“Śrīla Prabhupāda’s Kīrtana Standards,” installment 53
A discussion of dancing in kīrtana could take up a book in itself. Considering the sorts of dancing seen in ISKCON today, such a book would be welcome. Here let us just touch upon the topic.1 Śrīla Prabhupāda wrote:
Regarding your question about the dancing, the dancing should be done enthusiastically by raising the hands like Panca-Tattva. You can also dance enthusiastically by raising hands. All of Lord Caitanya’s followers used to dance with raised hands. If someone dances with ecstasy, that is all right, but it is better to dance with raised hands.2
Satsvarūpa Dāsa Goswami writes:
Dancing for Prabhupāda always meant upraised arms and extended fingers, like the depiction of Gaura and Nitāi. That was how he introduced dancing in his room at 26 Second Avenue, leading us around in a circle, showing how you put your left foot to the right side and how you sway back and forth with the arms always upraised. Kīrtanānanda called it “the Swami step.” Once in Chicago he admonished boys who were twisting, disco style. Emphatically from the vyāsāsana he raised up his arms. He did it once, and when the dancers did not heed, he did it again: “Like this!”3
Makhanlāla Dāsa (later Bhakti Mādhurya Govinda Swami) tells of the same incident:
The temple room, formerly a large basket ball gymnasium in a YMCA or something similar, was full with about 600 or more devotees. A rip, roaring fast kirtan was going on, in front of Śrīla Prabhupāda. the young male devotees were dancing crazy, running up to each other with their hands almost like fists, almost in a confrontational way, and going back and forth, twisting their bodies about like spastic epileptic fits. Suddenly, Śrīla Prabhupāda gave the order to stop the kirtan completely. It was like stopping 500 freight trains, but he gave the order. The shocked devotees fell silent. then Śrīla Prabhupāda spoke: “Not like this” (imitating the boxing-like motions of the men). “Like this”, and Śrīla Prabhupāda got up, once again reintroducing the original swami two step, just as he had taught in New york and in the San Francisco bay area in 1969-1970. From this intervention by Śrīla Prabhupāda, and stopping of “enthusiastic” kirtan, it is clear that there are standards that must be kept, not just a free-for-all based on unrestricted concoctions and sense gratification.4
Sometimes “dancing” can even become dangerous. In wild enthusiasm, devotees sometimes embrace other devotees and hoist them off the ground and drop them down again. When devotees once did this to Nirañjana Swami, he suffered a knee injury that cost him years of trouble and pain.
In a conversation in Washington, D.C., on July 8, 1976, Rūpānuga Dāsa asked Śrīla Prabhupāda about forms of dancing in which devotees turn their backs to the Deity, bump each other, and so on. Śrīla Prabhupāda said, “Sometimes dancing is done here in peculiar method. That is not desirable.” And finally he said, “They are inventing. What can I do? If you invent your own way. . .”
But not everything is an invention. Śrīla Prabhupāda wrote to Haṁsadūta Dāsa:
Regarding your dancing in the middle of the kirtana, it is not wrong. It is completely right. If in your kirtana everyone dances in ecstasy it is perfectly all right. That is spiritual enthusiasm.5
Bhavānanda Prabhu remembers:
During gurupuja in Mayapur Prabhupada would encourage devotees to dance. He especially would smile and move his hand—palm up—up and down to make Brahmananda jump up and down higher and higher.6
Sometimes the way of dancing that Śrīla Prabhupāda had taught became lost. But Lokanāth Swami writes that when ISKCON devotees picked it up again from the Gauḍīya Maṭha kīrtana parties in Māyāpur, Śrīla Prabhupāda was pleased:
On one occasion, when Brahmānanda and Śrutakīrti began dancing with raised arms, we could see that Śrīla Prabhupāda had appreciated the expression. We had never danced like that previously. Now, with arms raised, we were dancing more enthusiastically, and more pleasingly, it seemed, to Śrīla Prabhupāda.7
Revatīnandana Dāsa recalls that Śrīla Prabhupāda “liked graceful dancing.” Praising as graceful the dancing of one devotee, Śrīla Prabhupāda said, “See how he dances. This is very good. This will help one feel more devotion.” Revatīnandana remembers:
He also said that the dancing should be graceful and gentlemanly. Then, during the second kirtan, he got off the vyasasana and danced in the middle of the kirtan party. He danced back and forth very gracefully in what we called the “swami step.” After a while he put his hands up and started leaping up in the air straight up and down. He wasn’t shaking his body around. His hands were up, and he was leaping in the air. He kept leaping and leaping and leaping for a long time, and we were doing it with him. I got tired. I stopped and started to dance back and forth at one point. I was twenty-two years old at the time, and he was over seventy.8
Rādhānath Swami comes to mind for the type of graceful dancing Śrīla Prabhupāda commended.
Indradyumna Swami and Śrī Prahlāda Dāsa quote this verse:9
O king, when the devotees of Lord Kṛṣṇa dance, their steps crush the misfortune of the earth, their glances destroy the misfortune of the ten directions, and their upraised arms push away the misfortune of the planets of the demigods.
Notes:
1 One can find further quotations about dancing, from Śrīla Prabhupāda and from his disciples, in “Analyzed Data: The Kirtana Standards Book,” p. 31‒39.
2 Letter to Kirtanananda, 10 November 1975.
3 Prabhupāda Nectar, Volume 2, 16.
4 Letter to Kirtan Standards Committee. quoted in “Analyzed Data,” p. 31‒32. In October of 2021 Mahabuddhi Prabhu, who was present on the occasion, told me the same story.
5 Letter to Hamsaduta, October 19, 1974.
6 Bhavānanda Dāsa, personal communication, October 17, 2021.
7 In Conversation with Śrīla Prabhupāda, chapter 28.
8 Remembrances, Chapter 8.
9 bahudhotsāryate harṣād viṣṇu-bhaktasya nṛtyataḥ
padbhyāṁ bhūmer diśo ’kṣibhyāṁ dorbhyāṁ cāmaṅgalaṁ divaḥ
This verse is found in the Padma Purana and in the Hari-bhakti-sudhodaya (20.68), a part of the Nāradīya Purāṇa. Quoted by Indradyumna Swami and Śrī Prahlāda Dāsa in Harināma Eva Kevalam, p. 15. The verse is also quoted in the Caitanya-bhāgavata, 1.2.184.
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