First Experience of Kirtan.

by Yadunandana das (Yadunanda is a monk from Barcelona, Spain).

The first time I heard congregational chanting, was in a small room my friends and I had rented in the cultural centre of my hometown. We had a youth group for research about yoga and the paranormal. That day, when I came into the room, two or three of my friends were there, euphorically singing the Hare Krishna mantra, accompanied by hand cymbals and a little metal box, which they used as a drum. They had not taken any drugs nor drunk any alcohol. They were simply singing with their hearts and voices, bodies moving from side to side, following the rhythm of the chanting and the instruments, their faces beaming. When I entered the room I felt my whole being caught up in an intense, spiritual happiness. This was not ordinary singing or music. It was full of tangible, spiritual power.

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Some weeks later, I went to the temple in Barcelona for the first time. I was already chanting the Hare Krishna mantra on my beads, reciting sixteen rounds of 108 mantras every day and my friends and I used to meet regularly and have our kirtans (chanting sessions), sometimes in one of our yoga rooms, which we had transformed into a temple, and other times in a nearby forest or park. Still, when I took part in my first kirtan in the temple, with all the temple devotees gathered and their enthusiastic and graceful dancing, the experience was even stronger. I felt immersed in an ocean of bliss. This may sound like an exaggerated expression, but I have no better words to describe it. After that kirtan I decided: “I want to come here and live with these people”. Since it was my first time in the temple, I had not made any friends. Yet, the experience was so powerful that it increased my desire to follow Sri Caitanya’s teachings and mission.

During the week, I could hardly wait for the weekend, to go to the temple, which was thirty kilometres from my hometown, to join the devotees and sing and dance with them, and to experience the happiness of that chanting. For me, this was a living proof that made me identify with the character of Sri Caitanya and fanned in my heart a growing vocation to follow him, a vocation that has profoundly marked my life and that I pray will continue until my last breath.
Shortly afterwards, I participated regularly in the Sunday chanting processions in the streets of Barcelona. I was not dressed like the other devotees and I was less experienced than them, but this did not make any difference to me. I was going out to bring the experiences I was having so that others could have the same opportunity. Somehow the sankirtana of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and his devotees had touched me so deeply that I became part of his mission and was actively spreading it. The happiness I experienced, and still experience, surpasses beyond any comparison, the ordinary happiness of the mind and senses. Therefore, as Sri Chaitanya says in this verse: "param vijayate sri krsna sankirtanam, let there be victory to the Holy name of Krsna which expands the blissful ocean of transcendental life!"

This is an excerpt from an article about Sri Caitanya's Siksastakam Verses.

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