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Hindu

Louis Theroux in India

Brian K. Noe · July 25, 2023 ·

A friend in our work chat this morning shared this video after a short exchange about Hindu and Buddhist practices. It’s from the BBC program Weird Weekends with Louis Theroux.

Theroux is, I think, a sincere and light hearted skeptic. The video presents a mostly amusing look at some Westerners who have gone to India seeking enlightenment, their practices, and the Gurus that they follow, from OSHO to Prabhupada.

Toward the very end of the program, we witness Theroux’s encounter with Amma, and it is a moment of beauty and truth.

Filed Under: Curated Links, Video Tagged With: BBC Television, Documentaries, Gurus, Hindu, India, Skepticism, The Eternal Way

What I’m Reading: Autobiography of a Yogi

Brian K. Noe · October 23, 2020 ·

Autobiography of a Yogi CoverAutobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda is one of the great modern classics of spiritual literature. Since its first publication in 1946, it has been cited again and again as “the” book which first set one seeker after another on their path of discovery.

Yogananda was one of the very first Indian mystics to bring the ancient teachings of yoga to the Western World. He arrived in the United States in 1920, and lectured here widely until his Mahāsamādhi in 1952.

I happened recently across a documentary on the saint’s life called AWAKE: The Life of Yogananda and became fascinated. The book, thus far, gives a great bit more detail on Yogananda’s life from childhood through his departure for America. I’m looking forward to reading the rest.

I always seem to have several books going at once, and currently, along with this one, I’ve been reading Ram Dass’ Be Here Now and Krishna Das’ Chants of a Lifetime. It’s interesting to contrast the spiritual journeys of these two Americans who both mention Yogananda as an early influence, with that of this important Indian master himself.

Filed Under: Other Content Tagged With: Biographies, Books, Hindu, India, Masters, Meditation, Saints, Spirituality, Yoga, Yogananda

Chanting the Names

Brian K. Noe · May 9, 2020 ·

 

Ram, Sita, Hanuman PosterI began chanting the Sadaksara occasionally from the time I first obtained a Tibetan mala many years ago. Over the past year, as I took up the daily practice of meditation, I have alternated between it and the Adi Mantra (which we learned from Chand Shiva Singh, our Kundalini Teacher).

As my wife, Claudia, began her daily practice, she first used the Kirtan Kriya and then the Siri Gaitri Mantra.

Although all of these mantras have deep spiritual significance, none of them invoke (or make reference to) particular deities.

Over the past few weeks, though, I have been learning about the rich devotional tradition of bhakti. Much of that practice centers on repeating the names of various Hindu gods and goddesses.

Raised, as I was, in an Evangelical Protestant Christian home, I was taught that this sort of activity is akin to devil worship. Even the reverence of Christian Saints practiced by Roman Catholics was considered to be idolatry in our church. When I became Catholic, it took considerable study and soul searching for me to overcome this knee-jerk aversion stemmed in my upbringing.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church says that an idolater is someone who “transfers his indestructible notion of God to anything other than God.” Most Catholics, I suspect, would take this to be a prohibition against reverence to any god with a name coming from a tradition other than that of Judaism and Christianity.

Here is what I have come to believe. Our notions about God, and our faith traditions, are limited by our human capacities. Although we Catholics believe that scripture is inspired, we must also accept that the human beings who wrote the scriptures experienced the same limits of language and culture that we ourselves face. We are all trying to understand and describe something that is far beyond our ability to comprehend and convey. We can have an experience of the divine, but we can only approximate that experience when we try to conceptualize or describe it.

All of the world’s major religions have something to add to our understanding of why we are all here, and how we ought to pursue our lives. For me, Christianity in general, and Roman Catholic Christianity in particular, do better on the whole in the tasks of informing my conscience and nourishing my spirit – but I did not become Catholic because I believe that our teachings reveal the “one and only truth.” I do believe that there is truth to be found in the teachings of the Catholic Church, and in the way that we worship and work together. But this does not mean that we cannot also be nourished by the practices, and guided by the wisdom, of other religious traditions.

One of the great lights of kirtan in our age, Krishna Das, says that the practice of bhakti is singing to the loving presence that is always present within us and around us. “This loving presence may be called by all these names.”

In recent days, I have found great nourishment and comfort in singing the names of Rama, Sita, Hanuman, Krishna, Radha, Durga, Shiva – the list goes on and on. These names, for me, represent aspects of God, not beings who are distinct from God. I believe that learning their stories and chanting their names is another way of bringing more light into my life, and more love into my heart. I suppose that greater compassion will be the ultimate test of whether or not this is true.

All One.

 

Filed Under: Essays Tagged With: All One, Bhakti, Chants, Devotions, Faith, Folk Music, Hindu, Homemade Music, India, Interfaith Dialogue, Kirtan, Mantras, Music, Yoga

Diving in to Bhakti

Brian K. Noe · May 7, 2020 ·

About seven weeks ago, my wife and a couple of her yoga friends did a Facebook livestream from the Align Light studio where they shared the Siri Gaitri mantra. It was a beautiful meditation.

Unfortunately, after the live session, Facebook removed the sound, because they had used recorded music and the platform’s AI recognized it as copyrighted.

The idea struck me immediately that we could remediate the problem by recording the music ourselves. So I grabbed my handy recorder and guitar, played some arpeggios, then decided to add some keyboard sweetening. After a few hours I had the basic track together. We refined it over the next few days, adding some reference vocals and such. Done. It wasn’t what I would consider to be “listening” quality, but it was fine for the background to chanting.

It hadn’t occurred to me that this would be anything other than a fun, one-off project. But then my wife said “we should record Long Time Sun too.” So I got out the recorder and guitar again, and this time decided to add a bass guitar track in addition to guitar and keys. I had learned some things from the process for the first recording, and was noticing things during this second one that could be improved as well. Before I knew it, I found myself saying “the next one of these we do, I’ll want to start with a click track.”

By now I was absolutely hooked, and began searching all over the Web for anything I could learn about Kirtan music and devotional chanting. At this point I was still thinking of the music as a pleasant and interesting hobby or diversion. Then, something odd happened.

Although I already had a vague notion that the chanting had a spiritual basis and spiritual benefits (we chanted at the end of Kundalini Yoga sessions and our instructor always spoke about the deeper meaning of the chants), I hadn’t realized that it is at the very center of some folks’ devotional life. The practice already had a pretty firm grip on me, and now it pulled me in. It suddenly felt as if every thing that I have experienced throughout my life, from the time I was a small child, was leading to this moment of discovery.

Claudia and I continue to chant together every evening, and now I’ve added an afternoon session to my daily practice as well. I’ve also begun to read the Tulsidas Ramayana, and to consider how singing the names of Hindu deities each day relates to my life as a faithful Roman Catholic Christian. I’ll be writing more about that in the days to come.

In the meantime, we’ve ordered a harmonium. 🙂

Filed Under: Essays Tagged With: All One, Bhakti, Chants, Devotions, Faith, Folk Music, Hindu, Homemade Music, India, Interfaith Dialogue, Kirtan, Music, Yoga

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