Kommen Sie und teilen Sie mit uns die Vibrationen der Kirtans, die Freude, Gesundheit und das Wohlbefinden, die wir durch Singen, Tanzen und, wenn möglich, auch durch das Geben an diejenigen erfahren, die weniger begünstigt sind als wir!
Bleiben Sie dran für das nächste Kirtan in Wien!
Kirtan ist ein wichtiger Aspekt des Yoga. So wie Rasgulla ohne Zucker unvollständig ist,
so ist auch Yoga ohne Kirtan unvollständig.
-Swami Satyananda Saraswati
Come and share with us the vibrations of the Kirtans, the joy, health, and well-being that we experience through singing, dancing, and, when possible, giving to those less fortunate than us!
Stay tuned for the next Kirtan in Vienna!
Kirtan is an important aspect of yoga. Just as rasgulla is incomplete without sugar,
so yoga is also incomplete without kirtan.
-Swami Satyananda Saraswati
Kirtan as Meditation
by Paramhansa Swami Niranjanananda Saraswati
“Kirtan is a form of meditation which can take you from the intellect to the level of pranic vibration. Words stimulate one aspect of our personality. Kirtan stimulates the other aspect so that we can experience energy in motion. Emotion is energy in motion. The whole of life, the body, the cosmos, the universe, is nothing but an expression of energy. If you were to observe your body through a high-powered microscope, going through the different layers of skin, muscles and bones into the atomic structure, in the centre you would see the pulsation of the nucleus. That pulsation is energy. We are that energy. The vibrations of music and mantra help us create dynamism and activity in this energy field, and thus we are able to transform the mind.
Beyond Enjoyment
The purpose of kirtan is to take the mind from the gross to the subtler, more spiritual and more transcendental states. The purpose of kirtan is not just to enjoy good music. There are many kinds of enjoyment. Go to a discotheque and dance, or go to a party. Why make yoga a form of enjoyment? Enjoyment binds the mind to the one experience in which you are involved. There are systems and traditions which take our human perception beyond enjoyment. Yoga is one such system.
Music can lead us to deepen our experience of yoga. Beyond enjoyment is bliss, ‘ananda’. Enjoyment is sensory. Bliss is spiritual. Do we want to enjoy or do we want to experience bliss, the higher form of enjoyment? Let us look not just for enjoyment in the things we do, but learn to harmonize ourselves with what is happening. Once we are able to find that harmony, then we experience bliss and peace. In peace and bliss there is dynamism, motion. There is the movement of bio-energy or ‘prana shakti’. It is not a stagnant or static experience.
A Vibrational Experience
When we sing, we create a force, an energy. Just as a tree is at one point and can be moved by the wind, you have to be at one point and let the energy move you. Focus yourself on what is being sung. Participate and join in. Observe what you are singing. Whether you understand it or not makes no difference, but allow one part of the mind to observe the singer – you. Allow one part of the mind to become the song, and allow one part of yourself to flow with the music and experience a different form of kirtan. Kirtan is a vibrational experience. If you can be fully involved in the music, in the kirtan or mantra, your mindset and mental pattern will change. Your body will change. Every atom in the body will begin to sing and dance. It will not be only a feeling, not a mental experience or an emotional experience, but a vibrational experience. If you touch a live wire, the electric current will go through the whole body. Kirtan is that live wire. Hold it and allow the current to flow. Meditation is not isolating oneself, but harmonizing oneself. It is not closing the eyes and forgetting the world, but making oneself part of the world in a much more dynamic and vibrant way. That is absorption, ‘samadhi’, the final stage of meditation. In the beginning, however, we have to train ourselves to stop the heady nature of the mind.
Vibration and Energy
Why did kirtan become part of meditation? The tradition says that kirtan is a meditative process. It is a meditative practice because we access another area of our nature, the area of vibration and energy. When soldiers march across a bridge, they have to break step or the vibration will cause the bridge to collapse. No matter how many tons or how many people go over the bridge at one time, it is the thumping vibration that will make the bridge fall. That is the force of vibration. If you tune one string of a guitar or sitar and play that single string continuously, you will find that the other strings will automatically begin to vibrate, although you are not touching them. Just the sound of that one string will make the others vibrate, and after five or ten minutes you will find that all the strings of the sitar or guitar are vibrating in harmony. That experience can also happen to us. Just the tuning of one string will make the others vibrate in harmony. Just the merging of the conscious mind with the vibration of the kirtan and the mantra being chanted or sung will also influence and alter the expressions of the subconscious and the unconscious. That is another form or meditation, from the intellect to vibrational levels.
Activate the Bliss
Mantra chanting is also a part of the practices or sadhana of swara yoga, nada yoga, mantra yoga and laya yoga. ‘Nada Yoga’, the yoga of inner sound vibration, is considered to be a meditation practice. Mantra is considered to be a meditation technique because it has the ability to captivate the attention. When the vibrational dimension or aspect of our personality is activated and union takes place between the various mental states, the mind, which is now moving in all directions, will eventually enter the state of ecstasy known as samadhi. Samadhi is that state in which bliss or inner pleasure is most active and dominant. The effect of mantra can be intensified or made subtle, depending on how it is chanted. If you chant the mantra loudly, it will create a verbal frequency which will influence the nadis. If you repeat the same mantra mentally, it will create a subtle frequency. For example, if you sing the mantra ‘Om Namah Shivaya’ as a kirtan, the sound will create a resonance in the environment which will influence the physical moods. Maybe your body will begin to sway with the kirtan and you will begin to forget your inhibitions and get up and dance. Kirtan can lead to spontaneous ecstasy. Mantra chanting can create a wave of energy which can transport you from one level of experience to another. The same result happens in a subtle form when we repeat the mantra mentally in our meditative practices. The perception, the awareness and concentration are deepened. It becomes an anchor to hold the mind together when we move into deep states of meditation.”
Aradhana, May – June 2021