Hash Bash ‘Bash Crash’ 2018 (Album with photos)
Deva Madhava das: Some time ago Grace started introducing herself as Gray because she felt Grace was too much to live up to. When she was younger she felt the world was an opportunity to connect with others, there was good inside all people, and that her purpose was to help everyone feel loved and cared for. Lately though, feelings of anger were coming up inside her, seemingly out of nowhere. She was regularly feeling scared and isolated from both strangers and familiar relationships and didn’t know why. But it occurred to her that maybe part of the problem was with herself, that she’d wrongly given up on living for goodness always just because it became a little tough after childhood. So just recently she started introducing herself again as Grace.. like she’d done with me, and had written a series of Philosophical essays on her own theory of the best lifestyle.. Radical Gentleness. She’d gotten a Bhagavad-Gita As It Is a few years ago and appreciated it as profound book; though she couldn’t relate how to apply it in her own life. She was relieved and grateful, after an hour of dancing in the Harinama, to get a bottle of water and a Science of Self Realization.. which is “topically organized and easier to relate to than the Gita.”
Grace is the best kind of person we could hope to meet at a Hash Bash in 2018. Far from the energized rally it used to be.. with Marijuana practically legal now and the party scene thats developed over the years.. the event, like most modern efforts, has traded in its nobler aspects for the typically crass, indulgent fluffiness of today’s social justice scene. Most thoughtful people in the Detroit area keep Hash Bash on their calendar only to remind themselves to avoid Ann Arbor that day. But we look forward to the opportunity each year. As HG Madhavanada Prabhu, who got our consciousness primed for maximum impact all week with his wonderful katha, shared after his blazing kirtan.. “Some devotees were cautioning me ‘maybe its not so good this Hash Bash program.. we don’t want folks to affiliate us with this kind of crowd.’ But I can see they’re wrong, we have to be here.. look at all these people.”
Its not 1973 anymore, and that’s a good thing. Krishna Consciousness is for more, and has much more to offer, than merely what burnouts and hapless hippies can generally appreciate and accept. But that doesn’t mean those people shouldn’t get their chance.. That doesn’t mean a classic Hare Krishna street corner carnival doesn’t have its place in 2018. 6 Hours of Harinama, 2,000 servings of halva, 100+ big books and the thousands of people who heard the Holy Name last Saturday are proof “Old is Gold” as Madhavananda Prabhu puts it. Gauranga!
Deva Madhava das
Photography Courtesy: Arjun Bhattacharyya
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