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#4180 - Thursday, March 3, 2011 - Editor: Gloria Lee
The Nonduality Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights
A
Joyful Noise: Krishna Das On Chanting The Names Of God
"As they say
in India, you can’t rip the skin off a snake, or you’ll
kill him, but at the right time the snake sheds his skin. Our
patterns, our stories, who we experience ourselves to be —
that’s
our skin." By Alexis Adams
A Joyful Noise Krishna Das On Chanting The Names Of God by Alexis Adams
Adams: How would you describe kirtan to someone new to the practice?
Krishna Das: It depends who I’m
talking to, because I don’t want to scare people
away. If I say it’s “meditation with music,” some
will be put off by that. In India
they call it the “repetition of the sacred names of God,”
but I don’t want to say
that to someone who doesn’t believe in God. I don’t
even know if I believe in God —
not the one described in Western religious traditions anyway. In
India people
understand that God is within. There are Hindu images associated
with God —
deities like Krishna, Hanuman, and Kali — but when it comes
down to it, these
deities are symbols of the divine that lives inside each one of
us. Indians are more
creative about worship, whereas Christians are generally very
tense: there’s only
one right way to do it and only one God to worship. Of course,
there is only one
God in the Indian traditions, too, just many forms to symbolize
it. It’s ok to
worship anything in any way in India, because there it’s
understood that nothing is
outside of us. There’s only one God, and we’re all it.
Adams: Is it possible for someone
like me, who’s never been to India and is not well
versed in the Hindu gods and goddesses, to genuinely connect with
the tradition?
Krishna Das: Do you feel good when you chant?
Adams: Well, it’s brand-new for me, but yes, I do.
Krishna Das: Then why think about
anything else? You don’t need to know all the
deities. You don’t need to know anything about Indian
culture. You don’t have to
know what the words mean, because nobody really knows what the
words mean. You
can learn the lower, superficial meanings intellectually —
Krishna did this, and Ram
did that — but the real meaning of these chants is our own
deepest being.
I’ve been to yoga-teacher
trainings and heard people say, “If you don’t
understand
the deities, you’ll never be a good yoga teacher.”
Bullshit. We’re Americans. We
didn’t grow up with this. It’s not native to us. I’ve
spent a fair portion of my life in
India and still don’t have a clue. It doesn’t mean that
much to me. There it is: I told
the truth. All these so-called deities exist inside of us,
but we don’t understand that. We
don’t know who we are, so we can’t know who they are.
Find out who you are, and
you’ll know everything you need to know.
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Joyful Noise: Krishna Das On Chanting The Names Of God