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...I do believe you mean "Satan's Slave". #apostrophefail

Madhava in Sydney.

Friday April 2, 8:00 pm
Body Mind Life Yoga
55 Foveaux St
Surrey Hills

More details and tickets for the concert at www.bodymindlife.com.au.

More details of the tour at www.kirtanaustralia.com.

On the "featured in Mayapura" theme - Namahatta.org have put together an online compilation of analyses of debates that I did. It features an overview and analysis of five of my favorite debates - four of them involving Richard Dawkins, one with Bill O'Reilly.

You can check it out here: Sita-pati Analyzes Examples of Live Debates.

Rhiannon (Carana Renu) tagged me a photo on facebook. I took a look at it, and was a pull-up banner outside a seminar in Mayapur, West Bengal, India called "Happy Families Happy Communities". I wondered why she had tagged me in it, until I looked at the image at the bottom:

I remember taking that photo - I'd just returned from a business trip to the United States a couple of years ago, and we were all happy to see each other again. We took that photo on the deck at Red Hill.

I published it on my blog under a Creative Commons license.

"At roadsides, temples and sanctuaries He would chant in sweet tunes, 'Krsna,krsna, krsna, krsna, krsna, krsna hey!' Sometimes carried away by some indescribable divine exultation, He would sing 'Rama! Rama!' and dance sweetly in ecstatic rhythm. He would deliver one and all, irrespective of time, place orcircumstances, by magnanimously inducing them to chant the Holy names of Lord Krsna. I sing with joy the unending glories of my golden Lord Gauranga-sundara; the divine abode of pure love.

- Prema-dhama-deva Stotram 22

Just arrived in my email inbox.

On the left, the Warrapa dam during the drought. On the right, the dam at 9am on Wednesday.

Brisbane has received half its annual rainfall in the first two months of 2010.

Dams are at 80% of capacity now, the highest since 2002. Water restrictions introduced in 2005, and ramped up over the next three years to "extreme", have now been relaxed to allow residents to use water for activities such as watering their gardens.

More information.

Recently a god-brother of mine, Vidyapati (Mikey), has been writing about his experience of Krishna Consciousness in ISKCON over the past 7 years. His blog is at xkrishnax.blogspot.com.

I find his writing lucid, reflective, insightful, and respectful.

I would like to point out here that ISKCON is a federation of allied local communities, and is by no means a homogenous entity, so his experience is the personal experience of one person in one particular situation. It has been very useful as a topic of conversation here, and I have had several in-depth discussions about issues around it with my friends here, especially with David Jorm and Vrajadhama.

I posted a comment on a recent post of Mikey's, one in which he talks about difficulties that he and others experienced in reconciling the hermeneutical approach (that means how scriptures are interpreted) advocated in their community, with their own independent thinking and intellectual integrity.

I'm reproducing my comment here on my blog to put it front of a wider audience. Understanding the philosophy of Krishna Consciousness to this level is what works for me. My realization is that to stay interested and engaged in Krishna Consciousness over the long term, you have to find out what works for you. Krishna Consciousness is simple for the simple, but if your intellectual capacity is more complex, then Krishna Consciousness does not lack depth of philosophy; and I wouldn't let someone else harangue you into thinking that it's just for dummies and that intellectuals are evil. When this starts to happen we end up with an organisation that runs on a personality cult (religion without philosophy + guru), and would resonate with statements such as: "When I hear the word intellectual, I reach for my Luger". Just to further invoke Godwin, I'd like to point out that Nazi Germany also ran on the twin principles of guru-bhakti (Heil Hitler!) and "Purity is the Force". It is a very dangerous dynamic - a razor's edge. Independently thoughtful, intellectually honest philosophers loyal to the core values of Krishna Consciousness (brahmanas) are necessary to keep it real. These people derive their validity from their own internal conviction, not from social convention, and thus can be a real pain in the ass, and a valuable counter-balance to excessive swings due to group think.

Below the line is my comment from Vidyapati's blog:

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In terms of epistemology, we had some interesting discussions at our recent retreat, where we discussed the six philosophical systems over three days. One point that came out is that Prabhupada's explicit hermeneutical strategy ("As It Is") is largely rhetorical. For example, he contradicts it in Bg. 3.29, where he renders a purport practically in contradiction to the verse, using an interpretative strategy other than "As It Is".

His rhetorical choice of hermeneutic is linked to a previous philosophical interpretation that he is seeking to refute - Advaita Vedanta. Advaita Vedanta had in turn refuted a previous school, Karma-mimamsa, which used exactly the hermeneutical strategy of "As It Is". The Karma-mimamsa epistemology was that scripture was of divine origin, and so everything in it was literally true. Thus, if you perform the rituals in there, since the scripture must be true, the result must come.

Everything there was literally true: "as it is". They de-emphasised metaphysics by saying that anything that wasn't an instruction on how to achieve a result was not important.

To undermine the influence of this school, Sankaracarya accepted the Vedic scripture, but introduced a different hermeneutic.

Sankaracarya stated that pramanas (epistemological sources) have their domain of authority. The authoritative domain of scripture is transcendence. In other mundane areas, such as cosmology, if sastra-pramana (scripture) contradicted pratyaksha and anumana (empirical observation and logic), the description of scripture could be retired. Sankara called these paramarthika (the transcendental part), and vyavaharika (the mundane part)

With this hermeneutical strategy many modern-day ISKCON controversies, such as the relative distances of the Sun and the Moon, or the structure of the universe, disappear.

However, Sankara then applied this hermeneutical strategy to descriptions of Brahman, designating some of them as saguna (mundane) and others as nirguna (transcendental). I personally feel that he overstepped the mark with this, and I'm not the only one.

Rather than quibble over where this distinction should be applied, Prabhupada has opted for the Karma-mimamsa hermeneutical approach. This gets rid of some problems - such as Sankara's characterisation of some descriptions of Brahman as mundane, but introduces others - such as cosmological controversies, and instances where Prabhupada violates his own stated hermeneutical strategy.

Once you understand that, it becomes possible to consider the Bhagavatam using Sankara's hermeneutic, but without his fault of over-extension (ativyapti in Sanskrit - where a definition is so broad that it includes within it things that should not be included). This is precisely what Bhaktivinode Thakur does in his book Sri Krishna Samhita. Bhaktivinoda Thakura also uses Sankara's terms paramarthika and vyavaharika often, while you won't find them at all in Prabhupada's writing.

You can understand why this approach isn't a standard practice amongst ISKCON devotees too - most people would be thoroughly confused just reading this, what to speak of trying to apply it.

However, it is also part of the tradition.

Keep it simple for the simple, but remember - Krishna Consciousness is also complex for the complex.

I have to say that in a number of cases of my godbrothers who have given up on the philosophy, my feeling is that it is because they didn't go deep enough into it. Of course, that is discouraged in some circles, but at some point we have to own our own relationship with the tradition.

Come to chant the Holy Names in at the 24 hour kirtan at New Govardhana, NSW, on the weekend of March 26-27, 2010.

Special guests include Madhava and Sri Prahlada, and bhakti kirtaniyas from New Govardhana and around Australia.

Please contact Radha on 02 6672 8549 to arrange accommodation, and contact Sitapati at sitapati@worldsankirtan.net if you want to be on the roster to lead kirtan.

Kirtan artist Madhava visits Australia for the first time in March - April, 2010.

He starts a four city tour with a 24 hour kirtan in Murwillumbah on March 27 - 28, and weaves his way up and down the country over the next three weeks.

Here are the dates for Madhava's tour (those that are tba will be updated as we get the information), followed by his bio.

MURWILLUMBAH, NSW
Saturday, March 27, 5:00 PM
24 hour kirtan featuring Madhava (until Sunday 5:00 PM)
Hare Krishna Community
525 Tyalgum Rd, Eungella
02 6672 6579

BYRON BAY, NSW
Tuesday, March 30, 7:30 PM
Kirtan concert
venue tba
Byron Bay, NSW

SURFERS PARADISE, QLD
Wednesday, March 31, 6:00 PM
Kirtan concert
The Bhakti Centre
Trust House, 3070 Surfers Paradise Blvd, Surfers Paradise. 1st floor

SYDNEY, NSW
Friday, April 2, 8:00 PM
Kirtan concert
Body Mind Life Yoga
55 Foveaux St, Surrey Hills

SYDNEY, NSW
Saturday, April 3 - Monday, April 5
Nightly Kirtan
ISKCON Temple
180 Falcon St, North Sydney

MELBOURNE, VIC
Thursday April 8 - Sunday April 11
Venues tba

BRISBANE, QLD
Thursday April 15, 8:00PM
Kirtan concert
Brisbane City Yoga
Level 2, 129 Margaret Street

Artist Information

Madhava

With a tuft of matted dread-locks erupting from his otherwise shaven head, a sculpted goatee, and a host of piercings and tattoos, you expect Madhava to be a punk rocker — that is until the moment he closes his eyes, opens his mouth, and begins to sing. Before he completes one line, the sweetness captures your mind. And by the time you are repeating the refrain, you are his—hook, line, and sinker. If you had any plans for the next few hours go ahead and cancel them, and instead make yourself an appointment with the ecstatic chanting of sacred mantras. Welcome to kirtan, Madhava-style.

About Kirtan:
Kirtan is a folk form that arose from the devotional Bhakti movement of 15th century India. The primary musical feature of kirtan is the use of call and response, a figure that also deeply informs Western bluegrass, gospel music and jazz. The form is simple: a lead group calls out the melodies and the mantras. The crowd responds, clapping and dancing and the rhythms build and accelerate.

The mantras that are used in kirtan are mainly Sanskrit names for the Divine. Sanskrit is the oldest language known, and its sounds and their meanings are primordial. Kirtan is a consciousness-transforming and raising activity, where music and song are used to bring everyone together in a beautiful experience of collective expression of the divine. The mantras quiet the mind, the music frees the heart.

About Madhava:
A native of Mauritius, Madhava – né Joy Naidoo – was given his first drum at the age of 5. At 18, he moved to Vrindavan, a place of pilgrimage in India where kirtan has been practised continuously for centuries. He spent the next seven years living in an ashram, doing kirtan daily with the Krishna Balarama 24 Hour Kirtan Mandali, under the direction of legendary 24-hour kirtan leader, Aindra Dasa. While there he played the mrdanga drum for hours on end, day after day, honing his rhythmic skill and sensitivity. Unbeknownst to him, through bootleg recordings he was also becoming an influential figure in the global kirtan scene, all while sitting on the dusty floor of a small temple in a village in India.

When Madhava left to return to the West, his mentor Aindra impressed on him that he had to take the kirtan back with him from Vrndavan — telling him: "Now it is you who must lead the kirtan".

Based in Switzerland, Madhava travels extensively through Europe and the US with his partner Radhika and his band Gaura Prema, enlivening audiences with the power of devotional kirtan. He fuses his Mauritian roots with the influences of India to produce a unique style of kirtan, but one in which the main ingredient is the heartfelt bhakti. This year Madhava visits the shores of Australia for the first time.

Others on Madhava:
"Madhava's kirtan is one of the most transcendent kirtan experiences I've ever had. He sings with so much heart and dedication that every one who is present is effortlessly transported to another universe on waves of his chanting. His melodies are rich and inviting, his voice is honest and true, and he always surrounds himself with beautiful musicians and artists - all part of his artful way of revealing a doorway to the divine world through sacred chant. Madhava is a treasure to hear and to join with in kirtan. I pray that I'll be chanting with him for many years to come, basking in the warm glow of the names of the divine."
— Gaura Vani
Bandleader - As Kindred Spirits
Creative Director - Mantralogy

"Madhava is a powerful and inspirational devotional singer and master of mantra singing. His music and melodies bring ecstacy to our singing and dancing, bathing us in happiness as we respond to his illuminating voice."
— Loren Russo
Yoga teacher, Miami FL, USA

"Madhava’s singing touches the heart.... his chanting is always sweet and full of energy. It is a wonderful experience being in his kirtans."
— Dr. Nisha Vastani
Research Scientist, Uni Hospital- Zurich, Switzerland

"The kirtana of Madhava has an almost magnetic influence. The mind and heart get totally attracted, then drawn into the inside world where one can meet the soul of the universe. Tune in and you will have a deeply rewarding, spiritual experience."
— Sacinandana Swami
Inspirational speaker and spiritualist

This morning we finally unveiled the Kirtan Australia website. A huge thanks to Bhakticandrika, Vrajadhama, Prema Yogi, David Jorm and Nath0rn for the hours of work that they put into it.

The core concept of Kirtan Australia is discoverability.

We want to make it easy, at the first level, to discover what national kirtan tours are going on. One single place that you go to check who is coming when, and where, and what time. For this we will rely on visits to the site and the rss feed.

Going down another level, we want to make it easy to find a regular on-going kirtan in your local area, wherever that may be.

Conversely, we want to make it easy to publicise your regular kirtan circle or one-off event. For this we will rely on visits to the site, and email notifications.

Going down another level, we want to make it easy to discover quality suppliers of instruments, especially exotic and imported instruments.

And going down a further level from there, we want to make it easy to discover lessons and teachers to learn to lead or accompany kirtan.

It's about creating community through connection, facilitated by "discoverability" - a function of sattva.

Check out the site: Kirtan Australia.