Search Results (4)

Among the most prominent Hindu festivals is the Rath Yatra, or Festival of Chariots, which is celebrated by parading three brightly decorated chariots containing statues of the deities Jagganath, Subhadra, and Balaram through the streets of a city on brilliantly decorated chariots. Rath Yatra is celebrated throughout India and increasingly throughout the world through such efforts as the Festival of India sponsored by the International Society of Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), which stops in several prominent locations throughout North America. Within Krishna Consciousness, temple worship is an aesthetically vivid sensory experience in which the various art forms—music, dance, theater, and the visual arts—serve to attach the devotee’s senses to the Divine through worship practices, including darshan—the exchange of gazes, kirtan—the singing of sacred mantras, and lila—the re-creation of the pastimes of divine characters. The festival experience—and the Festival of Chariots in particular—can serve to bring the practices typically associated with temple worship to the public. This article draws on several Rath Yatra events, giving special attention to the annual Rath Yatra parade held in New York City, where devotees parade their deities down Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, and that held in Los Angeles on Venice Beach. These prominent American Rath Yatras serve as a study of the spiritual necessity of beauty and the spiritual necessity of joy, which are both addressed by the festival experience, as music and vivid visual imagery serve to transform urban space into sacred space by allowing bypassers as well as devotees to come into sensory contact with sacred imagery and sacred sound. Full article

Building upon earlier research, this paper unpacks the complex relationship between punk and Krishna Consciousness, in this instance through the lens of Paulo Freire’s notion of praxis. Here, the intersection between punk, the Hare Krishna movement and the corresponding relationship between auto-didacticism and spirituality are examined as a means of interrogating subcultural participation and the hegemonic dominance of the anti-religious sentiment within punk. Freire’s approach is examined within the context of this relationship, specifically regarding the inquisitiveness of the individual as they begin the process of engaging with Krishna Consciousness and spirituality, especially from the standpoint of punk. The importance here lies in the learning process being in a state of flux, where the continual re-creation of knowledge and inquiry becomes a means of consolidating the dialectical relationship between the self and the world around it. Here, punk becomes a valuable space in which to discover new ideas, a means of developing an aesthetic and subcultural/religious/spiritual membership within a framework of auto-didacticism; of illuminating the dialectical, hermeneutic relationship between consciousness and the world around us, central to Freire’s concept of praxis. Full article

One of the reasons for the spread of the Western Hare Krishna movement is that it offers several alternatives for the practice of religion: devotees can be full-fledged members of the church in congregations located in complex urban or in simple rural contexts. An example of the latter is Krishna Valley, where approximately 130 Krishna-devotees live austere lives. My paper presents the interpretations of this settlement concentrating on (multiple) internal (emic) views: On the one hand, I will show how the leadership of the church contextualizes and interprets Krishna Valley and how they wish the inhabitants to conceptualize it. On the other hand, I will also show what Krishna Valley means for its ordinary inhabitants and what interpretations those living there attach to it. When I was gathering material for the current paper, Krishna Valley was in flux. The settlement has always favored following a sustainable lifestyle but—due in part to the strengthening of the Hungarian eco-village movement—it was at this time that the conceptualization of Krishna Valley as an eco-village gained momentum. This was the heyday of the Eco Valley Foundation, which was to strengthen the eco-village aspect of the Valley, and in the communication of Krishna Valley the ecological aspect became paramount, drowning out all other interpretations. Not all inhabitants of the village welcomed this change and in response some began to emphasize the interpretation of Krishna Valley as a sacred place. In the current paper, I will present these two processes and the relationship between them through the lens of the interpretations of the members of the community. Full article

Kirtan is a musical worship practice from India that involves the congregational performance of sacred chants and mantras in call-and-response format. The style of kirtan performed within Gaudiya Vaishnava Hinduism is an expression of Bhakti Yoga, “the yoga of love and devotion”, and focuses on creating a personal, playful, and emotionally intense connection between the worshipper and their god—specifically, through words and sounds whose vibration is believed to carry the literal presence of Krishna. Kirtan is one of many Indian genres that uses musical techniques to move participants through a progression of spiritual states from meditation to ecstasy. Kirtan-singing has become internationally popular in recent decades, largely thanks to the efforts of the Hare Krishna movement, which has led to extensive hybridization of musical styles and cultural approaches to kirtan adapted to the needs of a diasporic, globalized community of worshippers. This essay explores the practice of kirtan in the United States through interviews, fieldwork, and analysis of recordings made at several Krishna temples and festivals that demonstrate the musical techniques that can be spontaneously deployed in acts of collective worship in order to create intense feelings of deep, focused meditation and uninhibited, expressive bliss. Full article