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INIMKOND
18th February, A-325

Making home in sound and silence: the sonic discovery of the place of Krishna

Marje Ermel
Tallinn University

Krishna devotees believe that we first get to know the places through our ears if we know how to ‘hear’ properly. I will explore the process of place-making by showing how the meaning of home is constituted among international Krishna devotees in Mayapur, India, through the process of listening.

Devotees refer to Mayapur as a Dham, a dwelling place of the Lord, where Krishna himself appeared in 1486 AD as a saint Caitanya Mahaprabhu and initiated sankirtan, the liberating practice of chanting and singing the God's holy names. The sound of the holy name is considered to be transcendental and thus higher than any mundane sound on this Earth.

Today, five centuries later, Mayapur is a growing 'Vedic city' which appears as a messy and noisy construction site. The growing new Temple of Vedic Planetarium, presumably the highest Hindu temple in the world, and the rapidly raising new buildings are attracting an increasing number of international devotees to come and make a home in the holy Dham.

Yet, regardless of the growing city, devotees believe that the Lord’s activities are eternal and thus he is still gracefully walking the fields in Mayapur and bathing in the Ganges. They claim that hearing the sound vibration of the mantra and the stories of the Lord’s pastimes help to purify one’s heart and thus to perceive the presence of the Lord.

I will explore how this process of making home and 'uncovering' the Dham takes place in this sonically complex environment through active listening and reciprocal relationship between devotees and their surroundings. I would argue that through the sound of mantra and storytelling devotees evoke and recreate certain realms, constituting the sense of home and the sacred mode of being in a place.