AND THEN THERE WAS AUSTEN

And then there was Austen. My coworker at the motel's 19 year old son. He was really getting excited about Hare Krishna. This was an exceptional young man in so many ways. Charismatic. Other kids loved him. Very funny guy. He liked to hang out with me, granny and I would take him here and there.

One day we drove to visit devotees who lived in the country. We got lost and had to stop for directions. I was sitting in the car and he got to out to ask a young woman on the street directions. He made believe he didn't speak English very well, like Russian or something. and in a frantic manner he told her it was an emergency that I was about to have a baby and pointed to me in the car. What a funny kid. She told him the directions and he used the excuse of being so thankful to give her a very tight hug. More like an embrace.What a rascal!

He had given up meat eating and loved chanting. I took him with me once to a street fair. I was selling roses and bouquets on one of the corners at the fair and I gave him a handful of Perfection of Yogas and Beyond Birth and Death. He was running up to people so happy to tell them something about Krishna...from what he was understanding.

At one point I looked over to where he was and there was a huge crowd of kids all standing around him and he was talking about not being this body and there really is God. He was getting the books out in a very nice way.

I took him to the temple with me. What a mistake! We spent several hours there and then I took him home. He made up his mind he wanted to travel and teach people about love of God. He and his mother had very little money but he convinced her to buy him a good pair of walking shoes and a new sleeping bag.

That night he got a phone call from the temple president. "If you can't follow 4 regulative principles and chant 16 rounds we don't want you here."

I was shocked. First of all they would treat him like that and second of all that they showed no respect to me. If there was a problem why didn't they discuss with me since the boy was taking shelter of me and I was trying to direct him.

Austen didn't want to have anything to do with the Hare Krishna movement after that.

So that's ISKCON. The movement is dead.