Visiting Krishna’s Village of Peace
by Krishna-kripa Das
Woodstock Festival: The Stage
On the stage, from noon to midnight, there were always either devotional singing, lectures, Indian dancing, drama, or devotee bands playing contemporary devotional music. Many hundreds and even thousands of people crowded into the tent to witness the varieties of spiritual entertainment. The sound system was so good that persons from hundreds of feet around could hear the transcendental sound.
Here Indradyumna Swami chanted on the stage with his associates.
People in the crowd took pleasure dancing along with the singing. One time some of the dancers linked hands and were winding in and out through the crowd. I counted 70 people in the chain of smiling dancers. When I saw all the young people singing and dancing in the kirtana, I remembered how Srila Prabhupada had begun this Hare Krishna movement by chanting in Tompkins Square Park in New York back in 1966 and how the hippies took part in the singing and dancing. Some of them became serious about spiritual life, heard Srila Prabhupada’s lectures on Bhagavad-gita, and gave up their bad habits like meat eating, intoxication, illicit sex, and gambling. Now they are working day and night to give others the spiritual taste they were given by Srila Prabhupada. Thirty-five years later these same activities are continuing on a larger scale in all different parts of the world and people are experiencing the happiness of the soul which is not dependent on external considerations of age, race, religion, sex, or nationality.
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Jayapataka Swami (on the right of the photo) came all the way from India to spend a few hours at the festival on the second day. He gave a lecture on our main stage about the value of chanting God’s names, and a lecture in the temple booth encouraging attenders to investigate Bhagavad-gita As It Is for it can answer life’s big questions like “Why does the universe exist?” and “What is the meaning of life?”, which we all ponder at some time in our lives. He also did a brief interview with a Viennese videographer on the purpose of the Krishna consciousness movement, and he spent some time in the questions and answers booth. |
Twenty Indian dancers who had come all the way from South Africa displayed their expertise on the stage.
Devotees dressed in fantastic costumes made by other devotees enacted scenes from classic spiritual epics like Ramayana to the great delight of the audience.
In the evening the devotee bands played on the stage. Here Sri Prahlad and his devotional reggae band, Village of Peace, play to a large and enthusiastic crowd who danced wildly.
Here Raghunatha Prabhu of the devotee straight-edge band, Shelter, talks with Indradyumna Swami. In addition to playing on the main stage at Krishna’s Village of Peace, Shelter also played on the main Woodstock stage to a crowd of about 320,000. Shelter was very well received by the young people there in Poland.
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