I live in New York City across the street from Bhakti Center in a neighborhood that is known more for its bars and nightlife than as the home of Their Most Merciful Graces Sri Sri Radha Muralidhar. When I head over to mangal aarti, bars are just closing and the last stragglers winding up their inebriated manifest pastimes on First Avenue.
On a recent evening the New York Knicks basketball team won the national championships for the first time since 1973, three years before the first New York City Ratha Yatra made its transcendental way down Fifth Avenue 50 years ago in 1976. We had celebrated the 50th NYC Ratha Yatra days before the Knicks victory and I was still recovering, sound asleep protected from all the noisy bars packed to capacity by the din of my window air conditioning unit.
But then there was a sonic boom. A shockwave of noise so intense ripped me right out of a deep sleep and pulled me half conscious to the window to see if a jet plane had indeed landed on First Avenue. No, the Knicks had just won. So many people poured out of bars it was comical to think how they had all fit into the storefront spaces that held them and they were jumping up and down in genuine frenetic joy.
As they jumped, I was reminded of the harinam Gurudev, Guruma and my dear godbrothers from San Diego and I had joined a few days earlier in Times Square before the 50th NYC Ratha Yatra. The World Cup was also in town (never a dull moment in New York!) and Times Square had already been claimed by rajasic fans from Brazil, their sea of yellow jerseys reflecting the bright lights of Maya’s World Headquarters.
When our harinam party waded fearlessly into their midst at first our chanting cut into theirs, then it was a happy battle of us chanting the Maha Mantra and them responding with their national slogans. But quickly their chief drummers and noise makers could not resist the power of the Holy Names and they started chanting Hare Krishna with us! We started going around and around the center of Times Square with a battalion of Brazil soccer/football fans in a multicultural harinam swirl that had the mouths of even the most hardbitten New Yorkers and hapless tourists agape.
We were jumping up and down and up and down and I felt certain that we could all go on eternally with not a hint of exhaustion buoyed by Lord Caitanya’s mercy, harnessing the undeniable material energy of this place and sending it straight up to Krishna. The Brazil fans seemed to have forgotten their slogans, unwittingly energized so much more completely by the Holy Names of the Lord. It was only a fast moving New York City summer thunderstorm with rains so intense they would seem to be from Indra’s Samvartaka clouds that sent us all scrambling for shelter. Our Govardhan Hill was nearby scaffolding to which Gurudev led us to take shelter and with a decidedly captive audience of hundreds of people fleeing the rain led us in our own smaller harinam!
Back at my window looking down on the Knicks fans jumping up and down, I thought to myself, “I wonder how long they will be able to jump up and down?” I was wagering it wouldn’t be for long as I remembered what Prabhupada said about how only the Holy Names have the power to be repeated over and over only getting more fresh and more sustaining. Someone once asked Prabhupada, “What's so special about the Hare Krsna mantra? Couldn't you get the same effect by chanting Coca-cola Coca-cola, or any other sound, over and over again?” Prabhupada replied,
“..by chanting and hearing God's holy names we're in the presence of God Himself. And since Krsna is the reservoir of all pleasure and purity, the more we chant Hare Krsna the more we feel spiritual pleasure and cleanse our minds of material misconceptions. Could you chant Coca-cola Coca-cola for very long without becoming bored and disgusted? Hardly. But from morning till night you can chant Hare Krsna, Hare Krsna, Krsna Krsna, Hare Hare/ Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare, and you'll feel new and new spiritual pleasure every moment. How can this be? The Hare Krsna mantra is a unique kind of sound vibration: the namavatara, or God's incarnation in His holy names.”
And sure enough, as ardent as the fans were, they could not jump up and down and chant the names of the Knicks for more than a minute or two before they began to flag and fade. Because we all know at a soul level whether we are aware of it or not that it is unsustainable, unsatisfying and ultimately slightly absurd to chant the names of anyone but God.
