“Śrīla Prabhupāda’s Kīrtana Standards,” installment 17
No “bhaja”
Bhakti Chāru Swami relates an incident that occurred when Śrīla Prabhupāda and his devotees were at the Kumbha Mela in 1976:
A devotee was leading a lively kīrtana one morning during guru-pūjā, and the rest of us were jumping up and down in ecstasy. Then he started to sing “Bhaja Hare Kṛṣṇa, Hare Kṛṣṇa,” and all of a sudden Prabhupāda shouted to stop the kīrtana.
Everyone froze; the tent went silent. “Where did you learn this ‘Bhaja Hare Kṛṣṇa’?” Prabhupāda roared.
The devotee was speechless with shock and embarrassment. Prabhupāda continued, “The Hare Kṛṣṇa mahā-mantra must be chanted just as it is—Hare Kṛṣṇa, Hare Kṛṣṇa, Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa, Hare Hare/ Hare Rāma, Hare Rāma, Rāma Rāma, Hare Hare. Nothing should be added to it, and nothing should be subtracted.”1
Telling of the same incident another time, Bhakti Chāru Swami said:
Prabhupada asked him “Where did you learn this bhaja Hare Krsna? Did you ever hear me singing bhaja Hare Krsna?” And Prabhupada just chastised him for about five minutes. . . . Prabhupada also explained that “This is how deviation starts. Somebody puts in his own concocted thing and then somebody else comes, he adds some more concoction to it and with time it becomes a complete distortion.”2
Harikeśa tells of a similar incident in New Māyāpur, France, in 1976.3 Here’s Hari Śauri Prabhu’s version of it:
There was kīrtana throughout the morning, as the devotees prepared for the installation. Śrīla Prabhupāda was sitting quietly in his room, waiting to be called when he rang the bell and asked for Harikeśa. When he arrived Prabhupāda told him, “Listen! What is that?” indicating the kīrtana downstairs. “He is adding something before the Hare Kṛṣṇa mantra. Go and stop it and bring him here.”
Harikeśa wasn’t sure exactly what Prabhupāda was referring to, but he went straight down and pushed his way through the packed temple room. Pṛthu-putra Swami was pounding a drum, leading a loud and fervent rendition of the mahā-mantra. A group of sweat-soaked brahmacārīs were gathered round him, clashing karatālas, stamping their feet, waving their hands and leaning into an intense exchange of the holy names with Pṛthu-putra. First he chanted, then them. Every time he took the lead he prefaced the mahā-mantra with the word “bhaja,”—“Chant!”
Harikeśa butted in and brought the singing to an abrupt stop. He informed Pṛthu-putra that Prabhupāda wanted to see him. Pṛthu-putra entered Prabhupāda’s room apprehensively, wondering what was going on.
Prabhupāda, whose sharp ears had picked out the extra word, demanded to know where he had learned “this bhaja Hare Kṛṣṇa mantra.” He was angry. “There is no bhaja in Hare Kṛṣṇa! Where did you get this from?”
Shaken by Prabhupāda’s sudden, unexpected reproach, Pṛthu-putra turned red. “I heard it in Vṛndāvana.”
Prabhupāda’s wrath intensified, and his face flushed as he thought of his disciples once again becoming polluted by the non-ISKCON elements of Vṛndāvana. He exploded, “Why you are taking this from the nonsense bābājīs! Who has told you this!?”
A shocked Pṛthu-putra tried to assure him. “Oh, no, not from the bābājīs! I heard it from our own men.”
Śrīla Prabhupāda still fumed, but he eased a bit when he understood it had not come from an outside source. Still, he strongly warned his disciple, “Never chant this bhaja Hare Kṛṣṇa again! Hare Kṛṣṇa mantra is complete in itself and requires no addition!”
Promising not to repeat his mistake, Pṛthu-putra returned to the temple room to resume his chanting—this time without the addition.
It is one of Prabhupāda’s great fears that ISKCON devotees will become increasingly polluted by outside influences not strictly in line with our sampradāya’s pure devotional principles. Just as he did with the gopī-bhāva group in Los Angeles, he acted quickly and firmly at the very first sign of contamination.4
No “bolo”
Similarly, Hari Śauri Prabhu wrote that a local brahmacārī was “in the habit of singing ‘bolo’ Hare Kṛṣṇa. . . much to Śrīla Prabhupāda’s disapproval.”5
“Bolo” simply means “Chant!” but Śrīla Prabhupāda disapproved.
Jayapataka Swami has written to me that Śrīla Prabhupāda once stopped him from chanting “bolo” before the mahā-mantra: “Srila Prabhupada called me and said don’t add any words.”6
No nothing
Bhakti Vikāsa writes:
Some devotees have the habit of inserting such words as bhaja, bolo or jaya here, there and everywhere in kirtanas. Sometimes devotees, especially lead singers, make a noise like “ooo” or “eee” before the first syllable of the maha mantra: “Ooo, Hare Krsna,” “Eee Hare Krsna.” Or they add a pop-style “Hey! Hey!” or “Woa, Woa” to the maha mantra.7 Such interpolations are not only unnecessary but can be confusing. For instance, the line krpa kari koro tare vrndavana-vasi is simple, clear Bengali and the meaning is easily understood. However, if the word bhaja, bolo or jaya is placed before it, it doesn’t make any sense. The song should just be left as it is.8
I’ve also heard sounds like “ah,” “ey,” and “oh” added before the mahā-mantra. One well-known Bengali kīrtana leader in ISKCON regularly begins the mahā-mantra with “oh.” Why? When I asked he said, “For bhāva”—that is, “For ecstasy.” As he said it, he smiled and, with some drama, threw his arms apart and fell slightly back, to reinforce by body language what he had said: “For bhāva.” For the greatest bhāva, we should simply chant the sixteen words of the maha-mantra as they are, without adding anything else.9
In a similar vein, Badrinarayan Dāsa (now Swami) wrote:
I also have a question about the long warbling, trilling singing going on. This is when the lead singer is not singing the mantra but just making some musical sound. When I was a young devotee at the Los Angeles temple (1970) Srila Prabhupada was staying there for several months. He was in his quarters and when he heard the lead singer doing some of these vocal gymnastics every now and then between singing the mantra, he sent his servant down immediately and stopped the kirtan.10
Notes:
1 Ocean of Mercy, p. 74.
2 Quoted by Bhakti Vikāsa Swami (“Kirtana,” p. 21‒22).
3 “Important Kirtan Instructions from Srila Prabhupada,” p. 19
4 Transcendental Diary, Vol 3, entry for August 6, 1976. p. 533‒4.
5 Transcendental Diary, December 9th, 1976 Hyderabad farm.
6 Personal communication, October 6, 2021. Putting Śrīla Prabhupāda’s instruction into Hindi, we can say: “Bolo mat bolo” (“Don’t chant bolo”).
7 Do some devotees really add a pop-style “Hey!” to the mahā-mantra? I had some doubt until early 2022, when I heard a kīrtana leader chanting this way again and again during the guru-pūjā at one of North America’s flagship temples. —js
8 Bhakti Vikāsa Swami, “Kirtana,” p. 22
9 If we translate bhava as “emotion,” “feeling,” or “mood,” the same conclusion applies.
10 Quoted by Candramauli Swami in “History of Kirtan in ISKCON.”
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