Jeremy (my boyfriend) and I arrived in Boston yesterday evening around 7pm. With only a couple days to explore the city and relatively little cash, we had to be a bit creative with our entertainment options. My boyfriend is a vegetarian and เคนे saw that a Hare Krishna Temple called ISKCON Boston was offering a free vegetarian dinner at one of their public programs. The program included devotional singing, a "message" given by a spiritual leader and a wonderful vegetarian meal (pictured below). I had to sneak a picture of the meal when I could, as you can tell, I already enjoyed a good portion of it.
The talk given was on karma: the different types of karma and the way to reach transcendence through lack of karma. . The most interesting thing I heard was that they believed that to achieve spiritual transcendence, one must live without karma, almost like above karma, where your actions have no consequences. This is achieved by communing with God through meditation and service.
At any time a person can achieve this transcendence and it does not have to be through Krishna, a devote catholic can reach this stage as well as other intensely spiritual devotees.
I enjoyed the different cultural experience. It's one thing to read or hear about a different religion or culture, it's another to experience it. In this case, we just happened to leave having had a great cultural experience as well as a delicious free meal. Definitely a win-win-win situation (we win for obvious reasons, they win for having visitors, and Krishna wins, probably).
All in all, unique religious experiences with free meals attached = great entertainment at a great price.