During the 1960s and 1970s, I remember seeing Hari Krishnas in the ‘streets of San Francisco,’ New York and at airports with incense in the air, chanting, dancing, praising God in their orange sarongs and pantaloons with close-shaved hair. This seemed almost typical for a time when the hippie generation was in full swing.
But these Hari Krishna young people were not hippies and were on a very different path, albeit that they, too, were all about peace and love. Knowing little or nothing of Hindu spirituality or culture, I often wondered what these young people of my generation were into and up to, and what their lives were like.
Having just read Rishi Waterman’s new memoir “Children of a Harsh Bliss (My Life As a Hari Krishna),” now I know. Having lived, now, in Asheville and Black Mountain since 2004, in his 292-page memoir Waterman takes us into and inside his life as a Hari Krishna in their community in West Virginia which he helped to create in 1971 and where he lived as a devout follower of the Hindu god Krishna for a little over 30 years.