 minute, then turned around and quickly got back into the air conditioned motor home. We weren't about to walk around a blindingly hot furnace in order to collect money for a guy who was spending his time back at the house eating and sleeping. So we all decided then and there...to mutiny!
The plan was to take the car we had driven from L.A. with back to L.A, all 4 of us. Leaving Ganapati alone. We needed money for gas so I called up my contractor friend and told him the situation. He pulled up 30 minutes later in his Mercedes and handed over a wad of cash, and then we were good to go. The next morning we took off. I only remember the name of one of the guys, Bala Dasa, an Indian devotee from Mauritius whom I would get to know a little better a little while later in San Jose. The big collector guy I had driven out to Tucson with would end up moving to Hawaii not long after we got back to L.A and he would get married there and lead a normal life.
As we pulled into the L.A. community I dropped off the guys and started to head off. As I passed Ramesvaras apartment I could see him on his patio staring at me in disbelief, he put his hand to head as if saying "what the hell is he doing now?" as he watched me drive off. I was going to go visit my girlfriend in the valley, but as soon as I got to the end of Watseka Ave I remembered she had moved to an apartment near the temple. So I went around the block and came back and parked the car as Ramesvara watched me with a smouldering angry look.
By then the mood of the L.A. temple had changed drastically since the first time I had been there. Many of Prabhupada's disciples had left or were no longer involved, and many of Ramesvara's disciples were gaining more authority. There was also more emphasis on making money then ever before. I didn't see any reason to stay so I decided to check out San Francisco. I had only been there once before. At the end of 1977 I had gone with my brother and a few friends up to San Francisco to catch the Grateful Dead new years shows, which was a tradition with the Grateful Dead. I didn't see much of the city then but I liked what I saw.
I don't think there is a San Francisco ISKCON temple today, nor for many years, but back then it was a nice large victorian house in the Upper Haight district overlooking Haight Ashbury. Atreya Rsi was in charge. He was the GBC as well. He was a wealthy Iranian who had become a disciple of Srila Prabhupada. I was immediately put in charge of the kitchen. There was only a handful of people living in the temple, I think there was Brahma Das, Dhira Krishna Swami, Mrgendra Dasa (he's a lawyer now and was going to law school there back then, I think) and then my friend Bhayahari showed up from England. The rest of the small community were married couples and kids and there was also the famous Ambarisha, the Ford scion, who was nominally temple president. But in reality Atreya Rsi was in charge. I think Atreya Rsi gave him the title of temple president just to kiss his butt. Ambarisha lived nearby with a male "friend" and didn't show up much at the temple. There was also a temple run restaurant a few blocks away called "The 7 mothers" and another restaurant downtown in the financial district which was run by the famous devotee chef Apurva Das. It had a terrible location, you had to walk down an alley to get there. It was a tiny hole-in-the-wall called "Jagannath's Cart". Both the restaurants served excellent food and I ended up cooking at both for a while.
I had first come into contact with Dhira Krishna Swami through his famous bhajan tape "Temple of the Mind" which was very popular throughout ISKCON when I first joined. Later when he was temple president of the L.A. temple I would serve him his lunch every day for a while. I would also see him give the occasional class or give tours to college classes who came to visit the temple. I was impressed with him. He was a very good musician and he excelled at public speaking and he didn't come across like most other ISKCON leaders did, that is he didn't seem like he was on an ego trip. So it was my surprise to find that he was living in the San francisco temple. He had just arrived with Brahma Dasa from Navadvipa where they had been living at Sridhar Maharaja's math. Their plan was to start a temple in the Bay area with Sridhara Maharaja as the acharya, and they were planning on printing books of his lectures and writings. Somehow Atreya Rsi was able to not be thrown out of ISKCON for allowing them to stay at his temple while they went about setting up their projects. Dhira would hold gatherings at devotees homes to give talks about the fledgling Sridhar movement, it's goal and purpose, trying to recruit people to his cause. He was well received. Without Dhira Krishna Swami the Sridhar movement wouldn't have taken off like it did in America. Devotees and non-devotees alike responded well to his cool esoteric intellectual demeanor and sense of humor.
In order to stop Dhira Krishna and Brahma from starting a competing gaudiya sect in America a handful of prominent GBC flew into town to try to convince them to stop with their plans. I remember Jayapataka and Jayadvaita, there were others but I only remember those 2. I was in the room next door to Dhira's room when they were trying to convince him to stop. They were unable to deter him and I was impressed with the arguments Dhira gave. When Jayapataka was there one morning the door to the house opened and in walked Hansadutta. He was really agitated and had come for a fight with Jayapataka. He started accusing Jayapataka of stealing over 1 million dollars worth of gold from him from when Hansadutta had been suspended from his zone in the Phillipines. He was angry and demanding it back. Jayapataka said he didn't take it and Hansadutta left in a huff.
Brahma Das convinced me that I should join up with him and Dhira in starting their new temple project. I wasn't so sure, but I thought what the hell, ISKCON was looking like a circus, so I joined up with them. I went out with them looking at properties around the Bay area. They ended up buying a stunning house in San Jose. It was 3 stories high, made with expensive wood interiors, and had been designed by a famous architect back early in the century and had been featured in architecture publications. This was before the start of the computer revolution. Back then Silicon Valley didn't exist. In fact San Jose was a lower income area compared to the rest of the Bay area, except for Oakland. There was a huge vietnamese community, a large latino community, and it was where the state of California had put a bunch of half way houses for mentally ill people. It was the least desirable place to live in the Bay area, and the cheapest to buy homes. Nowadays 2 bedroom homes in San Jose can go for well over $1,000,000. Once the computer revolution began because it was centered in San Jose, because of the low cost of property, housing prices skyrocketed to insane levels. They no longer own that original temple, if they did it would easily be worth $5,000,000.
So they called their new temple/society the "Sri Chaitanya Saraswat Maha Mandala". I was told that Sridhar Maharaj didn't want to piss off ISKCON's leaders so he asked them to make their new temple a separate organization from his own. At first there was just the 3 of us and a women collector whose name escapes me. As this was near Christmas Brahma and I headed down south to L.A. to sell record albums over the holidays. We needed money to pay for a large payment on the temple and they were planning on buying a printing press. We stayed at a devotee couples apartment near the Wilshire area and we would spend our days selling records while driving around parking lots. In the evening I was bored so I would take the car and go buy some ganja and get high and then go bowling or to a movie. I don't know if Brahma knew I was gone at night or not, he would spend his time with the devotee couple while I would be left in a lower room in their apartment building that they had for storage.
When we were through I was asked to drive back a small pickup truck full of Prabhupada's books which they were planning on selling up in San Jose. So Brahma took off and I took the truck. After 40 minutes as I was driving on the highway through Ventura county, the right rear tire blew out on the truck. Luckily because of the extreme weight of books, which had filled up the bed of the truck, I wasn't going very fast. As I slowed down, immediately because of the weight of the books being shifted to the right side due to the flat tire, the truck started to turn over on it's side! For around 50 yards I was driving on 2 wheels, one of which was flat, like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuZkGVb5rYg except because the back tire was flat the rim was gouging a groove into the road. Finally I came to a stop and the truck ended up on it's right side. There were boxes of books and books scattered around the highway. No other cars were involved because the people behind me could see it happening and were then able to slow down and avoid me. I jumped out of the truck and within 2 minutes a bunch of police were there asking me if I was alright. I was fine, the cops picked up all the books and put them back in the truck. A tow truck took the truck and me to their tow yard.
I called up Dhira and Brahma and then got a motel room which was just a few blocks from the tow yard. The next morning I was up early and walked to the tow yard to see if they had fixed the truck and then I was going to pay them. Brahma had been upset when I called the previous night because it was going to cost a lot of money. So when I walked into the tow yard and found the keys in the fixed truck and didn't see anybody around, I just drove off. I called Dhira and Brahma and told them I had taken off without paying and they were stunned, they were cracking up. I told them I didn't want to try to take all of the books up north because I thought it was too much weight which had caused the blowout. So we decided that I would send some of the books by train. The truck was really shaky and I wasn't sure it would make it to the nearest train depot. I spotted an elementary school with a large trash dumpster and I thought I could put a bunch of the boxes behind it for a short while and that they would be safe. So I left half the books there and sent the rest by train, came back and loaded up, and off back up north I went.
A handful of new people had shown up to join the temple and devotees were visiting from around the world. Acyutananda Swami visited, I hadn't realized he was gay until that visit when his sexual orientation became obvious. The guy who would kill Jayatirtha visited also. I thought he was weird because he was worshipping his own salagrama sila very seriously and was very picky about what kind of food to offer it and seemed like he was mentally unstable. I guess he would come to prove me right in the future.
There is a large Indian population in the Bay Area and we held some programs for them to let them know we were there and in no time at all the temple developed a thriving Indian community. Most of the devotees were planning on going to India before Gaura Purnima and I was looking forward to it as well. Before Brahma and I had gone to L.A. over Christmas to sell records we had made a deal that I would do it and that out of the money we collected that I would get a plane ticket to India. When it was getting not far from the time to go to India I reminded Brahma about our deal and he claimed that I was mistaken. He said that the deal we made was that I would be able to sell records when we got back to collect for my trip to India. I couldn't believe he would pull something like that. I was angry and went to complain to Dhira Krishna. He said that he couldn't get involved with our dispute and I could see that it made him uncomfortable. I couldn't stay in the same building with Brahma I was so upset. So I took off for Berkeley.
I had never been to Berkeley before. It was Hansadutta's homebase and fiefdom. When I got there almost everyone was at their farm community, I think it was called Mt. Kailasa. So I got a ride up there after a week or so because nothing much was going on at the Berkeley temple. I hadn't ever been to an ISKCON farm community and I wanted to check it out. Around a year earlier I had spent a few weeks at the newly acquired Three Rivers property that Ramesvara had bought to start a gurukula and country community that bordered Sequoia National park in central California. But I was one of the first people there. I had gone up there to help get the place in shape so that devotees could move there. There were only 4-5 of us and we spent our time cutting fields of weeds, getting buildings in shape, etc. Getting the place in shape went on longer then a few weeks, but I was bored and took off back to L.A after a few weeks.
So Mt. Kailasa was the first devotee farm community I would go to, but not the last. I didn't see any farming going on, but I didn't stay very long and didn't see all of the property. They had a nice piece of land in a hilly verdant area. Hansadutta lived in a trailer away from the temple and from other devotees. When I got there they took me to his trailer to talk with him. I could see that he was a different kind of guy then the other ISKCON gurus whom I had seen. He seemed stoned and had a bottle of what looked to me like some kind of booze near him and a bunch of pills. We talked and I told him that Brahma had cheated me and that I was into checking out his scene. He was sympathetic and cool and welcomed me to stay as long as I liked. I didn't stay long. There wasn't much for me to do there. After a week I decided to go back to San Jose. I did get to know Hansadutta a little bit though, even cooked with him one time, he was nice and affable. His followers seemed unsure of what they were doing. Most of them could sense that something was off with Hansadutta and they all knew that basically he was at war with the rest of ISKCON. It was a weird scene and I was used to a more sane environment, so I had to go.
I got back to San Jose shortly before almost everyone headed for India. I decided to go ahead and sell records and catch up with them later in India. So off they went leaving around 5 of us at the temple. After a while I realized It would take many months of constant record selling to make enough money to go to India because I wasn't very good at it. I got fed up and took the truck they had left me up north to Arcata to visit my younger brother who was going to college at Humboldt State University. Up there it's all huge redwood trees, fog, rivers, mountains, ocean, the classic north western American wilderness area. It's also world famous as a high quality ganja growing area. Before I left to go back to San Jose one of his grower friends gave me a couple ounces of the local ganja that area is so famous for. I couldn't turn him down, it was a gift to a devotee and he would be purified if I took it. So I spent the next few weeks getting high and hanging out. I did very little record selling. There was a new uninitiated devotee there named Bhakta Ken who smelled the ganja on me and asked me if he could get high as well. So we used to get high and goof off. When we found out that the Jerry Garcia Band (Grateful Dead side project) was going to play a concert at a club up in Berkeley we made plans to go. So we drove up and stopped at an ex-devotee friend of Kens who lived in Berkeley and who was going to sell us some acid for the concert. We knocked on his door and a Rajneesh guy takes us in and tells us to wait a minute while the ex-devotee guy was upstairs getting ready for the concert. He starts talking some weird stuff about Rajneesh and then in walks the ex-devotee (he was an astrologer as well). He looked like a typical Berkeley stoner with long hair and new agey hippie clothes. He told his Rajneesh friend to "cut the crap, these guys are devotees" and then we got high and he sold us some acid. He enthusiastically preached to us how we should enjoy the show, dance like crazy, and not to let the ISKCON trip inhibit us from enjoying life.
The concert was in a large club and it was packed. I hadn't taken acid since new years December 31 1977 at a Grateful Dead concert across the bay, this was over 4 years later. I had a blast. I danced like a madman all night. A beautiful young blond goddess came up to me and danced with me the whole time. As usual at Dead shows almost everyone is on psychedelics and there is an intense group interaction and vibe because of the telepathic nature of pyschedelics.
A few days later I was careless and smoked some ganja in the temple house thinking that blowing it out the window in a room upstairs during a rainy day would be alright since there were only a couple people there. I was wrong. Apurva Dasa was staying there and he smelled it and confronted me. I basically told him it was none of his business. I was feeling self righteous because I was one of the first devotees there and I had gone out and worked to pay for the temple and felt ripped off. He didn't press the point but he told the others in the temple. They demanded that I give them the key to the truck. I had enough of their bad vibes so I thought I didn't need the hassle and the cold damp weather, I gotta get me some sun and sand. So I took off for Puerto Rico.
Puerto Rico is very beautiful but also very dirty. The locals didn't seem to get the whole "throw your garbage in the garbage container" thing. Everywhere you go there is lots of litter. Other then that it's great. It's spanish culture and spanish architecture with rainforests and great beaches. I went to the ISKCON temple and I found that it's being run by Vakresvara Pandit Dasa. The Puerto Rico temple was basically a satellite of the New York temple. Vakresvara was a famous black New York devotee who was physically built like Hercules and was known for being a tough guy enforcer type. There he was in Puerto Rico looking like a raja with a harem of girls fawning all over him. Many years later he would get in trouble for statutory rape i.e consensual sex with an underage girl, and would get banned from positions in ISKCON.
I told him I could cook and he asked if I would would cook at their restaurant near the college since they were in need of a qualified cook. I said sure and I spent around a month there. While there I met a guy who had been convinced to be sent down there from New York City to get him inspired to become a full time devotee. He was naturally bald but barely 20 years old at most. He had some condition which made him lose all of his hair, he was totally bald. He was a roadie and close friend for a hard core punk rock band named "Bad Brains". This was during the time in rock music history that a new genre of music had started called "Hard Core". It was a faster harder more agressive form of Punk Rock. Kinda like a mixture of Thrash and Speed Metal with Punk Rock. The Bad Brains were the leading band of that new underground punk movement. That scene became famous amongst devotees because a number of the biggest bands became members of ISKCON and created a new type of hard core punk that would be called Krishnacore. Bands like the Cro-Mags, Youth of Today and Shelter. Due to the devotee influence on that scene another sub-genre was created and lasted for a while which was called "Straight Edge". Their thing was that they renounced sex and drugs, even though they were hard core punk rockers. So the new bhakta, John, didn't like living in the temple and wanted to leave and go back to being involved in the NYC punk scene. I was planning on leaving as well. I convinced him that instead of going back to the punk scene he should give Krishna consciousness one more chance and come with me to California and check out the Sridhar temple scene in San Jose.
He had given Vakresvara his money for safe keeping and could get it back when he wanted to leave. I was broke but had a bunch of ISKCON cassette tapes with lectures and music. I sold the tapes to a guy named Bhakta Roberto in order to get airfare to Miami which was $30. Bhakta John got his money and we were ready to go. I hadn't told Vakresvara I was leaving because I didn't want him to think that I was causing John to leave. The morning when we were to leave we were approached right before mangal aratik and were told that Vakresvara wanted to speak to us. I smelled a rat. Someone had told him, probably Roberto's wife, that we were planning on leaving. I didn't trust Vakresvara and thought he may try to get violent or take my money. So I told John that we should split right away. We went out the back door of the temple to avoid being seen. It was pitch black out and right below the stairs there were some cows laying down, which I didn't know and couldn't see. I fell over a cow. It was so funny, I didn't expect a cow to be there and it startled the cow but she didn't move. We then rush to the brahmacari ashrama to get our stuff and we hurry down the hill to the main road. The temple is in the country a good long way from the city, luckily for us there was a guy sitting in his car talking to a friend outside when we got to the road. He gave us a ride to the airport.
We were too early for our flight so we went to the beach and came back later in the afternoon. When we got there a sankirtan devotee spotted us and called Vakresvara Pandit. He told them to get the police and claim that we had stolen money from the temple! Two police and the devotee came up to us and we are escorted to the little police station in the airport. The cops didn't speak english. Luckily John spoke perfect Spanish. I find out he comes from Spanish aristocracy, in fact his sister used to date a Kennedy. He tells the cops that we didn't steal anything. I was being accused of stealing money from the restaurant by Vakresvara. I tell John to tell the cops that we were trying to escape from a cult and that the leader wanted to harm me for helping John escape. I then have John tell them that all of my money was accounted for from selling some personal property to another devotee. I ask the cops to get in contact with Roberto whom I had sold the tapes to. The cops get on the phone with Vakresvara and demand that he and Roberto come down to the airport. When they get there Roberto confirms that he gave me the money. I then tell Vakresvara that he's a liar and that he wasn't getting a dime. He then lunges at me slightly, that angers the cops and they grab him. They then ask us if we want to press charges against Vakresvara! We laugh and say no, we gotta catch a plane. So off we were for Miami.
We went to the ISKCON temple that was right on Miami Beach. It was an old beautiful art deco high rise hotel, with a pool on the beach! I don't know why ISKCON sold or lost that building, but it was really something, one of the last old art deco hotels in Florida. We spent a few days at the temple and then headed up to his father's house in West Palm Beach, which is a wealthy suburb a little north of Miami. I called up Bhakta Roberto in Puerto Rico to see what had happened. He told me that when the cops told him and Vakresvara to come to the airport, that on the way there Vakresvara had told him to lie about giving me money and to tell the cops that he didn't give me any money! He also said that right after we had left the temple in the morning that Vakresvara had sent out a few vans with a bunch of devotees looking for us! Years later I heard through the grapevine that Roberto had become the temple president in Puerto Rico.
We spent almost a week in West Palm Beach, we went swimming at Ft. Lauderdale, an old girlfriend of John showed up and wanted to have sex with him, and then we took off west heading to California. We decide to hitchhike for some insane reason. On the first day we made it up to Gainsville and we stayed the night at the ISKCON farm community in Alachua. Back then the temple was a small 2 bedroom house and there were only a small handful of devotees and a couple cows. Their prasadam was delicious and opulent with loads of fresh milk products. It was uncomfortably humid there. When later I learned that a large devotee community had formed there I was really surprised because I thought the humidity and heat made it very unpleasent there. Next we hit New Orleans and went to stay at the ISKCON temple. It was a large victorian house not far from the French Quarter on a residential street. The temple president treated us very rudely and even asked us if we were gay! We took off in a few days for Houston.
When we got to Houston we went to the ISKCON temple where we were warmly greeted and treated really nice. It was a big temple with a lot of devotees. I could tell John really liked it there and wanted to stay, so I took off for the satellite temple in Austin when they told me they desperately needed a cook there. Houston was too smoggy for me, it was worse then L.A. L.A. can get really smoggy in the summer but it's a really dry climate whereas Houston is really humid which makes the smog much worse. Austin is the capital of Texas and also the hippie center of the American south. It's got lot's of health food stores and a large new age community and a vibrant music scene and it's totally unlike Houston and Dallas or any other southern city. Austin has a small town feel to it, it's more like San Diego then a city in the American south. It's also a big college town. So I joined the small ISKCON temple there for a short stay because I liked Austin. I would spend most days swimming at a huge famous swimming pool which was fed by a natural spring underneath it, or hanging out at the college hangouts and checking out the music scene. There were only 4 of us at the temple and I was the only one who knew how to cook so they really wanted me to stay. But I was just visiting for maybe a month and then took off for St. Louis Missouri.
I went to the ISKCON temple in St. Louis and was warmly greeted. Sura Dasa was the temple president at that time, now he runs some type of bhajan band out of the L.A. temple, see http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fus....riendID=9618153 He's an old tough guy type of devotee famous for being a hard ass Radha Damodara bus party leader. As I was talking to him in his office when I first got there, in walks Vaisesika Dasa, the famous book distributor. Sura asks him if he knows me. Vaisesika puts his arm around my neck and says sure, we're old pals. Actually I had never spoken to him in my life, but he was in L.A. for a while when I was there. That's just the kind of guy Vaisesika is. He's very outgoing and friendly and lovable. I don't know ayone who doesn't think the world of him. As it turns out their cook had just gotten married and was planning on ending his service so they really needed a cook. Especially since they had a buffet restaurant in the temple. I wasn't planning on staying long since I was just travelling around wanting to visit various ISKCON temples that I had never been to. But I didn't tell them that. After a short while Sura tells me that one of the women wanted to marry me. She was really young and pretty and she was the biggest collector in the temple. So Sura wanted to appease her and tried to convince me that it would be a good idea. I guess it was my fault. In the morning I would chant japa in the alley behind the temple and so would she. Because she was so pretty, I couldn't help but checking her out. She started treating me in the temple with a humble deference, the whole slave girl vibe ISKCON women would act like when they wanted to seduce a guy, I should have seen it coming. I wasn't planning on staying in St.Louis for long, it was humid and smoggy, and I was thinking about Hawaii. The girl was a Ramesvara disciple and I wasn't sure how commited she was to him. Would she want to leave ISKCON and move to Hawaii or was she a commited disciple? It was too much for me to deal with so I decided to leave.
I then headed to Cleveland. Why Cleveland? Before I left San Jose, Bhakta Ken, the guy I was getting high with in San Jose, told me he was from Cleveland and that he was heading back there and if I was ever there to look him up. So I called the temple and they gave me his address. I got to his apartment which was near downtown and he wasn't there. As I'm leaving I ran into him on the street. He was eating an Egg McMuffin from McDonalds and he was embarrassed and quickly threw it away. He told me that his apartment was too small for me to stay, when we went there I could see it was true. It was barely big enough for a bed. So I went to stay at the temple. The Cleveland temple was an old large victorian house in an old residential neighborhood. Cleveland has a very large black population and every devotee but one guy was black at the temple. They were very nice and didn't ask me to do any service at all. It was the most laid back temple I had ever been to. It was very cool and I really enjoyed my time there. One of the bhaktas used to be a keyboardist for Parliament Funkadelic! Those were the guys whose records I used to sell. I went and visited Bhakta Ken and we got high and he gave me a hit of acid. So I took it and headed back to the temple. What an unusual trip that was. I went downstairs and volunteered to wash some pots. During the whole time, from my asking to finishing cleaning the pots, it was like I wasn't doing anything. I was just observing my body, it was as if something or someone else was controlling what I said and I did, like I was a passenger in my body while someone else was in control and doing everything. The whole experience that day was magical. For the first time since before I had become a devotee, God was messing with me to teach me something. Not only was God controlling my body but God was again speaking through other people to me trying to get me to realize God's control over everything and everyone.
After a week I headed out to New York. I then visited my wealthy aunt and female cousin (my uncle had died) who were living in Manhasset, Long Island, and whom I hadn't seen in 5 years. They were wealthy sophisticated New Yorkers who travelled a lot. I told them about my time as a devotee but they weren't too happy about it. They were hoping I would give it up and suggested a trip to Europe. So after I got my passport we took off for London. I didn't want to hassle them with Krishna consciousness so I never suggested we go visit a temple. We stayed in London for a week and then went to Portugal for a week and then the Netherlands for a week. It was a great time. When we got back I told them I had a job waiting for me in San Francisco after I had called up Atreya Rsi. My aunt bought me a plane ticket and off I went, back to the city by the bay.
When I got back to San Francisco I found that the temple had moved to the house next door to the "7 mothers" restaurant which was a few blocks down from the old temple. The only devotee living in the temple was my old friend Bhayahari Dasa. By that time ISKCON in America had switched to selling oil paintings rather then record albums for the most part. They had found that you could buy paintings very cheap in Asia from painting factories. Those were places where there were assemply lines of painters each of whom would specialize in one aspect of a painting. One guy would paint trees, another guy painted houses etc. Bhayahari was selling paintings. I don't know if he was giving any money to the temple, but I don't think so. I started to work as a cook next door at the restaurant. Bhayahari had some ganja connection and we would get high and then go out on Harinam on Haight street, which was just a couple of blocks down from the temple. It was just the two of us. This may sound weird, but it was really good. Bhayahari is a great kirtan singer and mrdanga player who was trained in traditional kirtan in Bengal. I was a competent kartal player and background singer. He would sing exotic melodies and exotic drumbeats and I would accompany him and the people loved it. Haight street is where the hippie counterculture began in the 1960's. That section of San Francisco is called Haight-Ashbury because a major cross road to Haight street is Ashbury street. But Haight street is the main boulevard. Even though it was 1982 there was still a strong hippie and new age presence there.
On one of the first days out doing harinam a red haired hippie joined us. We got to know him and his name of course was Red. He was a fixture on Haight street. He invited us up to his apartment overlooking Haight street and offered us some acid. What could we do? We accepted. We started going out on harinam on acid. LSD can give you a lot of energy, so we would have marathon harinams down Haight street and deep into Golden Gate park. We made so much noise that one time when we were in Golden Gate park a car screeched up next to us and out popped Atreya Rsi and Jagadisa. Jagadisa was the GBC in charge of ISKCON schools and I guess he liked to spend time in San Francisco. They had heard us all the way up the hill at Atreya's house almost a half mile away. They thought Hansadutta's Berkeley devotees were encroaching on Atreya's territory and they were coming to give them hell. They were shocked to see that it was just Bhayahari and me. They didn't realize that we were high as kites, but they gave us strange looks and then took off.
Bhayahari had never been to the San Jose temple so we went down there one sunday for the feast on the bay area train system, of course high on acid. When we got there I could see that things had changed. More devotees had moved in and they had started printing a book. They had bought a computerized printing press and put it in the garage and they got to work on transcribing Sridhar Maharaja's lectures into books. Mukunda Mala Dasa, whom I had known from L.A as a collector had moved there and was the person typesetting the books on the computer. Dhira Krishna came up to me and showed me a part of their first book. I think it was "The Golden Volcano of Divine Love", which was taken from lectures by Sridhara Maharaja. We had a good time and then headed back to San Francisco. When we were in the subway station in San Francisco waiting for a train to take us back to the temple, Bhayahari decided to start chanting some Narasimhadeva mantras loud enough for people to hear, mantras which I had never heard before. He chanted them in the proper meter and style and it was very mystical sounding. Being high on acid made the mantras seem unbelievably powerful, not just to me, but a whole bunch of people crowded around us mesmerized by the power of the mantras he was chanting. I figured it being San francisco, the acid capital of the world, that we weren't the only ones tripping there. It wasn't unusal to come across groups of people wandering around the streets of San Francisco late at night and early in the morning obviously tripping on psychedelics. San Francisco is the most beautiful city in America, really the only beautiful city in America. Except for the downtown area practically the entire city is comprised of old large colorful victorian homes. It's a very conducive place for wandering around at night on acid.
After a short while we weren't alone anymore in the temple, Trivikrama Maharaja had moved in with us. Later he would become GBC for Berkeley and that area. He was friendly with us. I don't know what he did there since there was nothing going on but the restaurant, but I didn't really think about it. By mistake I confided in a long time friend of mine, a Chilean devotee, who also had just moved up from L.A, that I was taking acid. This made him really angry and he told Atreya Rsi. Atreya was already mad at me because of what had happened a bit earlier when he had invited Raktaka Dasa up from San Diego in the hopes of his taking a job as the head of his restaurant. Raktaka was a friend of mine from the old days and he wanted to visit the San Jose temple, so he asked me to take him. So I took him down there. After that Raktaka left and went back to San Diego. Atreya thought that by my taking him to San Jose that that had turned Raktaka against working in San Francisco because it was in ISKCON, nominally. In reality Raktaka simply didn't want to move to San Francisco, San Jose had nothing to do with it. He told me he came up mainly for a lark and was never seriously considering working for Atreya. But Atreya thought differently and blamed me for turning Raktaka "against ISKCON" by taking him to the Sridhar temple. So I was summoned to a meeting before Atreya, Jagadisa, and another devotee or 2, to face an inquistion about my connection to the Sridhar temple. Trivikrama Swami was there to defend me. Atreya was really agitated and he got even more agitated when I started acting like I couldn't care less about what he thought while claiming that I thought he was being offensive to Sridhar Maharaj for acting the way he was acting. Then he got all smirky and accused me of taking LSD. I wouldn't deny it and that was it. He wanted me to leave for breaking the regulative principles. Which was a joke because I doubt anyone was following them in that community, especially Atreya. But he wanted me out and when Trivikrama spoke up to defend me, Atreya rudely told him to shut the hell up, that he was there as Atreya's guest.
So Bhayahari decided to leave as well. He rented a car and we drove down to stay at the San Jose temple. He was going to continue on down south and sell paintings after a bit and I was going to stay in San Jose for a short while and sell records and then head for Hawaii. After a few weeks or so in San Jose I left. Another devotee who had been there since the early days of the temple, Kshamabuddhi Dasa, wanted to go to Hawaii with me. So off we went. Since we hadn't been reading newspapers nor had any of us at the temple had any contact with outside media at all, we didn't know that the day before we left for Hawaii that Hurricane Iwa had just finished devastating the island of Kauai; the island we were flying to. I took some acid with me on the flight and took a tab an hour before we landed on Kauai, totally clueless about the Hurricane.
next time: All over La Jolla, and Waimea Bay. Everybodys gone surfin. Surfin U.S.A.
« Last Edit: Feb 21, 2009, 9:16pm by buddysattva »
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