GeeVees - 01.3: Further Experiments in Japa and Meditation

I cannot even begin to count the time I've committed to meditation over the years. Timewise, the bulk of my experiences span from my twelve active years as a Gaudiya Vaishnava, employing the tradition's methodology of meditation with theistic and transcendental objectives.

Over the years, I have also practiced a number of other methods of meditation, many of which form the bulk of this article alongside the Gaudiya roots of my meditative practice. The study of more physical contemplative yogic disciplines like Trataka, Pranayama and Kundalini, and the Chinese arts of Taiji, Chi Gong and Falun gong, have been set aside for another article.

A holy man seated for meditation with his rosary.

In the Gaudiya tradition, mantras are twofold: One category is the public maha-mantra (Hare Krishna Hare Krishna etc.), the other the many secret initiation mantras one receives from a guru. While the latter are almost invariably vocalized in the mind only, the former is also murmured, chanted audibly, and also sung to the accompaniment of instruments as a hymn of prayer and praise.

A japa-mala in its covering bag, underneath the maha-mantra written in Bengali script.

Symbolism of the Rosary

The japa-mala, a sacred rosary made of Tulasi-wood with 108 beads, is employed for the counting of mantras. While the practice is universal, the details and the interpretations vary. Many Gaudiya Vaishnavas take the rosary as symbolic of the rasa-mandala, the circular midnight dance arena of Krishna and the 108 main gopis. The rosary frequently has a string tied in after the eight largest beads, signifying the eight principal gopis.

I cannot recall anyone ever featuring the symbolism in any practical capacity, and so it remains a mystery whether you're supposed to meditate on the eight gopis every time you touch the eight beads, and whether you're supposed to mentally contemplate on the Rasa-dance pastime over and over again, or whether it's just a fancy poetic depiction without much further meaning. The only practical gopi-mandala related practice is a prayer some chant before taking up the rosary:

tri-bhaGga-bhaGgima-rUpaM veNu-randhra-karAJcitam |

gopI-maNDala-madhyasthaM zobhitaM nanda-nandanam || MBD 4.223

“In a three-fold bending form, his fingers curled on the holes of the flute, amidst a circle of gopis is the beautiful son of Nanda.”

While such symbolism can serve as useful initial inspiration, in this case I found no overall practicability to this, whether as an emotional or a visual aid. As for the string, I did find it useful in keeping mental track of even and odd rounds. As I sit for meditation, I'm disinclined from fiddling with the counter beads and breaking my solid posture and energy build-up every few minutes. Crossing the string with your fingers helps you bundle rounds into segments of two, and thence into segments of four and eight, up to where you can chant dozens of rounds and keep accurate mental track of the number without its causing a disturbance.

Author chanting japa in 2007 at Radhakund.

Experiences with Gaudiya Vaishnava Mantras

Rarely do I engage in japa these days, as I've come to find both the accessories and the verbal mantra-formulations distracting in general. Even with the maha-mantra, when I took up chanting en masse during my later days at Radhakund, it became constantly less and less a matter of the individual names in the mantra. Is one seriously supposed to do a focused back-and-forth bouncing contemplation on Radha and Krishna? If the point is to focus on them, it helps solidify your meditation if a single object remains in extended focus.

I personally found the diksha-mantras much more suited to this purpose, the Radha-mantra in particular. It consists of two bijas, the name of Radha in dative, and a closing exhortation. Dhyanachandra lists a common variant of the mantra as zrIM rAM rAdhikAyai svAhA in his manual. Combined with asanas and pranayama, the prolonged vibration of this formula led me to a substantial kundalini-experience — even if the presence and action of kundalini is largely ignored in Gaudiya circles.

The eighteen-syllable Krishna-mantra (astadasaksara-mantra or Gopala-mantra: klIM kRSNAya govindAya gopIjana-vallabhAya svAhA), on the other hand, was a bit lengthy to my liking and less useful for focused contemplation. Again, is one supposed to focus on Krishna, Govinda or Gopijanavallabha? If they are the one and the same, where is there a need for a plurality of names? And if they are different (as any pundit would explain to you), we again have the problem of having to constantly shift our focus.

I remember also growing uneasy over some of the other mantras, the tripartite gayatris in particular, that did not follow the standard meter and rhythm; a symmetric rhythm helps with maintaining focus. In particular, the accessory gayatris for the remaining members of the Panca-tattva and the accessory gayatris for the gopis were rather cumbersome formulations. (I was initiated into a total of 12 mantras and 12 gayatris at Radhakund.)

During my active chanting years, especially with the numeric strength of japa growing to two daily lakhs (128 rounds) and beyond, it was necessary to learn to relate to the ping-pong of names in the maha-mantra. Less a conscious decision and more a natural evolution, the explicit components of the mantra began to withdraw in favor of exposing a spiritual fabric rising from the vibration itself, a vibration underlying the names. It was this presence, of which it seemed a great deal could arise, that I associated with suddha-sattva, the existential fabric of the spiritual world itself. I doubt the idea would pass any orthodoxies, but such was my experience nevertheless.

Replica of Tryambakeshvar Mahadeva, one of the twelve Jyotirlingas located around India.

Experiences with Traditional Hindu Mantras

I have also done a fair amount of japa during my post-Gaudiya time, starting in the summer of 2007 with a brief and final Gaudiya revisit during the Kartika month of the same year. In exploring a future direction, I hopped on a rollercoaster of Advaitic and Buddhist studies, for those were the two traditions I found to be best matching my general spiritual orientation, matching inclinations present from before my contact with Vaishnavism, and latent throughout the years of Vaishnava practice.

In the initial period of exploration I grew quite fond of OM, the classic ultimate chant exhorted in the Upanishads. I found it much more suited for touching the tranquil existential fabric I had conjured with my earlier chantings of maha-mantra. In fact I even experimented for a week on hybrid mental japa of maha-mantra and OM — it's amazing what your mind can pull together once you put it to work. It was rather interesting, but required an excess of mental energy to contain over long term. I settled for the good old OM and was quite happy with it.

The pancaksara-mantra for Shiva (oM namaH zivAya) was a natural expansion of OM, very compact in its formula, carrying the gist of the structural power of the shorter Vaishnava-mantras I had once found useful. Moreover it carried strong Advaitic content, regardless of whether you associated it with the Upanishadic world or the approach of Kashmiri Shaivism, conveying a strong sense of non-dual divinity embodied as the Shiva-archetype. Along with the mantra of Tara, the pancaksara must be the most chanted among my later mantras.

A statue of Avalokitesvara, the bodhisattva of compassion, in Kathmandu.

Experiences with Buddhist Mantras

During my travels with the Buddhist monks and beyond, I committed a fair deal of time to some common Buddhist mantras. From the Thai monks I walked with, I learned the practice of chanting the ten ephitets of the Buddha on a rosary (iti 'pi so bhagavo arahaM samma-sambuddho...), which was more of a broad contemplation than a narrow-band mantra even if quite catchy with its irregular rhythm, and also briefly experimented with the shorter Theravadan chant (namo tassa bhagavato arahato samma-sambuddhassa).

A similar wisdom-contemplation was the great Mahayana mantra (oM gate gate para-gate para-saMgate bodhi svAhA) summarizing the heart of Madhyamika-philosophy on the nature of existence, covering the evolving perceptions of form and emptiness, and culminating into bodhi or enlightenment. While not as suited for extended repetition, I found chanting a few rounds to effect a rather refreshing flashback of the fundamentals of existence. Of course, with all mantras and particularly in this case, one must be well acquainted with the meaning of the mantra, and for fuller effect share personal experience of and insight into the said base aspects of reality.

Another genre of mantras employed in the Buddhist tradition are those associated with tantric or Tibetan Buddhism with its approach of contemplating on enlightened archetypal deities. My favorite by far was the mantra of goddess Tara (oM tAre tuttAre ture svAhA), which I practiced along with a refined visualization practice I learned from Atisha's medieval sadhana-manual in the library of the Kopan Monastery in Kathmandu. I also experimented on the mantra of Padmasambhava (oM aH hUM padma-guru vajra-siddhi hUM), a powerful chant in its own right, and the classic mantra of Avalokitesvara (oM maNi padme hUM), the bodhisattva of compassion, a mantra full of soothing lucidity and peace.

The mantra oM maNi padme hUM engraved on a stone wall in Tibetan script at Bodh Gaya.

Other Modes and Methods of Meditation

It was the non-verbal methods of meditation that I was most at home with. I suppose this largely owes to my preference of conceptual thinking over verbalization, or the pazyanti (direct perceptual) level over madhyama (mental verbalization) and vaikhari (external verbalization) stages in Upanishadic terms. Mental and verbal japa still maintain a sense of distance to the object, while conceptual contemplation puts one in an immediate relationship with the object. (This is incidentally also the goal of the Gaudiya way of meditation with its specific object.)

Two old Buddhist practices aiming for samadhi (concentration) and prajna (wisdom) are the heart of all Buddhist meditation. The former, while not directly conducive to the awakening of ultimate wisdom on its own, is a powerful and systematic method for attaining increasing levels of samadhi or jhana (Sanskrit: dhyana) along with their subsequent benefits. The sophisticated jhana-theory of Theravada Buddhism serves as a highly useful reference point for other traditions of object-meditation. Perhaps the most sriking discovery for me in this was in understanding the underlying principles and the inherent similarity between supposedly unique meditative traditions.

Vipassana or insight-meditation, the second of the two divisions of Buddhist meditation, is a direct tool for attaining ultimate wisdom and enlightenment. While vipassana may employ a number of techniques in attaining deep introspective perception and clarity, essentially it's about learning to observe the inherent natures of reality, witnessing the fundamental principles of reality (anicca: temporarity; dukkha: anxiety; anatta: non-selfhood) in all phenomena. While there are methods for enhancing the experience, the core observant principle does not require technical support.

All in all, it's all but clouds at the back of the hall...

Craving, Peace and Spiritual Objectives

I have come to marginalize goal-oriented spiritual practice in my life, having observed that it often leads to results quite antithetical to the desired goal, and instead of contributing to, consumes the sense of perennial tranquility and insight from the inside out. A very elementary Buddhist teaching is that craving leads to misery. Whether one is craving for openly mundane aims, supernatural powers, imaginary liberation or the favors of a supreme god, the very fact that there is craving leads to grief. As such, while I do not systematically seek to practice the said methods (or any other methods), their gist in revealing the natural potentials of the mind seem to have been amicably absorbed.

It is my personal conclusion that the less one attempts to actively manipulate one's spiritual evolution, the more one gains in the way of peace and existential insight. By stopping you progress. By seeking progress you stop. What a beautiful paradox. Now, I could cite any number of Hindu and Buddhist teachers whose teachings ultimately reflect the same, but I don't as I'm more concerned with direct personal experience than I am with the spiritual systematizations of another, no matter how wise he may have been.

Not that one isn't to learn of the experiences of others — but neither is one to assume he can successfully lead the life and grasp the insights of another without eventually developing his own. Whatever we learn is to be personally experimented on, experienced, and incorporated into our own unique frame of reference. We are what we are, and exactly at the place we are — independent of anyone's projections of what and where we ought to be according to his system. Walk your own way, I say. Or rather, stop and be happy.

GeeVees - 01.2: Early Experiences with Chanting

My early experiences with japa, or chanting Hare Krishna in this particular case, were in fact rather fascinating. It was only a decade later that I came to rediscover some of the same substance I touched on back then, substance soon lost in the depths of a missionary organization, and it was only then that I came to see a broader context for that particular segment of my early spiritual journey.

Bhakta Oskari, 15 years of age, posing for the temple magazine.

Japa Beginnings

The first vivid memory of my history with the Hare Krishna mantra is from one of those 40-minute bus rides to my mother's place I used to take every other weekend. It was a serene day, and as the bus kept humming its tranquil hymn and drove along the road, I closed my eyes as usual to contemplate on whatever it was that I used to ponder those days. Then, wholly out of the blue, it dawned to me that meditating on this mantra might be a cool thing to do.

It was only a matter of time before the occasional contemplation turned into loud melodic chantings of Hare Krishna as I wandered the forests of the neighborhood. There was no source to the discovery I'd have known of, if not for a cautionary video shown in school some years back, featured along with Satanism and Scientology by our back-then religion teacher, a staunch Christian and a priest of many years, whose generally less exciting presentations we weren't in the habit of paying much attention to.

Of course I did eventually meet a Hare Krishna book distributor, a Czech lady it was if memory serves, downtown Helsinki, buying a copy of Bhaktivedanta's "Life Comes from Life" to study; I had been tremendously interested in all things occult, oriental and esoteric. It was after a few weeks into visiting the weekly Sunday Love Feast at the local Krishna temple that I decided to purchase a set of japa-beads and start the mantra the way the devotees chanted, with some daily volume in the practice. My one regret with following their method is in ditching mental japa for some seven more years to come — for one was supposed to chant audibly in ISKCON.

Spring of Ecstasy

I believe it was autumn at this point. With the first day off with but four rounds of japa, the next day I kicked off with sixteen, as that seemed to be a standard number of sorts held in the temple. While I understood that many devotees held reservations over chanting near outsiders, I was not in the least worried; for it was only cool if someone spotted you engaged in something obscure and puzzling! My purple bead-bag with a Jagannath design, tagging along wherever I went, drew quite a few curious looks, yet few questions.

The practically endless pine forests in my neighborhood, in particular, provided a wonderful field for aimless solitary wanderings with the mantra rolling on. I remember deriving tremendous enjoyment from the practice. In fact, I remember being so thrilled at times that I had to sit down to let my system balance before moving on; a trait particularly inconvenient when moving around downtown, chanting. What I felt rather constantly as a result of chanting was an overwhelming surge of energy within my body, thrilling my limbs and warming up my face to a glow hitherto unknown to me. I suppose the almost forcibly manifest grin was the most visible of part of it all.

I only ever mentioned to one devotee of this. He was a new devotee as well, though already living in the ashram. A casual conversation on all things spiritual and sundry made for a perfect context to drop in my version of esoteric experience; it met with a puzzled shrug of shoulders, and then nothing. And for a reason: For it was believed that trembling of the body, grinning and laughing, dancing and the such were only manifest on the advanced stages of devotion, realms that were for the most part taboo, and were certainly not to be imitated under any circumstances.

This went on for a fair while, as I still lived home and kept going to school — and with tremendous effort at that, I might add, and with many a boring lesson chanted through. And good times they were; I was still buzzing at the height of discovery, for I had tapped into a whole new world to be explored, a magical world transcending the everyday reality I saw the surrounding society embrace and adore; it was a hollow world to me, the nine-to-five cycle of existence.

Covered Over

At this point, with the intensity of my experiences combined with my acquaintance with a couple of really cool temple devotees, it should come as a small surprise that I decided to join the temple after finishing my compulsory studies. I was in business with the chanting now, and the venture deserved to be seen through. After a bit of haggling with my parents, I secured a signed permission for becoming a resident of the temple, allowing me to "stay permanently" as I had promptly formed the agreement clause.

It didn't take too long for the magic of chanting to wane in the hectic temple environment, however. Constant traveling around and selling books and CDs took its toll, and hours spent chanting too early in the morning in too tired a state eventually led to a dramatic decrease in looking forward to the chanting experience, and subsequently in my interest in the practice itself. I did keep it going, of course, as a matter of obligation, but I had come a long way — and in the wrong direction — by abiding with the defunct modus operandi of the local temple and its hectic missionary spirit.

The standard explanation, of course, was an offensive attitude; there were ten offenses against the holy name that were taught of, and one way or another one could always imagine being guilty of at least one or the other. Then, as one might well expect, instead of biting into the root distractor in the way of inappropriate environment and circumstances, the offense-watching became a convenient facade for a failure to reach substantial levels of experience in chanting. And then, of course, it was supposed to be done for Krishna's pleasure, not mine, so I was wrong to seek bliss and euphoria in the practice in any case to begin with.

Rediscovering the Experience

It was only in 2005 that I began to explore the yogic arts deeper, still a staunch devotee, seeking to improve my sadhana. It so happened that one of our teachers, now at Radha-kunda, had also had a bit of a training in yoga, and had employed certain asanas or yogic sitting postures to support his chanting. (This, of course, is how you are actually supposed to be doing it, as any proper manual of sadhana ought to inform.) Mental japa combined with proper asanas and breathing techniques gave a substantial boost to my practice; it was as if all that preceded had not really amounted to much at all.

Incidentally, as I went further with my own studies of yogic meditation aids, I chanced upon the writings of late Swami Sivananda, an illustrious teacher of Yoga and Vedanta from Rishikesh, who called his way the Yoga of Synthesis and employed all relevant aspects of the four yogic paths, namely karma, jnana, astanga and bhakti-yogas. He was a big fan of devotion and chanting, and especially of sankirtan-styled chanting of Hare Krishna among other chants.

His perspective on diverse paths leading through a similar evolution towards the same goal put me first thinking, both curious and suspicious about practices comparable with my chanting experience. It was a text on kundalini-yoga that first depicted rather aptly symptoms akin to my early experience; parallels between bhava-bhakti and early kundalini-awakening were too evident to be ignored. In later solitary chanting sessions combined with pranayama I came to experience quite exactly the same as I had in my early days, and as I now was wiser on kundalini the unity of experiences became all too evident.

When I first embarked on studying the Buddhist theory of meditation, it became all too clear for me that we were dealing with universals. The Buddhist model for samadhi-oriented meditation featured a system of a whole hierarchy of meditation objects, and a general course of progress over which concentration grows and awakens certain states of mind. The first jhana, or meditative absorption, features the rising of an abundance of rapture and joy and is born of withdrawal arising from single-minded application of thought on the meditation object. In the second jhana, the experience springs from composure and unified awareness, and so forth — regardless of the object of meditation.

Conclusions

As to whether there is a certain hidden chamber in the mantra, yielding an abundance of extraordinary and transcendental relish and euphoria directly from the energy and presence of the rustic deity Krishna, or whether similar states of mind can be attained with diverse stimuli, I cannot say with any level of certainty. Though I did have my fair share of experiences one could call esoteric or deep, I suspect with a sufficient level of practice with a different object one could attain well comparable states of fascination and esoteric emotional turmoil.

Chanting Hare Krishna, or any mantra for that matter, when properly practiced in a conducive environment, can lead to a substantial level of concentration and inner mastery. While I no longer share a fascination for verbal meditation objects, I have no complaints of the process itself in principle, when practiced properly and in a balanced manner. However, excessive concentration endeavor is counter-productive, for with the rise of hectic concentration every surfacing negative mental pattern gains momentum.

Practiced in a distracting environment and under pressure, especially over filling daily quotas, japa becomes but a cruel means of beating the mind and sapping it out of its last vital juices. It should not, under any circumstances, be recommended to mend mental problems, lest they escalate as the wheels of the mind grind tighter and tighter. Contemplative methods such as vipassana hold much more therapeutic value for those seeking to first set straight the rudimentary inner landscape.

GeeVees - 01.1: Theology of God's Name

Continuing series The Nectar Name: 01.1 - Theology of God's Name

Namacharya Ramdas Babaji seated, chanting on a rosary

There are a number of theological formulations delving into the nature of God's name, the primary of which are summarized in the following sections. In the name of compactness and ease of reading, I have omitted quoting and referencing. For useful scriptural sources on the theme, please refer to Bhaktivinoda Thakura: Harinama-cintamani; Jiva Goswami: Bhakti-sandarbha; and Rupa Goswami: Bhakti-rasamrita-sindhu.

Non-duality of Name and Named

The heart of the Name's powers lie in its non-duality with the named, or Krishna. As God is understood to be of an absolute nature, he and everything we perceive of as relating to him are equally present in him, and are him. His name, appearance, qualities and activities form a single presence in distinct interwoven aspects. The word Name, indicating this particular powerful name, has been capitalized for clarity.

Then, in principle, when the name of God is chanted, it is equal to being in God's presence and interacting directly with him. The only distinctions the Gaudiya Vaishnava theologians would admit to is one of mercy; the Name is abundantly available, while God in his full persona aspect is difficult indeed to reach and as such less merciful. This is, of course, but a witty poetic play of words on the canvas of theology, highlighting the applicability of the method.

Three Levels of Experience

It was Kedarnath Datta Bhaktivinoda, author and theologian of late 19th century, who first published the tripartite theological formulation of the Name's aspects, even while diverse depths of experience have been long acknowledged. A graded approach is an important chapter in apologetics over the proposed full presence of God in his name vis-a-vis the lack of correlating immediate experience for the practitioner.

Nama-aparadha, or offending the Name, is the shallowest of levels where hardly any of the powers of God are experienced. At this point, one is still riddled with countless attitude flaws towards the Name despite knowledge of the Name's nature — flaws discussed later on. The pious merits resulting from such chanting are good for worldly boons alone, failing to reach beyond into God's own domain.

Nama-abhasa, or reflected Name, is the medium clearing level where rays of the Name begin to filter into the brightening consciousness. A reflection of the Name is said to grant instant mukti or liberation. Indeed, it is said that even a person chanting in jest, by accident, or referring to something else, would reap the said benefits (and this is a whole other branch of apologetics).

Suddha-nama, or pure Name, is the accomplished level where the fullness of Krishna is experienced through, or rather in, the Name. The chanter's consciousness journeys into the Name's own domain, into the spiritual sky of Krishna. This stage, and the subsequent experience of prema or developed love for God, is said to far supersede the joy of liberation. Associated hymns depict the experience as a climax of rapture that is incessantly relished, yet leaving the devotee addicted, craving for more, and again and again.

The founding eulogy of the dimensions of the fully potent Name, especially when chanted congregationally, reads as follows in Sri Chaitanya's words:

"It cleanses the mirror of the mind; it extinguishes the vast forest fire of material existence; it spreads the soothing moonrays of blessing; it is the life of bride Knowledge; it augments the ocean of bliss; nectar finds full relish at at every step; and it bathes the entire self; supreme victory to the full chanting of Sri Krishna's names!" (Siksastaka 1)

The sufficiency of the Name in Sri Chaitanya's view is evident in how its transforming influence extends from the very bottom to the very top, from the depths of ignorance and suffering to the greatest heights of nectarine relish in a rapturous communion with God.

The Standard Mantra

While the names of God are many, there is one particular formula of three names repeated a total of 16 names that Sri Chaitanya recognized as the foremost of all. The mantra is drawn from Kali-santarana-upanishad, a short text of a relatively late date, conventionally classified under Black Yajur-veda, and reads as follows:

Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare /
Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare //

While a traditional interpretation would have Hare as a vocative of Hari, and all three as Hari's names, some Gaudiya interpreters (e.g. Gopala Guru) also derive it from Harā, a feminine of Hari, indicating Radha, who steals away Krishna's mind. Many non-Gaudiya renderings of the text have the lines reversed, starting with Hare Rama.

The Upanishad promises a vast number of boons including liberation to one who chants it a total of 35 million times. On a rosary with 108 beads, at a rate of 64 rounds daily, the project would take approximately fourteen years to complete. There are, of course, all sorts of other boons mentioned in other sources, so no matter which way you do it, someone has promised something good for the effort.

Incidentally, a rough estimate of my extensive chantings over the years come to a non-calculated surprise total of 35,714,520 mantras, most marks on the chart towards the end of the session with a bunch of two-hundred-rounders on good days. Perchance that is why I finally graduated from Gaudiya Vaishnavism! Regardless, this is the mantra almost every Gaudiya Vaishnava chants daily for a lifetime, some more and some less.

Song and Repetitive Recitation

There are two primary applications for the Name, namely singing (kirtan) and private recitation (japa). Kirtan, sung to the accompaniment of instruments such as hand cymbals and clay drums, is generally a congregational practice where each participant contributes to the cumulative experience of the group. The prefix sam- turns the word into sankirtan, which refers to kirtan done in a grand style, e.g. parading en masse on the streets, or otherwise to a kirtan of particularly sublime depth.

Japa or private recitation is done on a rosary consisting of 108 beads (japa-mala), made of sacred Tulasi wood and especially sanctified for the purpose, often by a guru in an initiation ceremony. One mantra is either recited, muttered or meditated on at each bead, and a turn-around at the large Meru-bead starts a round anew. Japa is an individual practice, in which one works on his own individual relationship with the Name.

The Name also functions in an accessory and completing capacity in a myriad of other Gaudiya Vaishnava practices. It is said to be essential among the constituents of the secret and silently contemplated diksha-mantras, and believed to complete diverse ritual practices by making up for any inadvertent shortcomings. Chanting of the Name is classified as a compulsory root practice, in the absence of which lesser practices would remain deficient.

GeeVees - 01: The Nectar Name

The holy name of god features extensively throughout the theology and practice of Gaudiya Vaishnavism, a trend not at all unknown to other Hindu traditions. The chanting of god's names, and in particular the names of Hari, or Krishna, is described as the most accessible and ideal way of dharma in our corrupted times. The founding theologicians and poets of the tradition have dedicated countless hymns and chapters of philosophy to describe the wonders of god's name as understood in their tradition.

It was of course Sri Chaitanya, the founder of the tradition, who popularized the practice while breaking a number of religious orthodoxies. Parading the roads of rural Bengal in the early 16th century, he carried his fervent religious ecstasies to the masses and taught to connect with god through the chanting of his holy names, both in song and by reciting on a rosary. For him, it represented the ultimate means of connection and communion with his chosen deity.

In this essay, we are going to explore the world of chanting in its many facets, featuring a number of detailed theological formulations bundled with a flowing out-of-the-box commentary, along with my personal experiences over the years in diverse environments. Keen as I have been to improve and improvise in whatsoever I happen to be at, I suspect a few novel angles of interest on the dynamics of the meditational practice in chanting will surface; I do not attempt to write an orthodox adherent's account.

The bulk of the original content to follow on the details of the practice, when taken to extensive length, are drawn from my experiences during my time in Vraja spanning 2002-2007, from times I was working my way towards levels of practice seen in the local renunciates of full commitment, dissatisfied with anything less. Most of the content featuring basic obstacles and diverse backward applications spans from my early years in ISKCON from mid-90's onwards, from rather unfocused times as far as meditative absorption was concerned.

To be continued...

GeeVees - Preview - 01: The Nectar Name

In laying out the skeleton for the GeeVees series, it seems evident by the extent of it that some items must have gone missing... Here's a call to the readers to pitch in and let me know of any missing themes.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Theologically Speaking

- Non-duality of name and named
- Three levels of experience
- The standard mantra
- Song and repetitive recitation


Early Experiences

- Japa beginnings
- Spring of ecstasy
- Covered over


Grid of Offences

- The ten offences
- Offending a devotee
- The unwholesome root


Applications of Mantra-japa

- Three kinds of japa
- Concentration and withdrawal
- Connecting with a deity
- Weaving the vibration


Extended Practice

- 100,000 names
- Chanting all day long
- Benefits and harms


Common Problems

- Ignorance of methods
- Uncontrolled mind
- Exhausted with repetition
- Physical obstacles
- Unfit environment


Alternative Methods

... for easy application beyond situation, culture and religion ...

- Breath watching and body scan
- Chanting other mantras
- Trataka and object meditation
- Vipassana introspection
- Other yogic and tantric traditions

GeeVees - Future installments

As I've been drafting together my notes for the upcoming GeeVees series, if anything has become obvious it's the need to cut it down into smaller chunks for better online digestion. As it stands, the first essay on the drawing board, The Nectar Name, has some dozen subheadings and sub-subs, set into a trilevel structure (e.g. 2.5.2).

I'll be publishing each of the main subsections as individual entries over the days, weeks and months to come. In total, I expect the full series to grow into around a hundred installments. I'll be posting drafts of the chapter structure each time, and feedback from the readers on missing content is welcome.

GeeVees - 00: Roots

The GeeVees is a series of articles covering reflections from a decade of spiritual and religious practice, lessons every bit as valuable for current and former Gaudiya Vaishnava adherents as they are for the thoughtful interpreter able to penetrate the universals in motion.


My Brief History with the Tradition

In the early age of fifteen, a rush of sudden interest brought me to the shore of Hinduism in my ongoing quest for curiosities. It was the Hare Krishna faith that I first met, the only extant Hindu sect in Finland offering prospects for a committed contemplative life. My initial expectations of life as a monk were soon betrayed, however, as I embarked on a tour that was to last the better part of my five monk years as a missionary promoting the movement’s literature.

The escalating discomfort with duty versus absorption, combined with a major fall-out with the then-guru, one of the many leaders of the movement who later came to retire from the obligations of guruhood and vanish to the fringes of the movement, led me, now a married man of nineteen, to seek a more genuine experience of spirituality along the lines I had chosen. Further disappointments with the movement’s leadership had me looking beyond for answers — answers I was to find with an elderly Indian guru of the same tradition making his grand tour across the West.

Hopes soon perished, with less than two years in the group, as my plate was filled with vain hopes, hollow prospects and scores of internal conflict. With all the verbal profundity, it turned out to be little more than a personality cult with more charlatans than actual substance. The trail of much of the half-baked esoterics led to the old school Gaudiya Vaishnava renunciates living in the Braj area of northern India, where I was later initiated by an old scholar, chairman of the renunciate assembly at Radhakund.

It was more than theory that I had sought, however, and naturally connected with more teachers to get hands-on experience on the lifestyle and practices of the babaji tradition. A certain charismatic teacher, singer and meditator in his own right, had us under his tutelage for the better part of four years, a time that opened whole new horizons on the content of the religious and mystic substance of the tradition. Partially brilliant and partially bizarre teachings, sometimes incongruent with the common doctrine, combined with behavior that had more to it than just personality quirks, led me away from him, and astray as far as my then-wife was concerned.

In the span the year following our divorce, I lived the better half in the way of the traditional babaji ascetics, myself engaged in intense practice day in and day out, in quantities easily eclipsing a decade of ordinary practice, whatever the quality may have been. Meeting with yet another disappointment of a teacher, and more dead-ends and impassable lands than paths you could decently walk, a return to a blank drawing board had me moving on for an indefinite pilgrimage without any particular destination.


In the Times Beyond

In late February 2008, I jumped onto a train towards Varanasi for the upcoming Shiva Ratri festival. The original plan was to head towards Orissa, exploring the combination of old Buddhist ruins and grand Hindu shrines in the general area. That, and the Puri beaches were quite inviting too. From there, I would have taken the grand circuit across the four principal Buddhist places of pilgrimage in the north. It was not to be, however — not yet, anyway.

In Sarnath, a Buddhist center half-an-hour drive outside Varanasi, I bumped into a colorful group of Buddhist monks from the Thai Theravada school. The Irish monk was heading south and incidentally had a spare train ticket. Off we went, visiting Ramana Maharshi’s ashram in Tiruvannamalai and Sai Baba’s headquarters in Puttaparthi, for a two-week tour and back. I had considered dropping off in Chennai and flying over to Sri Lanka to explore the ancient Buddhist ruins and the contemporary scene, but I rather liked both his company and his plans.

Returning to Varanasi, we were joined by a Romanian-American nun and two Thai monks for a walk towards Lumbini, the birthplace of the Buddha in southern Nepal just across the border. Crossing some seven hundred kilometers on foot over three weeks, I got to know the lot rather well. With all the positives, however, I understood their way of life was not cut out for me, not the way it was available in the contemporary setting anyway. I decided to stay back in Kathmandu as they left for a bus-and-train journey back to Varanasi.

It was Kathmandu where I was based for four months, spending time with friends old and new, working with a few NGOs, exploring the mountains and the world of men in a way I had never seen it before. It was a time of great evolution, re-modeling the past and transforming into a new being, an individual being who was no longer subject to rules of religious conformance.

A liberation in its own right, it created a grand arena of contemplations for me. Thence are the thoughts that follow in the upcoming essays, written over a cool Scandinavian winter near a crackling fireplace, surrounded by familiar nature-spirits and a regenerating atmosphere, a muse and a friend of many years sitting by my side.


On Gaudiya Vaishnavism

The religious tradition founded by Sri Chaitanya (1486-1534) came to be called Gaudiya Vaishnavism owing to the ancient name (Gauda) of its motherland, Bengal. Sri Chaitanya’s was a devotional movement, bent in its core on mystical absorption and participation in the cosmic drama of Radha and Krishna, the tradition’s transcendent god and goddess. The outer praxis was that of a people’s movement, ecstatic preachers and wandering bards spreading the gospel of Sri Chaitanya far and wide, the chanting of the holy names of god brought to every town and village in the movement’s path.

The theological foundation, based on elaborations on Sri Chaitanya’s teaching, was laid by the six Goswamis, renunciate disciples of his, scholars in their own right with abundant time to commit to philosophical pursuits in the rustic environment of Vrindavan, the place of Krishna’s sports in the years bygone. It is especially the Vrindavan tradition that holds the meditational practices in the highest value, generation after generation preserving, interpreting and elaborating on the esoteric heritage of the Goswamis.

On grassroots level, the basics of Gaudiya Vaishnavism are not that radically different from other devotional Hindu movements. Some of the tradition’s later mutations, the Hare Krishnas for a good example, appear to have almost entirely shunned the esoteric tradition, favoring a public digest version of Hindu devotional religion with a few idiosyncrasies thrown in. The stripped version of the tradition is not, however, too compelling for a western audience, for one might just as well choose any other tradition that is better localized and established, being left with every bit as much substance with fewer cultural complications.

At its heart, beyond preliminary ideas of understanding the nature of spirit and matter and their interconnection with god, the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition aims to dissociate the psyche of the adherent from the present state, associating it with a sense of identification with the residents of Krishna’s transcendent heaven realm. The inner sensation of the adherent evolves from faith through various steps to fulfilled love, transporting his soul and mind away from the current world and implanting them in the spirit-identity. It is the fundamental incompatibility of the two worlds that most serious practitioners seem to struggle with.


Appeal for the Adherent

As it is now officially declared across the vast internet fields that I am an apostate unworthy of association, why would a practicing Gaudiya Vaishnava dare reading my writings? There may, after all, be lurking many a seed-of-doubt, crisis-of-faith and confusing-concept under the foliage. It would perhaps be better to just sleep in the cradle of belief, shielded from influences that could expose you to the unwanted.

The fact of the matter is that I was every bit as much in the cradle as most of my former comrades of faith, and these are the issues I had to confront as I rocked in the cradle over the years. They are real issues, and they deserve to be explored. Whether my solutions are real is immaterial; it is the questions we must all unearth and ponder in our depths. Unlocking the questions may, in fact, turn out to be a mine of potentials revealed with the perspective expansion.

I am sometimes asked whether it might be better to just forget about it all myself, and indeed I have received a fair hate mail or two over my writings. It is absurd for anyone to assume that twelve years of intense practice, and by far the biggest continuous tract of my life so far, is something one could just wipe aside as if it never existed. And neither do I see a valid reason for it, inasmuch I may have the ability to observe subtleties beyond a black-and-white model of absolutes.

The many valuable lessons of my Gaudiya Vaishnava years remain with me as an active facet of my sphere of understanding. Experiences positive or negative, they were all due coming and molded me in the ways I needed, crashing into my life one after another on karmic tracks beyond my capacity to observe. They were all good, for they were all for the good, and I believe sharing of the experience is something that may help others in good, too. The disinclined are cordially invited to exclude themselves from the audience.


Appeal for the Broader Audience

No activity occurs in vacuum, in a dimension void of connections to the rest of human existence, and no idea is too contextually bound to become a slave to its times and unfit for broader application. The lessons learned over the journey, a journey still rather incomplete, have countless parallels in the countless lives of many akin to myself. It is for the perceptive seeker, student and master that I write, for those able to extract and reinvent, drawing from the identity of principles beyond the specifics.

While the parallel themes are developed to an extent in the upcoming essays, there’s a long way for me to go until a comprehensive, or even a half-way decent system of archetypal concepts is in place. The readers are invited to take my observations as seeds of inspiration, fountains for rivers and oceans of understandings exceeding mine a thousand-fold.

As Indic religion in general, Gaudiya Vaishnava talk is riddled with Sanskrit-rooted jargon and very specific and detailed uses of context-related terminology. I will be doing my best to keep the text friendly for non-expert readers, glossing the unavoidable complications and choosing colloquial terms wherever possible. Blind as I am with my own writing, an obtuse language-gremlin or two may escape the hunt — please feel at ease with giving feedback on any and all aspects of the forthcoming series.

GeeVees - The Great Repercussion

The random audience has repeatedly sought my comments on diverse subjects related to the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition, of which I was a part in its several forms for well over a decade. This six-part series should contain most of the themes on my mind at the time of this writing, the outcome of countless nights of reflection, creative contrasting, recontextualization, and selective discarding or re-adaptation of old mental constructs.

• 00: Roots — On my background, on Gaudiya Vaishnavism, on the purposes of this series.
  
• The Nectar Name — Reflections on my experiences with chanting the name, subsequent experiences contrasted with other traditions.
• Ritual Culture — Integating into a native Gaudiya Vaishnava environment, mastering a culture of ritual purity and superstitions.
  
• Gopi Girls Forever — A gloss on the method of living in the "love land", reflections on its applications, psychological dimensions.
• Agamas and Sahajiya Roots — The natural human and the fundamental divinity of duality, heterodox roots of the methods of worship.
• Divinities and Tantric Buddhism — Archetypal deities and classical tantric deity practice, Tibetan Buddhist methods and theologies.
• The Human God — Dimensions of divinity, graded perceptions of dualistic, antropomorphic god and the dimension of nondual existence.
• Doctrinal Picks — Fundamentally valuable aspects in the Gaudiya Vaishnava doctrine, their universal application.

None of the essays that are to follow should be considered final in terms of research. Think of them as previews, alpha-version renderings of elaborate themes. I have no timeline for the current production, I work on pure inspiration. Bear with me and enjoy the ride.