CHANTING With The SWAMI IN JOY
Memories
- Joy Krauthammer
January 13, 2011
Listening tonight to visiting Rabbi Arthur Green talk about the "sense of wanting to have a religious response to the Divine, with awe and beauty", and of "Rishimu",* and also of his mentioning Swami Satchidananda, obm, reminded me of the time also when in 1968, I, too, had met the Swami (guru) and clearly felt connected. It was a ‘happening’. I was around 20, and Swami Satchidananda about 53 years, and Rabbi Green said he was 28 that year when meeting the Swami. I went to New York's JFK Airport to greet the great swami, and with my Jewish college friends, and close friend, Michael D'Angelo, sat at the Swami's feet and listened to his teachings on peace of mind and inner joy. I am reminded that we all held sticks of incense while visiting the Swami at Pan Am. I was an Village Voice reader and went to events listed.
I asked Rabbi Green about what he thought over four decades ago had drawn me to Sri Swami Satchidananda, renowned Indian yoga master, and he answered, the feeling of "Love" that permeated the space where the Swami dwelt; he exuded love. That is probably why in the sixties I felt mamash good while sitting by the Swami. We must have chanted "Ohm Shanti Shanti Ohm". Tonight, I came home from the rabbi's lecture at Valley Beth Shalom, and I looked online for and found the swami's UTube tapes with chanting and teachings. Tonight, too, I listened and chanted. Being an authentic and grounded Jew, and feeling the Oneness of people, I am OK with some of my multi-cultural chanting, but every chance I get, I'll change "Ohm" to "Shalom". I have an inner smile on my face remembering the energy vibrations and the messages.
During the same era, I would go to NY's beautiful broad open lawn, Sheep Meadow in Central Park, and in joy, chant and sing and dance with the saffron robed Hare Krishnas. I'd also give flowers to the cops, who had sturdy wooden batons, their weapons, by their side. I was a sixties flower child, a "khippie artist” (as my highly educated European Orthodox father-in-law to be, would later call me). I didn't use my Woodstock tickets, and instead I hitch hiked to music festivals (Newport Folk and Jazz), and with my sun darkened skin, and dark hair in pig tails, was mistaken for American Indian when hitching to a reservation, and introduced myself as "Princess Brown Beads". I ate my favorite seasoned rice for dinner at a veggie Buddhist eatery prior to my teaching adult ceramics classes at Cooper Square Art School in Manhattan's East Village. (Years later I opened an art school for children for the City of LA and again taught ceramics.) I loved the music spots in Greenwich Village and the outdoor art shows. I wore love beads, dangly Israeli earrings, Indian leather sandals, and short Indian cotton dresses adorned with reflective mirrors. I think I made it through Queens College (QC) wearing two Indian dresses. (My father, z'l, was a fine dress manufacturer and I could have had any of the fancy dresses at Saks 5th Ave. As a teen, my closet was filled with cocktail dresses. I know I wore a blue one to the Jr. H.S. prom.)
When I decided to no longer hang around my friends from SDS (Students for a Democratic Society)-- during their season of talking about making bombs-- they called me “bourgeois”. That stung, but I had limits for my actions. I did help "take over" the QC president's office, and we had a peaceful "sit in". in 1968-69, I counseled draft dodgers, as well as acting in Guerilla Street Theatre to protest against the Vietnam War, in addition to participating in the anti-Vietnam War marches. With friends on a rainy day and bull-horn yelling cops, we resisted arrest in 1969 when trespassing at another peaceful event in Phily. Even then at the police station, refusing to hand over ID, I named myself "Joyous Joy of Utopia" (Utopia was a nearby street) and my visiting California friend was "Marvelous Mike". (Mike Saks had made for me a beautiful turquoise color, Egyptian ceramic beaded long necklace which I still treasure.) To boycot my QC graduation, I entered and "walked out" with others in protest with leader, Dr. Benjamin Spock, the baby doctor. Twenty five years later, and still advocating peace and Tikkum Olam / fixing the world, I proudly wore a 'cap and gown' for my University of Judaism non-profit MBA graduation, and still embellished myself in long dangly earrings.
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Joy Krauthammer, MBA
University of Judaism |
While I was an undergrad art student at QC, I was in Oneness while wheel throwing my pottery. I was in centered stillness then, but I didn't know what that spiritually and intellectually meant. I was just deeply in that creative, connected meditative space and very happy. I stayed in that spiritual space also during my graduate ceramics study. Following that, I felt I had to 'prove myself' to my future in-laws, and I compromised, and I went on to help save the world as a very good medical social worker. My Black patients would gratefully say to me, "G*d bless you," although I had no idea what they were talking about.
For the last several years, when I go to the Onion (wood building, where I imagine I'm inside Noah's Ark) for Spiritual Unity Movement interfaith full moon gatherings, I add "Shal" as we chant Ohm, and Ohm Shanti (a lot more upbeat), or visiting Hare Krishnas chant with us, and it always gives me joy. It is palpable; I feel it. Maybe it is the long lost feeling from when I chanted in NY, which surfaces. It is the same feeling of inner joy and peace that resonate with me as the sound vibrations enter my sacred space. For me they were holy moments, although I didn't know what that meant, since I had had no education in religion. Then, I knew nothing of G*d, nor of being Jewish, except for Pesach and Chanukah home rituals. We ate lots of bagels and lox.
Today when I play my drums, gongs and Tibetan singing bowls (that I bought in Tibet) for healing sound meditations, I slowly chant "ShalOM" ** and ask others to join me. "I bless you and myself" (as my Reb Shlomo Carlebach, z'l, would say) with love filled energy vibrations to higher frequencies, and for peace and double joy, and closer connection to the Divine.
"How do we remember the Oneness?", asked Rabbi Green at his lecture. This is the week, Shabbat Shira, that beloved Jewish singer/composer Debbie Friedman, z'l, died, Jan. 9, 2011 - 4 Shevat. Torah Parshat Beshalach, Exodus 15:20 contains Miriam's Song, sung at the sea. Debbie sang "... and the women dancing with their timbrels followed Miriam as she sang her song...". I am so grateful that for the last decades, dear Debbie gave us all the opportunity for transformation; to sing and pray joyously to the Holy One, as our authentic response to The Source of All BlesSings, and I sang and danced in joy. In Debbie's zechut / merit I will continue to do so. For me this is knowing Oneness; as is a little 'potting' with clay on the spinning wheel with centered stillness.
In addition, with a little potting earth, I am already giving out dozens of baby fig trees to people for them to plant for Tu B'Shvat, and in Debbie's memory. A fig *** is like Torah, to be enjoyed through and through, as was Debbie's music; to bring us closer to and savor the Holy One, as we did when we crossed over to freedom and sang and danced with timbrels. I chant my morning prayers under my fig tree.
Over the decades, since I initially chanted with the Swami, Hare Krishnas, Reb Shlomo, Reb David Zeller, z'l, and then sang Debbie's praising songs to G*d, I came to understand what Rabbi Green is talking about, and with consciousness and awareness, and awe, I respond knowingly in joy to the Divine Presence.
BlesSings for health, wholeness, shalom and inner joy,
Joy
"Serve G*d With Joy"
PS Related sharing and Torah:
It was only two years after I met Swami Satchidananda, that I met my next ‘guru' who blessed me, the 7th Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneershon, zt’l, at 770 Eastern Parkway (down the street from the Brooklyn Museum School of Art, where I was a full-time ceramics graduate student). Two summers ago I visited The Rebbe's Ohel, his grave site in Queens. The "Rishimu" * of meeting The Rebbe has enveloped my life for the last four decades including the 16 years since his death; I'm a Chabadnik in addition to being a Renewal Jew and Feminist. (Or am I post-denominational, beyond titles?) I love responding and connecting to the Divine Presence, with awe and beauty, in joy. You can read my 47 websites which reflect my life and my relationships with my rabbis and other spiritual guides.
I dedicate this story I have written tonight, both to Debbie Friedman, may her memory be a blesSing as was her life (Debbie's funeral was on 1/11/11 at 11 AM), and also to the life and memory of Ellen Stewart, obm, 91, who died today, Jan. 13, 2011. Ellen, in 1961 in the East Village, founded the avant garde La MaMa Experimental Theatre, known as Cafe La MaMa. In the late sixties, friends (still today) and I studied with La MaMa, and it made a joyous difference in our lives as we discovered bodily expression in our wonder and movement. Now as a Baby-Boomer, I still recall the laughter and smiles in that era, and I am grateful.
This is the weekend remembering Rev. Martin Luther King, obm. "I had a dream". This was our era fighting for Civil Rights. When MLK was in prison in the little jail house near my beloved grandma's, z'l, grocery store in an Atlanta suburb, she would send her twin daughters over with his favorite noshes, Moon Pies. Grandma (immigrant from Russia) also told me that the Ku Klux Klan threatened to "tar and feather" her because of her having fondness for the "Negroes" and helping them. When my daughter was young, I took her to tour MLK's childhood home in Atlanta and she asked, "Where is the King?"
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* "The Reshimu is the residual impression of the infinite Divine Light that G*d "withdrew" from Creation through the process of Tzimtzum." - R. Yitzchak Ginsburgh
** SHALOM is composed of three Hebrew "Mother Letters." Shin, Aleph, Mem; near Last, first and middle letters..
Aleph is the first letter and beginning of sound, said with mouth open in 'ah' sound.
Mem is the middle letter and conclusion of sound with mouth closed. It is balance between opening and closing.
Shin is the synthesis of sounds between sound and silence. -R. Dov Ber Pinson
*** "Torah compares to a fig tree; Figs on a tree do not ripen all at once, but a little each day. Therefore, one keeps finding new figs in the tree each day. So too with Torah: The more one studies each day, the more knowledge and wisdom one finds." (Eruvin 54a)
"In that day (of Torah and peace)...everyone will invite his friend in fellowship under his vine and under his fig tree." (Zechariah 3:10)
Joy's poem about figs:
http://sephirathaomer.blogspot.com/2010/03/manna-from-heaven-hod-sh-byesod.html
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HIPPIE HISTORY from: Yosef Ben Shlomo Hakohen
My Search for the Soul of Zion – 206, Part Two: Lost and Found (Talent Scout)
"During the summer of 1970, I lived with the hippies in the East Village of Manhattan, New York City. Most of the hippies were young people who were rebelling against the materialistic values of modern western society, and who sought to find alternative ways of living which were more loving and spiritual. The hippy movement began in 1967; however, in 1970, the movement was entering a new stage, for many hippies were seeking to anchor their vision in a spiritual path. They began to realize that having altruistic goals was not enough, for they lacked a spiritual path and discipline that could help them to fulfill their vision. There were therefore Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, and other religious centers that had opened up in Lower Manhattan in order to attract the spiritually-searching young people that flocked to the East Village and its neighbor to the west, Greenwich Village."
Chofetz Chaim: When we help a brother or sister to reclaim their heritage, we are also fulfilling the mitzvah to return a lost object to its rightful owner (Deuteronomy 22:1-3).
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