On my last visit to the Hare Krishna Temple in Hillsborough, NC, I had the privilege of meeting with the spiritual director of the Temple, Bir Krsna Das Goswami. He had a crystal clear voice that never stumbled over his words. He had a friendly yet confident bearing that made you feel comfortable but that also screamed of spiritual conviction and the deepest levels of understanding and awareness.
He treated me with kindness and respect as we talked about our differences of opinion and our areas of agreement. As the highest official in the Krishna Consciousness Movement in the entire Southern United States, he has a level of status and responsibility that is very impressive. But during our entire conversation he was completely down-to-earth, laughed easily, and seemed very interested in my point of view.
Rather than going over the ins and outs of our conversation, let me instead go into detail on a couple of especially interesting topics. We talked about Christianity for almost 20 minutes. He had nothing but good things to say about Christ and a lot of good things to say about the Christian Church. He told me that in New Orleans the Christian Church had given with amazing generosity to the people who were down and out after the hurricane. He didn’t question the conviction of most Christians or their desire to serve God. He just felt they had gotten sidetracked by focusing more on the man Jesus than on his teachings. He believes that Jesus was the only “way, truth, and life” during his particular life span, but that Jesus’ words were never meant to convey that there would not be other great teachers, that there wouldn’t be others who, in a like manner, could bring us closer to God.
He also told me that when we looked at our lives in a more circular way, we were likely to have greater understanding in unraveling the mysteries that surround us. Rather than seeing things as having a beginning, middle, and ending, when we looked at things as having a beginning, a middle, an ending, and then a new beginning, we would be seeing the world as it really is. Such a profound point: everything that ends leads back to something new, doesn’t it? The end of a relationship opens us up for a new one that could never begin without the old one ending. It isn’t winter, spring, summer, and fall; it’s winter, spring, summer, fall, and winter… Life isn’t a chain of events that’s always leading to a conclusion, instead it’s a constant changing of the guard that’s leading back to an earlier lesson so that ultimately our convictions can be developed with much greater depth.
Bir Krsna knew Prabhupada (Prabhupada was the founder of the Krishna Consciousness Movement and a man who was revered by everyone who knew him) personally and advanced in the Krishna Movement while Prabhupada was alive. He believes that the Krishna Consciousness Movement made some mistakes after the death of Prabhupada but that, all in all, it is still teaching the basic tenets that Prabhupada left behind. Bir Krsna hails from the Western United States and today, travels quite extensively, both in this country, and internationally. It was his vision that brought the Temple to Hillsborough, and it’s through his leadership that it continues to thrive today.

Tim Connely