For the first field trip of the semester, my classmates and I visited the Hare Krishna Temple in Dallas. Although I was a little skeptical of the field trip at first, my expectations were quickly blown away once I arrived at the Temple. The Temple was like nothing I have ever seen before. Growing up Christian, I am very used to attending formal church services on Sunday mornings. After arriving at the Hare Krishna temple, I quickly realized that their culture is much different than what I am accustomed to. Immediately, I noticed the lack of seating in the Hare Krishna Temple and the large open space in the middle of the room. This differs vastly from the churches that I have grown up going to, with rows of pews filling the room. I later found out that this was quite common of a Hare Krishna temple, and in some temples there is actually no seating at all. People often drop to their knees while praying, and some even lie face down on the ground when praying. While the aesthetics of the temple were quite interesting, the history and personalities within the temple were even more fascinating.
The man who guided our tour of the Hare Krishna temple was a vibrant spirited man named Prajapati. Prajapati is one of the oldest, but high-spirited, followers of Hare Krishna in the temple. Prajapati’s story about his experience in the Hare Krishna movement, starting the late 1960’s, is summed up similarly in a piece we read in class titled, The Hare Krishna Movement: Forty years of Chant and Change. In the reading, we learn about a man named Prabhupad who led the Hare Krishna movement. The reading described how Prabhupad’s followers and disciples were very young people, mostly in their late twenties and early thirties. Prabhupad was in his 70’s when he started the movement and left behind a vast array of resources for his disciples to carry on his legacy after his death at age 81. This is exactly the story of how Prajapati started out as one of the young followers in the counter cultural movement years ago, and his great teacher left behind an ample amount of resources for Prajapati and his fellow followers to carry out his legacy. For example, their great teacher was revered so much that they still play a recording of him singing Hare Krishna hymns throughout the Temple. The personalities and history of the temple itself were quite interesting, but my favorite part of the trip was learning about Krishna.
Krishna is one of the most revered Hindu Gods. The walls of the Hare Krishna Temple were covered in large murals recounting various stories of Krishna. One of my favorite stories of Krishna was the story of Krishna stealing the garments of unmarried girls bathing in the river Yamuna (pictured below). In this story, Krishna saw many unmarried girls bathing in the river of Yamuna and knew of their desire to marry him. He then stole all of their clothes and climbed into a tree and told them to come out one by one, naked, to get their clothes back from him. By doing this Krishna fulfilled all the girls’ desires to marry him, due to the customs of the time. On top of this story, I also heard the crazy story of Krishna multiplying himself so that he could dance with all the women at once at a festival. Listening to these fascinating stories that seem foreign from my religious beliefs made the field trip quite memorable and eye opening.
