End of the World Part VII: Jesus and Krishna

Teachings of Jesus and Krishna

The Compassionate Christ Jesus of the Sacred Heart

I was sixteen years old in 1970. After my mother’s divorce with my stepfather I had fallen through the cracks in a dysfunctional family. My grandparents had given me shelter long enough to graduate high school, but made it clear that I was to find a job and support myself. My mother was in Mexico, pursuing the life of an artist. And so, after a summer with my grandparents I was on my own. I had missed the summer of love 1969, and felt that it was my time. So with 5 dollars in my jeans I set out with my friend “Flash” to discover the world.

We had seen the movie “Easy Rider,” the famous road film about the search for freedom. The heroes ended up taking LSD in New Orleans and finding their own version of the American dream. Inspired by our madcap ideas, Flash and I decided we would hitch-hike to New Orleans for the Mardi Gras and follow in the footsteps of our heroes.

Five dollars was a lot of money back then, but it didn’t go too far. We got a couple of rides out of Los Angeles, got as far as the Mohave Desert and were stranded out in the middle of nowhere. We slept in our clothes by some tumbleweeds beneath the stars and in the morning a friendly truck-driver got us to Phoenix. The plan was to take Interstate 10. It goes all the way from L.A. to Florida, by way of Phoenix and El Paso. When teaching English, sometimes I have to teach the present perfect: have done, has done... One of the questions we ask the students to explore is “What is the most dangerous thing you have ever done?” Or “What is the craziest thing you have ever done?” My own life is so filled with crazy and dangerous events its hard to pick one, but the road trip to New Orleans was one of them.

As luck would have it, Flash and I were picked up by a pink VW bus filled with hippies on the way to New Orleans. The driver was Fred, a Hell’s Angel on the way to Boca Raton, Florida. He rode up front with Jennifer, a blond flower child. Eddie had a mustache and played guitar. Suzie was his girlfriend. We listened to Crosby, Stills, and Nash and Jimi Hendrix and rode all the way to New Orleans.

Once there, our plan was simple. We would hit the streets by day and discover the surrealistic scene of the Mardi Gras. By night, we would crash at the Hare Krishna temple. We had heard that they were kind.

We got to New Orleans at night and said our goodbyes to our new friends. Lost in New Orleans we asked directions from an elderly gentleman of the African-American community.

“Where you folks going?” He asked.

“We’re looking for the Krishna temple.”

The old man smiled, displaying a gold tooth with a diamond in it. He pointed toward an row of wooden houses. “You don’t want to go down there, son. That’s black town son. You don’t want to go down there. You in the wrong place.”

We wandered the streets of New Orleans. 

We stumbled upon the Mardi Gras parade. Drunken people caroused in weird costumes. Decorated floats moved through the downtown, where pirate kings throwing beaded necklaces presided over throngs of debauched madmen stoned on drugs. Halfclad women hooted from the balconies of the French Quarter exposing their breasts and demanding tribute in beaded necklaces. Men dressed as women caroused with bottles of whiskey.

We stood, shocked in amazement. Suddenly on the street corner ten paces from where we stood a brawl exploded. We watched as ten fat white policemen formed a protective circle around a black man they were beating with their billy clubs. They grabbed a few black bystanders and began rousting them against a wall, slamming their faces into the brick and screaming, “Kiss the wall! Kiss the wall!”

Stunned, we wandered through the French Quarter for a while. We asked for directions again and got lost.

Wandering the back alleys where drunken vagabonds slept in piles of rubbish, we found our way and followed the streetlights until we came upon the Krishna temple.

It was an charming wooden house, an old two-story Victorian in a neighborhood within walking distance of Bourbon Street. We could hear some strange music and went upstairs. This must be the place.

We were greeted with big smiles and warm hospitality. Flash did the talking. We were welcome to stay the night, but would have to help pack incense. We found ourselves in a room with a bare wooden floor and little furniture. There was a record player. The music was the Hare Krishna mantra, chanted over and over again. The floor was covered with fine pink dust.

Everything smelled like strawberry. The incense dust saturated everything. We sat crosslegged on the floor. Incense was stacked in a huge pile on the floor. We counted out twenty sticks, placed them in a plastic sleeve and packed the sleeves of strawberry incense into cardboard packs with an image of Radha and Krishna on one side and an explanation of the Hare Krishna mantra on the other side. All the while we listened to the ecstatic sounds of the devotees chanting Hare Krishna. It was a complete sensual immersion in the sights, sounds and smells of Krishna bhakti as it was practiced shortly after the summer of love.

The contrast between the two worlds could not have been starker. Outside, the Mardi Gras was a celebration of barbarism, madness, ignorance and intoxication. Here we had found shelter from the storm. They told us it was time for “prasadam,” vegetarian spiritual food. One of the brothers brought out a long plank and set it on the floor. We sat around the plank in a line. We were served home-made brown bread and hot milk.

The devotees sang:

ভাই-রে!
শরীর অবিদ্যা-জাল্, জোডেন্দ্রিয তাহে কাল্,
জীৱে ফেলে ৱিষয-সাগোরে
তাঽর মধ্যে জিহ্wআ অতি, লোভমোয্ সুদুর্মতি,
তাঽকে জেতা কঠিন সংসারে
কৃষ্ণ বরো দোযামোয্, কোরিবারে জিহ্wআ জয্,
স্wঅ-প্রসাদ্-অন্ন দিলো ভাই
সেই অন্নামৃত পাও, রাধা-কৃষ্ণ-গুণ গাও,
প্রেমে ডাকো চৈতন্য-নিতাই

bhāi-re!

śarīra abidyā-jāl, joḍendriya tāhe kāl,

jīve phele viṣaya-sāgore

tā'ra madhye jihwā ati, lobhamoy sudurmati,

tā'ke jetā kaṭhina saṁsāre

kṛṣṇa baro doyāmoy, koribāre jihwā jay,

swa-prasād-anna dilo bhāi

sei annāmṛta pāo, rādhā-kṛṣṇa-guṇa gāo,

preme ḍāko caitanya-nitāi

"O brothers! This material body is a network of ignorance, and the senses are one's deadly enemies, for they throw the soul into the ocean of material sense enjoyment. Among the senses, the tongue is the most voracious and verily wicked; it is very difficult to conquer the tongue in this world. O brothers! Lord Krsna is very merciful-just to control the tongue He has given us the remnants of His own food! Now please eat these nectarean grains while singing the glories of Their Lordships Sri Sri Radha and Krsna, and in love call out "Caitanya! Nit!"

I felt I had been lifted up to paradise. The streets of New Orleans were hell and now I was on a heavenly planet somewhere. After the plates were cleared we helped in the kitchen for a while. Too wired to sleep we had a long discussion with the brothers.

I had read the Bhagavad-Gita long ago in Mexico. I liked Prabhupada’s spiritual message, but there were a few things I didn’t understand. A devotee there who I will call “Govinda Das” explained. My concern was about peace. At the time, the Vietnam War was raging and many of my friends had been called to duty. It didn’t seem fair. I had read the teachings of Gandhi and Martin Luther King. It seemed to me that war was wrong.

“How is it,” I asked, “that if your message is for peace, if the Hare Krishna mantra is the chant for peace, how is it that Krishna wants Arjuna to fight?”

“Well,” Govinda Das said, “Krishna is just asking Arjuna to do his duty. He is a warrior, so his duty is to fight. Everyone should do his thing, but do it for Krishna.”

I appreciated his answer while it did not satisfy me entirely. As it turned out, Flash decided to stay at the ashram. My life took a million turns before I finally surrendered to Krishna some time later.

But I have often been asked the same question, in different forms.

“If Krishna is so spiritual, why does he advocate violence?” Or “Why does Krishna want war?”

This question may be seen from different angles. While Prabhupada eschews metaphorical interpretations and demands that his disciples take a literal view of the Bhagavad-Gita, Shridhar Maharaja taught me to look for deeper meanings in life as well as in the scriptures. And while I was formally given Harinam initiation by Prabhupada, I sought shelter from Shridhar Maharaja after Prabhupada left this world. Shridhar Maharaja personally taught me and trained me to understand his message. He put me under the guidance of Bhakti Sudhir Goswami, and together with Bhakti Sudhir Goswami I published Shridhar Maharaja’s books at Guardian of Devotion Press in the 1980s. Part of my service was to spend time interpreting Shridhara Maharaja’s words and the message of the Vedic and Vaishnava literatures before we published. So I have spent a lot of time thinking about this question.

“Why does Krishna want war?”

The point about duty is important. Arjuna is a warrior and Krishna advises him to work as such without attachment to the results, but offering everything in sacrice to a higher power. Arjuna finds this to be superficial and asks Krishna to go deeper. Finally Krishna tells him that he should act in love, surrendering to Krishna. We find that surrender in devotion is the real message of the Gita.

Everything else in the Gita, all the other dharma is essentially superficial to this one truth: सर्व-धर्मान् परित्यज्य माम् एकम् शरणम् व्रज

अहम् त्वाम् सर्व-पापेभ्यो मोक्षयिष्यामि म शुचः 

sarva-dharmān parityajya mām ekam śaraṇam vraja aham tvām sarva-pāpebhyo mokṣayiṣyāmi ma śucaḥ

“Abandon all varieties of religion and just surrender unto Me. I shall deliver you from all sinful reaction. Do not fear.” B.G.18.66

I mention this question of mine since, as I unravel the secrets of the historical Christ in this series of articles I find a number of mysteries: contradictions that lead to further questions. In the interest of full disclosure I am revealing something of my own point of view: I am not a “Christian” in the strict sense of the word. I have great sympathy for aspects of Christ’s life and teachings. But in the end I identify myself more as a “Krishna bhakta.”

Still, curiosity and scholarship have led me to try to get a better understanding of the life of Christ.

And one of the problems I find is this tension between peace and war in the teachings of Jesus. It is clear that he felt strongly about the apocalypse. The “end-of-the-world” is a strong current running throughout the gospel and its traditions, dating back to John the Baptist. And some of what is spoken by the Prince of Peace is troubling.

Why would Jesus want war?

In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus is recorded as saying, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.”

These are strange words indeed coming from the “Lamb of God.” If Jesus is truly a peacemaker, how could he say this. He continues, “For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man’s foes will be those of his own household. He who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and he who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for my sake will find it. (Mathew 10:34-39)

Isn’t Jesus preaching war here? Or is there some way of reconciling his words with those of the man of peace who gave the Sermon on the Mount?

I have a difficult time believing that Jesus was preaching some kind of armed revolution. He never armed his followers, nor did they arm themselves. The Jewish Zealots did indeed lead a rebellion against the Romans in around 70 AD. It was a catastrophe. After the last Roman Procurator Florus stole vast quantities from the Temple of Jerusalem, the outraged Jewish masses rioted and wiped out the Roman garrison. When Cestius Gallus, the Roman ruler of Syria sent reinforcements, the rebels slaughtered them. But as the Jews celebrated their victory over Rome, the emperor sent 60,000 heavily armed and well-trained professional soldiers. Some 100,000 Jews were killed or sold into slavery. In part the loss was attributed to schisms between the Jewish Zealots themselves.

The early followers of Jesus are not known to have participated in the violence. Indeed, insofar as armed rebellion against the authority that had so oppressed the Jews, Jesus is recorded to have said as follows at the moment of his arrest by the Romans.

“Put your sword away. For those who live by the sword shall die by the sword. Do you think I cannot call on my Father and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels? But how then would the Scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen in this way?” In tht hour Jesus said to the crowd, “Am I leading a rebellion that you have come out with swords and clubs to capture me? Every day I sat in the temple courts teaching, and you did not arrest me. But all this has taken place that the writings of the prophets might be fulfilled. Then all the disciples deserted him and fled.” (Mathew 26. 52-55.)

At the very moment of his arrest, Jesus admonishes his disciples to use no force to resist the law. It seems clear that the rebellion of sons against fathers and daughters against mothers has nothing to do with physical war and violence, but something else. He says that he “has not come to bring peace, but a sword.”

While much violence has been done in the name of Christendom, including the bloody conquest of the Americas, I don’t believe that Jesus advocated violence of any kind. His nonresistance to the State had to do with his rejection of their authority, but he nowhere calls for armed rebellion. His rebellion is of a spiritual kind.

He calls for a sword, but he is more in the line of truth-tellers whose words cut. Bhaktisiddhānta Saraswati used to say that a saintly person or sādhu is someone whose words cut sharply through our attachments to this material world. It seems that when Jesus spoke of setting sons against fathers and daughters against mothers, he was drawing attention to the need to cut material attachments. Fathers and mothers are generally attached to the traditional ways of doing things. They want their children to do well materially, to prosper. Jesus was interested in preaching about the after life.

He exhorted his followers, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.” (Matthew 6.19-24)

These ideas are controversial even today. When their fathers and mothers instruct them, “Work hard and make money,” their sons and daughters might reply that Jesus said, “Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They neither labor nor spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you--you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” (Matthew 6. 25-34)