A Chant for Protection

Last week, we began our Kirtan Circle with a chant to Ganesha that I learned from my teacher, David Newman. David, also known as Durga Das, which means "Servant to the Divine Mother," is shown in the video above leading a group in the chanting of this same mantra, "Jai Ganesha." 

Ganesha, the elephant-headed God of hinduism, embodies the quality of the divine that can remove obstacles and is an excellent choice for embarking on any new endeavor--such as launching a new Kirtan circle. In the days following the first meeting of our new Kirtan chanting group, I realized how even more appropriate this particular mantra was for the days our world was living through. The sanskrit text for this chant is:

   Jai Ganesha! Jai Ganesha! Jai Ganesha Pahiman
   Sri Ganesha! Sri Ganesha! Sri Ganesha Rakshamam
   Gung Ganapataye Namo Namah 

And the meaning, in English, is roughly: 

    Hail Ganesha, the One who saves us.
    Venerable Ganesha, the One who protects us.
    I bow in reverence to the name Ganapati, the name of Ganesha. 

In this period of great upheaval and turmoil in the world, it is good to have the opportunity to sing with others to God. It is good, and comforting, to seek safety and protection in the divine that is always with us. Although the chants in traditional Kirtan are made to Hindu deities and the religion could not be more foreign to me, I have been greatly moved by the practice of Kirtan and no longer doubt the power of this particular form of worship.

Although Kirtan does not come from the tradition I was raised in, and I still know very little about it, I have found that the practice speaks directly to my heart, bypassing my brain and making it unnecesary to fully understand the stories or theology behind the songs. God has many faces and many names and, in the final analysis, my own beliefs are only a vague approximation of the true ultimate reality that is beyond any human comprehension. Keeping this in mind has been a great help as I have found myself swept away by this powerful devotional practice from a tradition not my own.

Tonight we meet again for Kirtan and we will offer our chant to Ganesha, asking for God's protection and grace, for ourselves and for all around the world who are living through these tumultuous times.

Peace be with you,

Raima

Kirtan Circle Launches

The last few weeks have brought a sharply increased level of activity in my yoga teacher training activities. I would like to have written more blog posts about all these activities, but this flurry of stuff has really kept me busy. Since the start of the year, I have been apprenticing in a beginner's class, have attended two weekend intensive sessions and, last but definitely not least, have prepared and am ready to launch my project: Sun & Moon Yoga Studio's first Kirtan Circle.

As readers of this blog know, I am passionate about Bhakti yoga, which involves a form of devotional chant known as Kirtan. I knew, even before I began yoga teacher training, that I wanted to share this powerful practice with others. Like everything in yoga, talking or writing about a yoga practice is no substitute for actual doing it, so I have been strongly motivated to find a way to share what I know about this practice and give others the opportunity to experience it.

All Sun & Moon teacher trainees are required to do a project as part of the training, so I chose to develop a Kirtan Circle where people who know nothing about devotional chant can come and try it out. Since early January, I have met with a small group of interested yogis at the studio, teaching them what I have learned in the few years I have been practicing Kirtan. We have met every week that we can, learning chants, singing together and having a wonderful time.

Although I knew, and could sing, many chants that I had learned "by heart," so to speak, I quickly realized that I needed to find a way to bring instrumental accompaniment into the mix. Our practice group chanted to CDs and MP3 files for awhile, and I slowly began to pick out some of the tunes on my portable keyboard. Others brought drums and shakers and bells and before too long, we were singing "Jai Ganesha" and "Hare Krishna" without even having to turn on a CD player.

This weekend we are ready to open our practice to all interested participants. Our first Kirtan Circle will occur Saturday, February 19, 2011 at 5:30 pm. The Sun & Moon studio has been wonderfully supportive of this project, and has listed our Kirtan Circle dates on the website where you can find directions to the studio. If you are close by and can join us, please do. We would love to chant with you!


Namaste

Hearts and Hands and Voices

As we continued with our studies of the chakras this month, making our way from chakra 4, the heart center, through chakra 5, located in the throat, and on toward chakra 6 (the "third eye") and chakra 7 (the "crown chakra"), an old hymn started running through my mind. 

I'll get back to that hymn later, but I need, first, to confess that I never knew, until now, that the hands are also associated with chakra 4. I'm not sure why it's taken me twenty years of yoga study to know that while chakra 4, the heart center, is obviously centered near the middle of the chest, the hands (and shoulders and arms) are also considered part of chakra 4. As we moved toward chakra 5, which obviously is associated with voice, I became very confused because, as a writer, my voice is often expressed with my hands. 

I do, of course, talk in the normal way, using my vocal chords and mouth, but I almost always have to write something out before I know what my heart is saying to me. And I am often trying to find the  right voice for a character, or the right voice to use for an article I'm writing. I rejoiced, like all writers do, when I felt I had found "my voice" as a writer, and the words began to flow easily and without effort. I, therefore, have had a very hard time separating my heart, my hands and my voice. I didn't know whether it was even possible for me to differentiate these two important energy centers.

And then this hymn started playing in my head. Over and over and over. It's a very old Christian hymn, written around 1636 by a German clergyman, Martin Rinckart, just as the plague descended on his town, eventually killing upwards of 8000 people there. 

Rinckart obviously wrote the words of this hymn in German, but the best-known English translation goes like this:

  Now thank we all our God, with heart and hands and voices,
  Who wondrous things hath done, in whom his world rejoices,
  Who from our mother's arms hath blessed us on our way
  With countless gifts of love, and still is ours today. 

I've always associated this hymn with the Mayflower pilgrims since, as children, we often sang it in church or Sunday School around Thanksgiving Day. Although it is clearly a song of thankfulness, I have always picked up on a strain of underlying suffering, which made sense, knowing that the pilgrims had just made it through a very tough year and were facing another harsh winter. Now, knowing the situation that the author himself was in, trying to minister to a flock that was suffering greatly, called on to bury thousands of his parishioners, I now see that there is much, much more to the story behind this hymn.

Despite the somewhat dated language (the use of words like "hath" and the sometimes-jarring reference to God using a male pronoun), I love this hymn, and not just because I've been singing it since childhood. Martin Rinckert's hymn is a hymn of devotion, so by singing it I can practice bhakti yoga, the yoga of devotion. 

I also love how Rinckart's hymn reminds me that my act of devotion can be offered up not just with my voice, but also with my heart as well as with my hands. I love the reminder that true thankfulness and gratitude comes by offering our heart and a hand to another, that it is often in the doing for others that we most deeply experience true gratitude. I love the deep lesson of this text that when we are truly thankful, the heart, hands and voice really cannot be separated.

Namate.

Bhakti, The Path of Devotion

There are many styles of yoga, although the different types known to most people in the west are all variations of Hatha yoga, concerned largely with asanas, or postures. The asanas are practiced to bring the body to a place where the mind can enter into meditation.


Georg Feuerstein likens the diversity of yoga styles to spokes on a wheel, each spoke a different form of yoga, all leading to the same hub, the ecstatic experience wherein the yoga practitioner transcends their own limited consciousness to experience transcendent Reality itself.

One of the spokes on the wheel of yoga is known as Bhakti yoga, the path of devotion. Bhakti practice can include listening to the many names of the Divine, chanting these names, with or without music, ceremonial worship, or other forms of devotion to God. The essential feature of Bhakti practice is that self-transcendence occurs when the heart opens in love.

About fifteen years ago, long before I had ever heard of Bhakti yoga, I went to an academic conference entitled "Teaching from Within." In one of the workshop sessions, the leader showed us how to get "within" by repeating a mantra. I had never done anything like that before, but the mantra stuck in my mind, like a catchy jingle on the radio. I got up the next morning and wrote the poem that I've copied below.

Even though I didn't understand much about the power of chant at the time I learned that first mantra, the chant taught me everything I needed to know. As Krishna Das, a master Bhakti teacher explains, you really don't need to understand chant to get the benefits. All you really need to do is chant.


The Sufi poet taught us to pray.
Chant, he said.
Chant this: All I want from you
Is forever to remember me as loving you.


So, I chanted: All I want from You
Is forever to remember me as loving You.
And again: All I want from You
Is forever to remember me as loving You.


I rise,
Climb out the window,
Hold tight to the rope.
It is important I hold fast
Since none will catch me if I fall.
        All I want from You…


I rise,
Write my pages,
Hold tight to the lines.
It is important I write
Since none will know me if I stop.
        All I want from You…


I rise,
Practice yoga,
Hold tight to the pose.
It is important I move
Since none will know I’m alive unless I do.


Round and round, the mantra of devotion revolves
I hold tight to the song
Tight to the line, the pose, the rope.
I hold tight. And after a hundred chants
A thousand chants
A million
We switched places, the chant and I.


And now the chant is singing me.


Each morning I rise
And sing the song,
Hold tight to the mantra.
It is important I chant
So that I will remember: I am the beloved
And you—You—are the Song.