CHANTING

Reading from Tuesday September 30, 2014 yoga class

From the foreward  by Krishna Das in the book, "The Practice of Nada Yoga" by Baird Hersey

"People ask me, "What is your experience when you chant?" I don't know what to tell them.  What I do is a little mystical and mysterious, even to me!  I can't even explain it.  When I sing I start to release my thoughts and feelings and the stuff of the day.  I start to get quieter inside.  I am singing to that loving presence that is represented for me by my guru.  I don't necessarily think about him as a person when I'm singing.  It goes deeper than that.

The whole idea of chant is to release ourselves from the obsessive thinking that holds us prisoner.  It is not only to be focused on what we are experiencing in that moment.  It is to simply chant and allow the practice to work on us.  Three hours go by and I can't tell you what happened.  I am just the instrument.  My guru picks up this rusty old pipe and plays beautiful music on it.  He puts it down when he's finished, and I go home and watch TV.

Every repetition of the divine names I sing, every single one, is a seed that gets planted.  I am scattering seeds.  In some sense, my guru is using me to plant the seed of the name in everyone who comes.  That seed will take root and grow according to its own time, when the situation is ripe.  I believe that's my guru's way of blessing people and transmitting his love and presence to them.  It's completely under the radar and different from what we might experience at the moment... my only responsibility is to sing to him and sing to that loving presence with as much intensity and as much sincerity as I can."