I started this blog a year ago today, as per the Vaiṣṇāva lunar calendar, with grand, lofty plans. I think God really does hate grand, lofty plans, at least when I have them, because every time I aspire towards one, a few minor obstacles find themselves in my way of achieving them, and then my inherent laziness takes full control.
Much more likely is that God doesn’t particularly care whether I maintain a blog habit, and instead that I am particularly bad at maintaining effort, and much too lazy.
Regardless of my conceited reflection, I hope to this year, with much less ambition, get this blog going regularly. I plan to, over the next few weeks, finish the several half finished drafts that I made for when I first started the blog, and then continue on hopefully with some hint of regularity with the fresh thoughts and reflections that I have otherwise collected in the meantime. Before I share those, I have a post whose contents have been floating around in my head as of late, and I am excited to see the floating disparate parts come together into my first concrete post. It will touch on Norwegian artist Aurora’s recent album, The Gods We Can Touch, and the intersections I found it makes with my current passion for studying the often (unfairly) dismissed and denigrated theology of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (frequently known colloquially as the Mormons).
What is Gregorian Kirtan
Writing an initial blog post is something more daunting than I expected; how do I introduce myself and my idea for what I hope my blog to be without giving off the impression (or maybe rather revealing) that I am narcissistic, insane, or, most likely, both? And so, as long as I have wanted to start a blog, the unavoidable question of how to skin this cat has been purring in the corner of my mind. However, much to the disdain and horror of the poor cat, I have had previously resolved that today, the 25th of February 2021, would be the date I begin this blog, and so I settled on deciding that by exploring the meaning of and reasoning behind the name of my blog, Gregorian Kirtan, I will also be able to some degree convey who I am, and what content I wish to be filling this blog with.
Kirtan can refer to many things, but underlying most of its meanings, is worship and glorification. However it has more colloquially come to refer mainly to musical Kirtan, a form of musical meditation focusing on divine names. Carrying then the notion of the musical, we have Gregorian, referring to Gregorian chant, the hypnotically melodic Western Christian musical tradition that has defined Christian music for over a millennium.
The name Gregorian Kirtan may therefore seem asynchronous enough to be the poor joke of someone prone to making, well, poor jokes. It may also very well be an awkward attempt at heretical syncretism, it may be hinting towards a Zen-like contradiction meant to provoke thought on interfaith issues, or may be an attempt to draw a strained ecumenical connection. It may also make no sense. I think any of those options, in many ways, can be true. Why I have chosen it, however, is because to me it speaks very much to who I am, and more-so, to the influences which have moulded me so much so.
I was born into and raised amidst the Bhakti-yoga practice of the mystical Gaudiya Vaisnava tradition, and while I would be eager to say that I had been actively and studiously absorbing the culture and philosophy of that tradition, I admit that my nurturing from it was purely through a vague osmosis. Concurrently, growing up in a large yet still rural town in Australia, I attended an Evangelical Anglican school for all my 13 years of schooling. If vague osmosis were to be the standard for what is considered an influence, then that evangelical influence were to be even stronger than the Vaisnava one. Yet, at one point, for reasons I will not discuss in interest of the length of this post, I found myself plagued both with intense existential concern, and an eagerness to learn as much as I could about the responses to that anxiety core to the human experience. I devoured Christian material, everything from the conservative Evangelical John Piper, to the just right of centre Catholic Bishop Robert Barron, to the delightfully iconoclastic Hans Küng, to the almost excessive but definitely stimulating John Shelby Spong, and made good use of the personal resources available to me through my heavily Christian setting. However, at the same time as that, I dove into the resources into Vedanta and broader Eastern thought that my family opened up for me. I had the privilege of studying under and being guided by masters both the philosophy and practice, siddhanta and sadhana, of Gaudiya Vedanta and Bhakti-yoga.
And it is within Gaudiya Vedanta that I found my home, try as well as I may, I could not and still can not shake the hold that the Krishna conception had, and still has, on me. Yet I never felt that such a commitment meant a messy divorce to this figure of Jesus the Christ, nor to all the profound insights that the many people who have come in the traditions following him have given. Instead, I saw that Greek philosophy provided so much of the philosophical framework of what became modern Christianity, and I began to see this tradition not as an isolationist one, as much as some of its adherents would wish it so. Instead I found a tradition in dialogue with others; true meaningful dialogue that in the case of Greek philosophy allowed it to learn from others how to articulate its very foundational philosophy. I saw not a Jesus who brought the message of a god in competition to eradicate and displace all the other “gods” (as if one could so absurdly reduce the majesty of that transcendent source of existence to mere polytheistic squabbling), but rather a Jesus who only reveals to me the same God who dances in the heart of all His devotees, irregardless of tribal concern. A God who in His dance is so captivating that He must be an all attractive God. To use the Sanskrit; Krishna.
And then therefore, what is Gregorian Kirtan? In many ways it is me; it is the way that I do Kirtan, now meaning Kirtan in the broader sense, of glorification in general. I cannot say that my doxology is any kind other than that of Kirtan, and yet I cannot deny that when I speak in praise of God, I do so with a distinctly Gregorian lisp. So then, what else is this blog compose of, but Gregorian Kirtan.
It is at this intersection that I wish to locate the focus of Gregorian Kirtan. Not exclusively, I plan to occasionally comment on topics relevant to only one aspect discussed, other times regarding one of the many other spiritual traditions of the world, or maybe even something completely off-kilter. Centrally and focally however, I wish to explore the meeting point between the not mutually exclusive worlds of the Christian tradition and the Gaudiya Vaisnava one. I plan to be posting spurred by the idea that if Greek philosophy, exotic as it was to Judaism, was apt to be adopted within the Abrahamic fold, why not Vedanta? What if instead of Aristotle being the lens through which Christian theology was read and interpreted, it had been Jiva Goswami? And, perhaps less ambitiously, I hope to also compare the surprising points of confluence that I find, both in similarities in theology and confession, and also in the similarities of human nature working within religion.
The first few ideas I wish to explore to bring this blog in that direction, are questions regarding the position of Jesus from a Gaudiya Vaisnava perspective on Christology, as well as a comparative view of questions on the nature of scripture and its composition. Related to that latter, also a comparison of the Gaudiya Bhagavata-centric hermeneutical principle and Christian Gospel-centric hermeneutical approaches. I am also interested in exploring more practical concerns, such as similarity in traditionalist and progressive movements among differing religions, among others.
As for what kind of people I hope would be interested in these posts, I feel I write in mind for a few types of people. For those like me, who do not see so necessarily such a strongly demarcated lines between spiritual traditions. For Gaudiya Vaisnavas who wish to learn more of Christian thought and for Christians who would like to see where Vedanta has surprising commonalities with their own views, and of course vice versa. For those of either tradition who would enjoy seeing the fresh perspective of another great theistic school, and how that can enrich their own. And for those of any religious or philosophical persuasion, who like to read and see the views, perspective, and experiences of others wrestling with the larger and very perennial questions.
There is an almost unspoken maxim in Gaudiya Vaisnava circles, that one should never let a holy day go to waste, especially for launching a project with little direction or plan. I hope this blog is not one of those, but I definitely have to confess that my aforementioned haste to launch my blog today is due to the significance of today in the Gaudiya Vaisnava liturgical calendar; for today is Nityananda Trayodasi, the day commemorating the divine advent of Nityananda Prabhu. This day has strong theological grounding as a day in which meditation upon the sacred mystery of the Guru is encouraged; but has further significance in that regard for me upon personal grounding as well. For it was on this day (according to the Vaisnava lunar calendar) a year ago, that my revered Guru, Srila Radha Govinda Das Goswami Maharaja, gave me Harinama, formally connected me to the Gaudiya Vaisnava lineage, and gave me the name Toshan Krishna Das. A story for another time, it never the less gives this holy day an extra personal significance for me, and will forever remind me deeply of the love and mercy that has been shown to me by Gurudeva.
And so, I plan to write a variety of things on this blog, maybe not much of it useful, if any of it at all. Yet I still hope that some of it will be, and I wish to offer all that which is good and beneficial, not only in this blog, but in the entirety of whatever life I live unto the lotus feet of my Guru, His Holiness Om Visnupada Paramahamsa Parivrajakacarya Astottara Sata Sri Srimad Radha Govinda Das Goswami, and unto Sri Nityananda Prabhu Avadhuta, who empowers all those who are manifestations of that Guru-tattva, the focal mystery of the spiritual practitioner’s life.
And I offer it to my Param Gurudeva, His Divine Grace Nitya Lila Pravista Om Visnupada Paramahamsa Parivrajakacarya Astottara Sata Sri Srimad Bhaktivedanta Swami Srila Prabhupada, who, directly empowered by Nityananda Prabhu, stole the hearts of the whole world to himself, that he may in turn allow them to be stolen by the cowherd boy Krsna, the All Attractive Reservoir of All Pleasure, Supreme Personality of Godhead, Reality the Beautiful.
I pray to Jesus Christ, the suffering saviour, that I may eventually be able to love and serve in even a shadow of how he did; a love so profound and alien to this world that it can result only in giving all, a self sacrificial love so powerful it brings whole nations to their knees, moves mountains, and cripples the oppression of powers and principalities.
And finally, but always, I offer it to all the Devotees of the world, to all those, who in some way or another, recognise the deepest substratum of reality to be personal, and intuit the obvious and still so deeply profound truth that such reality communicates purely through love.
My name is Toshan Krishna Das (or Tilak Gröger), and welcome to my blog, Gregorian Kirtan.