COLUMN ONE : Krishna Youths at a Crossroads : Many children of devotees have left the sect for a mainstream lifestyle. ‘There was a time I was really into religion and stuff,’ one teen-ager says. ‘I need more excitement, I guess.’

While her family helped prepare the Sunday feast at the Hare Krishna temple in Laguna Beach, Chitralekha Langsford spent the day at the beach with her younger sister. Later, when a blast on a conch shell called the faithful to worship, she stayed in the temple garden, basking in the sun.

The San Juan Capistrano teen-ager, nicknamed Charie, began phasing out the formal aspects of her religion a year and a half ago. At 19, she has no intention of becoming a full-time temple member.

“There was a time I was really into religion and stuff,” she says, running a hand through her long blond hair. “I need more excitement, I guess.”

Like many second-generation Hare Krishnas, Charie is feeling the pull of the secular world. Often raised outside the confines of Hare Krishna communities, they practice their religion in their everyday lives, a dual existence that one second-generation member likens to “moving from one country to another.”

First-generation devotees--such as Charie’s parents, Hal and Sally Langsford--joined as young adults searching for spiritual meaning. They accepted the dictates of their newfound religion and embraced the monastic lifestyle of the Hindu sect, which came to the United States from India nearly 30 years ago.

But as members of the second generation come of age, many are finding themselves at a spiritual crossroads.

“They are no different than any other teen-agers,” said Christopher Walker, 25, who was raised in the sect. He is an associate editor of a Los Angeles-based magazine for second-generation members who attended Hare Krishna boarding schools. “Like anybody else,” he said, “they go through a stage in life where they have to find their own identity and individuality.”

Of the 500 far-flung readers on the magazine’s mailing list, he said, “most are living a normal lifestyle as opposed to a full-time Hare Krishna lifestyle, but Hare Krishna consciousness does have a big part in their life.”

With fewer Americans looking to Eastern philosophies than they did in the 1960s and early ‘70s, Hare Krishna recruitment is virtually at a standstill here, say temple officials. Keeping the second generation within the fold of some 2,000 core members is vital.

“I think it’s very critical,” said Svavasa Dasa, president of the Hare Krishna temple in Los Angeles. “Like any religion, it really does depend on converts to continue. But I think our children are the future of our society.”

Charie, who lived in Hare Krishna communities with her parents until they moved out in 1980, used to join in the morning prayers and ritualistic offerings of flowers and incense at their home altar. She repeated a daily mantra, called chanting rounds, and attended evening temple services with her parents on Sundays.

Now Charie works as a waitress at a ‘50s-style diner in Costa Mesa and plans to major in holistic medicine in college. From this typically teen-age perspective, Charie says she is glad that she did not commit herself to life as a Krishna.

“When you take initiation,” she said, “you say you’ll chant 16 rounds a day, which is like two hours of meditation; and also that you’ll follow all four of the basic principles: no intoxicants, no gambling, no illicit sex and no meat-eating.”

Charie smiles and adds: “I believe pretty much in the whole philosophy, but there are things that seem too restricted. . . . To me, I’m experiencing what I think I should experience at this time of my life. I’m not ready to experience the religion fully.”

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The second generation reflects how the Hare Krishna movement in America has become more mainstream over the past decade.

Hare Krishnas first entered public consciousness after the 1965 arrival of Indian guru Srila Prabhupada. He settled in New York City, where his message of thinking of the Hindu god Krishna first as an alternative to material culture attracted a handful of followers who helped him establish a temple on the Lower East Side. But the movement’s big takeoff came as a result of what one scholar calls “the California connection.”

San Francisco’s Haight Ashbury, a mecca for flower children, proved to be fertile soil for the Krishnas. A temple founded there in 1966 by one of Prabhupada’s disciples attracted 200 members in two years, a time in which the sect’s communal living, rituals and organizational structure emerged.

The time was ripe for a growing a new spiritual movement.

Devotees scattered the seeds: to Los Angeles, Denver, Atlanta, Boston, Philadelphia, Montreal and even to London, where members became involved with the Beatles’ George Harrison, who helped promote the religion. At its peak in the mid-’70s, the sect grew to an estimated 3,000 to 4,000 members living in Hare Krishna communities in this country.

Although Hare Krishnas are viewed as benign by most scholars who study new religions, the public’s attitude toward the sect grew negative in the mid-’70s. This was caused by the rise of a strong anti-cult movement in the United States and growing annoyance with the robed devotees who pressed literature into the hands of airport travelers.

The sect also has been dogged by high-profile controversy.

Its farm community near Moundsville, W. Va., was rocked in the late ‘80s when two teachers were charged with sexually abusing children and former members claimed they had been beaten. (One of the teachers pleaded guilty, and charges against the other were dismissed.)

Another case involved a Cypress mother who claimed her daughter had been brainwashed by the Hare Krishnas in the mid-’70s, when she was 15, and had been moved from temple to temple to keep her away from her family. The daughter left the sect on her own after a year.

A state appeals court dismissed the brainwashing charge in 1989, and the 16-year legal battle finally ended in June with a confidential cash settlement for the mother’s claim that she had suffered emotional distress during the search for her daughter and that she had been libeled.

Despite such headline-making cases, the Krishnas seem less visible today, in part because of ordinances limiting airport solicitation but mostly because of changes in the movement itself.

From an exclusively communal, monastic lifestyle in the ‘60s and ‘70s, the sect has evolved into a broader-based religious movement: The vast majority of members live outside the communities.

Indeed, the stereotype of Hare Krishnas--chanting monks with shaved heads and traditional Indian garb--is only partially valid. Except for special occasions, most members today wear no outward signs of their belief.

“They are largely invisible; they’re part of the society,” says Burke Rochford, associate professor of sociology at Middlebury College in Vermont, who has been studying the Hare Krishna movement since he was a student at UCLA in the mid-’70s.

Rochford--author of “Hare Krishna in America,” which chronicles the movement’s history from the late ‘60s through the early ‘80s--says statistics are difficult to come by: “These sorts of movements don’t keep really reliable counts, but it’s clear that the number of core members living in temples is relatively small.”

About 2,000 members live in the 40 to 50 Hare Krishna farms and city communities spread across the country, Rochford estimates, with more than 20,000 devotees living outside. (The majority of those living outside are Hindus from India, who are drawn by the similarity of religious traditions and the absence of Hindu temples in most American communities.)

It is in the growth of congregational membership that, as Rochford says, the Hare Krishnas have become “simply another part of the religious landscape of American society.”

The transformation began in the early ‘80s. With sales of religious texts--their primary source of income--declining, Hare Krishna communities were unable to support large numbers of devotees, particularly those with families.

The Langsfords and others were forced to establish homes outside the temple. The result: Moving out no longer carried the stigma of moving away from Krishna consciousness. The movement’s financially strapped boarding schools--known as gurukulas-- also declined and were transformed into day schools. Although many second-generation devotees continue to attend Hare Krishna schools at the elementary level, Rochford says, most attend public or private secondary schools.

Raising their children outside the confines of the religious community has been a challenge for many first-generation Hare Krishnas.

Charie’s mother, Sally Langsford, 42, recalls that “nobody even had a television” when she and her husband joined the temple in Los Angeles in the early ‘70s. The couple now have a TV in their home, Langsford says, “but it’s not the main part of our life by any means.”

As Hare Krishnas, “you try to focus your life on a higher consciousness,” says Langsford, a nurse, who chants in her car while driving to work.

“But with kids and outside influences, it’s kind of hard not to have some of these things,” says the mother of five, whose children range from a 21-year-old daughter who married outside the religion and is no longer involved in it to a 13-year-old daughter who chants 16 rounds a day.

Adds Svavasa: “I’d say there’s a lot of pressure on these children, considering the fact that at a certain age they’ve had to go to public schools and make friends and sometimes their own parents have fallen away from practicing Krishna consciousness.”

Rochford says some second-generation members never reveal their religious background to classmates; although others face the stigma of being a Hare Krishna--even without the familiar garb--their difficulties usually are short-lived. As a Hare Krishna who grew up on the outside, Charie Langsford says that other than having some students ask her if her parents shaved their heads, “I never had any problems.”

Rochford, who’s writing a book about the second generation, became interested in the children of Hare Krishnas in the late ‘70s, when he was doing research at UCLA and serving as a volunteer driver in one of the boys’ residences in Los Angeles.

“I knew those children were growing up,” he says, “and I knew that even with successful religious or utopian communities, the second generation becomes a major turning point.”

Rochford’s research confirms an emerging pattern among the second generation: Many are moving away from the movement, “some of them bitter toward their experiences and some wanting to involve themselves in the dominant culture,” he says.

The bitterness, he says, often has to do with the Hare Krishna school system: Children typically were sent to boarding schools at age 5 and the parents had limited involvement with them. As a result, he says, “some of the children felt that sense of separation from their parents, some even felt a sense of abandonment.”

Svavasa, who joined the Hare Krishnas 20 years ago in Denver, acknowledges that some children “had horrible experiences” in the boarding schools, but says his 18-year-old son, Acarya Dasa, has no regrets.

Svavasa, who attended a Catholic boarding school as a child, says the sect’s boarding schools provided their children with an opportunity to receive training in Krishna consciousness. “The idea was they’d be with their peers and that would cause a certain type of excitement” about their religion, he says. “Of course, you do miss your parents, and there is no denying that.”

Living a strict Hare Krishna lifestyle was easier for the first generation, according to Rochford.

“The difference between converts and second or subsequent generations is their parents chose to be Hare Krishnas: They committed their lives fully in the ways that converts do,” he says.

Like second generations in other religions or among immigrant families, Rochford says, the children of Hare Krishnas “don’t have that kind of convert’s mentality, even fanaticism.”

Laguna Beach temple President Badahari Dasa says: “Generally, if the parents are devoted, the children usually have some degree of devotion, although it’s not uncommon in their teen years to grow away from it. That’s pretty common in every culture, I think. Time will tell if they’ll come back. We’ve seen many who have.”

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Vrinda McLaughlin, 21, is one who did. She became a full-time member of the Laguna Beach temple two years ago and in June married 19-year-old fellow devotee Visvambhara Dasa (David Aguilera).

McLaughlin’s parents had moved out of a Hare Krishna community when she was 6 and she grew up in the Bay Area, where she attended public schools. With the exception of adhering to some of the religion’s basic philosophies, such as not eating meat, she grew up apart from her religion. But at 18, she met several Hare Krishna devotees on campus when she was a student at Humboldt State University.

After “associating with them, reading (Hindu) scriptures and starting to chant,” she decided to move into a temple.

McLaughlin, however, is the exception. Second-generation members who leave the religion and come back most often join congregations and live outside the temple. But that doesn’t mean they’re any less committed to their religion.

Rochford confirms that there is evidence “to suggest some of these kids who are a little older--in their early and mid-20s--are beginning to become involved again. And often, those who do return come back with a stronger faith than they ever had.”

Simply growing older, settling down and having families prompts many second-generation members to return, Rochford says. But another factor may be at play: second-generation reunions, which have been held over the past four years.

Reunions were held this year in Los Angeles, Atlanta and the farm community in West Virginia.

“That’s an important development because a lot of these kids have scattered,” says Rochford, adding that the reunions have grown beyond social functions to include the singing of devotional music and other religious activities. “I think that has brought with it kids finding their way back to the movement.”

Says Walker, one of the Los Angeles reunion organizers: “To give you an idea of the interest, last year we had a total of 130 people attend, and this year it was up to 400.”

Walker, known among devotees as Chaitanya Mangala Dasa, says there is “a sense of being proud of the unique society we grew up in because there are so few of us.”