Krishna adherent will provide the keynote address for area faithful
By Allan Turner
September 7, 2015
If not for bad timing, Alfred Ford might not have been booted from the family home.
But the young great-grandson of auto magnate Henry Ford chose to announce his conversion to the Hare Krishna movement just as Detroit newspapers trumpeted the Hindu spiritual awakening of Elizabeth Reuther, daughter of United Auto Workers Union president Walter Reuther. Fords and Reuthers mixed as well as motor oil and water, and even a bit of guilt by association was too much for the Ford clan.
“They kicked me out of the house,” Ford said of his angry parents.
Within a few years, the familial crisis subsided, and today Ford, sometimes known as Ambarisa Das, has become an international ambassador for the Hindu-based teachings for the late Abhay Charan De, founder of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness.
Ford will be featured speaker Sept. 12 as thousands of Houston-area Hindus gather at the George R. Brown Convention Center for the citywide Janmashtami celebration marking the anniversary of Lord Krishna’s birth. Sponsored by Hindus of Greater Houston and the Hare Krishna Movement, the free event will feature food, entertainment and educational presentations.
Deeper meaning sought
Ford, now in his mid-60s, described his younger self as a frustrated Episcopalian in search of life’s deeper meaning.
“I went to church once a week, but I wasn’t all that serious about it,” he said. “I really didn’t understand it. It just didn’t seem that deep to me.”
As a college student in the late 1960s, he was aware of growing popular interest in Eastern religion. But, that, too, seemed like “a lot of gobbledygook,” he said. “It didn’t resonate with me.”
Ford’s spiritual quest eventually led him to Vedic scripture, and an encounter with De’s translation of “Bhagavad Gita” – the Hindu scholar by then was known as A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada – was transforming.
“A bell rang,” Ford said. “I was hooked. The main aspect in Krishna Conciousness and Hinduism is that God is a personality. He’s not a void, not a formless, wrathful old man. He’s youthful. He’s the most beautiful, most attractive, the most intelligent. … We all have relationships with him that are eternal.”
The group draws beliefs from the Hindu tradition of Gaudiya Vaishnava, practiced in India since the 15th century. Vaishnava adherents – about 350 million are thought to follow the tradition worldwide – have been active in America since the early 1900s. De arrived in the United States in the mid-1960s, and he spent the last decade of his life establishing the International Society for Krishna Consciousness.
Ford said acceptance the Hare Krishna doctrine seemed natural.
“My gurus used to say that Krishna Consciousness is not a religion, it’s a spiritual science,” Ford said. “It was not a great leap for me. I was already a vegetarian. The meditation, the devotional service … changed my life for the better.”
The tenets of Hinduism were not totally alien to Ford’s family, either.
“Henry Ford believed in reincarnation,” his great-grandson said. “He could take watches apart and put them back together, although he had no training. He came to believe that those were skills that he acquired in past lives.”
‘We’re not a cult’
The elder Ford at one point acknowledged that a belief in reincarnation, which he adopted in his mid-20s, negated the pressure to learn and do everything in a single lifetime. At one point, Alfred Ford said, the auto pioneer brought an Indian mystic to the U.S. to aid him on his spiritual journey.
“In the 1960s and ’70s, the Hare Krishnas were lumped in with a lot of cults, but we’re not a cult,” Ford said. “It’s a very ancient tradition with very deep roots.”
In the decades since his conversion, Ford has endeavored to help the Hare Krishna Movement “become more entrenched in regions around the world.”
He has been instrumental in building temples in Hawaii and India. Together with Elizabeth Reuther Dickmeyer, he helped purchase a Detroit mansion for use as a religious center.
“We still chant in the streets,” he said. “We still have books we distribute. But behind this is a sublime philosophy that should be able to resonate with anyone.”
More Information
A Celebration of Krishna’s Birth
What: Janmashtami
Where: George R. Brown Convention Center
When: 6 p.m., Sept. 12
Admission: Free
Source: Hindus of Greater Houston
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