Nama Hatta in USA

This article It is a speech given by HG Ravindra Svarupa dasa prabhu at the Third Annual Congregational Preaching Night, Sridham Mayapur, March 14, 2002, and describes the emergence of congregational preaching in ISKCON, and it’s relevance not only in remote villages, but in the ‘developed’ world as well.

I was asked to speak about the history of the development of congregation in ISKCON. It’s amazing to see how this Ministry has grown and developed, because in the beginning we didn’t know what a congregation was; we didn’t know what to do with it when we got one. When I first began to associate with devotees, in Philadelphia in 1970, I was married, with one child and another on the way. I owned my own house — actually very near the temple — I was a graduate student in Religious Studies, and it looked like I had a good career ahead of me. And the devotees were absolutely convinced that to be Krishna conscious I had to give it all up — studies and home — and move into the temple, with wife and children. Otherwise, I would always remain a karmi. I wanted to be Krishna conscious, so eventually we rented out our house and moved into the temple.

The devotees were certain I should quit school also — they had their quotes from Prabhupada. I wrote Prabhupada and asked him what to do. He said that I should get my Ph.D. This didn’t faze the local devotees at all. They said I should still quit: Prabhupada said what he said only because I was attached. I decided, however, to simply follow Prabhupada’s order.

You see, in those days to “make devotees” meant to convince someone to drop out of society, move into a temple, wear only dhotis or saris—the men shaved their heads—and go out every day on hari-nama and literature distribution. This is what it meant to make someone a devotee. So the devotees would always be trying to persuade you in this way. Not only that, they expected you to do this within a few weeks. If you took much longer they thought that something was seriously wrong with you. If you didn’t move in right away but kept coming around, they just sort of wrote you off. They turned their attention to the newcomers.

At a certain point I really wanted to move into the temple and become Krishna conscious but, you understand, there was the wife, there were the children, there was the house, there was the university. So it took me a while to sort everything out, and finally I moved into the temple. The devotees were very surprised when I did that; by then they thought I was going to remain a karmi. Yet by that time I was chanting sixteen rounds a day, I had a temple-room in my house, I was offering all my food—all those things—but still, from the temple there was no validation, there was no support, there was no reinforcement.

Well, I don’t regret moving into the temple either, because there were really bad influences outside. Especially in America in those days it was very hard to practice Krishna consciousness outside. Just by being a vegetarian, for instance, you were thought to be strange. If in 1969 you said that you were a vegetarian people thought that you were going to die of malnutrition. Now in America you tell somebody that you are vegetarian and they say, “I’m trying to give up meat too.” That’s a normal response. So there has been some changes in the atmosphere, and many of our convictions and practices no longer seem so strange or unusual to people.

In any case, in those days our model for making devotees, for spreading the Krishna consciousness movement, was to induce people to leave their position in the material world, their asrama, their sthana, all these things, and move into the temple. So I moved into the temple, and actually rather quickly I ended up being the Temple President, if only because I was the oldest person there — I was twenty-five — and I was the only one who had held down a job for any length of time. So I became the Temple President and, like everybody else, I was looking for people to shave their heads and move into the temple.

Simultaneously some strange, new things began happening in America. A major change took place at the same time the Krishna consciousness movement was starting in America: for the first time Asians began to immigrate in large numbers to America. This happened because in 1965 Congress repealed the Oriental Exclusion Act of 1924, which strictly limited the number of Asians who could come and stay in America. That’s how Prabhupada could get a green card; before it would not have been possible. Until then there were very few people from India in America. Around 1972 we started seeing Indian people beginning to come to our temple. They were professional people—doctors, engineers, accountants—and would come after work. Naturally we preached to them to give up everything and move into the temple, but they didn’t do it, not a one. And we thought, “Here are these people: they know who Krishna is, they are not meat-eaters, they accept the Vedas, and still, they wouldn’t move into the temple. What’s wrong with them?” We couldn’t figure it out. We would say, “Why can’t you convince Indians to become devotees?” We meant to say give up everything. Of course, here are people who have finally gotten a green card, are working or studying in America, starting a family, and now are they going to quit their studies or jobs and stand on a street corner for eight hours a day, jumping up and down and chanting Hare Krishna? Yet this was our expectation of these people. They simply wouldn’t do it. I remember saying to devotees: “How can you preach to Indian people? They are just like blooped devotees.” So we more or less ignored them.

The other group that began to pile up was what we called fringies—people on the fringe. You preached to them to move into the temple and, for some reason or other, they just didn’t do it, yet at the same time they didn’t go away; they kept coming around, month after month, even year after year. One segment of the fringies were people who had actually moved into the temple for sometime but who had then moved back out again, for various reasons—blooped devotees. When they would bloop — this is the word we used — for the most part they didn’t just disappear, but they kept coming to the temple for Sunday feasts or for festivals. Eventually at every Sunday feast the temple room would be filled with people. There were Indian people; there were fringies; there were blooped devotees. There would be a hundred people at the feast, and you are looking: “Where is somebody to preach to?” because you could preach to none of these people. They were not going to move into the temple.

Gradually we began to notice: these people were always coming around, they were not going away, their numbers were even increasing, and slowly we began to realize: these are our people. They would not move into the temple, but we discovered that all of them, to some degree or another, were practicing Krishna consciousness, often in the face of a lot of discouragement from the temple devotees, who had pretty much written them off. They were practicing to one degree or another, and they were our people; if you asked them on a survey, “What is your religion?” they would say, “Hare Krishna.” So it began to dawn on us that we must have some duties, some obligations toward these people. In this way a shift in orientation began, but it was rather slow in coming. You see, the big thing in America at this time was sankirtana, which meant book distribution. Your reputation depended on how many books you distributed, and that depended on how much manpower you could get out on the streets every day. Also this is where your income came from; it was also financially necessary to get people to give up everything, move into the temple, and start producing some income like this. This is how we measured our success. So it took a paradigm shift to start to think in other terms.

We began to understand that these are our people, that it is our job to take care of them spiritually; their children are growing up… In this way we began to function as devotees who lived in the temple but who had duties toward the devotees who lived outside the temple. We had to see what their needs were at home, how to take care of them, and how to help them to practice Krishna consciousness at home and in the world. This is how it happened, at least in America, this dawning realization of what to do.

Now things have changed. We’ve fewer and fewer people living in the temple, maintaining the Deity worship and the preaching, and bigger and bigger crowds coming to the temple—they are growing all the time. We discovered that when you actually spiritually take care of people, they come. They would put up with all kinds of hassles—not enough parking, overcrowding—if you are actually able to give them Krishna consciousness and do it in such a way that they can practice it. In many temples we have regular Sunday School programs for the children. In my temple in Philadelphia we have programs beginning from five years all the way through teenage. The enrollment at the very first session was maybe eight children, then at the next twelve or fourteen. Now it’s up around seventy or eighty. We are running out of space, just to have these Sunday School classrooms. And we also have many classes for the adults, various courses and workshops.

In this way our movement is growing very, very large while the temple population is not so large. In fact now we understand that most people—even the ones who come and live in the temple—will one day get married and live outside. We take care of them also, in a different way from which we were used to. Now we want to see, “OK, these persons will stay in the temple two or three years but then most will go back out, finish college or go to graduate school, start a career, start a family. How do we take long term spiritual care of these people? How do we train them so they can flourish spiritually outside the temple?” So this has been our change in orientation. I’m a little embarrassed that it took us so long to understand this, but — you know — sometimes when you have set your mind in a certain way it takes time to change. Better late than never. Now we are going on in this way, and our congregations are growing. We understand that for most people this — being in the congregation — is the main way of practicing Krishna consciousness. And we are trying to become more and more skillful and adept at providing Krishna consciousness to those who are not temple residents, who maybe will spend some of their life—maybe early and late—in the temple, but in the middle period will be in their home. We find that it’s working out very nicely, and Lord Caitanya’s movement in this way is increasing. This is also sankirtana.

Thank you very much.

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