I’m sitting here in the Philadelphia Hare Krishna temple with a belly full of Bengali-style Krishna prasadam, otherwise known as Ye Olde Traditional Hare Krishna Cooking.
This morning, my wife and I flew from Jacksonville, Florida (former home of Lynyrd Skynyrd and home of the Freebird Cafe) to Philadelphia (former home of Hall and Oates and home of my spiritual master Ravindra-svarupa dasa and his wife Saudamani dasi).
They’re both disciples of His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. When Prabhupada visited here in 1975, a huffing and puffing TV news reporter asked him, “How does your movement differ from other Buddhists?” He replied, “We have nothing to do with this Buddhism or Hinduism. We are teaching the truth, and if you are truthful, you will accept it.”
The truth I really wanted to wrestle with here was change, and decay, and how spirit survives (and can even thrive in spite of) it. The temple here is in an advanced state of decay. Some eyes would look upon this old hunting lodge, built in the late 1800s, as a clear candidate for demolition. The craftsmanship that went into building this structure is not available today, or, if it is, would be so costly as to be prohibitive for all but the most wealthy. I’d like to do something about it, but I don’t have the wherewithal to fix it up or knock it down.
The room I’m staying in is no exception to the all-pervading decay that envelops this place. I can’t even imagine what it would cost to fix even a single one of the leaded class windows, re-plaster the ceiling, or restore the woodwork to its original grain—in just this one very small room.
Today I went down the narrow, steep, dust-caked basement stairs with my spiritual master, to look at the temple’s new furnace, installed at a cost of twenty thousand dollars. It heats the water that circulates through the radiators. Every Wednesday, you have to open a valve to release the buildup of sludge that collects in the lines. Water has been circulating in these pipes for a very long time, condensing, evaporating as steam, running back through. The sludge that comes out of the tap looks like thick coffee.
Back in my room—looking out through a window that’s just screaming for repainting, re—grouting, and just about re-everything, I can see the leaves continually falling in a sweeping late October breeze. A few green and yellowing leaves cling to the maples and sycamores, but not for long. The yard is full of fallen leaves, and the greying sky is becoming more and more easily visible through the naked branches. The reflection of my face in the large wall mirror doesn’t look like the one I saw when I first came here in 1991. It is also falling, the skeleton underneath becoming more and more apparent.
Krishna is here, in His Deity form, just a few yards away from where I sit. He stands there as Radha-Saradbihari, Jagannath, and Gaura-Nitai, under bright lights, on an ornately carved wooden altar. He has always looked happy to me.
Ravindra-svarupa dasa and Saudamani dasi have lived right here since 1977. The fact that they stay, and that Krishna stays, is beyond my ability to understand. I’m led to understand that matter is transient, yet spirit survives and is nourished by spiritual activity. The fact that I see an endless, insanely costly, and possibly doomed rehab project instead of an endless opportunities for care, improvement, and beautification of a spiritual place of pilgrimage—possibly leading to immense personal satisfaction and spiritual happiness—just shows how little progress I’ve made.
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