Crash Course Krishna
Savya Sachi is the man behind the Hare Krishna Student Center near the University of Florida campus.
While a graduate student at Florida State University, Savya says he met a Hare Krishna on campus that introduced him to the religion. He used to fear organized religious groups. “That’s okay,” his Krishna friend told him, “we are the most disorganized people you will ever meet.”
After attending many Krishna events, he says he felt higher from the Krishna chants than he ever did from his bong. First his beers began sitting in the fridge, and then he began wondering what was happening to him. That was more than 10 years ago. Savya is now initiated as a Hare Krishna priest, but has taken on the duty of running the student center at UF for the past eight years.
“Because of total devotion to God, people can be happy,” Savya says. “But we walk away from total happiness for a mirage. We think if we get a bigger car we will be happy. The material world is tricky. Earth is like a party without God.”
Savya spends some weekdays serving lunch at the plaza, but his duties are much more extensive than that. He is also in charge of organizing the daily lunches, picking up Krishna students on campus and is fully responsible for the financial aspect of the student center. Savya is able to use his extensive background in business to make the center a place Krishna students can rely on. That’s right: the man who preaches about not relying on material possessions has a PhD in accounting.
At public events, Krishnas usually don beige robes or flowy pants and tops perfect for a vacation to the Caribbean. One might expect a Gandhi-like person to answer the door. Instead, Savya is tall, thin, Caucasian and wearing the same thing as every frat boy on campus: khaki shorts and a white t-shirt. Granted, it is a Hare Krishna t-shirt.
“We don’t drink, smoke pot or have sex outside marriage,” Savya says. “But they never said, ‘if you smoke pot, you’ll go to hell.’”
Photo: Emily Jourdan
Other Krishna practices include praying to Krishna every day, keeping a vegetarian diet and having good karma in your life. Karma is essentially like the saying, “what goes around, comes around.” Savya attributes his good karma to the lunch program that Krishnas provide on campus.
“Come look at the plaza when we are not there,” he says. “It’s empty. We just want to provide a place where people can come together to talk about spirituality. You get the benefit of vegetarianism and the benefit of spiritual food. We are benefiting from each other. We have given so much to the community, [that] it is bound to come back to us.”
Another strong Hare Krishna belief is reincarnation. Savya explains that if people do not learn sensitivity in this life, they will have the chance to learn it in the next. What happens to the souls of people who are not Hare Krishna?
“I don’t know,” he says, “but I know you won’t disappear.”