Allen Ginsberg Comments

Allen Ginsberg: Bhaktivedanta seemed to have no friends in America.  He was alone, totally alone, and went, somewhat like a lone hippie, to the nearest refuge, the place where it was cheap enough to rent.

There were a few people sitting cross-legged on the floor.  I think most of them were Lower East Side hippies who had just wandered in off the street, with beards and a curiosity and inquisitiveness and a respect for spiritual presentation of some kind.  Some of them were sitting there with glazed eyes, but most of them were just like gentle folk—bearded, hip, and curious.  They were refugees from the middle class in the Lower East Side, looking exactly like the street sadhus in India.  It was very similar, that phase in American underground history.  And I liked immediately the idea that Swami Bhaktivedanta had chosen the Lower East Side of New York for his practice.  He’d gone to the lower depths.  He’d gone to a spot more like the side streets of Calcutta than any other place.

Allen and Peter had come for the kirtana, but it wasn’t quite time—Prabhupada hadn’t come down.  They presented a new harmonium to the devotees.  “It’s for the kirtanas,” said Allen.  “A little donation.”  Allen stood at the entrance to the storefront talking to Hayagriva, telling him how he had been chanting Hare Krishna around the world—at peace marches, poetry readings, a procession in Prague, a writers’ union in Moscow.  “Secular kirtana,” said Allen, “but Hare Krishna nonetheless.”  Then Prabhupada entered.  Allen and Peter sat with the congregation and joined in the kirtana.  Allen played harmonium.

Allen: I was astounded that he’d come with the chanting, because it seemed like a reinforcement from India.  I had been running around singing Hare Krishna but had never understood exactly why or what it meant.  But I was surprised to see that he had a different melody, because I thought the melody I knew was the melody, the universal melody.  I had gotten so used to my melody that actually the biggest difference I had with him was over the tune—because I’d solidified it in my mind for years, and to hear another tune actually blew my mind.