Shaunaka Rishi Das - Personal Faith

Personal Faith

Born an Irish Catholic, and expressing an early interest in the priesthood, Rishi Das joined a Hare Krishna ashram, in Dublin, in 1979. In 1982 he was given Brahmanical initiation - ordained as a priest - in the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition.

Inspired by biblical and philosophical reading, which began when he was fourteen, Rishi Das developed a broad interest in spirituality. He said of this early period:

...to love the Lord our God with all our heart, all our words and all our deeds, and love our neighbour as ourselves struck me as an instruction, as a plea, and actually, as a necessity. Considering how to do to that, how to forsake all and follow God out of love has provided me my greatest challenge in life.

Joining a Hindu movement in the Ireland of his time did not feel like a courageous act for Rishi Das. Of his first encounters with the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) he said:

They were speaking Christianity but not calling it that. I knew I had met the people I was to practice with. My desire was to be a Christian. I had to struggle with the fact that I found it being practised to the highest standard by non-Christians.

To sample his spiritual thought in the form of prayer we can refer to one of his BBC Broadcasts:

Dear Lord, my desire is to serve you, and I offer what I think is best. Please let me know what You desire, and bless me with the grace to accept what you think is best.

And for a touch of his well known humour:

Over the next few years as I tried the ‘lose-weight-without-any-change’ method, as I wore ever tighter clothes, and weighed myself to depression, I felt doomed. My lowest point was the day I weighed myself after a haircut.