The ISKCON Deity Worship Journal

Report

Deity Report from the CIS

By Dhy€nakuŠ�a dev… d€s…

Altars of K��Ša behind the Iron Curtain

THE FIRST DEITIES in the Soviet Union were Ananta-�€nti D€sa’s. When was it? San€tana-kum€ra D€sa, one of the first devotees in Russia, doesn’t remember exactly. It might have been the end of the 70’s.

“...Ananta-�€nti had Gaura-Nitai and Jagann€tha. They must have been brought by the Western devotees who sporadically managed to sneak into the country. Practically speaking, there was no worship. He just placed his Gaura-Nitai on the shelf without outfits. They were standing there naked. Everyone would come to his Moscow flat to see Them. Even like this, without dress and decoration, They left a very special impression on everyone’s minds. I got inspired to make my own sculptures of those Deities. I worked in an art academy at that time. In that old BTG photo article about the Soviet Hare K��Šas, it’s me molding the clay forms of the Deities.

Later I think Ananta-�€nti gave his Deities to someone. For some time They stayed in Sat€nanda’s flat. There, the devotees began making outfits for Them and worshipping Them. Sat€nanda manufactured something like incense, some aromatic substance, and he would burn it before Them.

At these times, nobody knew anything. Whatever knowledge we had was from the devotees who would sometimes secretly come from the West. Ananta-�€nti knew more or less how to conduct an initiation ceremony. Some kind of parampar€ was there, someone told something to someone, who in turn passed it on to another. Our understanding of the standards was a sort of: “Now you whirl this thing like this, first before the spiritual master, then turn here,” and so on.

In 1981, after ®r…la Harike�a Sv€m…’s first visit, some sort of €�ram was organized. Sat€nanda introduced the standard of early rising. We printed leaflets with the mah€-mantra to distribute. There were no books at that time. We would simply gather together, offer pras€dam, and have k…rtana.”

“What eventually happened to Ananta-�€nti’s Deities?”

“His Jagann€tha Deities were later moved to Armenia. Where they are now I have no idea. It was in the mid-eighties, the times of persecution. Perhaps he had to send them away, or maybe they were confiscated by the KGB...”

“What about your clay Deities which you molded after Ananta-�€nti’s?”

San€tana-kum€ra laughs: “Oh, that attempt was not very successful. The clay soon began cracking and the ‘Deities’ simply fell apart.

But later, when we Moscow devotees went to the East Caucasus, to Kurdzhinovo, to organize a farm, there I had my personal Deity. This was after ®r…la Harike�a Sv€m…’s visit in 1980. I bought a sculpture in a shop; I found an obscure shop which had some Indian paraphernalia. I had just been initiated; I chanted Hare K��Ša and my Guru Mah€r€ja’s pran€ma-mantra, and so I became inspired to make a home altar. I bought a wooden form of K��Ša with the flute. I also bought incense and pieces of some Indian cloth. M€t€j… Malini, an artist, painted and lacquered the sculpture, and I worshipped that m™rti. Of course I knew nothing about worship. Well, I knew one should bathe K��Ša. So I bathed Him, tried to wipe Him with love. I made offerings, all of this spontaneously. I had no idea that to worship K��Ša’s form one has to be second-initiated. I knew nothing about offenses; I must have made heaps of offenses at that time... But the satisfaction was great: you bathe the Deity, then you drink caraŠ€m�ta, and look: Here is K��Ša, right here, you can see Him in this three-dimensional form; here, He has His hands, and so on. Some feeling of contact with Him was there.

But at the revision in Kurdzhinovo, my home altar was confiscated. We were put in prison and never got our things back. I think they were burned.

I spent three and a half years in jail. In ‘88 we were set free, and in ‘89, our devotees first went to India. K…rtir€ja D€sa donated many sets of Deities to us when we came. He had so many Deities in his house in V�ndav€na. He gave sets of Deities to all the Soviet y€tr€s.‘These big ones,’ he said, ‘you should take to Moscow.’”

"Begovaya - The Place of Horse Races"

NOVEMBER, EARLY MORNING. The Moscow Begovaya metro station is still closed, yet from all directions, figures in dhot…s and saris are hastening, all converging on one point. Many Moscow devotees have rented apartments near the temple, and they are enthusiastic to attend ma‰gala-€rat…. A sign above the wall gate reads WELCOME. We knock. The guard in camouflage uniform, his hand in his bead bag, unlocks the door and greets us: “Hare K��Ša!”

The brahmac€r…s who sleep in the temple room have already rolled up their sleeping bags and washed the floor. The sound of the conchshell calls us in. Within seconds, we are in a different world. The altar curtains, red and gold, are pulled aside, and our eager glances meet Their Lordships ®r… ®r… Gaura-Nitai, gracefully standing on Their siˆh€sana, blessing us with Their raised hands. The wooden siˆh€sana, the carved columns flanking the marble altar, and ®r…la Prabhup€da’s gorgeous vy€s€sana at the other side of the temple room, were all made here in Russia.

Namam…�varam sac-cid-€nanda-r™pam... the music swells. The temple room, however spacious, is soon becoming too small: no less than a hundred men and fifty ladies are singing and dancing side by side. Some congregational members come in suit and tie; after the €rat…, they will chant a few rounds circumambulating Tulas…-dev…, and go to work.

For the second part of the morning program, the crowds will swell even more, as the nearby metro station releases one group of devotees after another. Amongst other passersby, hastily walking to their places of work, with heavy bags, faces full of worries everyday life brings, the devotees look fresh and enlivened. During class, some crowd into the tiny cloakroom and peek through the door; others listen from the outside, through the open window. The audience is variegated: young men and women, families with children, as well as the elderly (some kerchief-clad babushkas have brought in their own little folded chairs). There are devotees from Russia, Georgia, Armenia and all the other republics. There are Indians too.

San€tana-kum€ra D€sa was amongst the first devotees to develop this place.

“We moved in here five years ago. The place was in a horrible state: crawling with rats, mice... It used to be ordinary living quarters, with eight flats. At first we worshipped a picture of Pañca-tattva, which the devotees had brought from India. Then K…rtir€ja D€sa came. This was his second visit, in 91’, when he was already our GBC.

We quickly brought the Deities he had given to us in India, made outfits and conducted a festival, an informal installation. Since then we did two €r€tis daily, morning and evening, and offered bhoga.

“Who taught you how to worship the Deities?”

“When the devotees first went to Sweden for ®r…la Harike�a Sv€m…’s Vy€sa-p™j€... was it 90’? or 91’?... they brought a printout of the handbook compiled by Prema Rasa D€sa and Hari-p™j€ d€s…, K…rtir€ja Prabhu's wife. “Worship on the home altar,” I think this was the title.

At the time of the Gaura‰ga Bhajan Band’s first visit in 92, the Deities were moved into the new large temple room, created by combining several rooms into one, and the formal installation was conducted. I was the head p™j€r…. Prema Rasa D€sa personally came to conduct the ceremony and to teach us various subtleties of Deity worship. He introduced a stable standard, so that €rat…s would not be skipped and p™j€r…s would not oversleep. Previously, it would sometimes happen that devotees would come for the morning €rat…... no €rat…. Where’s the p™j€r…? No p™j€r…. Nobody is there! Once, milk was offered in the patra used to collect the water from washing the conchshell...

Prema Rasa D€sa helped us a lot. He came every year. In ‘93 and ‘94 he conducted seminars on Deity worship. I knew I could always come to him and ask all my questions.”

Today, the Moscow Begovaya temple has the highest standard of Deity worship in the whole of the CIS, with six bhoga offerings and six €rat…s daily. The head p™j€r…, Vi�Šuratha D€sa, has organized his department in such a way that it is fully self-sufficient, including organization of minor festivals and temple room renovations. And the mah€-shop attracts a constant stream of mah€-addicts not only from the congregation, but from the outside world as well.

I ask Vi�Šuratha how many devotees serve in his department.

“Around 30. They are grouped in several sections: p™j€r…s, sewing, flowers, kitchen and mah€-pras€dam shop. The standard number of preparations offered to our ®r… ®r… Gaura-Nitai daily is 20, but usually we come up with at least twice that much. On festival days, our Deities are offered up to 150 different preparations. This is a sight to see!

Festival bhoga is offered in big plastic cups arranged on trays. It takes the whole space in the Deity room: everywhere on the floor there are up to five trays with cups, piled one upon another. Cups are placed on the siˆh€sana, on the shelves, and even on the edge of the wooden canopy about the Deities’ heads,” smiles Vi�Šuratha.

The canopy is indeed well utilized. It features not only decorative festoons of flowers and fruits, but often peacocks and even elephants as well. Defying the proportions of size and the law of gravity, white elephants over the Lords’ heads bring auspiciousness to the temple and are one of its hallmarks. Another are flower decorations. Flowers are expensive in Moscow, but thanks to the dedicated efforts of Vaisvanari d€s… and her flower team, every day the Deities and ®r…la Prabhup€da enjoy not only artistic, opulent garlands but also various other kinds of flower decorations. One of the miracles of this temple: here flowers do not only look nice, but have naturally beautiful fragrance—something sadly lacking in industrially grown flowers in the West.

25 Deities in a 15-million city

Altogether in Moscow we know of 25 Deities. In the other main temple, the Gaura-Nitai Mandir there are installed Deities and also in the two gurukulas and the Prema Invest. Practically all the senior devotees have their personal Deities and amongst the congregration there are also some Deities being worshipped.

Vi�Šuratha is rather critical of the general standard of worship. “I personally know at least three uninitiated devotees who worship Deities. Sometimes the Deities stay in one flat with the karm…s. The devotees' approach to the Deities is often sentimental. They lack seriousness and steadiness. Somehow or other they get Deities, begin worshipping Them, and later they forget... Of all the Deities I know of, half have been put to sleep.”

I sometimes think that Russia has been slightly too large a bite for ISKCON. One obstacle to successful organization is simply distance. Many devotees live too far away not only to visit the temple daily, but even to keep regular contact with it. These devotees want to take shelter of a Deity, and their spiritual masters usually sanction this. To wait for the first (what to speak of second) initiation, under the circumstances, would often be impractical.

There are temples which appear, begin worshipping Deities, and then disappear due to internal problems, or simply because most of the devotees moved to a bigger, more attractive temple. Such was the case with Tula. Now the beautiful Gaura-Nitai from the Tula temple are worshipped by two devotees, mother and daughter, in their private flat, which they share with other family members. The two ladies serve the Deities with dedication, maintaining the standard set during the “temple times.” “The only problem,” says the mother, Nirvyoma dev… d€s…, “is mah€-pras€dam. There is simply too much of it! With few devotees coming to our rescue, we have become fat!”

Another obstacle, even though blessed, is the number of devotees themselves. With the registration of ISKCON Russia in 1988 and especially with the incredible book distribution boom of the early nineties, the floodgates opened and soon ISKCON ranks increased by thousands of enthusiastic newcomers. Most of the ISKCON population today has been around for five years at most. They have grown up in a mass organization which did not have—it could not have—a mass education program. Only now is a bhakta program gradually being introduced in the Russian temples. ISKCON Russia is struggling with all kinds of overwhelming difficulties, both internal and external. But along with inexperience and sometimes lack of philosophical foundation, the devotees’ appreciation of the Deities and their fresh enthusiasm are something unparalleled.

Numbers

This list of centres comes from the Moscow temple address book (1996/7).
The data is not complete, as some centres could not be contacted.

© International Society for Krishna Consciousness, Bhaktivedanta Book Trust 1998
Founder-šch€rya His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhup€da