Sit Properly

HEY! or.. “HARIBOL!” as we say ’round those Krishna places…

I’ve decided that on every Ekadasi, I’ll be posting a “Hare Krishna” song that has affected me in some way. Let me explain.

First, for those who aren’t in the know, Ekadasi is a holy day in the Vedic calendar (Sikh’s celebrate it too, I think). It technically means “11th Day”. It happens roughly twice a month, 11 days after the full and new moons. Upon those days, we fast from grains and beans. There are a bunch of other traditions as well, but we’ll leave that for another time.

Anyway, back to the music. Each Ekadasi I’ll post an MP3 of a song that holds some sort of meaning to me. I’ve been a devotee for about 12 or 13 years, so I’ve amassed a huge collection of music that I really would like to share. What’s the point of having all these great songs if you can’t share them, right?

There are two types of songs that we sing. The first, which most folks are familiar with, is called “kirtana” (pronounced KEER-taun). It’s what you see devotees doing on the streets and in the temples, mostly. Wildly singing, dancing and really having a good time. It’s generally upbeat, fast and not at all somber. It’s a whole lotta fun.

The other type is called bhajana (pronounced BAH-jaun). It’s usually played in a temple, is often very somber or at least more orderly. Bhajanas are usually full songs. Meaning that there is a beginning and end to them. Kirtanas can go on for hours. So can bhajans, but not often.

And of course these two styles can innermix. I’ve seen kirtanas turn into bhajanas and bhajans turn into kirtanas. But the kirtana part is always more freeform and the bhajana part is always more toned down. And that’s how you can tell them apart.

I guess that’s not really all that important.

Anyway, kirtanas and bhajanas are the songs we sing. It’s like our church service. Except fun.

The song!

For this Ekadasi’s song, I’m picking the first kirtana I ever heard. It was a bonus track on the krishnacore band Shelter’s album Attaining the Supreme. Not a bad album, of course, but I would always keep the kirtana on loop. I’m not sure where it was originally recorded, but it’s still one of my favorites.

When I first heard this, I was searching for religion. It was 1993 and I was pretty discontented with being a Baptist. I had a bunch of questions and a bunch of ideas that just didn’t jive with that brand of Christianity. I found myself morally opposed to eating animals, believing in reincarnation and this acute sense that there was something more. I didn’t dabble in different religions for very long before coming across Krishna consciousness.

We were all into the hardcore scene and at that time, Shelter, a krishnacore band, was pretty big. I wasn’t really into them, but my friend Bryan was. He dug the music and some of the philosophy, but he wasn’t going to join up. He gave me his Bhagavad-gita (our “Bible” – one of them anyway) and I read it here and there. It made sense to me. A lot of the time when I was reading it, I was also thinking “You know, I kinda know this already.” I mean, that it just made that much sense to me. It was already what I was believing. Especially the “you’re not this body” parts and the stuff about karma and reincarnation. I already believed in that.

Now, I wasn’t all ready and willing to shave my head and join a temple, but I was hooked. And when Shelter’s Attaining the Supreme came out, I bought it and poured over the lyrics. At the end of the CD were two bonus tracks. One was a lecture by Ravindra Svarupa dasa, which, by the way, pretty much converted me. The other was a “Hare Krishna song.” It was this kirtana.

The lecture hit my philosophical side and the kirtana hit my fun side. I’d listen to it and close my eyes, imagining myself in the middle of a huge kirtana like the one I was hearing. And a few weeks after that, I headed down to the Philly temple (which was hopping at the time) and experienced this whole kirtana thing for myself.

Bliss? Hell yeah.

The lyrics towards the end of this song are the Hare Krishna Maha-Mantra:

We use this chant a lot. We’ve even been named after it. We chant it pretty much all the time. It means “O Lord, O energy of the Lord, please engage me in your devotional service.”The other chant you’ll hear in this is called Nama-Sankirtana. That means “The congregational chanting of the Holy Names of the Lord.” The song is pretty much a bunch of Holy Names arranged into rhyme. It’s a fun song to chant and it’s pretty cute too.

So download it if you like and feel free to let me know what you think of it. Remember, this is our church service. We’re a fun bunch of people.

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(If for some reason you have trouble downloading this, just let me know.)