Sankirtan – Where dance and meditation intersect for spiritual therapy

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Sankirtan is a spiritual therapy through music and dance.
Sometimes when people come to a temple and they see devotees dancing and singing often they get a culture shock. They think that a temple is a place where one should be peaceful and sober and they have that conception of prayer and meditation and when they are told that this dancing and singing is the ultimate spiritual activity they find it difficult to believe. So let’s try to understand how the Sankirtan that Shri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu has given is the ultimate spiritual therapy through music and through dance.
So there is the material plane and there is the spiritual plane. So we are currently at the material level of consciousness and the path of yoga involves a two-step process. One is detachment from matter and the second is attachment to Krishna.
And that’s why many people feel that if we want to practice spiritual life then we have to become silent, sober. That means we have to deactivate the body and deactivate the mind. Then we will become disconnected from the material level and the spiritual level.
So this is one way which most people think of as the way to spirituality. But it is difficult. Krishna describes in 12th chapter 5th verse that this is filled with klesha.
Klesha because for us to act at the body level is natural. So if we could instead of having to deactivate the body and the mind if we somehow activate, engage the body and the mind for the sake of attaining the spirit it would make spiritual advancement much easier and much more joyful. And that is precisely what bhakti yoga does.
And especially within bhakti yoga the activity of sankirtan does this in the most accessible and wonderful way. In sankirtan although at an external level we seem to be acting physically we are raising our hands, we are acting physically but actually the central point around which we are acting is spiritual. When we sing Krishna’s names when we dance gracefully for his pleasure then at that time the body is being used to connect with the supreme spiritual reality Krishna.
And when we are doing sankirtan it is not just a matter of athletic or acrobatic dancing. It is graceful dancing but the essence of the dancing is our prayerful meditation on Krishna. So by that the mind also becomes a means by which we connect with the spiritual reality.
So in this way the process of sankirtan connects the body and the mind both with spiritual reality. And because action at the bodily and mental level is natural for us so sankirtan becomes a natural and joyful way by which we can connect with Krishna. And then Mahaprabhu whom Srila Prabhupada called as the father of the sankirtan movement has offered us of course dancing as a part of bhakti yoga is mentioned even in the 11th canto of Srimad Bhagavatam unmadayantilokabahaya gayantnityatilokabahaya it is said that the devotee who is completely intoxicated in spiritual love dances, sings and doesn’t care for other people.
He is the most advanced devotee who is completely outside of bodily consciousness. But Shetana Mahaprabhu popularized sankirtan. It was there before him but he extensively popularized it not just as something meant for the most advanced devotees in ecstasy but also for the sadhakas as a means for making spiritual advancement as a joyful and ecstatic way of accessing spiritual reality.
And it has touched millions of people with the joy of sankirtan. In fact, so great was the wave of ecstasy that Lord Chaitanya spread that Emperor Akbar who lived 50 years later and who was quite syncretic syncretic means he tried to bring different religions together he wrote a poem glorifying Lord Chaitanya and this is told by one of the biographers of Lord Chaitanya one of the scholars who studied Lord Chaitanya he gives an English rendition of the poem that Akbar composed and there in Akbar says Hail thee O Chaitanya captor of my heart how can I express the love I feel for thee O Chaitanya I crave for a drop of the ocean of thy piety and love. So this expression of love and admiration by a Muslim emperor a Muslim saint this indicates that sankirtan is a universal spiritual process that cuts across all sectarian boundaries and offers immediate accessible and relishable spiritual ecstasy to anyone and everyone who is ready for it.
And it is this ecstasy which Shila Prabhupada spread all over the world by inviting and inspiring devotees from the streets of all the major cities of the world and that ecstasy is available to all of us by the mercy of Lord Chaitanya and Shila Prabhupada every time when we participate in Sankirtan. Thank you very much.