What does Hare Krishna mean?

When you say “Hare Krishna” or “Hare Ram,” what exactly does the Hare stand for? Here’s the tea.

In Hinduism, God’s energy has usually been shown to come out in two halves, masculine & feminine. So that’s why you always see pairings of Bhrama & Saraswati, Shiva & Parvati, Vishnu & Lakshmi.

Similarly, Hare is the feminine energy of Krishna, who is the Supreme Personality of Godhead - and it often refers to Radha ma.

When we say Hare Rama as well, we’re also remembering the other Vishnu avatar Ram, who is technically Krishna himself in another form.

You gotta understand, Hare is not the same as but very similar to Hari, which actually means the preserver of our senses i.e. Vishnu, who again is Krishna.

In fact, if you want to know what the names Krishna & Ram imply, they basically mean the one who attracts everyone & the one who gives us joy or pleasure, so they’re two sides of the same coin.

So together, the words Hare, Krishna & Rama form a very simple yet very powerful mantra called as the Mahamantra,

Last but not the least, Hare is also different from the Har Har Mahadev chant, where Har stands for Shiva’s quality to conquer & destroy challenges, sins, lust, fear & other evils in our life.

So we’re basically asking him to come defeat our darkness because he is the Destroyer in the trinity of Bhrama-Vishnu-Mahesh.