Tattva-viveka
Living kirtana
Syamasundara - July 21, 2007 6:16 am
I was listening to my iTunes audiofiles in shuffle mode, and all of a sudden a talk by Dhanurdhara maharaja came up. At first I wanted to skip it, as it was a total change of mood, but he started to talk about Tera Kadamba and GM sounded so excited that I listened to the whole thing.
At some point, while talking about Radha going to Nandagrama with Lalita, Visakha and Rupa manjari to cook lunch for Krsna and chanting on the way, he started to sing:
Radhe Radhe Govinda Govinda Radhe
To which the devotees responded.
The beautiful part was the spontaneity of it all. It wasn't calculated, not even in order to intensify the mood of the assembled devotees, it just sprang out of his mouth.
GM had this idea at some point, once Agni has retired, they would tour wherever GM is invited and he would give talks, and whenever a point touched upon would remind of a certain Vaisnava song, Agni would get the cue and sing it.
GM did it also, in his fits of spontaneity during some class, but in a much more contained way.
I think it's a wonderful thing, it makes the whole experience a living one.
Spiritual life is life, and if you think about it "material life" is such a contradiction in terms, the problem is that we as a group will always be at different levels of advancement and realization, and that's why spiritual life has to be defined as spiritual.
It pains my heart when such a spiritual flow gets compartmentalized: now we are having a kirtana, now a class, now prasada. When Mahaprabhu was here they would have wonderful kirtanas that were as good as classes, and while taking prasada! Think of the Cida dahi panihati festival (AAAARGH!!! I spaced out on it this year! It was in the 20s of June... just remembered right now 
)
I have a hard time believing that anyone in our sanga could become an imitiationist, not under the excellent guidance we have; so I think we should train ourselves and each other to be ready for fits of spontaneity, like when Gurunisther had us sing a kirtan before breakfast just because we were all together and had finished our rounds. We shouldn't burden our minds with considerations such as "Why is he/she doing like that? Is he/she qualified? Authorized? Really that advanced? He/she is not an acarya. Looking for prestige?" If someone is in bad faith it will come back on them anyway.
Now, it sounds like I am making a point, right? Not really, these are just my thoughts after listening to that talk, I am not denouncing anything in particular, but I do sense that things tend to get a little rigid sometimes. At any rate, much less in our group than in others.
By the way, what happened when Dhanurdhara maharaja was talking about the sweet rice made by Radhika? Somebody brought him sweet rice? It happened to be there?