Chris’s decision is rare for an American. Fewer young people today turn to Hare Krishna than during the movement’s heyday in the 1960s and 1970s. Most believers live off-site; of the 100,000 Hare Krishnas in the United States, Chris estimates that fewer than 100 are monks. Better organization and cultural roots make monks more numerous in India. Chris estimates that New Vrindaban’s total congregation numbers up to 1,000 people; most live nearby, in cities like Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Wheeling. That leaves the onus on the two-dozen full-time residents to maintain the temple, palace, guesthouses, grounds, cows, and gardens — a job done by hundreds at the community’s peak.

For that core group, autonomy is the rule while community is the goal (launch photo gallery in new window). Although there is a temple president appointed by the worldwide Hare Krishna movement, most jobs are left up to ad hoc volunteers and, more often than not, jobs are done purely by inertia. Those who cook the communal prasadam meals for the deities continue to cook, those who recruit on college campuses continue to travel, and those who have organized weekend festivals for decades, such as May’s Festival of Inspiration, continue to do so.

Making decisions is “fairly chaotic,” Chris says. After the troubles the community had under Kirtananda’s leadership, the hierarchy is looser and “management can be a little bit invisible.” Yet somehow, Chris says, “things get done. Food is cooked, deities are taken care of.” And despite the incense fire near miss a few weeks earlier, he adds with a halfhearted chuckle, “the temple usually doesn’t burn down.”