By Mahatma Prabhu
Chanting is very important, if you strive to upgrade your chanting it will make such a huge difference in your Krishna Consciousness.
QUOTE: “Japa is not a ritual. It is not a mechanical, mindless, robotic process. It is an offering of the heart, a pleading for mercy, a begging to be accepted by the Lord. It is a crying of the soul to be engaged eternally in the Lord’s service. The emotions these moods invoke nourish our chanting. Krsna is moved by love, not by a parrot like repetition. Feelings and desires for Radha and Krsna are meant to be communicated through Their Names.”
Now, this is interesting, because in the teachings of Queen Kunti, she is expressing that if I don’t, if I’m not material exhausted with the material world, and if I am trying to enjoy the material world, then, when I pray to Krishna, and chant His names, I won’t chant with feelings. In the purport Srila Prabhupada said that everything depends of feelings. So specifically, when we are chanting there is an obstacle we have, many, many of us face this, I will say all of us face it at one point or another, that is chanting mechanically.
Chanting mechanically, basically means to take the holy name as an ordinary material sound. Mechanical chanting is to just chant 1728 mechanical names, because of the vow we make to chant 16 rounds. So, there is no real feeling, there is real no prayer, or any purification to be accepted by Krishna, or any kind of emotion involved. It’s just a mechanical process to chant a certain number of rounds. And when we take initiation into chanting 16 rounds, we are not actually taking initiation into chanting mechanical rounds. That’s not, we are not vowing, Gurudev, “I have promised to you to chant 16 mechanical rounds”. No, we are not vowing for that. We are vowing to chant 16 good rounds. Which means rounds which we are praying for Krishna, to become pure, to surrender, praying for whatever it is, we need to advance in our devotional service.
Our previous acharyas, as well as Srila Prabhupada have left us numerous meanings to the holy name. In all the meanings that they have given us, there are actually prayers or emotions please bring my heart closer to you, please teach me how to serve you, please make me qualified to serve you. So, any time there is an emotion that you need to advance in your spiritual life and you put that emotion into your chanting and then your chanting achieves greater, greater potency.
Now I know lot of you are thinking aren’t we supposed to hear? Isn’t that the process? That is, but when you absorb your whole being and your whole feeling and emotions in your prayer in chanting, you are much more involved than in the process of physical hearing. Physical hearing is supposed to fix the mind, as your mind becomes fixed the emotions will come. But one of the best ways to fix the mind, is to chant with emotion, because when emotion is there the mind doesn’t wander. Usually when your mind is wandering you will notice because you are lacking emotion in your chanting, and you can hear it in your voice. When there is emotion in chanting as you hear it, you can feel the prayer, you can feel the petition, when you lose that feeling in your voice, then you can kind of feel monotonous or mechanical, “Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare” it’s like that kind of you can hear that’s little bit boring little bit mechanical just trying to get it done. But when there is prayer, you can feel, “Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare”, you can feel it and you can hear it. When other people are chanting prayerfully, you can feel it and you can hear it also. That is how you are should supposed to be chanting.
It takes energy, takes focus, takes effort, for sure but that’s the process. Chanting with feeling and what’s the feeling, Krishna, “I want to become a pure devotee”, Hare Krishna Hare Krishna, want to become pure devotee, I want to serve, I want to surrender to my Guru. Please empower me, please bring me closer to you, please get me out of Maya.
In one time when Srila Prabhupada was explaining the meaning of the mahamantra, Krishna, let me engage in your service, he went on to explain, that the mood of the feeling is, for so long I have been engaged in maya’s service, and I am frustrated, I am unhappy, I am frustrated it doesn’t work, I just wanted to engage in your service, Hare Krishna Hare Krishna, so that, meaning is please relieve me from the modes of nature please, please I don’t want to serve maya anymore. I served wicked masters of my mind and senses and they have just and they have given me pain and suffering and frustration. So please now, let me overcome these desires and let me just serve you.
if you understand the meaning, you see there is lots emotion in there, lots of prayers, lots of feelings in that. So, put that into your chanting. That’s the point of today’s quote. Hare Krishna.
(Transcribed by Madhumati Priyasaki Devi Dasi)
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