SHYAMDAS 1953-2013 IN MEMORIAM
SHYAMDAS 1953-2013 IN MEMORIAM SHYAMDAS 1953-2013 IN MEMORIAM
6 Special Issue • Shyamdas ~ In Memoriam The poster of Śrī Nāthjī
A STRANGE THING EDDIE STERN DIRECTOR: ASHTANGA YOGA NEW YORK CO-PUBLISHER: NĀMARŪPA truly strange thing occurred on Monday February A 4th. I was walking home from the subway after the evening Siva puja at our temple and, as I passed by my parked and frozen Vespa, I saw that someone had left a rolled up piece of paper tucked behind my seat. I thought that perhaps it was a flyer for something, and I walked over to pull it out. The paper was somewhat fragile, with some Rajasthani characters on the back – like a calendar of some sort. As I unrolled it, I was amazed to see that it was an old poster of Śrī Nāthjī from what looked like the Nathdvara temple in Rajasthan, a temple and deity that Shyam Das loved immensely. I couldn’t believe what I was looking at. Nathdvara is not well known outside of the Vaishnav circles; perhaps if it was a picture of Ganesh or Siva I would not have been as surprised, but because it was the deity that Shyam Das worshipped for so many years, I was taken aback. Then I counted back the days, and realized that it was the 12th day after Shyam's cremation, and that in the Hindu tradition (at least in the South), this was the day that the soul is released from the earthly plane, and begins its one year journey to the next world. met Shyam Das in a small ashram in Vrindavan in I 1991. I used to enjoy hearing him tell the story of how we met, because he was so funny and descriptive, and I would look forward to his retelling of it whenever he came to my school to do a kirtan or lead some teachings. When we met, I was actually in a yoga pose, lying on my chest, with my feet resting on my head. I remember distinctly seeing a guy in a dhoti and what I thought was a maroon football jersey walk through the ashram gates. He engaged in animated conversation with a few people at the front gate for a while, and then, after spotting me, walked across the compound. I stopped doing my practice and said hello, and we struck up a conversation. He said that he was surprised to see someone doing actual yoga poses – that in Vrindavan you never really saw that, and in fact he only knew one person who practiced asanas, a yogi who lived off in the forest of Braj somewhere. In the midst of our conversation he told me that he had come to India because of Ram Das, to meet Neem Karoli Baba, and that after Maharaji left his body, he stayed in Vrindavan, lived with the local Vaishnav saints, and learned how to sing dhrupad – a North Indian classical music system. He talked about Vallabhacharya and the devotional Radha Krishna poetry of the region and we hung out for an hour or so. We were both on the verge of heading back to the states – he to Connecticut, and I to NYC – and I gave him my phone number and invited him to come do some kirtan at the yoga school I was teaching at back then, Jivamukti. Kirtan was not then as well known as it is now. There was not yet a kirtan 'scene', with many offerings in the yoga schools and big festivals. It was restricted to the ashrams, or to just a few yoga schools like the Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centers, where kirtan was sung daily, and of course in the ISKCON temples. But until the mid-90's you couldn’t find Western recordings available in record stores, like Tower Records, or Virgin Records, until Jai Uttal and Krishna Das started producing them. Shyam Das was part of this generation that took part when kirtan began to spread outward. He was a genuine devotee with a penetrating love for the Divine, who expressed that love through song. But what characterized Shyam Das, and was really his unique expertise, was a deep devotional practice that was based on text, scriptural study, and seva, or service. Kirtan for him was to invoke the imminent presence of God. The name was the form, and the form was the name, and the invocation was the presence itself. His seva carried over from serving his deity and gurus to serving his friends and guests, and he was the consummate host. But perhaps the greatest service that he provided to his friends and those who attended his satsangs, was to draw them into the Radha Krishna Lilas through loving remembrance, through song, poetry and reflection. His expression was unique, and he will be missed. January 2013 Shyamdas, Lili and Eddie Stern 7
- Page 1 and 2: SHYAMDAS 1953-2013 IN MEMORIAM SPEC
- Page 3 and 4: SHYAMDAS • 1953 - 2013 Shyamdas r
- Page 5: Calling out to Sweet Radhe in the m
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- Page 11 and 12: uge. In the Bhagavad Gita Krishna s
- Page 13 and 14: Shyamdas and Vallabhdas, Jatipura,
- Page 15 and 16: We sat down in a cozy, quiet corner
- Page 17 and 18: Leading Kirtan at Bhakti Fest Midwe
- Page 19 and 20: samādhi, they returned home. They
- Page 21 and 22: “To awaken the wives of the gods,
- Page 23 and 24: employs emotions that are common in
- Page 25 and 26: offering. A short while later, Rasa
- Page 27 and 28: Brahmaváda philosophy, in which ev
- Page 29 and 30: universal destruction, “Go and si
- Page 31 and 32: YAMUNA’S STORY SHYAMDAS few years
- Page 33 and 34: Although the nature of Brahman is b
- Page 35 and 36: joy of His own Being. And it was th
6 Special Issue • Shyamdas ~ In Memoriam<br />
The poster of Śrī Nāthjī
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