Page 6 | Ka Leo | Wednesday, Oct. 12 2011
Features@kaleo.org | Alvin Park Editor |Maria Kanai Associate
Features _
‘This is a holy place’
UH MANOA - KENNEDY THEATRE presents...
Fall Footholds
One journalist’s experience with UH students at the Hare Krishna temple
Classic and Contemporary Dance by UHM Students
Oct 12, 13, 14, 15 at 8pm; Oct 16 at 2pm in the Earle Ernst Lab Theatre Just $5 for UHM students with validated ID!
JUDAH L ANDZBERG Contributing Writer
956-7655
www.hawaii.edu/kennedy
4pm to 8pm
On any given Sunday, a group of 10 or 20 students congregates at this large property in a residential neighborhood just off the Pali Highway, a few miles from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa campus. The house also doubles as the headquarters for Govinda’s vegetarian restaurant, which owns a popular food stand in UH’s Sustainability Courtyard. I went to the religious center to interview student participants out of a sense of curiosity, but my fi rst hour and a half was spent in silent observation. When I entered the temple, I was led into the main room to sit in on the end of a Bhagavad Gita study session. A few minutes later, the drums were beating from the center of the room and there were women in the front dancing in unison. The rest of us in the back swayed back and forth, working ourselves into the rhythm. By the middle of the session, everybody around me was dancing, and it was diffi cult not to be dragged in by the drumbeat. Students from all walks of life gathered in pockets of dance around the worship room. At fi rst glance, they seemed to be the closest of friends. But when we sat down together for a meal after worship, a different picture emerged. “I actually don’t really know most of these people very well,” said Nick Hargera, a UH Mānoa sophomore. “I came a lot more last year.”
NIK SEU / KA LEO O HAWAI‘I
The Hare Krishna temple is located on 51 Coelho Way, Honolulu, HI 96817. However, these students are linked through a deep interest in the religion, as well as a certain bond to the temple itself. “This is kind of a holy place,” said junior Narayan Higgins, looking up from across the table in the backyard of the Hare Krishna temple. Hare Krishna is a religion with of years of tradition. Like Hinduism, it is based on the text of the Bhagavad Gita. In the 1970s, a swami (Hindi for spiritual leader) named Prabhupada came to New York City from India with no money to his name to establish Hare Krishna as an international religion. Due to Prabhupada’s hard work and friendly manner, within a decade, dozens of Hare K rishna centers were established around the U.S. In his old age, Swami Prabhupada spent most of his time in his favorite temple, the very one in which we were now sitting and eating, studying and writing on the Bhagavad Gita. In addition to study, the swami was very active in bringing the virtues of Hare Krishna, like vegetarianism, to the greater
community. Some of the students I interviewed bridge their roles as religious devotees and students by becoming active in the vegetarian club on campus. “We’re not vegetarian because we love vegetables,” said Anna Nazaryan, president of the UH vegetarian club and a student of Hare Krishna. “We’re vegetarian because we love God.” A couple of other students from the vegetarian club volunteer their time helping at the Govinda’s vegetarian food stand on campus. The involvement doesn’t stop there. The students pass out literature on campus ranging from vegetarian cookbooks to books on Hare K rishna religion and philosophy. “A book is like a time-bomb. Once you give it to someone, if they’re there, somebody will eventually read it,” Nazaryan said. Dinner was over and I was getting ready to leave. I thanked Higgins for allowing me to join them and to interview them, but he wouldn’t let the night end so formally. “A lot of other religions are focused on ‘us versus them,’” Higgins said. “In Hare Krishna, there’s no ‘us versus them.’”