A Dance with the Beloved

There was a 16th century Indian saint by the name of Tulsidas, who, when he was first married, was so in love and passionate toward his bride that he had to be by her side all the time. He was so infatuated with this beautiful woman that he couldn’t be without her for even a few hours. One day she decided to visit her parents in another town. She had not been gone more than a few hours before Tulsidas found himself not being able to stand being without her. Before the day was over he showed up at his wife's parent's home.

At this point, his beloved turned to him and said, “You know,Tulsidas, if you were to take all this passion and devotion that you feel toward me and turn it toward God, you’d be enlightened in no time.”

He thought about this, and something began to shift in him. He began to take her advice, practicing turning his heart toward the Divine, and it is said that he became one of the greatest bhakti yogis (one who practices the yoga of devotion).

It has been said that relationship is the hardest kind of yoga. Yoga means "union,", and there are many different kinds, beyond what we typically think of as yoga—there’s Bhakti Yoga (the practice of love and devotion), Karma Yoga (the yoga of selfless service), Raja Yoga (the eight-limbed path that emphasizes states of meditation), just to name a few. These are all seen as paths to union with the Divine.

Many say that union with God through loving another person (in any kind of relationship) is the most difficult of all paths.  Stories have been told about devoted spiritual seekers who go to live in monasteries for several years. They become very masterful at sitting with themselves. They achieve great states of concentration and bliss. They experience great insights, expanded awareness, and deep peace. Then, when it’s time to re-enter society, they go home to their family of origin, and it all goes out the window at the dinner table.

Meditation teachers joke that if you really want to test how spiritually evolved you are, go home to be with your family for the weekend.

For one human being to love another: that is perhaps
the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the
last test and proof, the work for which all other work
is but preparation. ~Rainer Maria Rilke

The challenge we face as humans is that we have this heart that seeks union, but we also have this ego that wants to protect, defend, hold on to its separateness. Through the workings of the ego, we blame, go victim, are overcome with jealousy, attempt to dominate and control, compare ourselves and our loved ones to everybody else, and on and on.

The heart, however, our wellspring of True Love, wants to surrender, to lose its separateness, to merge. It is spacious and open and soft, whereas the ego is hard and contractive.

The greatest longing that we have in this life is known as the "Great Desire," it is the longing for union with the Beloved, with that presence that is the Source of all Love. Our own beloved, our partner, becomes a vessel into which this Love is poured, a channel through which God’s love flows.

The most conscious love relationships are ones in which both partners are “triangulating with God.”  Spirit becomes the focal and guiding point in the relationship.  The love then becomes less about your own individual desires and needs, and more about the big picture. Something Loves through you. Something that is bigger than both of you is loving through you.  And the purpose of the relationship is to lift one another’s hearts up to God, rather than the satisfaction of your desires and my desires.

Eckhart Tolle, author of The Power of Now,  says that “The purpose of relationship is not to make you happy, but to wake you up.”

So what about this experience of falling in love? Ram Dass has a wonderful way of describing what really happens when we fall in love. He explains that we go through our lives like hungry ghosts, insatiable, needing and wanting to be filled up with love. There’s a sense of desperation for that feeling, and we feel deprived when we don’t have a partner. When we do feel adored by another person, we get so high from it that we can get hooked on that kind of attention --so it is very much like an addiction.

It’s as if the love inside of us is all locked up, and we are like these human locks walking around looking for a key.  Then, one day we find the person who acts as our key, and boom! We say that we’re in love. And that feeling of being in love makes us feel expansive,as if we’re walking on air. Colors look brighter, we feel fully alive and joyful. The experience of loving someone cracks us right open.

But where we get confused is that we say “I think I’m in love with him or with her” rather than "I think I’m in love." Where we get fooled is that we believe we’re in love with the other person, but what’s really happened is that that person has become the key that has unlocked the vast reservoir of love that is our own true nature. It was in us all along.

So, said rather unromantically, “I love you” means: “You are the key stimulus that is opening me to the place in myself where I am love, which I can’t get to except through you.”

Now whether we touch into that vast ocean of love within us through a romantic partner, through meditation, through a guru, or taking psychedelic drugs, we get addicted to the method that got us there. We want to hold on to that state so badly, because this person or substance has worked to tune us to the place in ourselves that is the Awareness of Love. So we end up becoming very addicted to the vehicle. So, if it is another person that has opened us up to this love, we get very attached to being in the presence of that other person, and then starts the fear, possessiveness, jealousy, “I can’t live without you” “don’t ever leave me”, and all those other states of mind and behavior that are really not love at all (just listen to pop songs on the radio--it's all there!). We create a hell realm around the addiction to the vehicle for coming to love.

In other words, we get so caught in the relationship that we can’t ever arrive at the essence of dwelling in Love.

The mind has veiled the heart from its boundless merging with everything else in the universe. And when we fall in love with somebody, that veil is lifted, at least temporarily, and we come back into the place in ourselves where we feel whole and complete and expansive.

In a spiritually-based relationship, we move from the place of “I Love You” to “We are In Love together.” We are meeting in the space of love. Once we can unhook from seeing the other person as the vehicle to get us there, then we realize that this is something arising from within us, and the neediness and desperation around being in relationship starts to dissolve.  We can move beyond needful relationship to partnership as celebration. Loving is happening through us.

What about those of us who are single? Not being partnered, whether by choice or not, provides us with an opportunity to practice being one’s own beloved, to practice dipping into that wellspring within. If loneliness arises, it can be a great gift that turns one's heart toward Spirit. The great Sufi poet Hafiz has written:

Don't surrender your loneliness so quickly.

Let it cut more deep.

Let it ferment and season you

As few human or even divine ingredients can.

Something missing in my heart tonight

Has made my eyes so soft, my voice so tender,

My need of God absolutely clear. 

                                               

So we have this Longing, this Great Desire, for union with Spirit, and essentially all other desires we have are sublimations of this Great Desire. Even the desire for a loving relationship is our longing for God. Because when we do connect with another human being at the heart level, where we feel completely and fully loved and understood and cherished, it is for many of us the closest we get to God in our lifetimes. There are other avenues, but a loving partnership is for many of us the access point, the portal, to that experience of oneness with God, of God loving us completely. And the challenge we face is learning how to sustain that experience of being in Love in our journey through all the pitfalls of the egoic mind the landscape of the personality, and to eventually come to see this love as originating in ourselves.

Once we can see Loving as originating within us, and happening through us, then we can see Love everywhere, and anything can become the stimulus. The curve of a branch covered with new fallen snow. A fragrant blossom, the song of a bird, a trickling stream… our own breath moving in and out…

If we see all of that as God’s love for us, then everything we do becomes a dance with the Beloved.

Chanting, Then and Now

It’s 1973, and I’m walking in Manhattan’s Central Park. From a distance I hear drums and voices singing. As I approach, I see a cluster of very exuberant people wearing colorful, exotic clothing, with funny hairdos (or hair-don’ts!), garlands of flowers, and ankle bells.  They are full of energy and joy, chanting endless repetitions of the Maha Mantra: Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare, Hare, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare…

I see them only as another of the City’s many fringe cults. In my mind, I lump them into the same category as the “Moonies,” those dazed and confused young followers of Rev. Moon, or the “Purple People” who used to ride their bikes through the park, wearing only purple clothing. I watch with amusement as the Hare Krishnas dance and sing. I recognize the mantra as being “from” the Broadway musical Hair.

Fast forward 30 years. It’s Labor Day weekend 2004, and I am at Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, NY, at the very first annual Ecstatic Chant Festival. I signed up because chanting sounded fun. I find myself in a huge hall with 300 other people. An American Jewish guy from Long Island named Krishna Das gets on the stage and sits down at the harmonium (a small hand-pumped organ used in Indian music). He is not wearing orange robes, flowers, or bells. Instead, he has an unassuming outfit of jeans and a flannel shirt. He and his band begin to lead us in kirtan, Hindu call-and-response devotional chanting.

Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare, Hare, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare…

I feel waves of love welling up in me. Love for myself, for my partner, for everyone in that huge room, and for the Divine. My heart cracks open. Tears flow, and I finally understand, without being able to explain it rationally, what those Hare Krishna folks were up to.

My life has not been the same since that moment. Since then, I have made it a yearly pilgrimage to spend a weekend singing kirtan. Most years it has been at the Omega Institute for their Labor Day Extravaganza, although last year I flew out to the Bhakti Fest in Joshua Tree, California. And, in the summer of 2008, I had the pleasure of attending Jai Uttal’s week-long kirtan camp immersion in Marin County, California.

The rise in popularity of kirtan festivals, camps, and workshops are indicative of a wave that is sweeping the United States and other Western countries as well. Although it is an ancient practice from India, it is beginning to find its way into the mainstream, as yoga is becoming increasingly popular in the West.

Kirtan has been practiced in groups for millennia. When the group all feels like one voice, you feel the divine presence. It’s shining in all the molecules. It is super- high and beautiful. But that feeling of high is different from the high of drugs and alcohol. It’s so much a feeling of the divine presence. I always feel like we’re giving so much of our hearts to each other, our spriits and our passion. Most of us live life on a pretty low burner. When we can share that heart energy, the flame rises and it’s just so great. If you’re singing with an open heart, the presence of God, the divine spirit, the universal spirit—whatever you want to call it—is in the chants. The more we invest our hearts in the chants, the more that spirit is there. When you do it in a group, each person increases the others’ experience.

~ Kirtan leader Jai Uttal, interviewed by Maggie Jacobus in Kirtan! Chanting as a Spiritual Path

What does all this have to do with yoga? Chanting is one of the main practices of Bhakti Yoga, the yoga of Love and devotion. Whereas hatha yoga tones and energize the body through postures and breath, bhakti yoga opens the heart . It is also a meditative practice, as the repetition of the Names and mantras focus and settle the mind. Ultimately, yoga is about becoming more fully alive and connected to Source. Chanting is one of the portals into that place where we touch into Spirit’s grace.

This year I attended the Omega Ecstatic Chant Festival for Labor Day only (an option for those who cannot attend the entire weekend).  The highlights for me were:  

Deva Premal and Miten, with Bansuri flute master Manose Singh

 

Krishna Das

Jai Uttal

I recommend Jai's new CD, Queen of Hearts. 

And, last but not least, The Mayapuris, who were fabulous muscians and dancers, as well as nice to look at!

I invite you to check out the above links and explore this world of kirtan. Enjoy!

OM Shanti,

Jody

Where Everything Is Music

Don't worry about saving these songs!
And if one of our instruments breaks,
it doesn't matter.

We have fallen into the place
where everything is music.

The strumming and the flute notes
rise into the atmosphere,
and even if the whole world's harp
should burn up, there will still be
hidden instruments playing.

So the candle flickers and goes out.
We have a piece of flint, and a spark.

This singing art is sea foam.
The graceful movements come from a pearl
somewhere on the ocean floor.

Poems reach up like spindrift and the edge
of driftwood along the beach, wanting!

They derive
from a slow and powerful root
that we can't see.

Stop the words now.
Open the window in the center of your chest,
and let the spirits fly in and out.


-- Jalaluddin Rumi

translated by Coleman Barks

Asana as Prayer

Yesterday I had the good fortune to participate in an exclusive webcast Q&A session with Ram Dass, one of the most beloved spiritual teachers of our time. As many of you know, Ram Dass is the author of the groundbreaking “Be Here Now” and several other books that have helped make Eastern spirituality accessible to Western minds. As a member of his online satsang, I have the opportunity to send in questions via email and receive his teachings in a live video stream from Maui, where he lives.

During last night’s webcast, a viewer sent in the following question:  “I am a yoga practitioner, and when I do yoga I feel something shift in me energetically, but I don’t feel connected to Spirit. I don’t feel that sense of union that everyone says yoga is about. How does one experience unity and oneness through yoga?”

Ram Dass speaks haltingly (due to the effects of a stroke several years ago), but nevertheless with great wisdom. In essence, he said:

You can let your yoga be God-focused. You can choose to make it simply a practice of physical exercise, or you can let it be an opportunity to direct your mind, heart and body toward Ram, Krishna, or Shiva. Asana is shaking hands with God. All asanas are communications with that Presence, with the One.

He used the sacred Names of Ram, Krishna, and Shiva, but one can focus on any form or name of the Divine. One can do Christ-centered yoga, or offer oneself to the Divine Mother. Or to the Ein Sof, the primordial formlessness that gives rise to all Life. or simply to the Radiance of one’s own true nature.

In yoga, we practice deep and mindful breathing. What if each inbreath were an opening to Grace? What if each outbreath were a surrender of the ego into the ocean of God’s Love?

Asana is body prayer. What if each upward lift of the arms and opening the chest were an act of inviting that river of Grace to fill our hearts and minds? What if each forward bend were an offering of ourselves to be an instrument of God’s Love?  Each inversion a surrender of small self to Big Self?

Yoga practice can be a meditation-in-motion, and a vehicle for prayer. When we bring a devotional quality into our sadhana, we cultivate a deep peace and sense of expansiveness of which the great yogis have spoken:

Yoga pose is mastered by relaxation of effort, lessening the tendency for restless breathing, and promoting an identification of oneself as living within the infinite breath of life. ~Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, 11, 48

I’ll leave you with this delicious image from The Radiance Sutras, as an invitation to play with movement as prayer. Beyond alignment, placement of the feet, and doing it “correctly” our asana practice can be an exploration of the joy of embodiment:

Rocking, undulating, swaying,

Carried by rhythm,

Cherish the streaming energy

Flooding your body

As a current of the divine.

Oh, Radiant One,

Ride the waves of ecstatic motion

Into a sublime fusion

Of passion and peace.

~Radiance Sutras, #60, translated by Lorin Roche

Hanuman

This Monday, April 18th, my husband, Doug, will be running in the Boston Marathon. It's his first marathon ever, and he has been training for six months for this event. It will perhaps take the most strength and focused will that he's ever had to summon. I think it's auspicious that Doug is running on Monday, because it also happens to be Hanuman Jayanti, the Hindu festival honoring the birthday of  Hanuman, the monkey god.

Hanuman is worshiped as a symbol of physical strength, perseverance and devotion. In the epic tale known as the Ramayana, Hanuman is the servant of Lord Rama, and he demonstrates his unwavering and complete devotion to his Master with amazing feats of courage and strength. At one point in the story, Rama’s beloved wife Sita is abducted by the demon king Ravana, and she is held captive on the island of Lanka. Hanuman is given the task of crossing the ocean to find Sita. By the power of unwavering intention and loving service, he makes himself grow to a colossal size, and fixing his thoughts on the Divine Goddess Sita, he leaps across the ocean in a single bound. Lighting his tail on fire, he takes to the streets of Lanka and burns down the palace where Sita’s captor dwells.

After Rama and Sita are reunited, Hanuman is given a string of pearls as a token of appreciation. He immediately breaks the necklace and begins cracking each pearl open with his teeth. When asked why he is doing this,  Hanuman replies that he wants to see if Rama's name is present in the pearls. If it isn’t, then the necklace has no value to him. Sita then asks Hanuman if Rama is inside of him as well. At this point, the monkey god rips open his chest to reveal the name of Rama inscribed on every organ, muscle and bone, and the images of Sita and Rama are found on his heart.

The story of Hanuman’s strength and devotion are also depicted in the Hanuman Chalisa, a forty verse hymn written by 16th century Hindu saint and poet Tulsi Das. Many find great inspiration in singing these verses. In fact, there are many versions with different melodies by the kirtan artist Krishna Das. On his CD and book set Flow of Grace, Krishna Das sings the chalisa and provides instruction, interpretation and proper Hindi pronunciation for those who wish to learn to sing this beautiful hymn.

The Hanuman Chalisa is chanted specifically to clean the mirror of our hearts so we can come into direct contact with the grace of Hanuman. His river of grace flows into our nearly dried-up stream and fills it with the water of life, awakening us to the awareness of Ram's (God's) presence within. This is when our hearts truly come alive. Once the waters of two rivers mingle, they can never be separated.   ~Krishna Das, in Flow of Grace

Hanuman inspires us to find strength within ourselves we might never have known we had. He is an example of discovering our forgotten potency. It wasn’t until he took that giant leap across the ocean that he became aware of his own strength. It was something he had never done before--it was a “leap of faith.” But because his whole heart and mind were directed toward loving and serving God, this hidden potency emerged and empowered him. It is said that the word impossible is not a word in a devotee’s dictionary.

So, I invite you to reflect on an area of your life where you can offer your unwavering service and devotion. What calls you forth to summon your inner strength and courage? Can you take that leap of faith?

Hanuman, bestow your grace upon us,

Divine Guru

O, Son of the Wind, reliever of suffering,

embodiment of blessings,

live always in our hearts.

                            ~Hanuman Chalisa

The Power of Chant

Hello Dear Ones,

I just got back from an amazing weekend tour with my band, ONE LOVE. We did a big loop through Pennsylvania, from Doylestown (just north of Philly) to Harrisburg, and then up to State College. We led kirtan and interfaith chanting at two churches, were the featured guest musicians for a Sunday worship service, and then went on to play for a live music yoga class followed by a kirtan. 

I'm still vibrating from the experience. In each venue we witnessed people melt as they dropped into their hearts, as they chanted along with us. Teary-eyed folks came up to us afterwards to share how powerful an experience it was for them--some of them participating in chanting for the very first time. One woman described the experience as "a massage for the soul."

The reason I'm sharing all this with you is not to brag, but to emphasize the incredible power inherent in the practice of devotional chanting. This is an integral part of yoga, and it's a huge part of my practice and service to others. I invite you to visit my band's site, www.onelovechant.com to get a taste of this yoga that I practice off the mat.

Basically, the word yoga means "union." It is the Sanskrit ancestor of the English word "yoke, " and it has come to mean a method of spiritual union. A yoga is a method (and there are many kinds) by which a person may become united with the Godhead/Divine Presence/Ultimate Reality. 

When we do postures and breathing, we are practicing Hatha yoga, which conditions the body and calms the mind. . Bhakti Yoga is the yoga of devotion, and uses the power of the heart to express our love and longing for the Divine, through chanting, prayers, and ritual offerings.  One does not need to be deity-oriented-- we can use these practices to call upon our highest Self, that wellspring of love, joy, and radiance that is our essential nature.

I look forward to sharing the power of chant with you, in yoga class or at the next kirtan in your town! 

"The soul should always stand ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience."  Emily Dickinson