Contessa Gayles woke up very, very early to meditate and hang out with Columbia’s Bhakti Club. After a 7:00 AM mantra meditation session, she sat down to talk with Gadadhara Pandit Dasa, the current—and first ever— Hindu chaplain at Columbia. They spoke about a typical day in the life of a Hare Krishna monk, and what it’s like to be a monk in New York City.

Why did you decide to become a monk?

That question could take about an hour to answer! It definitely wasn’t something like, I woke up and decided; Hey, you know I want to become a monk! I always had spiritual questions growing up. Questions like, what happens to me when I die? Do I come back to this world as something else, or does my existence just come to a halt all together? Since I grew up in the Hindu tradition, I always believed in the idea of reincarnation; that life will continue, and I just accepted that, but it was hard to understand or grasp it really. Also, questions like, what is God? Is it a person? An individual? Can I relate? Is it just an energy? How is it that I’ve been so fortunate in life? I had everything growing up that I wanted, and there are so many people in India that are very impoverished. How is it that I somehow was born to a set of parents that could immigrate over to America? Why wasn’t I born to a set of parents who were just struggling to get a meal every day? Somehow I landed this…how did that take place? And many times when I experienced misfortune in my life, I wondered, what have I done to deserve this? These are questions that anybody can have. It wasn’t until there was a severe financial difficulty that my family faced that I really inquired deeper; I feel like I’m just a piece on a chess board. Who is in control here? To make a long story short, I came across the Bhagavad Gita, which is the main spiritual text of India. As I started reading it, it started giving me the answers to the questions that I was always pondering and I found myself becoming a little bit more peaceful. When you’re uncertain about something, that’s when anxiety comes up and when you’re certain about something, even if you’re not comfortable with the explanation, it is easier to deal with. So for about five years I studied this and other spiritual texts, I started talking to monks and in 1999, I decided to quit my job as a loan officer in a mortgage company and go to India and explore my spirituality. I didn’t even go there with the intention of becoming a monk. I just wanted to take a break from life, because life already took me through a roller coaster.

After a six month monastic stay in Bombay, Pandit returned to New York City and lived in a monastery for a summer, an experience which he describes as the happiest he had been in his entire life. Ten years later, he continues his life at the same NYC monastery.

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