Comments on: Kirtan: Spiritual Materialism, or Accessible Devotion?

By: Not Safe for Yoga | elephant journal

Not Safe for Yoga | elephant journal — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 17:51:22 +0000

[...] get me wrong, lots of “yoga music” is great. I’m even starting to get into Kirtan a little more. But music…well…I always say that music is my performance enhancing drug [...]

By: Kirtan hurts my inner child. | elephant journal

Kirtan hurts my inner child. | elephant journal — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 05:04:48 +0000

[...] Kirtan is worth knowing about & learning, not just monkey-imitating-dancing to. “alalalalalallalalaallalalaalallalalalaallaalalallalalalalalala (rock back and forth) re… [...]

By: New Agey types, ironically, love to accuse others of “judging.” | elephant journal

Wed, 01 Dec 2010 07:24:24 +0000

[...] that “Spiritual Materialism” stuff. Still, we get happy-yappy hippie-dippy love n’lightey comments like this one all the [...]

By: How Old is Yoga? | elephant journal

How Old is Yoga? | elephant journal — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 19:05:23 +0000

[...] goldrush that is American yoga over the past 15 years, it’s important to consider “spiritual materialism“—not from a point of view of defining true yoga and identifying charlatans so much as from [...]

By: elephantjournal

elephantjournal — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 02:27:16 +0000

Thanks, Bob, for the time and thoughtfulness behind your recent comments. It was a wonderful, warm experience last night—it was fun, and relaxing, and sweet. That said, without Sean's great introductions before and the contemplative silences after, kirtan could fall into just "feeling good" without having sufficient understanding of the meaning behind the practice. As with the famous Buddhist story about Naropa, the great professor at Nalanda, and the hag… (google it, for those of you who are interested).

With thanks,

Waylon

By: Bob Weisenberg

Bob Weisenberg — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 12:47:04 +0000

Thanks for writing so honestly and openly about this. It's so refreshing to be allowed inside a writer's questioning mind instead of just getting the surface view. I have the same hesitations you do about any mass spiritual activity. The whole idea makes me feel instantly uncomfortable, perhaps coming from my ultra-traditional Catholic altar boy upbringing, where each week at mass I would say to myself, these people are just going through the motions and reciting all these prayers by rote, just like I'm doing. More likely it's just a matter of inner personality. To me spirituality is more naturally a very private matter. Not that it can't be talked about. I'm a spiritual writer! But for me it's a deeply individual experience, not a group one. That said I want to broaden my horizons, just like you're doing. So I'm going to make a point of going to the next Rajani kirtan here in Milwaukee, which is, by all accounts, very similar to what you describe above. Some of your readers might not be aware that the the ancient Yoga texts themselves present different types of Yoga to match different personality types. It's really quite astounding. See: Different Yoga Strokes for Different Yoga Folks http://yogademystified.com/discussion-and-comment... Bob Weisenberg http://YogaDemystified.com