profile

Hari-kirtana das

Hari-kirtana is an author, mentor, and yoga teacher who shares his knowledge and experience of how the yoga wisdom tradition can guide us toward meaningful and transformative spiritual experiences.

PostsLinksProductsRecommendations
Featured Post

Welcome and thanks for becoming a subscriber!

Thank you for becoming a member of my online community. I hope I'll be able to be of service to you as we journey together down the path of transcendental knowledge. Click here to find out about upcoming group study opportunities with me. If you'd like to hear my conversations with a variety of podcast hosts about bhakti-yoga philosophy in theory and practice, the relationship between faith and knowledge, perspectives on cultural appropriation, tips for yoga teachers, and observations on...

9 months ago • 1 min read

Greetings Reader - The wisdom texts of yoga tell us that how we acted in our previous lives created the blueprint for our current life and how we act in this life is creating the blueprint for our future lives. This progression of ongoing actions and reactions is known as the law of karma. On one level, it's a pretty simple formula: we create happiness for others, happiness comes our way in return; we cause distress for others, we create distress for ourselves. Eventually, but inevitably,...

about 19 hours ago • 2 min read

Greetings Reader - If you or a yoga teacher you know want to learn a sure-fire strategy for creating a workshop that will attract a crowd and deliver a truly valuable experience for all who attend, save your spot for this special event: How To Develop Great Workshops Live via Zoom on Sunday, May 19, 2024 | 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm EDT A great yoga workshop can be a life-changing experience. The challenge for the teacher is to consistently craft workshops that make a real difference in people’s...

10 days ago • 1 min read

Greetings Reader - I live in Washington, D.C., a company town where the "company" is the federal government, where seeing the President's Press Secretary at a coffee shop constitutes a celebrity sighting, and policy geeks crowd into sports bars to watch Judiciary Committee hearings instead of the Nats, Caps, Wizards, or Mystics. Politics is the number one spectator sport here in our nation's capital. And for those of us who live here, being a spectator is all you get to be. Fewer people live...

19 days ago • 1 min read

Greetings Reader, I'm happy share the news that my new my book, Journey Into the Bhagavad Gita - A Guide to Exploring Timeless Principles of Transcendental Knowledge and Integrating Them Into Your Life, is set for release on May 23, 2024. Here's the cover: When I started on this project, I had no idea how long it would take to finish writing, editing, designing, and publishing this book. To be honest, if I had, I might not have written it. But I didn't and I did and it's done. Whew! Here's an...

27 days ago • 2 min read

Greetings Reader - In a world of 60-second news cycles, wildly competing narratives, and hyperbolic supposition posing as authoritative journalism, distinguishing truth from opinion has become increasingly challenging. Without a compass that can reliably point us in the direction of reasonable belief and away from misguided theories, We can easily get lost in a sea of information - and misinformation - overload. That's where pramāṇa comes in. Pramāṇa, which means “evidence” in Sanskrit, is...

about 1 month ago • 1 min read

Greetings Reader - Explaining how the physical systems inside our bodies give us the ability to distinguish one thing from another, integrate information, and perform basic functions like watching, listening, and speaking are what scientists call "easy problems." Explaining why and how we have subjective experiences, on the other hand, is what David Chalmers, professor of philosophy and neural science at New York University, dubbed "the hard problem of consciousness." As Meghan O'Gieblyn,...

about 2 months ago • 2 min read

Greetings Reader - A friend of mine recently asked me a question: "What is the teaching that had the biggest impact on your spiritual life?" My friend is a person. I wouldn't blame you for thinking that I'm stating the obvious: I'm a person, you're a person, everyone we know is a person. But how do we know that our experience of individual personhood is real and not just an illusion? Respected members of the scientific community think this is a reasonable question. And many of those who work...

about 2 months ago • 2 min read

Greetings Reader - I'm very excited to let you know about the new spring/summer courses and workshops I'm offering this year! Thursday Night Bhakti Satsang - Divine Madness: The Remarkable Teachings of Sri Chaitanya 14 classes - Live via Zoom starting April 4 @ 8:00 pm Eastern Daylight Time. Sri Chaitanya was a 15th century scholar, mystic, social activist and transcendent leader who revolutionized the spiritual culture of India. However, his impact on modern spirituality is largely...

about 2 months ago • 2 min read

Greetings Reader - I’ve given talks about how to give a talk, offered workshops about how to develop a workshop, and taught classes about how to teach a class. Now it’s time to have a conversation about how to have a conversation. I’m so meta. But meta in a yogic way. Yoga has its own meta-ness, as exemplified in the Bhagavad-gita. The Gita is a narration of a conversation. As such, it’s not just a medium for the transmission of transcendental knowledge; it’s also a case study in how to have...

2 months ago • 2 min read

Greetings, Reader - For the past five years I’ve had the honor of participating in a local high school’s annual “Yoga Minimester.” It's pretty awesome: the students spend three days learning about yoga and meditation. This year, I had two classes with them: a guided meditation practice and their closing session, which included an introduction to kirtan: call-and-response chanting of Sanskrit mantras. At the beginning of their Minimester, the students heard a bit about the history of yoga and...

3 months ago • 4 min read
Share this page