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Tuesday, October 23rd, 2018
→ The Walking Monk

Amsterdam / Toronto

On Ground In Air

Long day. Long waits. Delhi. Amsterdam. Then Toronto Airport. New computers at customs. No paper. Just pressing some buttons. A long enough indoor walk to the outside. Time to think. What did I think? I remembered several brahmacharis coming to me on the last day at Kanpur. Those monks were saying, “We’ll miss you,” because we had the best times before the deities of Krishna. We were singing and we were swinging with new moves—for them and me—dancing for God.

I’ll miss the readings in the morning. The leader, Devakinanda, usually reads a page, a verse, a purport, to the assembly, but he just handed the Bhagavatamto me each morning. A different voice I guess.

Also, special soup was made for me each day since I fell sick the first day. Good soup. Good prasad.

From Kanpur to Lucknow, I had the good company of Australian monk, Ramai Swami, as a companion. We reflected on the week of talks. ‘Constitution’ was one topic. Yamala from Delhi was with us, too. We made the drive over the Ganges to a quaint airport—the kind we like.

I walked little this long day. With no baggage, I can do the long corridors of Amsterdam, but the wheels on a suitcase won’t take it. While there, I met these groups of acquaintances from Toronto who were on their way to Delhi—not known to each other, but now they are; since they saw my saffron, it pulled us all together.

What did we say? Well, everyone’s not that happy about the lax Canada cannabis rules. There’ll be problems. Always in this world, there’ll be problems. Know how to ride them.

May the Source be with you!

2 km

Music as Meditation-the kirtan experience. Laksmi Nrsimha Das:…
→ Dandavats

Music as Meditation-the kirtan experience.
Laksmi Nrsimha Das: I’m sure many musicians have had a meditative experience while playing in a band or orchestra or even playing one’s instrument alone. Long ago, in the early 70’s, I was a percussionist for a well-known NYC folksinger named Steve Baron. Steve and I had a music connection that ran deep. We never rehearsed, yet many of our concerts, small and large, would catapult us into an almost meditative trance, free of anxiety or loss of focus. Our audience would similarly get swept up in our sometimes joyful, sometimes melancholy songs. It was this type of performance experience which led me to the conclusion that music can be a profound meditative experience.
Even as a listener or appreciator of music, the act of attentively listening to one’s favorite form of music can cause moments, minutes or hours of rapture. Music is so captivating that it induces pleasant concentration with blissful ease. With that said it comes as no surprise that the ancient yogis developed a form of music that is a powerful meditation; a meditation made easy through melody and rhythm. This form of meditation is known as kirtan.
A dear friend of mine, Swami Dhanurdhara, wrote about kirtan-“The test of any meditational practice is its ability to facilitate focus on the object of one’s mediation, usually a mantra that is heard. As proper melody and rhythm spontaneously allure the mind, mantra couched in music naturally makes mantra meditation easier. And as the focus in kirtan is the very object of the practitioner’s devotion (the divine names of God), extraordinary feelings, such as devotion and joy, naturally arise as one’s meditation deepens.” This in short describes the kirtan meditation. As the setting for a precious jewel enhances the beauty of the jewel, the setting of melody and rhythm in kirtan enhances the captivating beauty and concentrative power of the mantra in focus. through continued experience of kirtan, gradually the participant connects with an inner dimension of simultaneous joy and heightened awareness of the true nature of the self.

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