Retreat—Japa Workshop 1

Giriraj Swami: Some years ago, I came across a conversation between Srila Prabhupada and some disciples in East Africa, in which a disciple asked Srila Prabhupada, “How do I know if I am chanting with quality?” And Srila Prabhupada replied, ”When you chant with quality you won’t have to ask, you will know.” He said it is just like someone who is eating, he doesn’t have to ask if he is satisfied or not. When he is satisfied he will know. He doesn’t have to take a certificate from someone who is satisfied with the meal. And then Srila Prabhupada said that when quality comes, you will feel like Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, śūnyāyitaṁ jagat sarvaṁ govinda-viraheṇa me, the whole world is vacant in the absence of Krishna. Just like if for example a wife loses her husband, then the whole world seems vacant and everything that she sees will remind her of her husband.

And then Srila Prabhupada said, that in the beginning, you have to chant as a matter of duty. You have vowed to chant sixteen rounds, so you must chant sixteen rounds as your duty. You do your duty and the quality will come, and spontaneously you will want to chant. You will feel like Rupa Gosvami, ‘What is one tongue and two ears? Like millions of tongues and billions of ears then I could chant.’ Like Haridasa Thakura, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu personally told him, ‘You don’t have to chant your rounds anymore. You have done enough.’ But he didn’t want to stop.” And then Srila Prabhupada gave his own example, in a little different context, and he said, “Just like me, I get up in the night to translate and write my purports. No one tells me that, ‘You have to get up,’ but I do it, because I am enthusiastic to do it. Therefore people like my purports.” And he explained that that stage of quality, govinda-viraheṇa me, that comes, well he mentioned two words, asakti, which is like the most advanced stage of sādhana-bhakti, and bhava. So that will come but for now you do your duty and chant your sixteen rounds.

Now, we here today are somewhere in between. We are not satisfied just to officially chant our sixteen rounds or mechanical chanting of our sixteen rounds. We want to chant better rounds with some attention, but we are not at the stage, govinda-viraheṇa me. The whole world is vacant without Govinda, but we must do our duty that is given. We must chant our sixteen rounds, and we can hanker. Srila Prabhupada has explained, in the beginning, one derives pleasure from the service and then later one derives pleasure in relation to the object of the service, Krishna, Radha and Krishna. So we can pray to the holy name to be merciful to us, and to allow us to utter the holy name, and hear the holy name, and have the holy name enter our minds and hearts. Because we cannot do it on our own. Anyone who has tried knows; we can’t do it on our own.

Even Narada Muni in his meditation, the Lord appeared in the lotus of his heart, but then after some time the Lord disappeared. And Narada Muni tried to recreate the same situation in which the Lord had appeared the first time, but the Lord didn’t appear again. And then he heard a voice in which the Lord said, “Because you are not yet mature in your devotional service, apakva, you are immature. Now you will be unable to see Me again in this life, but I have allowed you to see Me to increase your desire for Me.” So the holy name is the person, Krishna, alive, conscious, personal, and He will deal with us in the way He thinks best. But from our side, we have to be constant in our endeavor and in our prayer. As far as chanting with feeling, whatever feeling we have, in a sense, we can actually put into our chanting. Eventually that other feeling will come, feeling of separation from Krishna, but now we can put whatever our feelings are into the chanting and pray to the holy name to give us shelter.

When I first joined I was told that Srila Prabhupada said that, if you are angry you should think of Lord Nṛsiṁhadeva, and if you are lusty you should think of Krishna and the gopīs. So all holy names are included in Krishna’s name, just as all incarnations are included in Krishna, and somehow or other we want to hear the holy name and think of Krishna, think of the holy name as Krishna. And whatever our failings, whatever our frustrations, we can place them at the lotus feet of the holy name and beg for mercy. Sometimes I will be chanting, trying to hear and then at a certain stage, feel to just throw my hands up in the air and say, “Krishna please save me. I am helpless. You are the only one who can save me.” Or if things are going a little better than usual, we can become proud, and then when we notice that, that makes us humble, because we realize how fallen we are, like the pauper who is proud of his penny, as Srila Prabhupada said. I think, probably because Mother Narayani is there, thinking of the early days in Boston more, but this is another one from the early days in Boston, that we are like players on a chessboard, being controlled by someone else and if we move one step forward on the chessboard, immediately we think, I am God.

So I have that tendency. Probably many of us have that tendency. So when we notice that, we take more shelter. Krishna, I mean how pathetic! I chanted one mediocre round and I think I am so great. How pathetic, please save me. We also pray to the Vaishnavas. This is something I read some years ago, in Raghunatha dasa Gosvami’s instructions called Mana-śikṣā. He compares himself to a traveler on a highway and these robbers, lust, greed, and anger, capture him on the highway and bind him with ropes. He is helpless, he is bound, he is at the hands of these rogues, thieves. So what does he do? He calls out for help to the Vaishnavas and as soon as he calls out for help to the Vaishnavas, they immediately come and release him from the ropes of material desire that bound him.

So, sometimes we do that. I do that. Cry out to Prabhupada, “Please save me.” And he responds. Or, pray to Haridasa Ṭhakura, pray to Tulasi-devi, pray to Bhaktivinoda Thakura, so many well-wishers we have, so many superior authorities. But it really works, so to speak, when one really does feel helpless, and desperate and one will feel helpless and desperate when one is intense in one’s goal and then one sees one is unable to reach it when it is stuck, maybe even going down. So we cry out for help, and help comes. But help doesn’t always come immediately. Sometimes Krishna wants to increase our desire. When Krishna was dancing with the gopīs He disappeared, and in great separation, they were roaming all over Vrindavan looking for Him. And eventually when they cried out the most tedious terms, the Gopī-gīta, then Krishna, His heart melted and He returned to them. And then there was some discussion, and in the end Krishna said that, “I was always near you. You didn’t see Me, but I was always near you. I never forgot. I just wanted to increase your desire for Me.”

So we might be chanting, doing all of the things that we should, to chant properly and attentively, but still Krishna maybe hiding from us. We may be praying, He may not respond immediately, but He is there, He is hearing our prayers, He is watching our efforts, but He is choosing not to come near you, because He doesn’t want to be so cheap that we think we can get Krishna on command whenever we pronounce the syllables of the holy name properly, or try to fix our mind on the sound of the holy name, or even pray to Him to be merciful for us.

So He is independent,svāśrayāśrayaḥ, but His nature is, He is very affectionate to His devotees, bhakta-vatsala. And if we sincerely endeavor in that desperate mood of helplessness and sincerity, He will reciprocate. Another emotion that we experience, a feeling that we experience, the sadness, and that ultimately is from separation from Krishna. Now in a more advanced state, we actually feel separation from Krishna, but if we feel sad because of separation from someone in the material world, or from some disappointment in the material world, but ultimately our only problem is being separated from Krishna, and the only solution that will solve the problem is to be reunited with Krishna.

His Grace Ravindra Svarupa Prabhu has told the story. I don’t think he would mind if I repeated it, because he told it on occasion, but after some years of chanting Hare Krishna, it finally dawned on him that we are supposed to chant with attention. Devotees will go for years just chanting, and they don’t really get it, that they are supposed to chant with the attention. Anyway he got it, at a certain stage he got it and he was trying to chant with attention and he started to become overwhelmed with feelings of grief, and he thought, What is happening? Because that was still relatively early, maybe the mid-1980s, when we thought, chant Hare Krishna and be happy. So he thought, Here I am chanting, trying to chant with attention, more than ever before and instead of feeling happy, I am feeling this overwhelming sense of grief.

So then he started to think there was something wrong with him. He was getting the opposite result. So he kept this secret, he didn’t want anyone to know. And then one day he was chanting and he was completely overcome with these feelings of grief, and he came to the bottom of it, the absolute bottom of it, and he realized that he felt grief because he had turned away from Krishna. He realized that he had turned away from Krishna, and that was the most abominable acts that one could ever do. And at the same time he had a perception of Krishna’s beauty and mercy and he realized that in his turning away from Krishna, there was absolutely no fault in Krishna. The fault was entirely his, that he had turned away from Krishna. And subsequently he connected that perception to the second verse of the Śikṣāṣṭakam, that tava kṛpā, You are so merciful, You made Yourself available in Your holy name, You invested all your potencies in Your holy name, but mamāpi durdaivam, I am so unfortunate that I had no attraction. So, he had that twofold perception or realization, on one hand Krishna’s mercy and on the other hand misfortune and that was a revolution in his spiritual life and in his chanting.

And it may happen that when we chant seriously, make a serious effort to chant attentively that things come up, and that is actually good. It is part of the process of purification. Again in the early days, one disciple told Srila Prabhupada that he felt he had more good qualities before he joined. That after joining, he felt more bad qualities were coming out. And Srila Prabhupada compared it to a room, a house or a room that has been very dirty for a long time, but all the dust is settled, it is there, but it is all settled. It has just been accumulating for a long time, and when you start to clean all the dust starts to fly up, and you think, Wow, supposition might be that it is dirtier than it was and it is supposed to be clean and it is getting dirtier. But it was there, but it was under the carpet, it just settled, and now it is coming up. That can be part of the process of purification.

The last time I was in Dallas, not just visit, but the previous visit, I was chanting in the temple room after maṅgala-ārati, trying to chant attentively with feeling, and suddenly I became overwhelmed with this perception that I was a demon. The person who I could most closely identify with was Rāvaṇa. Just like I mentioned yesterday, that in many of our relationships there is a mood of service, but at the same time, in personal relationships, there is the relationship of the soul and the relationship of the body and we want the relationship of the soul to become more prominent and the relationship of the body to be less so. Now I am speaking in retrospect, but there was maybe some subtle contamination of the desire to enjoy, but at that moment that is all there was. That is all that there was in me but the desire to enjoy, and it was staggering. And just then it was time to greet the deities, I could hardly stand, I could hardly, but I had to. Giriraj Swami can’t just sit on the sideline when it was time for deity greeting. And then I had to give class so. I had to. . . but I was very eager to discuss this with Ravindra Svarupa Prabhu.

So this all happened in Dallas. I came to Houston and simultaneously he also came to Houston. So we met, and then he was saying this is part of the process, and he said that a humble devotee will feel like that. There is the song by Bhaktivinoda Thakura, like we are not in the same category but, amara jivana, he laments on not just the fallen condition but also the demoniac nature and he refers to the Seventeenth Chapter of the Bhagavad-gītā, “The Divine and The Demonic Nature,” that when Krishna explained the two natures to Arjuna, He reassured Arjuna that, “Don’t worry, you are of the divine nature.” So, he really ensured that Arjuna, as a humble Vaishnava, hearing about the demonic description, must have been thinking that was describing him. So that will be there, and it is true. Actually it is true. After Ravindra Svarupa Prabhu said so many things to encourage me, in the end I said, “But the thing is I had that experience, and I know it is true.” And then he said, “Well in a way we are all demons, but we are being reformed. The life of society of demons being reformed.” Anyway, am sure that all of you pious souls will never have to experience anything like that, but whatever we experience, the idea is to dovetail the feeling in Krishna consciousness, and chanting the holy name, and just to go deeper and deeper in the chanting, and feel completely helpless, and independent.

Another thing Srila Prabhupada said; it came up yesterday when Sarvabhauma Prabhu mentioned about feeling complacent. That our service should be a challenge to. . . that we can only meet by coming to a higher level of Krishna consciousness, or taking more shelter of the process of Krishna consciousness. So likewise that goes for over endeavor. We want to be careful of that because that will disturb our chanting, but at the same time, if our life is too easy, if we feel too self-satisfied; that is also not favorable. So you want to have enough of a challenge that can meet the challenge we have to become more Krishna conscious, means you have to take more shelter of the holy name. And as Mother Narayani mentioned yesterday that can happen when things get out of our control, having a major challenge, in a sense, means that things are out of our control.

So that is basically what we have. There is nothing to be had in all the three worlds but the holy name. Chanting and service. Of course, we made the point before. Once our godsister called Kausalya, I think she broke her arm in a rickshaw accident in Jaipur and she could not do active service. So she asked Srila Prabhupada what she should do, how she should spend her time. And Srila Prabhupada said, ”You should chant.” She said, “But Prabhupada, I need to do some service, I can’t just chant!” And Srila Prabhupada said, ”Chanting is the best service!” But each of us, coming back to the idea of a challenge, that our service should be a challenge that we have to meet by coming to a higher level. In my case, one of those challenges was having disciples that I am responsible to deliver, and pretty much all of us have responsibilities like that, because the Bhāgavatam says:

gurur na sa syāt sva-jano na sa syāt
 pitā na sa syāj jananī na sā syāt

that no one should become a spiritual master, a father, a mother, a husband, or a, guru also means teacher, or a superior relative unless one can deliver one’s dependents from repeated birth and death.

So, in the purport Srila Prabhupada says that one can only be delivered from the replication of birth and death if one is a pure devotee. So therefore to just charge our responsibility properly, we have to become pure devotees. We have to train our dependents to become pure devotees. So a basic process is to repeat the message of Krishna, yāre dekha, tāre kaha ‘kṛṣṇa’-upadeśa and follow the instructions of Krishna. But one day, in my last visit to Dallas, I gave them instructions and I try to follow the process, but still I was struggling, and I was thinking it would be so helpful to them if I had more potency. If I had kṛṣṇa-prema, then I could really do my service and really help them. So I was chanting at White Rock Lake and I was thinking. I was chanting and chanting and I felt like I am chanting but they are all like blanks, like you have guns with bullets, so some of them are blank, there is no live ammunition; they are blanks. I thought I was firing blanks here and nothing was happening. On the one hand I was firing blanks and on the other hand, I am saying, if I really had love for Krishna, kṛṣṇa-prema, I would really help people and I. . .anyway Krishna is merciful. It does happen at a certain stage. It may be just at the breaking point, that is also Krishna’s characteristic. He waits for the last moment, like with Draupadi, it was a very interesting story yesterday; just at the last moment.

And when mother Narayani was saying, how we should imagine a situation with, not imagine but recall a situation where things are completely out of our control. I had a situation once in Johannesburg where I could not breathe and I really thought I would leave my body. It came to that point where there was one breath and I just couldn’t take the next breath. My oxygen was getting consumed. I thought this could be the end and somehow, I could not fit, because of all the congestion, I could not actually articulate the holy name, but within my mind I just called out to Krishna and I was able to breathe. Suddenly I was able to breathe again and they rushed me to the hospital. But Krishna is like that. Sometimes He waits for the very last moment, just to draw out that desperate appeal which is very much a part of our chanting, like the genuine cry of a child for its mother. If we really care for people, we really want to do good for them, then we should get as much Krishna consciousness as we can. There are different ways of looking at it, but one way of looking at it is you can only give as much as you have. So if you really want to care for someone, you really want to be good for the person, you really want to give them Krishna consciousness, then you have to have Krishna consciousness, and that means

Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare

Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare

Taking shelter of the holy name, crying to the Vaishnavas, to the spiritual master, to the holy name to be merciful so one can get a little, just a drop, like Bhaktivinoda Thakura praying to the Vaishnavas, “Give me just one drop of faith in the holy name,” even that is something. If we had one drop of faith in the holy name, we can keep chanting. That will give us the strength and we continue to chant and we can give that to others. Our words will have more potency, they are realized. And whatever we do actually, we chant our sixteen rounds. I think of a story more on the negative side, but it is the same principle.

One mother brought her child to Mahatma Gandhi and said, “My son eats too much sweets. Can you ask him not to eat so many sweets?” So Mahatma Gandhi said, “Okay bring him back in two weeks.” So she brought the boy back in two weeks, and Gandhiji told the boy, “Don’t eat so many sweets.” So afterwards the mother said, ”Well, you just told him not to eat so many sweets, why didn’t you tell him that two weeks ago, when I brought him the first time?” And he replied, “Well I was eating sweets myself at the time. How could I tell him not to eat sweets!” Of course we do, we repeat, that is our process to repeat what we heard but the more we practice what we preach and realize what we preach, the more effect we will have. And in that sense also chanting is service and it helps us in our service of encouraging others to chant, which is service to the holy name and to others.

Okay, thank you very much. Hare Krishna.

We do have time for questions and comments. Would you like to say anything? Chaitanya dasa?

Devotee: [Unintelligible 39:23]

Giriraj Swami: Excellent point. Chaitanya dasa says that when we preach to others, then we chant nicely, so we are actually preaching to ourselves.

That is true, and a lot of the time when we preach something we are tested on the same thing. I gave a class, you should be humble, and then the next day, the next hour, “Oh..oh! I am getting tested on what I just told everyone else to do.” So that is true. Preaching is very beneficial. You are preaching to yourself, even if you realize the knowledge more when you preach, and you have to come up to the standard that you are preaching. That is a very good point. Yes?

Devotee: [Unintelligible 40:24]

Giriraj Swami: These are two of the best questions I have ever heard in my whole life. Thank you very much. What is your name? O.B.Dikay? Thank you. I was in so much ecstasy hearing the questions, I have forgotten what they are. I remember the second one. Can you repeat the first one?

Devotee: [Unintelligible 41:01]

Giriraj Swami: Oh, how one could turn away from Krishna?

Yes, that is a very good question, a very deep question.

Well in our philosophy, Gaudiya Vaishnava philosophy, as we have received it from our spiritual master, Srila Prabhupada, we understand that we all have an eternal relationship with Krishna, and, eternal means without beginning and without end. So the fact that we are in the material world means that we have turned away from Krishna, because from beginningless time, anādi, from beginningless time, we have had a connection with Krishna, and there are verses, Kṛṣṇa bhuliya jīva bhoga vañcha kare, as soon as one forgets Krishna and wants to enjoy, he comes under maya. So that is an existential truth about all of us. And the chanting is reviving our eternal relationship with Krishna. It is already there. It is not something artificial that we have to gain from another source, it just has to be revealed by chanting. And as far as the spiritual master delivering the disciple, your question was how can any person deliver another person, and that is true, it is actually a cooperative effort. The spiritual master gives instructions and the disciples follow them or try to follow them.

Once in Bombay a man came to Srila Prabhupada, he was, in a superficial way, pleading, “Swamiji Swamiji please save me. Only you can save me.” And Srila Prabhupada replied, “I cannot save you; you have to save yourself. But I can give you the method by which you can save yourself.” So the two are there. Once Srila Prabhupada commented on that mentality. Some disciples prayed to Srila Prabhupada, appeal to Srila Prabhupada, “Srila Prabhupada please give me your mercy that I may follow your instructions.” And Srila Prabhupada, he was like, of course in his heart Prabhupada had nothing but love for everyone but externally, his lips crowed in disgust and he said, “My mercy is that I have given you my instructions.” He said it is like someone is in the well, someone who is in the well, fallen in the well, and someone else passes down the rope. And then the person at the bottom of the well is, “Please give me your mercy, that my fingers will curl around the rope” His mercy is, he is sending me the rope that will pull you up, but you have to hold on to the rope, and then holding on to the rope is following the instructions. But of course the devotee, the spiritual master, he can pray for the welfare of the disciple, and that also helps. And again depending on his purity and his relationship with Krishna, his prayers will have that efficacy to help the disciple. But still the disciple has to make the effort and that is what we discussed yesterday, pariśrama, one must tire this endeavor without consideration of hopelessness of the people and at the same time depend on the mercy of Krishna.

Yes, Namachintamanee?

Devotee: [Unintelligible 45:43]

Giriraj Swami: She says, eventually you feel pure separation from Krishna but isn’t the first stage to feel separation from the spiritual master.

In general it looks like that. First is the spiritual master, Vaishnavas, śikṣā-guru, dīkṣā-guru, then Nityananda Prabhu, then Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, then ultimately Radha and Krishna. But you can have a glimmer of separation from Krishna also. That is true; it begins like that.

You have any questions or comments?

Devotee: [Unintelligible 46:52]

Giriraj Swami: [Unintelligible 46:53] Prabhu says that we have to cleanse the heart of material dirt. We have to know the different types of dirt.

Well, there are scriptures that tell us, like in Caitanya-caritāmṛta, Lord Chaitanya mentions some of the different types of needs and in the discussion of the cleansing of the Gundica temple, Srila Prabhupada quotes his guru Maharaja, Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Ṭhakura, about how the cleansing of the Gundica temple represents the cleansing of the heart, and then he discusses some of these different anarthas. There are many books by previous acharyas that detail them. And by chanting itself, that process of attentive chanting, things are revealed to us about ourselves. What our weaknesses are and where we need to improve. And we can also consult other Vaishnavas. In that example of the devotional creeper, bhakti-latā-bīja, Lord Chaitanya says one must become a gardener, plant the seed and water it and pull out the weeds.

So we might not be expert gardeners, but there might be others who are more expert who can point things out to us if we are ready to subject ourselves to that. And there are qualified people who can help us, but the thing about chanting, it is like the panacea of all diseases. So whatever your particular anarthas might be, your particular nuances in anarthas, chanting will cleanse them all. It is not like we need different medicine, that one medicine will cure all the diseases, and I think that is part of the process of purification. You yourself will realize what anarthas are there as you are in the process of being cleansed.

Shyamasundara Prabhu? 

Devotee: [Unintelligible]

Giriraj Swami: When will I be able to come and give the class on The Nectar of Devotion?

When the Lord is merciful to me, and helps me overcome my causeless reluctance. I will keep it in mind. Maybe when the new temple’s finished.

Any other questions or comments? Mother Narayani would you like to comment?

Hare Krishna

All glories to Srila Prabhupada.