Spiritual Saturday #3

The Art of Kirtan

'When we chant, we are moving more deeply into ourselves.'
~ Krishna Das.

What is Kirtan?

In simple terms, Kirtan is the chanting of the names of gods and their stories. Usually a mantra - or a phrase - is either repeated in what is known as japa meditation or is sung in what is called kirtan. Both emanate from bhakti yoga - the yoga of devotion.

In broader terms, through chanting these names of gods, we are able to mute the mind and come face-to-face with love; that which we are. The gods whose names are sung are typically Hindu gods, yet belief in them is not required for the partaking of this practice. Each god whose name we chant symbolically represents an inner part of us we reconnect with during practice. For this to be understood, we need to explore the nature of how all of these gods came about.

"First of all, there is a thing in India - the word lila. God's lila they call it, and lila means play or playing, or drama. The storyline goes like this: there was tremendous evil in the world, terrible suffering and pain, and God took form to alleviate that suffering, and the way in which it was alleviated was that a whole storyline was created with different characters playing their parts, and through the workings of that storyline, the negativity was removed."

~ Krishna Das.

As we dive into kirtan and devote ourselves to specific mantras and chants, we are drawn towards the right 'characters' in this 'play', and through the repetition of the practice, these 'characters' - gods - work through us to rid the world of negativity and to help us reconnect with divinity.

'Coming Back'

Krishna Das often talks about 'coming back' after being gone, especially during kirtan. This idea is that most of the time - 99.99% of the day - we are 'gone' - absent in awareness and not really here in the now. As we sit down to do kirtan, we begin to chant and maybe for 5-10 seconds we are really aware of what we are doing and are doing it fully, but then as thoughts creep in and our minds begin to wonder, we find ourselves in absent in the here-now.

The moment you realise that you have been gone for a period of time - 5-10 minutes or even more - you 'come back'. This momentary return is extremely blissful and insightful, but then you will find yourself gone again. The more and more you do your practice and learn to watch yourself and notice when you are gone so that you can 'come back', the more you reconnect with that divine love within you. Kirtan is just one out of countless ways of reconnecting with the truth.

In next week's post, I will begin looking into the Hanuman Chalisa.

Something to listen to:

Sources -

Image 1 - Krishna Das

Image 2 - Accordion

Namaste!