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B ¦ The Daily Collegian Thursday, April 8 i V< ¦'f * /iv i ftBa^aatwari - i i VISHP' EE5r r~ ~^l in W&~ ¦oa F«g3 il* • iMti o>N»tV • I»\ x pjj d i® *> Ia«3 Among the regulars at the Krishna house is 19-month-old Anna Kochersperger. Her parents, Denise and Steven, frequent the Krishna dinners for the philosophy, the food and the devotees. Krishnas offer spiritual insight, vegetarian feasts By LINDSAY NAYTHONS Collegian Staff Writer On any Sunday, while many University students are eating their dinner, a small group of students and area residents is receiving a sermon and food of the gods, all courtesy of the Hare Krishnas of State College. . . The Krishnas, according to their spiritual leader , Stambha Dasa, welcome anyone to their early-evening meals. They are always available to provide spiritual enlightenment for those 'who are remorseful over their materialistic existence or to give theological insight to those who are just 'curious about a different lifestyle. Upon entering the Krishna's neighborhood temple, at 103 E. Hamilton Ave., one must remove his shoes before being greeted by Indian ornaments, Vedic literature and one or more of the devotees ("Hare Bo!" is their informal greeting), who sit and rap with those so inclined. At about 5 p.m. the devotees begin chanting their mantra: "Hare Krishna, ¦Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare. Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare." The purpose of the mantra: to get closer to Godhead. The type of crowd that attends: as varied as the food. The Krishna house is awash in the smells of incense and vegetarian dishes such as Laddhu, a sweet made with chick pea flour and nuts; Puri, a type of bread; Halava, a cakey grain pudding; Subji, a mix of vegetables and cheese; Boga, a mix of rice and potato; and Lassi, a drink of grape juice and yogurt. The food and drink is called Purshadam, meaning blessed by Krishna. After about a half hour of repeating the chant over and over, rising and falling through several mellow and intense verses, it is time for the sermon to begin. Usually led by Stambha, it attempts to relate to the crowd the basic tenets and values of the Krishna Consciousness movement. On one Sunday, with more than 20 people sitting on the floor around him, Stambha spoke on the need to understand the causes of everything. By not " / understanding, he said, "we try to conquer nature and get slapped in the face. Because nature's never been defeated." A Krishna woman speaks to guest at one 'I'm only bored when I'm not doing what I'm supposed to be doing (serving Krishna) .. Chanting is the most satisfying and ideally it should be done as much as possible.' "What is matter and what is spirit?" he asked rhetorically. "Krishna explains clearly — all is connected to the absolute. Nothing exists in itself." . After the sermon and a question-andanswer session, which normally follows the philosophical lecture, the meal is served, and guests can mingle with each other and with the devotees. For Frederick Walker St. Clair III of State College, the evening was "very interesting. Stambha's got some good points about certain religions that say 'This is the way you have to be.' That's why I don't like organized religions." After her first time with the Krishnas, Eva Smith (9th-recreation and parks) was "really impressed ." She said she was "kind of hesitant about coming out to the house" because she "didn't know what to expect. But they're so intelligent. Their frame of thought is much better, like their whole outlook on life. Smith said she was "definitely going to go again." "Some parts of Christianity are egotistical . . . this is probably the most diverse lifestyle around," said Fred Langer (7th-health planning administration). "(Stambha) made a lot of valid points, but I wouldn't think of converting from Catholicism," Terry Pascarella (12thaccounting) said. Pascarella attended the dinner to determine how the Krishna's lifestyle differs from the more commonplace University students' lifestyle for her Higher Education 101 assignment. For the Krishna devotees who live at the house/temple, the lifestyle is a repetitive series of actions, the sole purpose being to prepare for and attain the next incarnation after the present body dies, thus escaping from the repetition and pain of material existence. e "I'm not gonna' go get brainwashed," was how Michael Dennis reacted when a Photo by Eric C. Hegedus of the group's vegetarian feasts. musician friend asked him to go to one of the Krishna dinners more than a year ago. Now, Dennis is the newest devotee living with the Krishnas and will receive his Sanskrit name soon. At that first dinner, he found Stambha's lecture "very compelling .-.. he was so bold and convincing .. . they were stong thoughts" for someone who was just interested in music at the time. "I do it for myself, but I realize at every moment who I want to serve," Dennis said. And Dennis said he likes the Krishnas' motto: "Simple living and high thinking." According to Dennis, many University students are afraid of the Krishnas. "Their fear is based on a misunderstanding. They're afraid — that we may be right — that our way may be a rational thing." Uddhava Dasa reiterated the fear concept: "They're afraid of something different. They think we're from Mars." (The Dasa surname is common among devotees. It means servant.) Uddhava has been living with the Krishnas for three months. Before coming to State College, he lived at a temple in Baltimore since 1974. Prior to that, he belonged to a traveling temple — a converted bus — in his home state of California. At first, he was thinking about becoming a Buddhist monk but decided to join the Krishnas instead. This was after hearing some of the philosophy. Since becoming initiated, he's gone on a pilgrimage to India as have many Krishnas in the West. • While standing outside Schwab Auditorium — the site of Jed Smock's springtime tirades against University students' hedonism — one warm day handing out "Back to Godhead" magazines, Dennis said: "People tell me time and time again how much they appreciate our gentlemanly behavior. We don't yell . . . Smock wasn't in control of his own senses or his own mind — you could see it all over his face." Later that day, Matt Hirsch (13thbusiness) rode by on his bicycle and readily accepted a magazine from Dennis. Hirsch said he and his roommates "love the pictures. We put them on our walls . . . they're very mystical. "People are very ethnocentric in this country... the magazine has interesting articles of another culture," Hirsch said as he pedaled away. • Purananda Dasa, 35, graduated from Queens College in New York as an accounting major and put in a fourmonth stint on Wall Street as a budget analyst. But "it was all a game. I didn't see any future for personal satisfaction," he said. So he joined the Krishnas. . He's been at the Hamilton Avenue house for only two months but went around the country, living at different temples for six years prior to settling down, for now, in State College. Purananda uses his accounting experience for the Krishnas, balancing the budgets of the house/temple and the Krishna farm, located near Lewistown. "We don't give up what we know, we use it as a service for Krishna," he said, — Purananda Dasa "This is much more practical and fulfilling. Before it was for some temporary, personal satisfaction. "I'm only bored when I'm not doing what I'm supposed to be doing (serving Krishna). Chanting is the most satisfying and ideally it should be done as much as possble," he said. It's important to be "more tolerant than a tree," Purananda added with a nod of his head. "We're all so small and insignificant among the universe." A pause. "One must become humble." Later in the evening, while a videotape of the Krishna Movement in America was showing, several guests mulled over what they had experienced. "You meet different people here than you'd meet at a party. And the food's good," John Conway (8th-psychology) said. Tom Rodina (9th-environmental "* engineering) is "starting to get into it and learning more about it" by "reading a lot." Lance Johnson (I2th-advertising) liked the meal and the philosophy but said he felt "they really seem to deny themselves of too much, though they do have a point... I think there's a happy medium to be found somewhere between their spiritualism and many people's materialism." "I find Stambha a most interesting character who often engages in rather polemical conversations," James Englehardt (8th-comparative literature) declared. "He's a fine adversarious to debate metaphysics with .., and the food's great and healthy for you," he said. Would Englehardt ever think of joining the Krishnas? "Well, while I can envy their lifestyle, I feel that they undergo and endure many privations. They close doors .. . one should be as eclectic as possible." However, Englehardt felt that "many average students limit themselves too, like when they think 'Oh boy! We gotta' go get drunk and get laid!' " « One Krishna devotee who doesn't live at the house/temple but comes to the dinners is 29-year-old Rukmini, originally from California and now a resident at the 600-acre Krishna farm. Rukmini said she was raised in a Jewish family and is "really close with her parents. "They may not understand our lifestyle, but they appreciate the wisdom of it." Rukmini said many different socioeconomic and religious backgrounds are represented in the devotees' past and "they all seek their answers in this philosophy now. "Penn State students are very introspective and serious when compared to California students," she said. The masses of them, she pointed out, "are gross materialists, but you can find a cream of the students." The students here are "really fun," she decided, but "Stambha gets on their case and that's great — he's a very important person to have on this campus. He's A woman sits in contemplation behind a notebook of Krishna literature teaching the students important things. 9 "We are hidden from Krishna by a cloud, but that cloud is Him," Stambha said at one point in the sermon. Certainly not hidden from anyone, and absolutely endearing to everyone, was 19-month-old Anna Kochersperger, accompanied by her parents, Denise and Steven. Denise said she and her family go to the dinners because they like the philosophy, the food and most of all, the devotees. "They're all very nice." , The house/temple is not the only place the Kocherspergers go to spend time with the Krishnas. "We've been to the farm many times," and when Anna is old enough for school "she'll be going to the farm school," Denise said. Why? For one thing, the Kocherspergers are vegetarians and sending Anna to a public school, in State College, would be something extra "to high as a 25:1 student-teacher ratio. Moreover. Denise told of a school agedeal with," she said. Just as important, Denise said, is the * student-teacher ratio at the farm school (which is fully accredited by the state board of education). The farm school usually has a 1:1 ratio, "with the older children teaching the younger ones." State College schools, she said, have a group <strong>aca</strong>demic achievement test that • was conducted statewide and the results of the tests showed that students at the farm school scored just as high or higher than Pennsylvania public school students did.' . Anna obviously enjoys the music and singing that pervades the house during the chanting of the mantra. Indeed, sheis * an adorable, animated, precocious child given to sporadic fits of dancing and unpredictable walks around the temple with copies of "Back to Godhead, ' whereas Steven catches up to her and patiently goes through the magazines with her. The pictures seem to simultaneously amuse, frighten and intrigue her. Rukmini first came in contact with the Krishna Consciousness movement in California in the heady, tumultuous year^ of 1968. It was there and then that she *' met A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Photo by Eric C. Hegedus Prabhupada, the Spiritual Master of this century, who made a pilgrimage from India in 1965 at the age of 70 to bring the Movement to America. Swami Prabhupada worked his way through Greenwich Village and Haight- ' Ashbury during the Vietnam War era, turning hippies off of drugs and onto the Krishna Movement. Stambha thinks the hippies "were contaminated by materialism. All their free love and intoxication only served as an adulteration of spiritual objectives. They didn't change their self-conception at all. They were just bodies with long hair, most of whom are now working for the power structure they decried but which gives them their material reward (money). "It was fun while it lasted but really it was just a v<strong>aca</strong>tion for dropouts," he asserted. Rukmini is quick to emphasize that the Krishnas are not hippies: "We're happies!" /' >\ M £
iMiliiriiiirTMfllWlIrl * * '.,eaEMpHBB*5!EI335i* jMPfl^lM|ram l*ES5» " ."'' " wj sssm Stambha Dasa serves Krishna vegetarian food specialties ^~>' 8 Photo by Eric C Hegedus Stambha Dasa has lead life of achievement By LINDSAY NAYTHONS Collegian Staff Writer Stambha Dasa, spiritual leader of the Krishna house/temple at age 32, has had a life of achievement. But not in the ordinary sense of the word. Stambha, during his formative years, "was not the proverbial loner," he readily admits. But he "did enjoy being alone" and he "always read a lot," when he could find time between playing "lots of" sports and getting elected class president twice during high school. While growing up in Atlanta, Stambha (the Sanskrit name given to him by his spiritual master) says he came to sense that there was more to life than eating, sleeping, mating and defending (the four needs of animals). • , After dropping out of Atlanta Law School, Stambha entered the esoteric world of Krishna Consciousness and realized that "knowledge of the self isn't really wisdom." Meaning, as he puts it so often, "We are not our bodies ; our bodies are just like clothing," which one changes after each physical incarnation until the Soul, through good Karma, makes it Back to Godhead. He is now dividing his time between studying Sanskrit and Krishna literature as well as writing a book on epistemology — the origins, methods and limits of human knowledge and perception. (The Krishna devotees shave their heads to humble themselves in the eyes of Krishna and to disdain the vanity that the materialists hold in such high esteem). University students who haven't seen Bro Cope around lately may be disheartened to learn that Stambha and the Krishnas will not shout in public. Most of their public work is spent handing out literature on campus and answering questions. However, Stambha knows Bro Cope: "Bro's a real schizo-type guy. He glowers at me sometimes and other times he's real nice to me." The Krishnas have been living at 103 Hamilton Ave. for the past three years and Stambha characterizes the community's attitude towards the Krishnas as changing: "Initially, there was a good deal of prejudice; I think fear would be a good description. People are afraid of things they don't understand. And although many people accepted us, because in college you're supposed to be 'liberal,' people were still internally hampered even when they showed external liberality. "But gradually, I think, by virtue of lecturing in the classrooms, our programs at the temple and the distribution of books and magazines, people have come to understand that our culture and heritage are very old and we're not just some new cult." With the sudden surge in popularity and influence of New Right/Moral Majority "televangelists" in the country, many people on the left/liberal side of the political spectrum have suffered undue consternation. But Stambha is not bothered by these conservatives or ^heir liberal counterparts: "The danger is that both extremes share'a lack of knowledge which produces the problems. In other words, the fault of both the left and the right is that they fail to answer the question 'Who is the self?' and they've both adopted the model that we are our material bodies. "Now, for example, the people who claim to be fundamental Christians may say that ultimately the Soul will go to heaven but their whole lifestyle is to satisfy the senses of the body. And actually their religion consists primarily of augmenting their endeavors. They fail to take the spiritual process seriously or to realize themselves as spiritual beings. All they can fall back on is a vague mysticism or some sentimental, emotional appeal to dogma; they can only sustain their views by their fanaticism. "Therefore, they cause intelligent people to flatly reject religion. These (New Right and Moral Majority evangelists) have done more harm than all the atheists in the world put together." If you ask Stambha whether or not he considers himself to be an emotional person, he'll tell you: "No, I don't. I think by virtue of being philosophically inclined, I always had a tendency to look at things in a very philosophical way. Although I was always concerned with suffering, death and the 'meaningless of life,'.my concern was more turned to trying to understand why these things were happening and if in fact there was some way to solve these problems. I was always very disgusted wth emotionalism. "We don't believe in abnegating the body or in stoicism, but the question is 'What is the proper understanding of who the self is and what is the body?' and therefoVe, 'How should I use my body?' "The body should be taken care of and we don't neglect the sufferings of others but the central fact is that the self is a spiritual being. The body may be properly used to fulfill the goals of the self. The body is not an end in itself , which is why so many people are afraid of death ; the end of their existence as they know it. "In other words, as we perceive of ourselves, then we will create a suitable environment. For example, if a person thinks of himself as an artist, he will surround himself with paint and an easel or if he thinks he's a scholar, he'll acquire his perfect five-foot bookshelf and his desk. So, in the same way, society structures a suitable environment to meet what it considers are its needs. Society then becomes a group of bodies seeking only to gratify the physical senses in nice ways. We never question whether or not our happiness is actually in materialism, and that's pretty much a solidified orthodoxy at this time, especially in the history of the Western world." The Krishnas' motto, "Simple living and high thinking," is evident in Stambha's demeanor and his philosophy: "Conceptually, the self is denigrated to the march of technology. Technology promises many things to please the senses. This space shuttle business was nonsense. It was a distraction, a waste. "We feel that Krishna Consciousness must be presented to intelligent people because man has • something over and above the animals. Man has his reason, he can question his existence. If he doesn't, then he's just a sophisticated, technological animal." Stambha considers himself "an eternal spiritual being," who is only in his body "temporarily." After he "dies," he will return to his original spiritual state, he says, and won't have to return to the material world. Some of his other opinions follow: "Being popular consists largely in prevaricating effectively and being willing to go along with the lies of others. "Religions which perpetuate the idea that man was given dominion for his unbridled enjoyment, and that all living beings simply exist as servants for his happiness, we consider criminal. All life forms were created by God and we have no right to destroy any. Man's dominion, by virtue of his higher development, means he has a higher responsibility." One should not eat the meat of animals just because the Bible says to go forth and conquer and dominate, Stambha says. "A king has dominion over his domain but that doesn't mean he eats the citizens." On the contrary, it means "he has a greater responsibililty to look after them and make arrangements for their peaceful living. He has a trust, a responsibility. "Everything belongs to God and all living beings are His " children. Until we understand this, our philanthropism and humanitarianism' is incomplete "We inherently seek selfish ends. And we may overlay our selfishness with subtleties such as philanthropy or we may expand our selfishness to our family or our nation , but it is still a set of interests which revolve around the self as the nucleus. "The intellegentsia in the West has prostituted itself to the pursuit for knowledge. This is why I'm in a college community, because it's very important for society to be guided by intelligence, not power. "But in today's society, the intellegentsia have been purchased by power, and they're doing research for technological salesmen. They see their intelligence as a way of earning money. The pursuit of absolute knowledge and absolute paradigms of ethics, which can provide firm morrings for society, has become \ forgotten and it's considered to be irrelevant. Our society has so cleverly ridiculed the pursuit of absolutes, and therefore most of the intelligent people are just finding ways of entertaining themselves aesthetically, esoterically, or they're just selling their intelligence to research anddevelopment, which ultimately produces objects for purely physical consumption." THE PARTY'S OVER All too often , when the party ends, the trouble begins. People who shouldn 't be doing anything more active than going to sleep are driving a car. Speeding and weaving their way to death. Before any of your friends drive home from your party, make sure they aren 't drunk . . Don 't be fooled because they drank onlv beer or wine. Beer and wine can be just as intoxicating as mixed • drinks. And don ' t "kid yourself because they may have had some black coffee. Black coffee can 't sober them up well enough. FRIENDS DON'T LET FRIENDS DRIVE DRUNK l : or frt-o information, write to: l)IUINK[>IUVKK.IIo When's the last time you wrote to mom ? GOOD FRIDAY WORSHIP IN THE MARKET PLACE In the midst of 'business as usual' in a nuclear war-threatened world on Penn State campus and downtown State College the 14 stations of the cross will be observed to remind us Sponsored by of ui the tiie death ueciu i of ui the UIB Prince nmw of ui reauc Peace various peace All ARE WEICOME organizations, churches and in- Time: Friday April 9 dividual 9:15-11:30 a.m. peacemakers Meeting Place: outside Eisenhower Chapel The Sisters and Pledges of the Gamma Phi Beta Sorority are extremely proud to announce their new initiates : Barbie Craig- Maria Fulginitti Maura Guthrie Valerie Innes Congratulations! Gamma Phi Beta — SO years of Perm State Proud U-154 Ann C. Popovich Kimberly Gail Rainey Janice Lorayne Simons "Often television tries to tell a story when it really doesn't have time to tell it completely, leaving people with the impression they have the full story. The tragedy is that many viewers believe they are getting all the news, so they don't bother reading a newspaper." the Centre Daily Times quote from Fred Friendly, former CBS News President in a March 1982 speech at New York University «-
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