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A STRANGE TH<strong>IN</strong>G<br />
EDDIE STERN<br />
DIRECTOR: ASHTANGA YOGA NEW YORK<br />
CO-PUBLISHER: NĀMARŪPA<br />
truly strange thing occurred on Monday February<br />
A 4th. I was walking home from the subway after the<br />
evening Siva puja at our temple and, as I passed by my<br />
parked and frozen Vespa, I saw that someone had left a<br />
rolled up piece of paper tucked behind my seat. I thought<br />
that perhaps it was a flyer for something, and I walked over<br />
to pull it out. The paper was somewhat fragile, with some<br />
Rajasthani characters on the back – like a calendar of some<br />
sort. As I unrolled it, I was amazed to see that it was an<br />
old poster of Śrī Nāthjī from what looked like the Nathdvara<br />
temple in Rajasthan, a temple and deity that Shyam<br />
Das loved immensely. I couldn’t believe what I was looking<br />
at. Nathdvara is not well known outside of the Vaishnav<br />
circles; perhaps if it was a picture of Ganesh or Siva I would<br />
not have been as surprised, but because it was the deity<br />
that Shyam Das worshipped for so many years, I was taken<br />
aback. Then I counted back the days, and realized that it<br />
was the 12th day after Shyam's cremation, and that in the<br />
Hindu tradition (at least in the South), this was the day<br />
that the soul is released from the earthly plane, and begins<br />
its one year journey to the next world.<br />
met Shyam Das in a small ashram in Vrindavan in<br />
I 1991. I used to enjoy hearing him tell the story of how<br />
we met, because he was so funny and descriptive, and I<br />
would look forward to his retelling of it whenever he came<br />
to my school to do a kirtan or lead some teachings. When<br />
we met, I was actually in a yoga pose, lying on my chest,<br />
with my feet resting on my head. I remember distinctly<br />
seeing a guy in a dhoti and what I thought was a maroon<br />
football jersey walk through the ashram gates. He engaged<br />
in animated conversation with a few people at the front<br />
gate for a while, and then, after spotting me, walked across<br />
the compound. I stopped doing my practice and said hello,<br />
and we struck up a conversation. He said that he was surprised<br />
to see someone doing actual yoga poses – that in<br />
Vrindavan you never really saw that, and in fact he only<br />
knew one person who practiced asanas, a yogi who lived off<br />
in the forest of Braj somewhere.<br />
In the midst of our conversation he told me that he had<br />
come to India because of Ram Das, to meet Neem Karoli<br />
Baba, and that after Maharaji left his body, he stayed in Vrindavan,<br />
lived with the local Vaishnav saints, and learned how<br />
to sing dhrupad – a North Indian classical music system. He<br />
talked about Vallabhacharya and the devotional Radha Krishna<br />
poetry of the region and we hung out for an hour or so.<br />
We were both on the verge of heading back to the states – he<br />
to Connecticut, and I to NYC – and I gave him my phone<br />
number and invited him to come do some kirtan at the yoga<br />
school I was teaching at back then, Jivamukti.<br />
Kirtan was not then as well known as it is now.<br />
There was not yet a kirtan 'scene', with many offerings<br />
in the yoga schools and big festivals. It was restricted to the<br />
ashrams, or to just a few yoga schools like the Sivananda<br />
Yoga Vedanta Centers, where kirtan was sung daily, and<br />
of course in the ISKCON temples. But until the mid-90's<br />
you couldn’t find Western recordings available in record<br />
stores, like Tower Records, or Virgin Records, until Jai Uttal<br />
and Krishna Das started producing them. Shyam Das<br />
was part of this generation that took part when kirtan began<br />
to spread outward. He was a genuine devotee with a<br />
penetrating love for the Divine, who expressed that love<br />
through song.<br />
But what characterized Shyam Das, and was really his<br />
unique expertise, was a deep devotional practice that was<br />
based on text, scriptural study, and seva, or service. Kirtan<br />
for him was to invoke the imminent presence of God. The<br />
name was the form, and the form was the name, and the invocation<br />
was the presence itself. His seva carried over from<br />
serving his deity and gurus to serving his friends and guests,<br />
and he was the consummate host. But perhaps the greatest<br />
service that he provided to his friends and those who<br />
attended his satsangs, was to draw them into the Radha<br />
Krishna Lilas through loving remembrance, through song,<br />
poetry and reflection. His expression was unique, and he<br />
will be missed.<br />
January <strong>2013</strong><br />
Shyamdas, Lili and Eddie Stern<br />
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