Below is a re-post from the guitarist of one of my favorite hardcore bands, 108.
Vic is a musician and devotee of KRSNA (Krishna).
This faith continues to intrigue me because I see SO many paralells between the way that Vic talks about his understanding of KRSNA and the Vedas and the way I understand Christ and the Gospel. The two aren’t totally congruent, but I still feel really enriched by reading about Dicara’s faith.

Visit his blog at http://vicd108.wordpress.com

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How do you explain Krsna Consciousness to people with no idea what it is?

About 15 minutes ago a respectable friend of mine told me that he is going to a university to explain Krsna-Consciousness to a group of students with little to no prior exposure to it or even to global religions. He asked for my suggestion on a class outline. Here is what I came up with.

1) What is the meaning of life?

Let them offer suggestions.

Then say “Raso Vai Sah” and “Ananda Moya Abhyasat” and explain that Vedic wisdom says that the meaning of life is to relish joy and bliss – to be happy.

Suggest that the validity of this answer is self-evident.

2) Explain the 4 goals of life, as different milestones or facets of understanding how to attain that goal.

Kama – happiness through sensations, Artha – happiness through security (to stabilize our ability to enjoy quality sensations), Dharma – happiness through morality (to cooperate with one another so that no one wants, and thus no one steals our enjoyable sensations), and Moksha – happiness through enlightenment (to attain an enjoyable sensation beyond the confinement of this world, i.e. time).

3) Explain the 5th goals of life, Prema.

After exploring all 4 goals we evolve to understand that joy does not come by having enjoyment, rather it comes by giving enjoyment. Prema means, love, and love is the desire to give enjoyment to the beloved.

4) Explain the proper vishaya for prema.

Once we understand love it also has to evolve to find the most joyous and blissful person to love (“Vishaya”). First we will love a limited person, but (a) that excludes other persons, and (b) that person is temporary and (c) that person has faults. Eventually to fully realize the meaning of life we seek love of God.

5) Explain the 5 stages of love of God.

At first love of god is merely an awestruck wonder at God’s position – shanta rasa. Then it can evolve to actually interacting with that awe-inspiring and worshipable being – dasya rasa.

These are the common conceptions of God, but beyond that are secret conceptions that are rare. The 3rd stage is where love of Godhead evolves so that we interact with Godhead without the limitations imposed on the relationship as a result of God beings so, “God-like” and imposing. This is Sakhya Rasa.

It can evolve beyond that so that the love intensifies so much that one expresses superiority to the beloved and takes care of him like a parent takes care of a child. This is Vatsalya Rasa.

It can finally evolve to the most intimate state, in which there are no limitations whatsoever on the intimacy of one’s joyous blissful loving relationship with God. This is romantic divine love – the sweetest bliss – therefore called Madhurya Rasa.

Mention that there are further evolutions within that category beyond the scope of current discussion.

6) Name the Vishaya.

There are various forms of Godhead to reciprocate with various people in various relationships. But the higher three relationships become more exclusively focused on the original, intimate form of Godhead known as Krsna, the “all attractive.” Krsna is Godhead at his most open and intimate.

7) Now the sadhya (goal) as been explained, so next explain the sadhana (means to achieve it): Nothing but love creates love. Therefore to attain divine love one needs only to practice it. (sadhana-bhakti-yoga).

The practice mainly centers on Sravana-Kirtana-Smarana: hearing about the beloved, and speaking about the beloved – with the effect of remembering the beloved.

There are many ways of doing this, but extra emphasis is given on the most effective way: nama-sankirtana – coming together with others who desire to love Krsna and together singing and listening to songs about Krsna, especially about his sweet name.

There is one particular Mantra, the “maha-mantra” especially suited and empowered for this practice:

Hare Krsna, Hare Krsna
Krsna Krsna, Hare Hare
Hare Rama, Hare Rama
Rama Rama, Hare Hare

Here was my response:

I will be so bold as to assert that I can sum up World Religions in a single sentence: World Religion is the attempt to reconcile “truth” with “Truth”.

            Every religion we’ve study seems to be on a search to take what they feel is right or good, and reconcile it with a force greater then themselves. It’s the search for where our feelings come from. It’s the journey we go on to find out, not what a star is made of, but what exists in between stars. It’s the acknowledgment that nothingness is still something, and that the end of our empirical knowledge of the true workings of the universe is also the beginning of our journey to the divine. In the words of Socrates “all I know is that I know nothing”.

            To clarify, “truth” is the correspondence between object and thing. The fact that correspondence requires an interaction designates “truth” as a relationship. Something may be true from one point of view that is not from another. If I’m looking from the west wing of a building into a parking lot, I see five cars. If you are looking from the east you may only see four or you may see six. The fact that we are in different places does not make one of us a liar, it simply means that we see things differently from our various perspectives and that what is true for you is not for me. Truth, with a capital “T”, is the man in the helicopter who can see all possible parking lots and can definitively tell us how many, what color, and what model cars there are in the entire city. So, as you see by the expansion of this metaphor, my assertion that major world religions attempt to reconcile what they see with what they cannot see (but submit to the idea that there is One who can) is very convincing.

            A common misconception of World Religions is that they are separate. I would posit that, in this day and age, they are parallel paths to the same destination. In antiquity, when there existed true polytheism on a mass scale (Norse and Greek/Roman mythology) there also existed true division between regional worships. However, suggesting that the idea of Brahma can really put Hinduism out of the polytheist family, we now exist in a world where the remaining popular beliefs are all on a search for a reunification with one god. This is essentially the same goal. I suspect that it would have been vastly more difficult to find common threads between Judaism and Norse belief than it is to find, for instance, commonalities between Christianity and Hinduism.

            Thus, in some ways, our operational definition of religion as “providing social unity and a personal sense of salvation” both works and doesn’t. Traditionally, this was thought to mean that it brought unity to your specific society. However, as an example from my own faith, Christ discouraged this idea in an attempt at global, rather than local, unity. Jesus said in Matthew chapter 10 

“Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. ³⁵ For I have come to turn
   ” ‘a man against his father,
      a daughter against her mother,
   a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law -
    ³⁶a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.’

           Out of context this seems to be Jesus’ call for the end of social unity. However, when looking at the wider context of His life through the Gospels, we see the larger picture. In Matthew Chapter 12, Christ’s disciples inform him that his family would like to see him. Christ then rejects the center of the social structure, the blood family, and says that whosoever does the will of G-d are his family. In this, Christ is calling for the destruction of communal religious unity and suggesting that we may all be brothers and sisters under the Will of G-d. It’s also worth noting that this directly confounds the Moral Majority’s claim that the American family is the bedrock of our society.

            This can also be seen in other major religions. Jews have taken to accepting converts and also are active in various forms of interfaith council. Even the Hasidic Rabbi who spoke with us in class seemed to have a very accepting notion of others faiths, even those that seemed to confound his own. Hindus have always been of the mind that we are all Brahma and it could be argued that the pluralization of World Religion(s) is but maya (the ego, which deludes us into thinking that we are separate). Buddhism has proven time and again that it embraces all faiths and requires only a cognizance of the noble paths. Even Islam recognizes its Western brethren as “people of the book” and has the faction of Sufism which mingles in Eastern faith. No matter where you go, if you can possibly sift out all of the power-struggles, land grabbing, and political posturing that taints the faiths of the world, we’ll see that we are ever working toward turning World Religions into it’s singular form, World Religion.

            At the risk of being short winded I think that the above is the best way for me to describe World Religion. We could spend volumes going over each belief system and it’s thoughts and practices. This is worth doing, just as one cannot decide that 3 + 3 = 6 and that is the only way to get to six. We must realize that you can also divide, multiply, fraction, and otherwise cross-quantify six. The answer is always the same, but the methods are the beauty, not the conflict, of the problem.

Recently my wife and I have been packing up copious amounts of our stuff in preparation to move a whopping 6 city blocks. This is always stressful, especially for Jenny, who becomes a fountainhead of anxiety when seeing all her things out of order and in cardboard boxes.

But seeing my wife fret, I wondered why I wasn’t. The answer is a bit embarrassing, but also heartening in a way.

The reason I’m not stressed is because tomorrow my parents are coming into town to help. I’ve spent my whole life trying to shed the “momma’s boy” image that I obtained through encountering over masculinized cousins and playmates, but when it comes down to it I couldn’t be happier that my inner child still has the privileged to think “Mom and Dad will make it alright”.

I know this could come off as “haha, I like my parents and you don’t”, but I really don’t mean it that way. As I look around at students, co-workers, and friends who are relegated to viewing their parents as a worry, burden, or non-sequiter I just have to encourage those whose parents fall into the “not so bad” category to rejoice.

It’s such a damn privledge to know that my parents are tripping over themselves to come help us move. To know that a real friend helps you move, and that my parents are real friends. They don’t expect anything of me nor I from them just because we’re blood. We have a real relationship based on earned respect (not assumed respect) and an ever changing dynamic as I grow up.

But for those who have a rocky or null relationship with there blood family, take heart! You’re family is who you make it. Reach out to a friend and make them your family, it’s got nothing to do with blood and everything to do with the way we treat one another. With all this Christian “Focus on the Family” blabber-mouthing about “family values” we’ve forgotten that Christ himself dissed his mom and siblings (Matt 12:46) and suggested that we choose our family. We are all family. Family values exist, not just within the blood relation, it’s the respect and willingness to “help move” that you have for your friends and associates.