Recently I've been writing to a lot of new friends on MySpace and Facebook and what invariably comes up in the discussion is this: How did you first come into contact with Krishna, with devotees, with Krishna consciousness?
I'm always fascinated to find out how people come back to Krishna and become attracted to take up devotional service again. What was it about ISKCON / and Krishna, that attracted you and made you stay attracted?
Personally, I was brought into Krishna consciousness by my mother, when I was six years old. She had been a yoga teacher and one of her students had obtained a random second canto of Srila Prabhupada's translations and purport to Srimad-Bhagavatam, in German, in a small village in southern Germany. The student didn't know what to think about the Bhagavatam, and gave it to his teacher, my mother, who read it from cover to cover, broke into tears, and called the temple and said "how can I join?" I still remember her lying on the living room couch, reading the Bhagavatam, and crying, and I was like "Why are you crying mom?" And she said "I have found what I was looking for all of my life."
So we stayed on in our little village in southern Germany for a couple of years more, and I went to first and second grade public school. When I was 8, we moved to Vrindavan, India, where I attended the Bhaktivedanta Swami Gurukula ("Ashrama" boarding school). Looking back at those days, I am thankful that I had the opportunity to live and study in Vrindavan at such a young age, and it has left a life-long impressing on me.
When I was 10, we moved to France, to the ISKCON farm community at New Mayapura, where I again attended the gurukula "ashram" boarding school. I stayed there for four years, and again have many fond memories of growing up among devotees, festivals, kirtanas, the deities there...
At 13, my mother passed away suddenly, and both myself and my brother were left orphans of the gurukula - the headmistress adopted us as her sons for a couple of years. When I was 15, my non-devotee father came to pick us up - custody had transfered over to him and he wanted to do the right thing and try to be a dad for us after all these years (he had divorced my mom when I was 3 and I had hardly seen him in the meantime.)
So at 15 I moved to Germany again, attended public middle school (what a change!), and struggled there for three years until I was 18.
At that time, we had a gurukula reunion at New Mayapura, and after three years of being away from devotees of Krishna, I had a very strong and lasting realization. I wanted to be a devotee of Krishna. I did not have much in common with my public school friends and with their career goals (becoming famous, wealthy, powerful, whatever...) The devotee youth at the gurukula reunion were my family. This is who I wanted to be with and live with and be around.
So shortly thereafter, at 18, I moved out and and back into a temple situation. I moved to England, and served with some devotees at a small preaching center in Romford, and later at Bhaktivedanta Manor in the Gurukula school there. Around that time I started a newsletter for ISKCON youth / gurukula alumni called "What's Up?" - in order to keep in touch and encourage communication among the devotee youth I had grown up with, and their friends and siblings.
This was in the days before Internet, before e-mail.
At age 20, I moved to Los Angeles and, with a team of wonderful people, helped with an international youth newsletter called AS IT IS, and later, SPIRIT NOT THIS BODY. There, I lived at the Los Angeles temple, helped run a "Vaishnava Youth Ashram" out of my apartment, and was somehow involved in helping to start ISKCON Youth Ministry and the Harinama Sankirtana Bus Tours (currently Krishna Culture Festival Tours.) That was back in 1995.
Today, my wife Jaya Radhe and I serve, work, and live in the New Raman Reti devotee community in Alachua, Florida. I'm still very active in promoting youth ministry work in ISKCON, trying to encourage the next generation of young people like yourself to organize and systematically create youth programs to inspire yourself and others in Krishna consciousness, and to go out there into the world and spread this enthusiasm to others. Give others the Holy Names, association of devotees, and prasadam.
So dear friends, kindly let me know how I can serve you. How can we inspire the youth in your community to get together more often, have bhajans to sing the Holy Names together, and start doing more inspiring, Krishna conscious, Krishna centered activities together?
Email me at youth at Krishna {dot} com
(oh the spammers... you should be able to decipher the email address from that, right?)
Your aspiring servant,
Manu dasa
volunteer at ISKCON Youth Ministry
