Art of Living Updates (in this message: 2 new items)

Posted: 25 Mar 2013 08:00 PM PDT

Bangalore:There's a Waltz for Lord Ganesha, Almost a Tango for Radha and Govinda, Lord Narayana's Andante and A March for Lord Shiva.

If you are wondering what these mysterious combination of words that seem to bring together something intrinsically Indian and typically Western are, these are some of the symphonic bhajans composed by engineer-turned-composer B. Prasanna and Khurshed Batliwala, co-designer of the Youth Empowerment Skills Plus workshop of the Art of Living, with inputs from their companion- filmmaker Gowrishankar. These compositions are based on bhajans by the Art of Living.
"I was playing the piano one day and Guruji (Sri Sri Ravi Shankar) happened to be there. He liked it and he said why don't you take some bhajans and give them a western classical treatment. I had also been toying with the idea in my head, wondering how it would be if instead of tabla and guitar and harmonium, there were cellos and woodwinds and brass playing in the bhajans," says Khurshed, who is also an amateur piano player and music connoisseur. "But it was only always in my head because I'm not trained enough in theory of music to write it out though I can think of a tune. That's when Prasanna happened."
Khurshed (or Bawa as he is popularly known) knew that Prasanna, who had returned from Singapore after a stint in a production house, had been working independently on composing music for quite sometime. So he approached him.

"He is trained as a Carnatic musician, and his mind is sharp and agile, it picks up the nuances of music. It was amazing how he would bring out all the music I had in my head."

Their first track, Lord Hari's Andante, received a standing ovation from the audience of the satsang they played it in. and so they worked on the rest of the tracks, bringing out different Western styles of composition, like the tango, duet or waltz in each bhajan.
"We chose some bhajans based on their rhythms and tempos - if you listen to Radhe Govind, you know it has the potential to be a tango. When you listen to the bhajan you know it can be treated in a certain way and we chose bhajans based on their different flavours," says Prasanna.
"These bhajans just lent themselves to what we wanted. So we knew that for the Devi we wanted something soft and melodious or for Shiva we wanted something martial, loud and heavily orchestrated. For instance, If you listen to the Ganesha waltz it brings to mind a cute baby elephant."
Khurshed and Prasanna listened to a lot of classical music by Mozart, Chopin, Beethoven and Strauss, even some modern classical music like the themes of The Lord of the Rings, Super Man, Star Wars and others along the way. They drew inspiration from these masters, but managed to create an album which is uniquely theirs.

"Though the music sounds as if it's being played by a 100-piece symphony orchestra, it's just Prasanna, a keyboard and an iMac," smiles Khurshed. He has played some of the piano in the album, along with some other musicians, so it's "not so digital and more human."

"The album is a very outrageous idea," says Prasanna, who, being a trained Carnatic musician found that all it took to appreciate and explore a new genre of music was an open mind that is like a blank slate.

"It's a very different sound. When I searched for orchestral bhajans on the net there was nothing, it is a unique attempt. I don't think a classical orchestra would have ever thought about playing bhajans. I don't think a bhajan singer would have ever thought of having a full orchestra backing to their singing. It was a bold marriage but somehow it worked," adds Khurshed.

The essence of the album is devotion, he finds, though it's simply just something beautiful and, he says, good music leads into meditation. He is now thinking of working on more symphonic bhajans and later a Broadway-style bhajans album, "like a modern musical of how Andrew Lloyd Webber would treat a bhajan."

Source: The Hindu

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A spiritual message in San Jose for a stress- and violence-free society

Posted: 25 Mar 2013 07:56 AM PDT

SAN JOSE -- Holy men seem to pack San Jose's convention center like nobody else. The Dalai Lama drew a capacity crowd two years ago. On Sunday afternoon, a guru from India drew several thousand people from around the Bay Area to hear his vision of a world made free of stress and violence through meditation, compassion and individual love.
Just before addressing a crowd of about 8,000, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, an international humanitarian and spiritual leader, told a group of journalists and VIPs that the Newtown, Conn., massacre underscored the importance of his mission.
"It really tore me apart," he said. "I saw that we can't keep quiet anymore. We have to promote this idea of establishing a violence- and stress-free society in a big way."
Not to be confused with the late sitar player who inspired the Beatles, this Sri Sri Ravi Shankar travels the world delivering a nondenominational message and techniques that incorporates meditation, yoga and breathing exercises to reduce stress. If individuals, schools, social groups and even prisons can help reduce stress and anxiety on a mass scale, violence and crime would drop dramatically just about anywhere.
A 'different' energy
A son of an auto executive, the young Sri Sri took a spiritual path, followed the Marharishi Mahesh Yogi and developed a rhythmic breathing exercise to help relievepersonal suffering. A middle-aged man with a big smile to match his long, black beard, he founded the nonprofit Art of Living Foundation in 1982 to conduct programs for people of all religions and cultures.
His appearance Sunday buttressed one of those efforts, the Campaign for a Stress-Free Violence-Free Community. Some 1,200 volunteers trained in Art of Living techniques heard Shankar urge them on in a separate speech earlier in the day.
"With him, the energy is different," said Nandini Rao, an Indo-American woman from San Jose, who was cheerfully helping people find their way inside the large McEnery Convention Center.
She and another volunteer, Mridusmida Talukdar, of Cupertino, said they plan on teaching Sri Sri's stress-reduction techniques in public schools to put the clamp on bullying and early signs of worse behavior.
"I think we can start there," Talukdar said, "Help the kids get over their stress."
While the vast majority of volunteers and attendees appeared to be Indo-Americans, there was a sprinkling of other ethnic groups, enough to maybe indicate that Shankar's nondenominational philosophy and approach is catching on.
Spreading the word
Casti Cimpian, a Romanian immigrant who lives in San Francisco, said she was in a highly stressful situation in her job at a bank when a friend referred her to an Art of Living workshop.
"I had hit bottom," she said. That was 10 years ago. Cimpian said she learned how to see the good and bad in fellow employees and focus on the positive. "Everything is better, my relationship with my boss, co-workers and my career." She now teaches workshops for Art of Living.
So does Wendy Sanchez, an immigrant from Honduras, who teaches the technique to Latino immigrants, a group she described as hard to crack.
"They have so many challenges -- with the language, working two jobs, figuring out the schools," she said. Another challenge, Sanchez said, is the perception that Art of Living teachers are trying to convert Latino Catholics to Hinduism.
"I'm a Catholic," Sanchez said. "And I'm still a Catholic. Reducing stress allows you to find silence and spirituality. It only deepens your faith."

Source: Mercurynews

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