A statue of A.C. Bhatktivedanta Swami Prabhupada was inside of the ISKCON temple we visited on Thursday. Its significance is that he was the founder of the Hare Krishna movement. ISKCON stands for International Society for Krishna Consciousness. Although Swami Prabhupada died in 1977 the movement is still relevant. The Hare Krishna movement is part of the Hindu religion, and devotees follow scriptures from the Bhagavad Gita which he showed us along with other texts, including the Epics. The man we spoke with made a funny comparison between Rama and Star Wars, basically saying Star Wars is the same story as Ram. His analogies helped explain a lot of what they believe in that Temple. For example, the believe in reincarnation and that our bodies are temporary but our souls go through the cycle of rebirth. His analogy for that was that although we get inside our cars and drive, we are not the car. Furthermore, we are not the body.

While in the Temple I noticed some of the other people inside who might be devotees and they definitely were examples of the type of people ISKCON began with decades ago. For example in the article by Thomas Hopkins, Hopkins explains that ISKCON was sort of a new, almost hippie movement. Not that the people inside looked like hippies, but it some did not seem as if they had any connection to India while many Hindus often do. Swami Prabhupada began the practice on the lower east side of New York and opened a storefront to practice the religion. Anyone was allowed to joined and it is still that way because they practice proselytism. When interviewed in New York some of the members did not even know where India was or what it had to do with Hinduism. That is how open they were to new members and simply teaching about Krishna and exercising bhakti. 

Krishna is their main God. One of the interesting things the man we spoke with talked about was the different relationships with God that can exist. He explained the relationships of admiration, service, parental, friendship and romantic. It seemed as though the Hare Krishna’s like to focus on a romantic relationship. In the paintings, Krishna was often depicted as developing romantic relationships with women. In one painting, he had cloned himself to be with each women yet the women all thought they were special and Krishna was only sharing himself with one of them. Krishna was also depicted as a child in many of the painting s which I don’t fully understand but it must have something to do with his mischievous nature.